AM ACC 3/26/2018

Congressional Hearings - There are no hearings to report at this time.

Industry and Association News

1. (ACC Mentioned) U.S. Specialty Chemicals Market Regains Momentum, ACC Says

   Mar 23, 2018 | ChemEng Online

   By Scott Jenkins
   
   
   The American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) reported that U.S. specialty chemicals market volumes regained momentum, increasing 0.4 percent in February, after only a 0.1 percent gain in January.
2. (ACC Mentioned) China Urges US Against Taking Trade Relations to 'Dangerous Place'

   Mar 24, 2018 | GK Men

   By Bennie Garza
   
   
   The U.S. also imposed new tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum.
3. (ACC Mentioned) NABE Panel Foresees Economic Growth Revving Up Through 2018

   Mar 26, 2018 | ABL Advisor

   The NABE March 2018 Outlook Survey report projects economic growth to pick up this year. The survey, covering the outlook for 2018 and 2019, presents the consensus of macroeconomic forecasts from a panel of 51 professional forecasters, and was conducted between Feb. 28-March 7.
4. Senate Tees up Confirmation Vote for EPA Nominee Wheeler

   Mar 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

   By Patrick Ambrosio
   
   
   The Senate set up a confirmation vote for former congressional staffer and lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to serve in the No. 2 job at the EPA.

LCSA News

5. What Do Offshore Drilling and Toys R Us Have in Common?

   Mar 24, 2018 | Washington Examiner

   By John Siciliano
   
   
   The Environmental Protection Agency has added officials from a noted offshore drilling company and the prominent Environmental Defense Fund to its chemical safety advisory committee.

Chemical Management News

6. CITGO, Occidental Asked to Pay $11 Million in Louisiana Cleanup

   Mar 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Enviornment Report

   By Sylvia Carignan
   
   
   CITGO Petroleum Corp. and three other companies would pay $11 million under a proposed agreement with federal and state agencies over contamination of a Louisiana estuary.
7. California DTSC Faces Debate over Reach of Review for PFAS in Carpets

   Mar 23, 2018 | Inside EPA

   By Curt Barry
   
   
   Industry and environmentalists are battling over which per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) California's toxics department should assess in its proposal to list carpets and rugs containing the substances as a "priority product" under its green chemistry program, a decision that could drive how strictly the products are regulated.
8. The EPA Planned to Ban a Deadly Paint-Stripping Chemical. Will It Follow Through?

   Mar 26, 2018 | Center for Public Integrity

   By Jamie Smith Hopkins
   
   
   It might be surprising to learn that simply removing paint could be fatal, but the key ingredient in many paint-stripping products has felled dozens of people engaged in this run-of-the-mill task.
9. Washington Becomes First State to Ban PFASs in Food Packaging

   Mar 26, 2018 | Chemical Watch

   Washington has become the first US state to ban perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) from food contact materials.
10. You're Likely Ingesting Plastic from Your Water, Food, Toys, and Cosmetics

    Mar 23, 2018 | Healthline

    By Elizabeth Pratt
    
    
    It’s in things you use every day, and it may be harming your health.
11. 15 Years Ago, Warning Signs of a Crisis

    Mar 25, 2018 | The Fayetteville Observe

    By Greg Barnes
    
    
    In March 2003, a Fayetteville Observer reporter toured a new facility at DuPont’s Fayetteville Works plant, which had just begun producing C8.

Energy News

12. (ACC Mentioned) W.Va., Ohio, Pa. Governors Renew Shale Gas Agreement

    Mar 23, 2018 | Weirton Daily Times

    Leaders in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania will continue to work together to market the region for natural gas development.
13. (ACC Mentioned) Shale Crescent USA Team Attends Global Conference

    Mar 24, 2018 | Marietta Times

    By Janelle Patterson
    
    
    On Friday, leaders of the Shale Crescent USA movement returned to Marietta with leads on the future of petrochemicals and natural gas for the region.
14. Trump's Trade War May Sabotage Gas Deals That Would Ease Deficit

    Mar 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Dan Murtaugh
    
    
    President Donald Trump's trade fight with China is risking energy deals that could ease the deficit causing him so much angst, according to analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.
15. Energy Industry Wary of Intensifying Trade Showdown

    Mar 23, 2018 | Politico Pro

    By Ben Lefebvre and Eric Wolff
    
    
    President Donald Trump’s steel tariffs and the possibility of an ensuing trade war with China are rattling nerves in the oil industry.
16. Perry Steers Clear of Trump's Chaos with Laser Focus on Energy

    Mar 26, 2018 | Politico Pro

    By Anthony Adragna
    
    
    Energy Secretary Rick Perry once called for abolishing the agency he now runs but forgot its name, his biggest policy initiative so far went down in flames, and he was photographed in a bear hug with a coal magnate seeking a special break from the White House.
17. Omnibus $1.3T Spending Bill Boosts Energy, EPA Spending, With EPA Budget Flat

    Mar 23, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence

    By Charlie Passut
    
    
    Precisely 10 months after unveiling a plan to make deep spending cuts across the federal government, President Trump on Friday signed a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill into law on Friday, despite an eleventh-hour veto threat, which increases spending for most energy-related agencies.
18. Study: Ethane Crackers More Lucrative in Marcellus Region

    Mar 25, 2018 | Wheeling Intelligencer

    By Casey Junkins
    
    
    Officials representing those who may build an ethane cracker valued at up to $10 billion in Belmont County said they will acquire the Ohio-West Virginia Excavating property along the Ohio River, which would give them nearly 500 acres for the giant plant.
19. States Plan to Sue EPA over Missed Landfill Methane Deadlines

    Mar 26, 2018 | Politico Pro - Whiteboard

    By Alex Guillen
    
    
    California and seven other states say they will sue EPA for missing key enforcement deadlines for a rule limiting methane emissions from landfills.

Chemical Security News

20. Threats from Cyber Hackers Growing, U.S. Grid Regulator Says

    Mar 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Ari Natter
    
    
    Hackers increasingly threaten sites in the U.S. ranging from nuclear power plants to water processing systems, according to a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, adding his voice to warnings from other agencies and officials in recent weeks.
21. Russian Attacks on Energy Grid Spark Alarm

    Mar 25, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire

    By Morgan Chalfant
    
    
    Revelations about Russian cyberattacks on the U.S. energy grid are sparking new fears in Washington about the growing threat to the energy sector.

Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.

Environment News

22. (ACC Mentioned) U.S. Chemical Makers Could Face Tougher, More Costly Air Pollution Controls

    Mar 26, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News

    By Cheryl Hogue
    
    
    U.S. chemical manufacturing plants with large industrial boilers may face tighter, more expensive emission control requirements for toxic air pollutants because of a recent federal appeals court decision.
23. D.C. Circuit Might Back EPA 'Exceptional Events' Rule With Limit On Scope

    Mar 23, 2018 | Inside EPA

    By Stuart Parker
    
    
    Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit appear inclined to uphold EPA's revised rule for when states can discount emissions associated with “exceptional events” such as wildfires from Clean Air Act compliance, but signaled that the court would aim to enforce EPA's narrow interpretation of the rule's scope.
24. California Adopts Rule to Ban Refrigerant Causing Climate Change

    Mar 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Katherine Tam
    
    
    The California Air Resources Board adopted a rule to ban hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)—refrigerant chemicals that are greenhouse gases.

Congressional Hearings - There are no hearings to report at this time.

Industry and Association News

1. (ACC Mentioned) U.S. Specialty Chemicals Market Regains Momentum, ACC Says

   Mar 23, 2018 | ChemEng Online

   By Scott Jenkins

   The American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) reported that U.S. specialty chemicals market volumes regained momentum, increasing 0.4 percent in February, after only a 0.1 percent gain in January.

   All changes in the data are reported on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis. Of the twenty-eight specialty chemical segments monitored by ACC, twenty-one expanded in February and seven experienced decline. During February, large market volume gains (1.0 percent and over) occurred in food additives, mining chemicals, oilfield chemicals, and textile specialties.

   The overall specialty chemicals volume index was up 5.1 percent on a year-over-year (Y/Y) 3MMA basis. The index stood at 113.1 percent of its average 2012 levels. This is equivalent to 7.79 billion pounds (3.54 million metric tons). On a Y/Y basis, there were gains among twenty-three market and functional specialty chemical segments. Compared to last year, volumes were down in only five segments.

   Specialty chemicals are materials manufactured on the basis of the unique performance or function and provide a wide variety of effects on which many other sectors and end-use products rely. They can be individual molecules or mixtures of molecules, known as formulations. The physical and chemical characteristics of the single molecule or mixtures along with the composition of the mixtures influence the performance end product. Individual market sectors that rely on such products include automobile, aerospace, agriculture, cosmetics and food, among others.

   Specialty chemicals differ from commodity chemicals. They may only have one or two uses, while commodities may have multiple or different applications for each chemical. Commodity chemicals make up most of the production volume in the global marketplace, while specialty chemicals make up most of the diversity in commerce at any given time, and are relatively high value with greater market growth rates.

   This data is the only timely source of market trends for twenty-eight market and functional specialty chemical segments. Chemistry directly touches over ninety-six percent of all manufactured goods, and trends in these specialty chemical segments provide a detailed view of trends in manufacturing. The data also sheds light on how various consumer end-use markets are performing compared to others in the marketplace.

   http://www.chemengonline.com/u-s-specialty-chemicals-market-regains-momentum-acc-says/
   

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2. (ACC Mentioned) China Urges US Against Taking Trade Relations to 'Dangerous Place'

   Mar 24, 2018 | GK Men

   By Bennie Garza

   The U.S. also imposed new tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum.

   Emily Skor, CEO of Growth Energy has expressed disappointment that China is seeking additional tariffs on USA ethanol exports. "In the second stage, the 25 per cent import tax will be imposed after evaluating the impact caused by the USA policies", the Chinese Ministry said.

   Certain media source quoted the Chinese Commerce Ministry as saying, "China does not want to fight a trade war, but it is absolutely not afraid of a trade war".

   "It creates a very bad precedent", Beijing said, adding, "China hopes the United States will pull back from the brink, make prudent decisions, and avoid dragging bilateral trade relations to a risky place".

   In the same year, Taiwan was also accused of blocking American rice, while Japan Brazil faces similar charges over US made leather goods; South Korea over wire rope; and the European Union over soy beans. "Commerce ministry is weighing options on taking a stance as they are the two most important markets for India", an official with DGFT told The New Indian Express.

   Whilst the impact of the tariffs may be relatively small, "the concern will be whether this will spiral into an all-out trade war which clearly would be an overall negative for the U.S. & the rest of the world", said analyst Alvin Liew.

   "China's response was entirely predictable, given recent actions by our administration to implement new tariffs", said Bob Dinneen, president and CEO of the RFA.

   Kennedy said a deal to cut China's $375 billion USA goods trade surplus by $100 billion is far easier to achieve with additional purchases of US soybeans, beef, liquefied natural gas, Boeing (BA.N) aircraft and other equipment.

   The ministry said the list was aimed at offsetting the losses incurred from U.S. tariffs on steel and imports, which are due to take effect on Friday.

   Earlier Thursday, lawmakers and industry groups had expressed fears that China would retaliate even though they shared President Donald Trump's assessment that Beijing's policies - such as forcing USA companies to share their technology with Chinese companies - needed to be curbed. Trump said Thursday the tariffs on Chinese imports could reach $60 billion, although other administration officials said the tariffs would amount to $50 billion. "It's going to make us a much stronger, much richer nation", he said at the White House.

   In Washington on Wednesday, the mayor of the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung, Chen Chu, met with Susan Thornton, the U.S. State Department's senior diplomat for East Asia, Taiwan's representative office in Washington said.

   The United States has chose to exempt the European Union and six other countries from the steel and aluminium tariffs.

   China claims Taiwan as its own and considers the self-ruled island a wayward province, which Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Tuesday would face the "punishment of history" for any attempt at separatism.

   Earlier this month, Trump signed a proclamation calling for tariffs on steel and aluminium, a decision which the American Chemistry Council (ACC) said put $133bn of chemical industry investment at risk.

   China's ambassador to the WTO told Reuters on Thursday that China was ready for the USA move, and would challenge it at the WTO. Trump had exempted Canada and Mexico from the import levies for the duration of talks aimed at renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

   China's retaliation against the US tariffs on steel and aluminium appeared restrained.

   http://gkmen.com/2018/03/24/china-urges-us-against-taking-trade-relations-to-dangerous/
   

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3. (ACC Mentioned) NABE Panel Foresees Economic Growth Revving Up Through 2018

   Mar 26, 2018 | ABL Advisor

   The NABE March 2018 Outlook Survey report projects economic growth to pick up this year. The survey, covering the outlook for 2018 and 2019, presents the consensus of macroeconomic forecasts from a panel of 51 professional forecasters, and was conducted between Feb. 28-March 7. 
   
   “NABE Outlook panelists are more optimistic about the U.S. economy in 2018 than they were three months ago, especially regarding prospects for the industrial sector of the economy,” said NABE Vice President Kevin Swift, CBE, chief economist, American Chemistry Council. “The panel’s median forecast for average annual real gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2018 is 2.9 percent, up from 2.5 percent in the December survey. In addition, 76 percent of panelists believe that risks are weighted to the upside.”
   
   “In large part, the increase in growth prospects appears related to federal fiscal policies,” added survey chair David Altig, executive vice president and director of research, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. “The median estimate of the impact on real GDP growth resulting from fiscal policy changes is an increase of 0.45 percentage points in 2018, and 0.3 percentage points in 2019.
   
   “The outlook for inflation remains modest,” Altig said. “Overall, panelists expect that inflation, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, will increase by 1.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the fourth quarter of 2018 (Q4/Q4), up just a tick from the December forecast of 1.8 percent. The Q4/Q4 median inflation forecast for 2019 is also 1.9 percent.

   “Relative to the December survey results, panelists have downgraded the probability of a recession occurring by the end of 2018,” noted Altig. “Slightly less than 7 percent of respondents put the probability of a recession this year at greater than 25 percent, compared to the 12 percent who held this view in December. The top three downside risks cited by panelists are a stronger dollar, weak wage growth, and inflation.”
   
   Highlights:The median forecasts for growth in inflation-adjusted GDP (real GDP) are 2.9 percent between the fourth quarter of 2017 and 2018 Q4, and 2.5 percent between Q4 2018 and Q4 2019. The forecast for 2017-2018 represents an upward revision from the 2.4 percent in the December 2017 Outlook Survey. On an annual basis, the median real GDP growth forecast for 2018 is also 2.9 percent, compared with 2.5 percent in the December survey. Overall, the panel expects economic growth in 2018 to be significantly stronger than the 2.3 percent annual GDP growth rate in 2017. The panel’s median forecast for average annual GDP growth in 2019 is 2.7 percent, 0.2 percentage points less than in 2018.Seventy-six percent of panelists believe the balance of risks to the economy through 2018 is weighted to the upside, while 20 percent believe the balance of risks is weighted to the downside. The risk assessment has strengthened since the December survey, in which 60 percent of panelists believed the risks were on the upside, compared to 33 percent who believed risks were on the downside. The panel ranks the top three downside risks to the economy as a strong dollar, weak wage growth, and inflation. The top three upside risks are corporate tax reform, individual income tax cuts, and stronger global growth.

   http://www.abladvisor.com/news/13721/nabe-panel-foresees-economic-growth-revving-up-through-2018
   

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4. Senate Tees up Confirmation Vote for EPA Nominee Wheeler

   Mar 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

   By Patrick Ambrosio

   The Senate set up a confirmation vote for former congressional staffer and lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to serve in the No. 2 job at the EPA.

   Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), early March 23, filed a procedural motion to limit debate on the nomination of Wheeler to serve as deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. That action sets up a confirmation vote when the Senate returns from recess in early April.

   Wheeler is an attorney at Faegre Baker Daniels in Washington, where he has lobbied on behalf of coal giant Murray Energy Corp. and other companies. Prior to that, Wheeler was majority staff director and chief counsel for the Environment and Public Works Committee where he worked on various environment and energy-related legislation. Wheeler has some direct EPA experience: he spent four years working at the agency during the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations.

   The confirmation vote could come just in time for the agency: Mike Flynn, a career employee currently serving as the acting deputy administration, is set to retire April 3 after nearly four decades at the agency.

   http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=130386341&vname=dennotallissues&fn=130386341&jd=130386341
   

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LCSA News

5. What Do Offshore Drilling and Toys R Us Have in Common?

   Mar 24, 2018 | Washington Examiner

   By John Siciliano

   The Environmental Protection Agency has added officials from a noted offshore drilling company and the prominent Environmental Defense Fund to its chemical safety advisory committee.

   The additions are required under the updated Toxic Substances Control Act law that requires more diverse membership on the agency's Science Advisory Committee.

   EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced the 11 new committee members Thursday to supplement the 18 people appointed in January 2017 — including a former Toys R Us executive.

   Under the chemical safety law, the committee "is required to include representatives from multiple sectors, including: science, government, labor, public health, public interest, animal protection, and industry."

   Houston offshore drilling company Noble Energy is one of the standouts in the list of new members. The company has become well-known for the discovery of the giant Tamar natural gas field in the eastern Mediterranean off the shore of Israel.

   Israeli officials have been in the U.S. recently talking up their plans for developing the field and creating new inroads for exports to Europe and Egypt.

   Those plans could dovetail nicely with Trump’s energy dominance agenda, which plays up energy exports from the U.S.

   The company announced this week that it sold off a 7.5 percent stake in the Tamar field, retaining a 25 percent stake in the giant energy find.

   It doesn't hurt that Sidney Marlborough, who will be joining the committee, is a senior environmental toxicologist with Noble Energy. He is responsible for the company's chemical stewardship program, which EPA says is "responsible for the risk evaluation of new products for oil and gas exploration and production."

   Marlborough will be joining the likes of Alan Kaufman, a vice president at the Toy Industry Association. Kaufman was part of the group selected by the EPA in January 2017.

   Kaufman had been vice president for regulatory affairs and product safety at Toys R Us Inc., which recently announced it will be closing its national chain of giant toy stores.

   The EPA is also adding a top environmental activist group, the Environmental Defense Fund, to the committee.

   It is the first environmental group to be included on the chemical committee under Pruitt's watch. Jennifer McPartland, who will be joining the committee, is a senior scientist at the group who supports the environmental organization's efforts to ensure the implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act.

   Pruitt also added Michael Wilson from the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of large labor unions and environmental groups.

   Pruitt said he hopes that "broader representation" on the key chemical advisory committee "will work to advance the agency’s efforts to get the most modern and safe chemicals to market quickly in order to provide regulatory certainty for manufacturers and confidence for American consumers."

   https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/what-do-offshore-drilling-and-toys-r-us-have-in-common
   

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Chemical Management News

6. CITGO, Occidental Asked to Pay $11 Million in Louisiana Cleanup

   Mar 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Enviornment Report

   By Sylvia Carignan

   CITGO Petroleum Corp. and three other companies would pay $11 million under a proposed agreement with federal and state agencies over contamination of a Louisiana estuary.

   In the proposed settlement, filed March 22, the agencies claim the companies disposed of hazardous substances in the Calcasieu Estuary. The $11 million would reimburse the agencies for assessing past contamination and to restore natural resources.

   The companies that are potentially responsible for the contamination are CITGO Petroleum, Occidental Chemical Corp., OXY USA Inc., and PPG Industries, Inc. Most did not immediately respond to Bloomberg Environment’s emailed requests for comment.

   “PPG believes that this is a positive settlement and we are pleased to have this matter resolved,” Mark Silvey, spokesperson for PPG, told Bloomberg Environment in an email.

   The agencies involved in the settlement are the Department of the Interior, acting through the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

   In 1999, the Environmental Protection Agency conducted an investigation of the estuary’s contaminants, finding metals and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in surface water. The agency also found polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, and organochlorine pesticides in sediment.

   EPA’s investigation included surface water, tributaries, biota, soils, adjoining shoreline and banks, riparian habitats, and related wetlands.

   EPA has determined that PCBs are probable carcinogens, and some PAHs are carcinogens. Organochlorine pesticides can cause short and long-term health effects, such as headaches, vomiting, and liver and thyroid damage.

   The agencies’ complaint is rooted in the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act—also known as Superfund law—and the Clean Water Act. The consent decree is subject to a public comment period.

   http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=130386340&vname=dennotallissues&fn=130386340&jd=130386340
   

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7. California DTSC Faces Debate over Reach of Review for PFAS in Carpets

   Mar 23, 2018 | Inside EPA

   By Curt Barry

   Industry and environmentalists are battling over which per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) California's toxics department should assess in its proposal to list carpets and rugs containing the substances as a "priority product" under its green chemistry program, a decision that could drive how strictly the products are regulated.

   During a March 20 public workshop on the plan, manufacturers and chemical industry officials urged the Department of Toxic Substances (DTSC) to preclude older, long-chain PFAS -- that have been phased out and are no longer manufactured in the United States -- from the Safer Consumer Products (SCP) program review and instead limit it to short-chain PFAS, which they argued are less toxic than the longer-chain chemicals.

   The industry officials charged that DTSC's plan is based on risks posed by long-chain PFAS -- such as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) -- that are not used anymore in carpets and rugs sold in the United States and is ignoring scientific evidence that newer formulas of different PFAS chains being used are safe.

   "There's a robust body of degradation, toxicity and exposure data on those short-chain, side-chain fluorinated polymers that demonstrates a lack of widespread adverse impacts from those chemistries that are actually used to treat carpeting today," Jessica Bowman, executive director of the FluoroCouncil, which represents leading PFAS manufacturers, told the meeting.

   But environmentalists argued strongly that both short- and long-chain PFAS should be included in the review and questioned industry claims that short-chain substances are less toxic.

   "While it's true that short-chains do not accumulate in [blood] plasma to the extent that long-chains do, this alone is not sufficient evidence to conclude that there is no cause for concern," Tom Bruton, representing the Green Science Policy Institute, told the meeting.

   "The short-chain compounds have been less well-studied, and some recent research does raise red flags," he added.

   For example, recent studies on mice and humans "detected short-chain PFAS in several organs other than blood, including in concentrations higher than long chains," Bruton said. "Another study published last fall showed that short-chain PFAS was not detected when looked for in blood serum but [was] in 100 percent of whole blood samples. And all of this suggests that there's reason for concern about the short-chain PFAS, and this is important because they're the ultimate degradation products of many of the chemistries currently used to treat carpets."

   Further, "the fact that there are thousands of different PFAS in use means that it's impractical to evaluate the safety of these chemicals one at a time," he added. "A large number of academic, government and NGO scientists from around the world feel that the evidence against this class of chemicals is strong enough to merit limiting their production and use."

   SCP Program

   Under the SCP program, DTSC publishes three-year priority work plans, in which specific chemicals and products are identified for near-term reviews to determine if they should be studied in-depth for potential phaseouts or bans. DTSC may eventually require manufacturers to study whether replacing chemicals of concern with alternatives is feasible. This is known as the alternatives assessment process, considered a key part of the program. DTSC can also ban certain chemicals found in products if it deems that action necessary.

   In the case of PFAS, DTSC has determined that "there is potential for human and other organism exposure to PFASs in carpets and rugs" and that "the exposure has the potential to contribute to or cause significant or widespread adverse impacts."

   During the meeting, Bowman criticized DTSC's SCP "profile" document for PFAS in carpets and rugs as inaccurate and unsound on a number of levels.

   "We were deeply disappointed in the document, especially to find out that much of the information that we provided to the department regarding the primary PFAS that are actually used in carpeting today and have been in use for more than a decade -- those are short-chain, side-chain fluorinated polymers -- has not been included in the profile document," Bowman said during the workshop.

   "We think that that document is fundamentally flawed, from both a factual and a scientific basis, and that the concerns raised in the document regarding potential adverse impacts and exposure are based almost wholly on PFOA and PFOS," two substances that have been phased out, she said.

   "PFOA and PFOS are not used in carpeting today. The PFAS that are used in carpeting today are not a relevant source of these substances."

   In addition, Bowman claimed that there's a "robust body of data, much of which we provided to the department, that was not included in the profile document that shows the concerns associated with PFOS and PFOA are not characteristic of the entire class of PFAS, or the specific PFAS that are used in carpeting today."

   While DTSC's document discusses PFOA and PFOS hazard and exposure concerns, "these substances continue to be manufactured outside the U.S. by companies that didn't participate in" U.S. EPA's PFOA stewardship program, under which manufacturers agreed to voluntarily phase out the substances, Bowman said.

   She said that products containing PFOA and PFOS continue to be imported legally to the U.S. "So if the department does in fact have concerns about . . . PFOA and PFOS, then we would encourage you to take a closer look at other applications where they continue to be used today, rather than focusing on an industry on an application that over 10 years ago switched away from long-chains."

   'Limited Subset'

   More generally, Bowman charged that DTSC "cannot, and has not, demonstrated widespread adverse impacts for all PFAS chemicals" and that the department should "acknowledge that only a limited subset of PFAS are actually used in carpeting today." This subset consists primarily of "short-chain, side-chain fluorinated polymers."

   But public health groups challenged these assertions, applauding DTSC's profile document and urging department officials to proceed as quickly as possible to list PFAS in carpets and rugs and require manufacturers to develop less hazardous chemical alternatives.

   Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council's health and environment program, said during the meeting that California has an opportunity through listing PFAS as a priority under the SCP program "to be a leader to provide public health protections" from the chemicals, which she described as causing a "global contamination problem."

   In addition, she argued that it is "critical that the product listing cover the entire class, not only to make sure that we are addressing all . . . contaminants that we see today and in the future, [but] that we are not ending up in a cycle of regrettable substitutions."

   A DTSC staffer said at the end of the workshop that department officials have not made any final determinations yet on the proposal and that there are "many potential outcomes from the process." After the April 16 deadline for parties to submit written comments on the proposal, "staff may choose to change something in the proposal," the staffer said. 

   https://insideepa.com/daily-news/california-dtsc-faces-debate-over-reach-review-pfas-carpets
   

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8. The EPA Planned to Ban a Deadly Paint-Stripping Chemical. Will It Follow Through?

   Mar 26, 2018 | Center for Public Integrity

   By Jamie Smith Hopkins

   It might be surprising to learn that simply removing paint could be fatal, but the key ingredient in many paint-stripping products has felled dozens of people engaged in this run-of-the-mill task. In the waning days of the Obama administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed to largely ban paint strippers containing the chemical methylene chloride so they would no longer sit on store shelves, widely available for anyone to buy.

   What’s happened since should be no shock to close observers of the Trump administration's pattern of regulatory rollbacks. The EPA, after hearing from both Americans in support of a ban and companies opposed to it, pushed back its timeline for finishing the rule to an unspecified date, saying it needed more time to weigh the issue.

   Consumer advocates fear the proposed rule has been effectively shelved, even as people continue to die while using methylene chloride paint strippers on bathtubs and other items — including at least three last year.

   “There literally are bodies stacking up,” said Erik Olson, who directs the health program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. If the EPA won’t act on a chemical that’s undisputedly killing people, he said, “what are they going to act on?”

   The NRDC is among the advocacy groups that plan to intensify their efforts to get these products off shelves another way — by ratcheting up pressure on home-improvement retailers such as Lowe’s and the Home Depot to stop selling them. Lowe's said in an email to the Center for Public Integrity that it is working with suppliers on alternatives and is “committed” to nearly doubling the number of methylene chloride-free paint strippers it sells by the end of the year, to seven total.

   A doctor who serves as a Maryland legislator, meanwhile, wants his state to institute the ban the EPA hasn’t finalized. And California regulators are working on a proposed rule that would require manufacturers to look for safer alternatives to methylene chloride in paint strippers. (Some such options already are on the market but don't sell well, manufacturers say, because they don't work as quickly.)

   Even if these efforts bear fruit, they represent a patchwork approach that Congress seemed intent on avoiding when it amended the Toxic Substances Control Act in 2016. That legislation gave the EPA clear authority to ban chemicals presenting an “unreasonable risk” to health or the environment.

   Often, chemical harms are hard to grasp because they’re not immediate. But methylene chloride, which research suggests carries risks of cancer and other long-term health problems, can also kill on the spot. It’s been linked to more than 50 deaths in the U.S. since 1980, a 2015 Center for Public Integrity investigation found — among them a few consumers and a wide variety of workers on the job. Teenagers. A mother of four. A 62-year-old man. An Iraq War veteran.

   Using the product in enclosed areas, where fumes build up, puts people at risk of asphyxiation because methylene chloride is an anesthetic at high doses — knocking victims out and stopping them from breathing. Because it turns into carbon monoxide in the body, it can also trigger heart attacks in smokers and people with certain health conditions.

   “It’s too toxic to use indoors,” said Dr. Robert Harrison, an occupational medicine physician at the University of California, San Francisco.

   Over the decades, methylene chloride — also called dichloromethane — has struck down people removing paint or other coatings in bathrooms, tanks, basements, even in a church baptismal pool. The public appears mostly unaware of the danger. Clerks in hardware stores didn't seem to know, a California agency found in a 2013 survey. But experts linked the chemical to deaths as far back as the 1940s. Criticism that the EPA hadn’t done something began in the 1970s, in the agency’s early years.

   The European Union pulled methylene chloride paint strippers from general use in 2011. When the EPA proposed a rule in mid-January 2017, it wanted to ban sales to consumers and most other users.

   The proposal was years in the making. It came over the sustained objections of paint-stripper manufacturers and their trade groups, which argued that job losses would follow. In 2016, after the EPA’s work on its proposed rule was well underway, the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance petitioned the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to strengthen the products’ warning labels — then argued last year that this obviated the need for sales restrictions on the “most efficient and cost-effective paint remover products.”

   “We certainly recognize that some people have been harmed when using methylene chloride without the appropriate safeguards, and we are committed to being a part of the solution,” Faye Graul, executive director of the alliance, said at a recent legislative hearing in Maryland.

   The group, speaking on behalf of methylene chloride manufacturers and users, also said in comments on EPA’s proposed rule that the agency failed “to take into account the documented greater flammability risk posed by alternative products.”

   Benzyl alcohol, recommended by some state agencies as a safer option for paint stripping, poses what the National Fire Protection Association calls a “fairly insignificant” fire hazard. The EPA noted in its proposal that methylene chloride is often mixed with flammable solvents in paint strippers on the market.

   The EPA also considered whether better instructions would be enough to render methylene chloride safe. But dozens of studies “found that consumers and professionals do not consistently pay attention to labels for hazardous substances,” the agency said in its proposed rule, adding that proper safety precautions for methylene chloride are too complex for most users to successfully carry out.

   In December, however, while trumpeting its deregulatory efforts, the EPA changed the categorization of its would-be ban from “Proposed Rule” to “Long-term Action.” The agency said in an emailed statement last week that officials “felt that more time was needed to consider how best to analyze and address any risks from these chemicals.”

   In fact, the EPA has done that already — as part of its original proposal. Asked for an estimate on how long additional work on the rule would take and whether the agency still intended to finalize the proposal, the EPA did not respond.

   Maryland Delegate Clarence Lam, a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health physician with a specialty in public and occupational health, saw the EPA’s handling of this chemical as a call to action. In February the Democrat sponsored a bill to ban methylene chloride paint strippers in his state. The legislation isn’t going anywhere this legislative session, but he’s hopeful about its chances next year.

   “I didn’t think further risk assessments needed to be done,” Lam said. “This chemical probably should have been banned long ago.”

   Industry representatives testifying against his bill argued that a ban would be premature because the EPA is on the job. They pointed not to the languishing proposed restrictions but to a separate toxics review the agency is undertaking. Methylene chloride is one of the targeted chemicals.   

   But relying on that effort to get action on paint strippers could delay restrictions for years because it’s an opportunity for the agency to retrace all the steps it already completed, said Liz Hitchcock, who heads Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a group that works to get toxic substances out of products.

   “In the absence of EPA taking action, we are urging — and definitely increasing our efforts to persuade — the largest home-improvement retailers to take action on their own,” she said, and get “these dangerous products off their store shelves.”

   https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/03/26/21626/epa-planned-ban-deadly-paint-stripping-chemical-will-it-follow-through
   

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9. Washington Becomes First State to Ban PFASs in Food Packaging

   Mar 26, 2018 | Chemical Watch

   Washington has become the first US state to ban perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) from food contact materials.

   This week, state governor Jay Inslee signed into law a bill (ESHB 2658) that will block the use of the entire fluorinated chemical class from food contact materials.

   The prohibition will take effect from 1 January 2022, provided the state’s department of ecology identify a safer alternative by 2020. This alternatives analysis must take into account hazard and exposure factors, as well as the availability, performance and cost of the alternative.

   The bill has been touted as a "major defeat for the chemical and packaging industries, which have quashed similar proposed bans in other states," according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

   "It marks an important shift away from regulating one chemical at a time, to removing a whole class of fluorinated chemicals in food packaging," the NGO said.

   But industry groups have complained about the law’s duplication of federal food contact regulations under the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as well as its regulation of a broad class of substances.

   https://chemicalwatch.com/65322/washington-becomes-first-state-to-ban-pfass-in-food-packaging
   

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10. You're Likely Ingesting Plastic from Your Water, Food, Toys, and Cosmetics

    Mar 23, 2018 | Healthline

    By Elizabeth Pratt

    It’s in things you use every day, and it may be harming your health.
    

    Plastic is a part of everyday life for most people. It can be found in everything from food packaging and cosmetics to toys.

    Now, concerns are being raised that micro-sized particles of plastic small enough to be ingested are leeching into bottled water.

    A recent study found that 93 percent of bottled water contained signs of contamination with microplastics.

    The study examined 259 water bottles from 27 lots across 11 brands, purchased from 19 locations in nine countries.

    The study is yet to be peer reviewed and didn’t examine whether microplastics impacted human health.

    Nonetheless, the World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed to the BBC that they’ll conduct a review into the potential risks of plastic in drinking water.More than just water

    However, it’s not just bottled water that health experts are worried about.

    A number of industrial and consumer products made of plastic contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which can negatively impact human health.

    “So many of our plastic products that come in contact with food and beverages are made with endocrine-disrupting chemicals that leech into the environment and end up in our bodies in measurable quantities,” Nancy Wayne, PhD, a professor of physiology and reproductive endocrinologist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, told Healthline.

    EDCs are chemicals found in a number of everyday products that can interfere with hormones. In recent years, public interest surrounding the possibility of health threats due to EDCs has risen.

    Despite this, there’s yet to be a coordinated approach in the United States to regulating EDCs.

    EDCs are used in the manufacturing of many plastics and other products. Even in low doses, they can lead to a number of abnormalities in the body.

    “Bisphenol A or BPA is detected in over 90 percent of urine samples from thousands of humans tested. That means that it is in high enough amounts in blood that it spills into our urine prior to being fully metabolized. Animal studies show that low amounts of BPA, below that which the [Food and Drug Administration (FDA)] says is safe, leads to a host of abnormalities,” Wayne said.

    Low doses of BPA can alter cellular function and activate genes that promote growth of cancers.

    “Higher level of exposure to BPA in humans is associated with a host of health problems, including higher body fat in children, increased risk of miscarriages and premature birth, and increased incidence of prostate cancer. And that’s just one of many chemicals. Add in all the other endocrine-disrupting chemicals and toxins we are exposed to, and we have a big problem that is impacting everyone, no matter who you are, where you live, or what your socioeconomic status is,” she said.

    Affecting future generations

    A recent study by the Endocrine Society found that the impact of EDCs could extend beyond more than one generation by contributing to a significant drop in sperm count and sperm quality.

    “Sperm counts among men have dropped substantially over the last few decades, but the reason for such an alarming phenomenon is not known. These results suggest that when a mother is exposed to an endocrine disruptor during pregnancy, her son and the son’s future generations may suffer from decreased fertility or hormone insufficiency,” said Radwa Barakat, BVSC, MSc, a lead author of the study, research PhD scholar, and member of the faculty at the College of Veterinary Medicine at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

    The researchers studied the impact of DEHP, one of the EDCs commonly found in piping and tubing, cosmetics, toys, and medical devices.

    Male mice exposed to DEHP prenatally had less testosterone in their blood and a lower sperm count. As a result, they lost fertility at a time when they should have been fertile.

    Researchers said this suggests prenatal exposure to DEHP can impact both fertility and reproductive capacity of more than one generation.How much harm?

    Barry McIntyre, PhD, a group leader of the Developmental and Reproductive Toxicology Group at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, says a major challenge in research into EDCs is extrapolating data from animal studies to try and determine the potential risks for humans.

    He says the extent of damage from EDCs can be dependent on a number of factors.

    “The potential for harm from EDCs depends on what hormone pathway is impacted, the amount of exposure, and whether exposure occurs during a sensitive time of development like pregnancy or puberty,” McIntyre told Healthline.

    Source: Nancy Wayne, University of California Los Angeles

    According to the Endocrine Society, a growing body of evidence suggests traditional scientific methods for assessing the health impacts of chemicals is inadequate when assessing EDCs.

    This, coupled with controversy surrounding the safe doses of various EDCs, has impacted the development of federal regulations and guidelines.

    Wayne adds that although we may be years away from knowing the full extent of the impact of EDCs on human health, it’s not too early to act.

    “We are at the beginning of understanding. And what we know from well-designed, well-executed studies is pretty frightening. We should do more to limit exposure to EDCs, including limiting the use of plastics in food and beverage packaging because of its impact on the health of the first generation exposed, let alone future generations — which will inevitably be directly exposed if nothing is done,” she said.

    https://www.healthline.com/health-news/ingesting-plastic-from-water-food-toys-cosmetics#4
    

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11. 15 Years Ago, Warning Signs of a Crisis

    Mar 25, 2018 | The Fayetteville Observe

    By Greg Barnes

    In March 2003, a Fayetteville Observer reporter toured a new facility at DuPont’s Fayetteville Works plant, which had just begun producing C8.

    DuPont wanted to allay public concerns over the compound, which had been used for decades to make nonstick coatings for pans, food packages and other household goods. At the time, C8 was the subject of multiple lawsuits in West Virginia and Ohio, after regulators determined C8 from a DuPont plant had contaminated public water supplies and private wells for thousands of people.

    DuPont used to buy C8 from the 3M Co. in Minnesota, process it at the Fayetteville Works plant, and then ship it to the Washington Works plant in West Virginia for final production of Teflon. When 3M decided in 2000 to stop producing C8 for environmental reasons, DuPont took over as the country’s sole producer.

    During the tour of Fayetteville Works, DuPont officials told the reporter that they had taken every precaution to ensure that C8 was contained to the $23 million state-of-the-art facility where it was being made.

    They told the reporter that no wastewater would be discharged into the nearby Cape Fear River. Rather, they said, it would be recycled to remove as much C8 as possible before being trucked to an incinerator in New Jersey. DuPont officials also showed off a four-story smokestack scrubber, which they said was designed to minimize air emissions.

    ’’We’re very comfortable and confident that we can produce this product without any adverse effects to our employees, the community or the environment,” Barry Hudson, DuPont’s plant manager, said at the time. ’’We feel like we have a world-class facility.”

    Hudson didn’t say that just three months earlier, C8 had been found in groundwater under the plant, a 2,150-acre complex on the Bladen-Cumberland county line. DuPont told state regulators about the leak shortly after finding it. The public wouldn’t find out for another two years, in 2005.

    In response, environmental groups mobilized to raise awareness of the dangers of C8. They pushed for investigations, more monitoring at DuPont, more monitoring of the Cape Fear River, more EPA oversight.

    But state regulators largely ignored the warnings, environmentalists say. The state continued to allow DuPont to police itself, despite the crisis over C8 that continued to unfold in West Virginia.

    Twelve years later, North Carolina would be dealing with its own crisis because of DuPont and its spinoff company, Chemours — the GenX contamination of the Cape Fear River, nearly 200 private wells in Cumberland and Bladen counties, and public water supplies downstream in Wilmington.

    At least a hint of trouble should have come in 2001, when DuPont went to renew its discharge permit.

    At that time, the company asked state regulators for permission to bypass its wastewater treatment plant on the Fayetteville Works site. The company wanted to discharge the C8 waste into a wood-lined ditch leading to the Cape Fear River — the primary source of drinking water for more than 250,000 people in New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties.

    The permit request noted that medical tests on DuPont’s employees and other epidemiological studies supported the company’s conclusion that C8 “does not pose a health concern to humans or animals at levels present in the workplace or environment.”

    The state didn’t sign off on the permit right away, but regulators allowed DuPont to start making C8 at Fayetteville Works. Production began around October 2002.

    Two years later, the state’s environmental regulatory agency approved the wastewater discharge permit, which would allow DuPont to dump C8 wastewater into the river.

    For unexplained reasons, DuPont decided not to go that route. Documents show that 20 days after the state approved the permit, Michael Johnson, environmental manager at Fayetteville Works, sent an email listing a number of permit corrections. One said the company would not discharge C8 wastewater, because DuPont’s new facility “was constructed so as to have no process wastewater discharges.”

    DuPont discovered the C8 leak under the Fayetteville Works plant in January 2003. When it became public knowledge in May 2005, DuPont officials said it came from an old leaking cistern in another area of the plant, not from the C8 facility itself.

    The highest concentration of C8 found at that time measured 1.5 parts per billion in one of DuPont’s on-site monitoring wells. That’s 21 times higher than today’s EPA health advisory, which is equal to 0.07 parts per billion for drinking water.

    State regulators did little about the spill. Larry Stanley, then a hydrogeologist with the state Division of Waste Management, told the Observer that the contamination would not pose a concern unless the concentration was 100 times higher, or 150 parts per billion, which was the standard set by DuPont and West Virginia regulators. Stanley also said the agency was allowing DuPont to oversee its own testing.

    Though apparently not a big concern for the state, the spill triggered environmental groups into action. They formed the North Carolina C8 Working Group and, in August 2005, held a news conference outside the state Legislative Building to call for “a full and immediate investigation, rigorous monitoring and the involvement of the EPA.”

    The environmentalists tried to bring attention to what had happened in the Ohio River Valley. About four years earlier, regulators found that C8 had contaminated public drinking water in towns surrounding DuPont’s Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia. The contamination led to multiple lawsuits alleging that DuPont acted with reckless disregard, knowing the toxicity of the millions of pounds of C8 it had been releasing into the air and the Ohio River. The compound has been shown to cause cancer in lab animals and is a suspected human carcinogen.

    Among the North Carolina C8 Working Group’s organizers was Hope Taylor-Guevera, executive director of Clean Water for North Carolina and a former Duke University chemistry professor.

    Taylor-Guevera became so concerned about C8 that she led a small contingent of residents to DuPont shareholders’ meetings at its Delaware headquarters.

    Among those who accompanied her was Tracy Eaton, who lives on a small farm about a mile from the Fayetteville Works plant, across the road from Marshwood Lake in Cumberland County. Eaton said tests conducted by DuPont found C8 in nearby Marshwood Lake and in a well. State regulators said documents from that time period show that the C8 found in the well tested at 0.012 parts per billion, far below today’s EPA health advisory. The regulators said the state did not test the lake for C8 and didn’t have any results.

    Regulators didn’t check Eaton’s wells back then, she said, but she became concerned because young cows on her farm had been dying for no apparent reason.

    Eaton said she went before a large group of DuPont shareholders for two straight years, telling them about the cows and pleading for something to be done.

    The shareholders listened but did nothing, Eaton said, “just a bunch of pussyfooting around the issue.”

    “It’s frustrating for us because it could be poisoning us, and they don’t seem to care,” Eaton said.

    The C8 Working Group asked the state’s health director to investigate the impact of C8 exposure on nearby residents and workers at the DuPont plant. The group successfully sought a meeting with the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources to talk about groundwater contamination and the need for oversight

    But the meeting left Taylor-Guevera feeling “very disappointed.”

    “I don’t feel like they were taking it very seriously,” she said.

    Regulators continued to allow DuPont to conduct its own investigation of the groundwater contamination in its monitoring well and in an onsite drainage ditch without state or federal oversight.

    Upset, members of the C8 Working Group began taking their own samples in the Cape Fear River around 2005.

    In all of their samples, taken at six locations near DuPont, C8 tested much lower than 150 parts per billion, the level that would have triggered state action. But some tested above today’s EPA health advisory. The highest measurement came from upstream of the plant.

    More troubling, they detected other unregulated chemicals at much higher concentrations. Three were chemical cousins of C8. One of them — perfluorononanoic acid or PFPeA — measured slightly more than 2,000 parts per trillion at one sample site. By comparison, the EPA’s threshold today for C8 in drinking water is 70 parts per trillion.

    The discoveries should have sent shock waves through the state’s regulatory agencies, said David Andrews, senior scientist for the national Environmental Working Group in Washington.

    “I think the state should have absolutely been concerned,” Andrews said. “While the levels of C8 were below EPA short-term health advisory levels, they were significantly higher than other places in the country, and the other contaminants found should have added weight to that concern.

    “If these contaminants were known to be in the water more than a decade ago, why wasn’t periodic monitoring completed and made public?”

    Sheila Holman, the state Department of Environmental Quality’s assistant secretary of the environment, noted in an interview this month that the compounds found by the C8 Working Group were unregulated. Without a health advisory from the federal government, she said, little could be done other than to monitor the compounds.

    Michael Scott, head of the DEQ’s Waste Management Division, said six private wells outside DuPont’s boundaries were tested for C8 contamination around 2005. Only one came back with a measure of C8, at 0.012 parts per billion, he said.

    “I think the actions taken show that those were appropriate actions,” Holman said, “and that it didn’t extend beyond those property boundaries.”

    Scott said the DEQ continued to check the company’s on-site monitoring wells every year. In 2006, one well test found C8 at 765 parts per billion. The contamination decreased to only traces in later monitoring. Scott believes nature likely caused the C8 to dissipate.

    Jason Thomas, who lived at Marshwood Lake at the time, said he remembers environmental officials testing his well, his blood and the lake for C8. He said they found trace amounts in the lake and in his blood, but nothing in his well.

    Afterward, Thomas said, the issue “just disappeared.” But Thomas said he became so concerned about the presence of C8 that he eventually moved away.

    Eaton and Taylor-Guevera said testing outside DuPont’s perimeter stopped because the detected levels of C8 never reached above the 150 parts per billion threshold.

    It wasn’t until 2006 that North Carolina established a much lower limit for C8 at 2 parts per billion, though that was still four times higher than a settlement agreement reached for drinking water in the Washington Works case.

    In 2009, the EPA lowered its provisional health advisory for C8 to 400 parts per trillion. It lowered it again, to 70 parts per trillion, in 2016. The health advisory still has no teeth as a matter of law. C8, GenX and perhaps thousands of related chemicals remain unregulated.

    But the EPA did begin to recognize the problem. In 2003, the same year C8 was first discovered in groundwater at the Fayetteville Works plant, the EPA began to investigate DuPont in West Virginia for failing to report information about the health and environmental risks of C8.

    Two years later, the EPA fined DuPont $16.5 million — the agency’s biggest fine ever at that time — saying DuPont knew the potential risk of C8 as early as 1981 but failed to report it, as required by the federal Toxic Substances Control Act. Under terms of the settlement, DuPont did not admit to having legal liability.

    Environmentalists around the country thought the fine should have been much larger. DuPont made about $1 billion off C8 in 2005.

    State lawmakers played down the significance of the fine.

    “I would be astounded to learn if they (DuPont) were doing anything other than what they should be doing,” said then-Sen. Tony Rand of Fayetteville. “I would hope the (DENR) office in North Carolina is staying on top of it and continues to monitor the surrounding area.”

    A month after the fine, DuPont and seven other companies entered into what the EPA called its “global stewardship program.” The companies agreed to reduce 95 percent of C8 production by 2010 and eliminate its use altogether by 2015 because of the ever-growing environmental and health concerns.

    Taylor-Guevera, the head of Clean Water for North Carolina, believes the agreement caused the EPA to take a more lenient stance toward DuPont’s release of C8, since the chemical was going to be phased out.

    But the spread of C8 continued, especially in DuPont workers’ blood. Almost everyone has C8 in their blood. The average concentration for Americans is about 5 parts per billion. For DuPont’s Fayetteville Works employees, the average is much higher.

    The C8 Working Group said DuPont provided the EPA a report in 2002 showing that, on average, workers tested at Fayetteville Works had 11 parts per billion of C8 in their blood. A year later, blood tests showed an average of 217 parts per billion. By 2005, the average was 450 parts per billion, according to the C8 Working Group. One worker’s blood tested for C8 at 2,280 parts per billion.

    Despite the growing numbers, the Fayetteville Works plant manager again assured the public that C8 is safe.

    “Make no mistake, we are absolutely committed to the health and safety of our employees and neighbors as it relates to this issue. We take this responsibility very seriously,” Hudson told the Observer in March 2006.

    Less than a month later, he wrote an OpEd column in the Observer saying DuPont is not a significant contributor of C8 in the Cape Fear River.

    He asserted that C8 “does not pose a health risk to the general public.”

    Although C8 was found in monitoring wells at the plant, in the river and in Marshwood Lake, there is no evidence suggesting that it ever harmed anyone in southeastern North Carolina.

    It’s C8’s replacement — GenX — and the related chemicals recently detected at high levels in public drinking water that have tens of thousands of people scared.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/news/20180325/15-years-ago-warning-signs-of-crisis
    

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Energy News

12. (ACC Mentioned) W.Va., Ohio, Pa. Governors Renew Shale Gas Agreement

    Mar 23, 2018 | Weirton Daily Times

    Leaders in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania will continue to work together to market the region for natural gas development.

    Gov. Jim Justice announced the extension of the Tri-State Shale Coalition Agreement with Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf.

    The goal of the Tri-State agreement is to enhance regional cooperation and job growth through developing shale gas in the Appalachian Basin.

    “Instead of competing, our three states are working together to promote the region as a center for shale-related manufacturing,” Justice said. “Shale gas presents an opportunity to spur economic growth beyond the wellhead. We are working to attract investors and downstream partners. We are encouraging chemicals and plastics manufacturers to come here, stay here and grow here with us in the Appalachian region.”

    The Appalachians have long been recognized as a source for valuable resources such as natural gas. The states host several chemical feedstock and plastics manufacturing businesses.

    The Tri-State Coalition participants said they intend to increase the region’s share of downstream-related business investments and the high-paying careers associated with them.

    Early forecasts say this region will supply 37 percent of the nation’s natural gas production by 2040.

    Under the coalition agreement, the states work together on issues in infrastructure systems, workforce development and marketing activities to better enable the region to harness the potential of Appalachian gas and natural gas liquids, officials said.

    The agreement identifies key areas in which the states cooperate to grow the natural gas industry, including workforce development, infrastructure and research.

    During annual Tri-State Shale summits, the government, educational and industry leaders from across the region meet to share information and best practices.

    A strong upsurge of investment in the U.S. chemical industry can be attributed at least in part to the plentiful supply of natural gas, reports the American Chemistry Council. The domestic supply gives U.S. chemical manufacturers a competitive edge, resulting in increased investment, industry growth and jobs, the report said.

    As of December 2017, the council reports, 317 projects cumulatively valued at $185 billion in capital investment have been announced.

    The Memorandum of Understanding creating the Tri-State Shale Coalition was signed in 2015. The cooperative agreement renewed automatically each year. The new signatures continue the regional cooperation agreement through Dec. 31, 2021.

    Representatives from public-private, economic development and philanthropic organizations such as Vision Shared of West Virginia, TeamNEO of Ohio, The Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation and the Regional Pittsburgh Alliance of Pennsylvania help support and guide the coalition’s efforts.

    http://www.weirtondailytimes.com/news/local-news/2018/03/w-va-ohio-pa-governors-renew-shale-gas-agreement/
    

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13. (ACC Mentioned) Shale Crescent USA Team Attends Global Conference

    Mar 24, 2018 | Marietta Times

    By Janelle Patterson

    On Friday, leaders of the Shale Crescent USA movement returned to Marietta with leads on the future of petrochemicals and natural gas for the region.

    Greg Kozera, Jerry James and Nathan Lord represented the area at the World Petrochemical Conference in Houston throughout the week, gathering leads for international investment in the Marcellus and Utica shale areas of Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Shale Crescent USA is an economic development initiative focused on bringing manufacturing industries to invest in the tri-state area.

    “Last year we came back with one lead, but really the conference was pure education–learning what these international billion dollar companies are looking for, what their checklists are,” said Greg Kozera, of Marietta, director of marketing for Shale Crescent, and a past president of the Virginia Oil and Gas Association. “But this year we had the CEOs’ ears, and what really drew people to our table was the study.”

    A recent study, performed by the publicly held company IHS Markit, ran 10,000 simulated analyses comparing new investment in an Ethylene project in the shale crescent region versus the U.S. Gulf Coast.

    “The logic of the study is we looked at what it could cost to put in a million-ton ethylene operation which would include both an ethane cracker and subsequent plastics plant,”explained Ron Whitfield, vice president of applied economics for the London-based firm. “We developed different scenarios treating this study as though it would be performed for a private investor looking at price scenarios. They would want to know what the returns on investment would be.”

    The three questions assessed in the study were:

    ¯ Would a nearly $3 billion investment in an ethylene/polyethylene plant in the Shale Crescent USA earn higher or lower returns than a comparable investment in the U.S. Gulf Coast over a 20-year timeframe?

    ¯ Given the uncertainty in future energy and feedstock (natural gas) price levels, how will financial returns change under low and high-ethane price environments?

    ¯ How will other risk factors affect financial returns, such as differences in capital costs, operating rates, proximity to customers and access to international markets?

    According to the IHS Markit models, new investors would make more money by building in the Mid-Ohio Valley–$713 million more than a project in the Gulf Coast.

    “The IHS Markit analysis predicts that an ethylene project in the Shale Crescent USA region will produce a net present value of $930 million over the life of the project, compared to a NPV of $217 million for a similar project on the U.S. Gulf Coast,” reads the study’s executive summary.

    Whitfield said the valley could support up to five petrochemical operations due to the store of natural gas in the area.

    “This is the third study and really put us out on the global stage because people respect IHS and what they do,” said Jerry James, president of Artex Oil, noting a study commissioned by the state of Pennsylvania a year ago, that spurred the new Shell investment in Monaca, Pa. currently under construction, and a later 2017 study produced by the American Chemistry Council which found that if ethane from the shale crescent were used to create manufacturing operations, 100,000 jobs would be created in the region.

    “This is the building block that made CEOs pause and give us the time to explain why they should invest back home,” said James.

    But where are the jobs, the building, the boom? Shale Crescent USA has been marketing the area heavily since 2016.

    “Well, PTT Global, a company based in Thailand, is looking at building at a site in Belmont County,” noted Whitfield. “They bought the land, though the decision to build hasn’t yet been finalized.”

    Purchasing land is like using pocket change for a snack for multi-billion dollar companies, according to local industrial engineering firm accountants.

    James said the Shell plant in Pennsylvania, which broke ground last year, is projected to employ 6,000 workers to build in five years and then maintain a workforce of 1,000 to 1,500 employees and contractors once the plant is built and the support services continue its operation.

    Wally Kandel, senior vice president of Solvay’s local plant in Marietta and another director for Shale Crescent USA, further explained that the work the nonprofit is doing is a longer process than the year’s results.

    “These decisions are multi-billion dollar decisions so they’re not made lightly or quickly, I understand it seems like a long time,” he explained. “But the IHS is the gold standard for industry data, these companies rely on their market research to make their decisions. The CEO of Dow was giving a presentation (at this Houston conference) and used Shale Crescent as an example on the main stage.”

    The IHS Markit comparison predicted that the region would supply 37 percent of the nation’s natural gas production by 2040. When ethane, extracted from that natural gas supply, is able to be produced into ethylene without the cost to transport the gas in liquid form down to the Gulf Coast, the cost to produce polyethylene (plastic) would then be much less for manufacturers, explained Whitfield.

    “Then we assessed who would buy it,” he said. “And that would be a mixture of U.S. plastics companies making things like your trash bags and household goods, then China and Mexico.”

    But Whitfield explained the bottom line for return on investment would be more for new plants looking to invest in the U.S. because of the delivery capabilities within a day’s drive, or up and down the Ohio River.

    “The Shale Crescent USA region is in close proximity to over two-thirds of U.S. polyethylene consumption,” reads the executive summary of the study.

    Kozera and James said they’re returning with leads from China, South Korea, India and other investors but now is the time to follow-up rather than celebrate.

    “There’s more work to be done to stay in their minds,” said James, prior to boarding his flight home.

    IHS Markit Study findings

    ¯ Comparing economic opportunities for an ethylene project placed in either the U.S. Gulf Coast or the Shale Crescent, the study found:

    ¯ Ethane price: 32 percent less in the shale crescent; ethane is extracted from the natural gas stream.

    ¯ Ethylene cash cost: 23 percent less; ethylene is commonly produced from ethane.

    ¯ Polyethylene cash cost: 16 percent less in the shale crescent; ethylene (a gas) is converted to polyethylene (a plastic).

    ¯ Polyethylene delivered cost: 23 percent less in the shale crescent; polyethylene is shipped to customers for use in a variety of products including food packaging and household containers.

    Source: IHS Markit.

    http://www.mariettatimes.com/news/2018/03/energy-prospects/
    

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14. Trump's Trade War May Sabotage Gas Deals That Would Ease Deficit

    Mar 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Dan Murtaugh

    President Donald Trump's trade fight with China is risking energy deals that could ease the deficit causing him so much angst, according to analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

    China, the world's fastest growing natural gas market, could agree to buy as much as 50 million tons a year of liquefied natural gas from U.S. suppliers, Bernstein analysts including Neil Beveridge said in a March 23 research note. If that happens, it would reduce the U.S.’s trade deficit with China, which was $375 billion last year, by $25 billion annually and be “transformational” for U.S. exporters, Beveridge said.

    “The key issue is politics,” Beveridge said. “China may not want to play ball. A trade war between China and the U.S. could result in China giving U.S. LNG projects the cold shoulder.”

    China buying more U.S. gas would be the “simplest” solution to easing the trade imbalance between the countries, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said during an interview with Bloomberg TV March 22 after Trump ordered tariffs on some Chinese imports.

    A trade war could upset the momentum on LNG trade between the U.S. and China that seemed to be building last year, Beveridge said, when China's two biggest energy companies, China National Petroleum Corp. and the refining giant known as Sinopec, signed agreements with U.S. export projects. China has other options than the U.S. when it comes to slaking its LNG thirst, with ventures from Papua New Guinea to Mozambique and Canada competing against U.S. sellers.

    http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=130386342&vname=dennotallissues&fn=130386342&jd=130386342
    

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15. Energy Industry Wary of Intensifying Trade Showdown

    Mar 23, 2018 | Politico Pro

    By Ben Lefebvre and Eric Wolff

    President Donald Trump’s steel tariffs and the possibility of an ensuing trade war with China are rattling nerves in the oil industry.

    The 25 percent tax on imported steel has the potential to raise the costs for building new pipelines, LNG export plants and oil rigs, among other things, with most of the increase getting passed on to consumers, industry analysts said. Meanwhile, the potential for blowback in a global trade war is killing the buzz much of the industry felt amid the recent corporate tax rate cut and the recovery in oil prices.

    The U.S. imported 5 million metric tons of pipe and tube steel in 2017, according to an analysis by consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners. Even with the temporary exclusions that the Trump administration placed on imports from Mexico, Canada and other allies, the tariffs would still apply to about 40 percent of that amount, the analysis showed.

    “Slowing down commerce and slowing down trade are terrible ideas,” ClearView Managing Director Kevin Book said in an interview. “Energy trade is a tightly strung violin, and slack strings don’t sound so good. A trade war is bad for energy — there’s no way around it.”

    Trump's proclamation exempts a total of six countries and the European Union from the tariffs until April 30, unless the president decides before then to extend the exemption. But even if the tariffs aren’t put in place, Trump may also put a limit on how much foreign steel the U.S. may import.

    Steel-intensive pipeline and LNG projects would suffer the most, industry sources said. New LNG projects could suffer double, as their cost of construction goes up and a trade war with China takes away the country many had thought would be a major buyer of U.S. gas.

    “A lot of alarm bells are going off right now for U.S. LNG producers trying to lock in long-term contracts with Chinese buyers,” said Charles Dewhurst, leader of accounting and consulting firm BDO’s global natural resources practice. ”The current state of trade relations certainly raises the question of whether China will turn to Qatar or Australia to supply its growing LNG demand.”

    The blowback an international trade war would bring would be almost as bad as the direct tax on steel, sources said. China has already proposed its own tariffs on imports of U.S. agricultural goods, which could damage demand for diesel, gasoline and chemical fertilizer and pesticides used for farming.

    China also reserved the right to place further tariffs on U.S. products in the future, a possibility that could roil markets and industry further, noted Jason Schenker, president of Prestige Economics analysis firm.

    “The problem with tariffs is that they are like cockroaches: there is never just one,” Schenker wrote in an analyst note.

    China‘s proposed tariffs include ethanol, but it would have less of an immediate impact because the country already drove ethanol imports close to zero last year with a 30 percent tariff, according to U.S. census data provided by the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol trade group.

    Still, ethanol producers are worried that a new tariff would lock the door against winning market share back. U.S. producers exported about 8 percent of their 15.8 billion gallons last year, but exports in general, and China in particular, are considered an important source of growth for the industry.

    “China has and continues to be an important market for ethanol and for distiller grains, and we want to remove any of these unnecessary barriers as soon as possible,” Emily Skor, CEO of Growth Energy, another ethanol producers trade group, said in a statement. “These actions could undercut our potential to increase exports to China following the country’s stated goal to move to a 10 percent ethanol blend by 2020, and would be a major barrier to increased trade.”

    China could be a huge market. In 2016, with a 5 percent tariff, the country was the third-largest ethanol importer behind Brazil and Canada. After almost no imports in 2017, shipments resumed in December, and China made up 13 percent of that month’s U.S. exports. This week's proposed retaliatory tariff by China, which would raise the existing tariff to 45 percent, could smother the market’s nascent resurgence.

    “China’s response was entirely predictable, given recent actions by our administration to implement new tariffs,” RFA CEO Bob Dinneen said in a statement. “It is my fervent hope that the White House now fully understands the impact these actions will have on America’s ethanol industry and farmers.”

    https://www.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/03/energy-industry-wary-of-intensifying-trade-showdown-441730
    

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16. Perry Steers Clear of Trump's Chaos with Laser Focus on Energy

    Mar 26, 2018 | Politico Pro

    By Anthony Adragna

    Energy Secretary Rick Perry once called for abolishing the agency he now runs but forgot its name, his biggest policy initiative so far went down in flames, and he was photographed in a bear hug with a coal magnate seeking a special break from the White House.

    But in his first year atop the Energy Department, Perry has demonstrated a remarkable ability to avoid the kinds of negative headlines that have dogged other members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, and he’s winning praise from Congress for leading the agency that oversees upkeep of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, the network of national labs and cyber defenses for energy infrastructure.

    Democrats and environmental groups have pounced on virtually every revelation of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's or Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's expensive travel — the Sierra Club last year started running mock online ads for Pruitt-Zinke Airlines — and their frequent interactions with industry lobbyists and powerful conservative donors. HHS Secretary Tom Price resigned amid controversy over alleged misuse of government resources.

    Perry, meanwhile, has managed to keep his head down and generally avoid the spotlight — reports that Trump was considering moving Perry from DOE to lead reforms at the VA generated more national attention than the Energy secretary received in months. And he’s emerged as one of Trump’s main emissaries to Saudi Arabia to try to persuade the kingdom to partner with the U.S. on nuclear power.

    Congressional and Texas political allies say Perry’s record-setting 14-year tenure as governor managing the Lone Star State — and the retail political skills he developed there — have helped him run a tight ship at DOE and deal with Congress.

    “He has incredibly thick skin and he’s able to trade figurative blows with someone during the day and be perfectly friendly with them the next one,” Ray Sullivan, a longtime Perry aide and former chief of staff, said in an interview. “Who knows what the future might hold for him, but I do know he is very honored and pleased with this job and is taking it very, very seriously.”

    Even some of the oversight groups intensely investigating Trump’s Cabinet concede that Perry has floated under the radar, even as he has engaged in some behavior similar to that of other agency heads, such as adding his wife to an official delegation traveling to Italy on the taxpayers' dime or his failed attempt to bail outTrump's supporters in the coal industry. And he put off some DOE employees when posters discouraging leaks appeared in agency headquarters.

    But those critics point to the Texas political veterans on his staff, his willingness to rely on career staff and the large portfolio of DOE work that must remain classified as key reasons why Perry’s stayed out of the headlines.

    “It is striking when it’s a story that a Cabinet member hasn’t been plagued by scandal, but good on him,” said Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight. “He should feel like he’s under the microscope even if we have not yet found anything.”

    Lydia Dennett, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight, said that while “it's difficult to know what we don't know,” Perry had avoided the ethical troubles of other officials like Pruitt and Zinke.

    “Given the secretary's past experience in government, it is clear he is familiar with the expectations of public office,” she said.

    Perry stepped into his latest job facing skepticism over how he’d run the vast Energy Department, whose sprawling portfolio ranges from maintaining the U.S. nuclear stockpile to protecting the electric grid from cyberattacks and developing new technologies. Skeptics pointed to Perry’s infamous “oops” moment during the 2012 presidential race, when he forgot DOE’s name while listing the three Cabinet departments he vowed to eliminate.

    Perry allies don’t agree on whether DOE is his last stop in government service. Some think the 68-year-old former governor is keeping his head down in hopes of shifting into another Cabinet role should Trump win a second turn, while others think he could be keeping the door open to one final presidential bid in 2024. Others think he'll opt for a private-sector role.

    But observers have been favorably impressed by the selection of his staff and his earnest efforts to understand the expansive network of DOE responsibilities. And they say he’s been laser-focused in understanding the work of the agency, trekking to the nation’s national labs while also vocally pushing the Trump administration’s “Energy Dominance” policy.

    “You don’t need to be high-profile to be effective, and I think he’s proven that,” Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told POLITICO. “He just wants to get the job done, and I think he’s doing it.”

    Perry’s under-the-radar and disciplined approach has left him without the flood of ethical and spending scandals dogging many in the Cabinet. He’s avoided lavish private jet spending that took down Price, steered clear of first-class travel and significant transparency issues dragging Pruitt, abstained from expensive office furnishings hampering HUD chief Ben Carson and sidestepped the questionable helicopter rides and political activities while on official business that have dogged Zinke.

    Asked why Perry’s seemingly stayed lower-profile and out of the headlines, former House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) laughed: “Didn’t need new furniture.”

    That’s not to say Perry’s tenure has been without controversy. Federal energy regulators unanimously shot down his plan in January to prop up coal and nuclear power plants — a proposal that followed his interactions with Bob Murray, a coal magnate and major Trump donor who would have benefited from a number of his policies. Perry also earned bipartisan rebukes in Congress for the administration's proposals to eliminate a breakthrough energy program known as ARPA-E and slash budgets for the national labs.

    But unlike some of his Cabinet colleagues, Perry’s taken a more conciliatory tone when disagreeing with congressional lawmakers. During a Senate Energy Committee hearing Tuesday, he vowed to make lawmakers “proud” of the programs if Congress decided against cutting them.

    “If you see fit — this committee sees fit, Congress sees fit — to fund particular line items, I give you my solemn oath that it will be administered and managed as transparently and as successfully as possible,” Perry said.

    Perry has been able to navigate such situations with charm, even among some lawmakers who oppose his policy stances.

    “I think that Secretary Perry is an affable guy who my guess has been limited by the administration’s viewpoints about what needs to happen on energy and has been playing the role they want him to play,” Senate Energy ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said. “I’ll bet you as governor the bright light was shone on him and he knew that kind of scrutiny was going to happen, so he more adapted” than other Cabinet members.

    Decades of political fights in Texas taught Perry to avoid some of the travel-related scandals that have tripped up fellow Cabinet members. Perry, a known fan of Southwest Airlines, quickly disclosed his non-commercial air travel in response to congressional inquiry.

    Congressional allies say he’s done a good job of listening to their advice before unveiling new policy proposals, while conducting genuine bipartisan outreach on other issues.

    “It’s his personality plus Texas common sense,” Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said. “He has lots of friends up here who behind the scenes on occasion when he asks, we try to tell him the truth as we know it. And that is the mark of a good administrator and a good leader is that they do listen and I think Secretary Perry listens really well.”

    What's clear is none of his allies are surprised Perry’s taken his job seriously and embraced the latest phase of his tenure in public service.

    “He could have chosen to showboat or show-horse rather than workhorse, but he chose the workhorse route,” Bud Albright, a former DOE official during the Bush administration, told POLITICO.

    https://www.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/03/perry-steers-clear-of-trumps-chaos-with-laser-focus-on-energy-437214
    

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17. Omnibus $1.3T Spending Bill Boosts Energy, EPA Spending, With EPA Budget Flat

    Mar 23, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence

    By Charlie Passut

    Precisely 10 months after unveiling a plan to make deep spending cuts across the federal government, President Trump on Friday signed a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill into law on Friday, despite an eleventh-hour veto threat, which increases spending for most energy-related agencies.

    "There are a lot of things that I'm unhappy about in this bill," Trump said. "I will never sign another bill like this again."

    The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 passed the House on a 256-167 vote on Thursday. The Senate followed suit, 65-32, in an early morning vote on Friday. The bill's passage averted at least a partial government shutdown, which would have started on Saturday.

    Under the bill, the Department of Energy (DOE) will receive $43.2 billion in funding for fiscal year (FY) 2018, a 14.3% increase from the $37.8 billion it received in FY2017. The bill also increases funding to the Department of Interior (DOI) by 7.4%, to $13.1 billion in FY2018, up from $12.2 billion in the year prior.

    Meanwhile, funding for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will remain essentially flat at $8.1 billion. EPA received $8.2 billion in FY2017.

    One of the 12 annual appropriations bills that fund the federal government -- the Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill, which includes funding for the DOI and EPA -- totals $35.2 billion under HR 1625, a $3 billion increase from FY2017. The bill includes $1.3 billion to the DOI's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and $1.1 billion to the U.S. Geological Survey, which are increases of $80 million and $63 million from FY2017 funding, respectively.

    Although the BLM funding includes $60 million for greater sage-grouse conservation plans, an earlier version of the bill included a provision barring the DOI secretary from proposing a rule to protect the ground-dwelling bird.

    Meanwhile, the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill, which funds the DOE, the Army Corps of Engineers and other related agencies, totals $43.2 billion, a $5.4 billion increase from FY2017. That includes $248 million in funding to protect the nation's energy infrastructure from cyber and other attacks.

    Energy programs at the DOE will receive $12.9 billion, or $1.6 billion more than they received in FY2017. Research and development programs devoted to fossil fuels technologies will total $727 million, up $59 million from the prior fiscal year.

    Last May, Trump proposed slashing nearly one-third of funding to the EPA, while making smaller cuts to the DOE and DOI. Trump wanted to give $5.7 billion to the EPA, $11.7 billion to the DOI and $28 billion to the DOE.

    http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/113808-omnibus-13t-spending-bill-boosts-energy-epa-spending-with-epa-budget-flat
    

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18. Study: Ethane Crackers More Lucrative in Marcellus Region

    Mar 25, 2018 | Wheeling Intelligencer

    By Casey Junkins

    Officials representing those who may build an ethane cracker valued at up to $10 billion in Belmont County said they will acquire the Ohio-West Virginia Excavating property along the Ohio River, which would give them nearly 500 acres for the giant plant.

    As Thailand’s PTT Global Chemical and South Korea’s Daelim Industrial Co. are working toward constructing the plant at Dilles Bottom, a new study shows building an ethane cracker in Ohio, West Virginia or Pennsylvania produces more value than a comparable plant along the Gulf Coast.

    Presently, there are multiple ethane crackers in Texas and Louisiana. There are interstate pipelines, such as the ATEX Express, that ship ethane drawn from the Marcellus and Utica shale regions to the Gulf Coast for cracking.

    Despite ongoing efforts in Belmont County, in addition to the work by Royal Dutch Shell to complete an ethane cracker north of Pittsburgh, there is still no such plant in Ohio, West Virginia or Pennsylvania.

    However, officials with the Shale Crescent USA group, which represents several industry organizations in the Marcellus and Utica region, believe they are on track to see ethane crackers built. They believe processing the ethane into ethylene and polyethylene near the Eastern Seaboard will reduce costs. This is because the ethane would no longer have to be shipped southward for processing — and then shipped northward again to reach the market as finished plastic products.

    “The region has an abundance of natural resources at costs below their Gulf Coast equivalents. It is in close proximity to a very large installed base of plastics manufacturing customers, and the region benefits from reasonable costs of doing business,” said Ron Whitfield, who wrote the study commissioned by Shale Crescent.

    “This ultimately leads to lower delivered costs of polyethylene, which is used to manufacture a multitude of consumer goods – everything from food packaging to household containers.”

    “The region boasts a number of major advantages, including access to some of the lowest natural gas prices in the developed world from the abundant Marcellus and Utica shale formations. When taken with the close proximity to more than two-thirds of the domestic market for polyethylene consumption, it means we are the most profitable location for a petrochemical project,” Shale Crescent spokesman Jerry James added.

    U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, lauded the study.

    “We have an abundant natural gas supply, access to water, proximity to major markets, and a ready and skilled labor force. It’s a major reason that an international petrochemical company is considering building an ethane cracker plant in Belmont County – which would be the largest construction project in Ohio history,” Johnson said.

    Although an ethane cracker would bring thousands of jobs to Belmont County, it would also bring a variety of air pollutants. This summer, residents should have the opportunity to comment on the air quality permit being sought by PTT, according to Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Director Craig Butler.

    According to the permit Royal Dutch Shell filed with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection a few years ago for its ethane cracker north of Pittsburgh, air pollutants likely associated with an ethane cracker include nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, volatile organic compounds, ammonia, carbon dioxide equivalents, xylene and benzene.

    Last year, the Ohio EPA issued a permit allowing PTT Global Chemical to discharge wastewater into the Ohio River.

    http://www.theintelligencer.net/news/top-headlines/2018/03/study-ethane-crackers-more-lucrative-in-marcellus-region/
    

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19. States Plan to Sue EPA over Missed Landfill Methane Deadlines

    Mar 26, 2018 | Politico Pro - Whiteboard

    By Alex Guillen

    California and seven other states say they will sue EPA for missing key enforcement deadlines for a rule limiting methane emissions from landfills.

    The 2016 rule was an update to 20-year-old regulations targeting landfill methane, as well as volatile organic compounds and other pollutants.

    EPA had a statutory deadline to approve or disapprove state-submitted plans to address landfill methane by Sept. 30, 2017. And EPA was supposed to issue a federal plan by Nov. 30, 2017, for any state that did not submit a plan or had a plan rejected. The agency missed both those deadlines, the states complain.

    The agency is reconsidering the rule, along with a related regulation setting standards for new landfills. EPA earlier this year dropped plans to issue a long-term delay of both rules.

    EPA said in 2016 that this rule would have net benefits of $444 million and reduce methane emissions by 290,000 tons annually once fully implemented in 2025.

    “EPA Administrator Pruitt has a legal responsibility to enforce this critical landfill methane regulation. If he fails to do his job, our coalition is ready to go to court,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement.

    States involved in the lawsuit include California, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont.

    WHAT’S NEXT: The states can file their lawsuit after 60 days.

    https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
    

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Chemical Security News

20. Threats from Cyber Hackers Growing, U.S. Grid Regulator Says

    Mar 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Ari Natter

    Hackers increasingly threaten sites in the U.S. ranging from nuclear power plants to water processing systems, according to a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, adding his voice to warnings from other agencies and officials in recent weeks.

    “Cyberattacks have the potential to cause significant, widespread impacts on energy infrastructure,” Commissioner Neil Chatterjee said March 23 in an emailed response to questions.

    “Sophisticated hacking tools are becoming more widely available, and cyber threats are constantly evolving, making such attacks more versatile.“

    Chatterjee's remarks underscore the alarm growing after the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued a report earlier this month saying that Russian hackers have been attacking the electric grid, power plants, air transportation facilities, and targets in the commercial and manufacturing sectors—attempting to gain remote access or install malware or make spear phishing attempts.

    A report released by the Energy Department last year warned that the country's power grid was in “imminent danger” from a cyber attack.

    Energy Secretary Rick Perry said March 23 he agreed the attacks linked to the Russians were an “act of war.“

    Cold Shoulder

    “We are making I think every effort to protect the electrical grid from those types of attacks,” Perry said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

    “I agree the United States and the rest of the world need to send a very powerful message to Russia relative to some of their activities.“

    He has said cyber-attacks are happening hundreds of thousands of times a day.

    Even the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees the reliability of the electric grid, hasn't been immune from the attacks.

    The Justice Department on March 23 charged nine Iranian citizens with hacking hundreds of companies, academic institutions and government agencies to steal more than $3.4 billion in trade secrets and other data on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

    Among the victims: FERC.

    “While the administration has taken significant steps to address cyber threats to our critical infrastructure, I believe that these threats will continue to grow,” Chatterjee said.

    Among the more recent targets are the Colorado Department of Transportation, where more than 2,000 computers shut down after it was breached in a ransomware attack; and the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, which operates the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline that transports roughly 500,000 barrels of crude a day.

    “We know they are trying” but have so far been unsuccessful, Kate Dugan, a spokeswoman for Alyeska, said. “The number grows every year.“

    http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=130386338&vname=dennotallissues&fn=130386338&jd=130386338
    

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21. Russian Attacks on Energy Grid Spark Alarm

    Mar 25, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire

    By Morgan Chalfant

    Revelations about Russian cyberattacks on the U.S. energy grid are sparking new fears in Washington about the growing threat to the energy sector.

    The developments have some officials worried that Moscow or another nation state could execute a disruptive cyberattack targeting the U.S. power grid.

    "The next December 7 won't be airplanes and torpedoes coming at Pearl Harbor, it's going to be triggered with an attack on our energy grid with rolling blackouts and chaos," Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a member of the Homeland Security Committee, said this week. 

    Officials with the Department of Homeland Security and FBI revealed last week that Russian hackers have staged cyberattacks against the energy sector and other critical infrastructure since 2016. They linked a coordinated hacking campaign the security community had been tracking for months to the Russian government.

    Officials issued a public alert describing how hackers penetrated commercial entities on the fringes of the energy sector to compromise their intended victims. They were ultimately able to gain access to information on industrial control systems, technology used to power critical services like electric power and water.

    In one case, hackers remotely accessed a Human Machine Interface, a device used by individuals to operate large industrial control systems – signaling they could have shut off power.

    "They were on machines that were on the operational network that had the control panel not only monitoring but also control for systems that were generating power, generating electricity," Eric Chien, technical director at cybersecurity firm Symantec, said.

    Lawmakers and other officials in Washington have sounded the alarm about potential cyber threats to the energy grid over the last year, after attacks took down power in parts of Ukraine in 2015 and 2016. Moscow is suspected in both attacks.

    Newly identified strains of malware targeting industrial control systems--which are highly rare--have underscored the threat. Last June, researchers released details on the malware linked to the 2016 attack in Ukraine. And in December, security firms identified malware targeting safety systems manufactured by Schneider Electric that shut down operations at an unknown industrial plant in the Middle East.

    Experts note that the decentralized nature of the U.S. power grid--which is itself comprised of many small grids--means that it would take several simultaneous cyberattacks to take down power across a wide swath of the country.

    But the latest revelations of Russian attacks spurred new concerns about the ability of hackers to breach power systems and other critical infrastructure, which are largely owned and operated by private companies.

    "I am very much concerned, not only [about] Russia but any enemy, domestic enemy or foreign enemy," Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), who sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee, told The Hill. "Our energy sector is very vulnerable to invasive attacks."

    The alert issued last week suggests that the Russians were collecting intelligence on control systems that could ultimately be used to stage disruptive or destructive attacks, should a motivation arise.

    Those threats have been noticed at the Department of Energy, which last month announced plans to create a new office devoted to cybersecurity and energy security. The department's cyber funds would get a boost under President Trump's proposed fiscal 2019 budget, amid cuts to other programs.

    In recent months, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which sets mandatory standards for grid operators, has also proposed a series of new rules governing cybersecurity and cyber incident reporting.

    Energy Secretary Rick Perry addressed the Russian cyberattacks on Thursday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Perry assured lawmakers the Trump administration was taking steps to stop attacks on the grid, though he refused to go into detail in a public setting.

    "We're making, I think, every effort to protect the electrical grid from those types of attacks," Perry said.

    When asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) if the attacks were an act of war, Perry said he would "tend to agree."

    Protecting the grid requires the Energy Department to coordinate with private companies in the energy sector and the Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for protecting critical infrastructure from cyber and physical threats.   

    Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), who heads the Homeland Security subcommittee focused on cyber, told The Hill that his panel would examine the Russian attacks as part of its oversight role. Still, he expressed confidence that Homeland Security is responding adequately to the threat, citing the cyber expertise of Kirstjen Nielsen, the department's new secretary.

    "We're constantly following up when we get reports like that," Ratcliffe said.

    "The Department of Homeland Security has never had more cyber expertise than it has right now," Ratcliffe added. "For all of the concerns about Russian meddling into our election and more generally into our critical infrastructure, we're better equipped to deal with it than we've been at any point in the past."

    Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on energy, in an interview said he plans to make cybersecurity a big focus of an upcoming April 12 hearing with Perry.

    The Russian grid attacks have widely been viewed in the context of Moscow's interference in the 2016 presidential election. The Trump administration disclosed the energy sector attacks when unveiling new sanctions on Moscow for meddling in the election and executing the global "notPetya" malware attack last summer.

    Still, the threat to the energy sector extends beyond Moscow. 

    On Friday, U.S. officials indicted and sanctioned nine Iranian hackers for breaching hundreds of universities and other organizations to steal information on behalf of Iran's government and for financial gain.

    One of their targets, officials said, was the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

    "That is the agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil," Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, said Friday.

    "That agency has details of some of this country's most sensitive infrastructure."

    http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/380033-russian-attacks-on-energy-grid-spark-alarm
    

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Environment News

22. (ACC Mentioned) U.S. Chemical Makers Could Face Tougher, More Costly Air Pollution Controls

    Mar 26, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News

    By Cheryl Hogue

    U.S. chemical manufacturing plants with large industrial boilers may face tighter, more expensive emission control requirements for toxic air pollutants because of a recent federal appeals court decision.

    The court ordered EPA to revise a 2015 Clean Air Act regulation for some 14,000 boilers that produce heat or electricity at U.S. industrial plants. These industrial boilers are some of the nation’s largest sources of air pollution.

    EPA’s regulation requires facilities to install pollution control equipment that limits boilers’ emissions of carbon monoxide to 130 ppm. The agency said this technology would lower releases of other air pollutants, including hydrochloric acid, fine particulate matter, and mercury.

    But EPA failed to explain why the CO standard was an acceptable substitute for establishing individual emission limits for other toxic air pollutants, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit says in a March 16 ruling. It directed EPA to revise the regulation. At the behest of environmental groups that brought the case, the court ordered the CO standard remain in place until the agency finalizes the rewrite.

    In the decision, the court upheld another part of the regulation that establishes work practices to curtail emissions during start-up or shutdown of boilers. The American Chemistry Council, the major trade association of U.S. chemical manufacturers, which intervened in the case on behalf of EPA, supports this portion of the regulation.

    The ruling is the latest event in a 25-year saga of EPA attempting to control toxic air pollutants from industrial boilers. The agency issued its first emission standard for industrial boilers in 2004. A federal court struck it down in 2007. The agency tried again in 2011, but after industry, including chemical manufacturers, complained that those limits were unachievable, EPA revised them in 2013 and 2015.

    https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i13/US-chemical-makers-face-tougher.html
    

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23. D.C. Circuit Might Back EPA 'Exceptional Events' Rule With Limit On Scope

    Mar 23, 2018 | Inside EPA

    By Stuart Parker

    Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit appear inclined to uphold EPA's revised rule for when states can discount emissions associated with “exceptional events” such as wildfires from Clean Air Act compliance, but signaled that the court would aim to enforce EPA's narrow interpretation of the rule's scope.

    At oral argument March 22 in litigation over the rule, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), et al. v. EPA, et al., a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit appeared inclined to reject challenges to the merits of the October 2016 revised exceptional events rule.

    The rule is of key importance to Western states' efforts to attain national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS), as these states experience wildfires, dust storms and other phenomena that raise ambient levels of ozone and particulate pollution. The earlier 2007 exceptional events policy allowed states to discount emissions from these events from counting toward their overall pollution levels for the purposes of determining NAAQS attainment.

    The exceptional events policy is vital for states' attainment of the ozone NAAQS, which the Obama EPA tightened down in 2015 to 70 parts per billion (ppb), from a prior level of 75 ppb set in 2008. Further, the Trump EPA has since indicated it intends to revise the agency's policy to further ease states' use of the exemption.

    In 2016, the Obama administration issued a revised version of the rule that aimed to simplify its functioning. Environmentalists sued, claiming the agency's revised definition of “natural events” could unlawfully allow some industrial emissions to qualify as exceptional events.

    NRDC and fellow petitioners Sierra Club urged the D.C. Circuit to vacate the rule, but Judges Thomas Griffith, Gregory Katsas and Harry Edwards instead appeared likely to uphold the rule, subject to a clarifying opinion that memorializes EPA's interpretation of the rule that precludes exemptions for routine industrial emissions.

    Argument centered on EPA's definition of “natural events” that cause emissions that may be exempted under the rule. Although not all events need be “natural” in order to qualify for exemptions as “exceptional,” environmentalists argue that EPA has opened a “significant loophole” in the Clean Air Act with its definition of “natural,” which includes emissions of some man-made substances under certain circumstances.

    Attorney Margaret Hsieh argued for the environmentalist organizations that the second sentence of EPA's two-step definition of the term “natural” -- which is undefined in this context by the air law -- “allows an unlimited amount, and an unlimited portion of industrial pollution” to qualify for an exemption.

    But Griffith asked whether this is an “overstated” position.

    EPA in the rule says, “natural event means an event and its resulting emissions, which may recur at the same location, in which human activity plays little or no direct causal role. For purposes of the definition of a natural event, anthropogenic sources that are reasonably controlled shall be considered to not play a direct role in causing emissions.”

    Hsieh argued that EPA in the lawsuit has offered a “post-hoc” interpretation of this language that limits it to only include human-caused pollution that is distributed by natural event, such as road dust whipped up by high winds. But EPA's efforts to limit the scope of the exemption appear nowhere in the regulatory language and leave the rule open to abuse, Hsieh said.

    Judges' Doubts

    But the judges did not seem convinced by Hsieh's argument that unlimited volumes of industrial pollution could still be exempted from “reasonably controlled” sources, including major sources such as power plants that emit tons of pollution even once subject to controls.

    Katsas, on probing Hsieh's position further, posited that while NRDC may see the regulation as “over broad,” if it were limited to EPA's stated concern about high wind events raising a mixture of man-made and natural dust, then “the core of it is probably OK."

    Edwards also suggested the court could write an opinion that limits application of the natural events definition to exclude routine smokestack emissions.

    Katsas agreed, saying, if there were an acceptable narrow interpretation of the rule, “why wouldn't we impose it? Rather than just throw the whole thing out?”

    Department of Justice Attorney Sue Chen, representing EPA, argued that EPA's regulatory language in fact limits the definition of natural event to exclude routine industrial emissions. Such emissions are not caused by an “event,” and therefore cannot qualify, she said.

    “Routine industrial emissions cannot get past the door. Routine industrial emissions are not an event,” Chen said. An “event” requires an deviation from normal conditions, and routine emissions do not “result from” the natural event, she said.

    Chen conceded that there is no limit on the amount or proportion of manmade pollutants that can be exempted under the “natural event” provision, so long as they are released by the event itself. “The question really is -- what put the pollutants in the air?,” she said.

    Chen further argued there is “nothing post hoc about any of this,” and pointed to EPA's rulemakng record over 20 years as evidence of consistency in the agency's thinking.

    But Hsieh on rebuttal said that the crucial second sentence of EPA's “natural event” definition was absent from the regulatory language of EPA's prior 2007 exceptional events rule.

    Faced with the suggestion from Katsas and Edwards that the court may reject environmentalists' petition, but issue an opinion limiting EPA's leeway to interpret its regulation broadly, Hsieh said that might be an acceptable alternative so long as the court memorializes a narrow interpretation that precludes routine industrial emissions.

    https://insideepa.com/daily-news/dc-circuit-might-back-epa-exceptional-events-rule-limit-scope
    

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24. California Adopts Rule to Ban Refrigerant Causing Climate Change

    Mar 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Katherine Tam

    The California Air Resources Board adopted a rule to ban hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)—refrigerant chemicals that are greenhouse gases.

    The state rule allows California to preserve and continue in the state some of the Environmental Protection Agency's prior bans on the chemicals.

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in August vacated the Obama-era EPA rules banning certain HFC refrigerants.

    CARB said that due to the court decision, California passed its own rule to ensure it could meet a state law cutting HFC emissions by 40 percent below 2013 levels by 2030.

    California sees the rule adopted March 23 leading to an estimated 3.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions being cut each year by 2030. 

    http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=130386345&vname=dennotallissues&fn=130386345&jd=130386345
    

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