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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Emails Show Industry Worries Slowed New Science Policy
Apr 19, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Annie Snider
EPA’s rollout of a controversial new transparency policy that would severely restrict the scientific research the agency can rely on when drafting new regulations has been slowed down by political officials’ fears that it could have major unintended consequences for chemical makers, according to newly released EPA documents. -
(ACC Mentioned) Internal EPA Emails Confirm that Scott Pruitt’s Secret Science Proposal Is Entirely Driven By Politics
Apr 19, 2018 | Union of Concerned Scientists
By Yogin Kothari
Newly released documents obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists under three separate Freedom of Information Act requests and first reported on by POLITICO demonstrate that the Trojan horse “secret science” proposal being floated by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt is entirely driven by politics. -
(ACC Mentioned) US Spot Ethylene Falls to 16-Year Low on Soft Sentiment, Ample Supply
Apr 20, 2018 | ICIS
By Jessie Waldheim
US spot ethylene on Thursday fell below the 14.25 cent/lb floor that it had been trading at for nearly two weeks, as supply remains long and sentiment remains soft. Front-month April ethylene traded at 14.00 cents/lb on Thursday, matching lows set 16 years ago in March 2002. -
Internal Emails Show EPA Working to Limit Agency's Use of Science
Apr 19, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green and Timothy Cama
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) political staffers have been working to internally replicate through agency action a bill that would restrict the kind of science that the EPA can use when writing regulations, internal emails show. -
Smith Pitched Pruitt on 'Secret Science.' Now It's Happening
Apr 20, 2018 | E&E - Climatewire
By Scott Waldman and Niina Heikkinen
EPA coordinated with House Republicans about their plans to restrict the science used in crafting regulations, newly released emails show. -
EPA Internal Watchdog to Probe Pruitt's Security Spending
Apr 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
The EPA's internal watchdog will investigate the agency's around-the-clock security protection for Administrator Scott Pruitt, including the possibility bodyguards accompanied him to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl, in addition to its four other probes into Pruitt and his staff. -
EPA Inspector General to Probe Pruitt's Use of Security Detail on Personal Trips
Apr 19, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Brady Dennis
...The Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general on Thursday said he plans to examine Administrator Scott Pruitt’s use of his round-the-clock security detail while on personal trips, including a family visit to Disneyland and attendance at sporting events, such as the Rose Bowl and a University of Kentucky basketball game. -
US Lawmakers Introduce Resolutions Calling for Pruitt Resignation
Apr 20, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Democratic lawmakers in the US House of Representatives and Senate have introduced companion resolutions formally calling on EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt (pictured)to resign. -
Open Data and Protecting Privacy — We Can Do Both
Apr 19, 2018 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Rep. Lamar Smith
After EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that he will implement a policy to make our government more accountable to the American people, we’ve seen massive media coverage misrepresenting the potential effects of such a policy. -
Plastic Makers’ Credit Ratings May Be Hit by Pollution Rules (1)
Apr 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anna Hirtenstein
Plastic packaging makers may be less credit-worthy in the future as governments try to curb marine litter, Moody's Corp. said in a report. -
EPA Review Plans for Asbestos, Other Toxics, to Shape Regulation
Apr 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The EPA is poised as early as April 20 to release chemical review risk plans for 10 chemicals, including asbestos. Here's what you need to know. -
Vermont Senate Votes to Override Governor Toxics Bill Veto
Apr 20, 2018 | Chemical Watch
Vermont's Senate has voted to override governor Phil Scott's veto of a bill designed to expand the state's power to ban or restrict chemicals in children's products. -
Senate Overrides Scott Veto of Toxic Substances Bill
Apr 19, 2018 | Bennington Banner
By Ed Damon
The Vermont Senate voted Thursday to override Gov. Phil Scott's veto of a bill that would enact stricter regulation of toxic substances. -
Top Democrats Urge EPA To Quickly Craft Enforceable SDWA Limit For PFAS
Apr 20, 2018 | InsideEPA
By Suzanne Yohannan and David LaRoss
More than two dozen Democratic senators are urging EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to quickly develop an enforceable, federal standard under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), though agency officials have said that development of such a standard would be a “multi-year” effort. -
US NGO Calls for Avoidance of Recycled-Content Building Products
Apr 19, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
A US NGO is calling for the avoidance of several recycled-content building products unless their contents are fully disclosed and evaluated to be lead-free. -
Energy Industry Puzzles over New White House Adviser
Apr 19, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Ben Lefebvre and Eric Wolff
The appointment of a 28-year-old former congressional staffer as the top White House energy aide left many industry lobbyists scratching their heads — and nervous that the new hire may have trouble filling the shoes of the more experienced adviser he's replacing. -
EPA to Unveil Policy Aimed at Avoiding Legal Action over Oil and Gas Polluters: Source
Apr 20, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) office of enforcement will announce a new policy aimed specifically at helping polluters in the oil and gas industry, The Hill has learned. -
Costly Toxic Pollutant Limits on Power Plants Still Debated at EPA
Apr 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
The EPA is still on the fence about whether withdrawing toxic air pollution standards for power plants would benefit the energy industry. -
EPA Floats 'Flexible' Options For States' Interstate Ozone Air Quality Plans
Apr 19, 2018 | InsideEPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA is soliciting comment on a menu of “flexible” approaches states could pursue in their upcoming plans for mitigating interstate air emissions that are hindering attainment of the agency's 2015 ozone standard, as the Trump administration moves away from EPA-led emissions trading programs toward a state-led approach. -
Judge Ditches Suit Over EPA Delay of Power Plant Water Limits
Apr 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
A federal court tossed out a lawsuit over the EPA's indefinite delay of toxic wastewater limits at power plants. -
Federal Judge Sends Utility ELG Delay Suit to Appeals Court
Apr 19, 2018 | InsideEPA
A federal district court judge has rejected environmentalists’ bid to keep their suit over EPA’s authority to delay implementing its power plant effluent limitation guidelines (ELG) separate from challenges to the rule itself, shifting focus to a related appellate court suit over the Trump administration's delay of the ELG. -
Energy Regulator Starts Inquiry on Gas Pipeline Approval Process
Apr 20, 2018 |
By Stephen Cunningham and Rebecca Kern
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will be seeking public comment on whether and how it should revise its natural gas permitting policies. -
FERC Tackles First Gas Policy Review Since 1999
Apr 20, 2018 | E&E - Energywire
By Rod Kuckro and Jenny Mandel
Federal regulators expect an outpouring of comments on an inquiry launched yesterday on whether they should change the way they review and approve interstate natural gas pipelines. -
EPA GHG Inventory Sees 2.5 Percent Drop in 2016
Apr 19, 2018 | InsideEPA
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is touting a technology approach to reducing greenhouse gases after the agency released the final version of its annual greenhouse gas inventory showing that in 2016 the country emitted 6.511 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, a 2.5 percent reduction from 2015 levels. -
Challenges Remain for Crude-By-Rail Readiness — Report
Apr 20, 2018 | E&E - Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
Rail safety officials should assemble a "toolkit" for handling a worst-case train derailment involving crude oil or ethanol, according to a federal advisory group. -
States Criticize EPA's Efforts to 'Delay' CWA Jurisdiction Rule Suit
Apr 19, 2018 | InsideEPA
States seeking a federal district court ruling on the legality of the Obama-era Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule's merits are pushing back against the Trump administration’s renewed effort to stay their suit, saying the government is mounting a baseless appeal in order to “delay” cases over the 2015 policy. -
EPA Air Chief Plans To Speed NAAQS Reviews Using 'Close Enough' Data
Apr 19, 2018 | InsideEPA
By David LaRoss
EPA air chief William Wehrum plans to accelerate the long-delayed national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) review process by reducing some scientific advisory input and accepting data that is “close enough” to justify a review rather than “perfect,” suggesting Supreme Court precedent would allow the changes. -
Cutting Through the Smokescreen around Environmental Regulation
Apr 19, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Mike Carr
In a recent EPA press release, Administrator Scott Pruitt said, “American ingenuity and technological breakthroughs, not top-down government mandates, have made the U.S. the world leader in achieving energy dominance while reducing emissions.” -
UK to Become First Country to Ban Plastic Straws
Apr 19, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Jacqueline Thomsen
The United Kingdom will implement a ban on plastic straws as soon as next year, becoming the first country to impose such a measure.
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Emails Show Industry Worries Slowed New Science Policy
Apr 19, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Annie Snider
EPA’s rollout of a controversial new transparency policy that would severely restrict the scientific research the agency can rely on when drafting new regulations has been slowed down by political officials’ fears that it could have major unintended consequences for chemical makers, according to newly released EPA documents.
The issue of scientific transparency has been high on the agenda of House Science Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who has found strong support from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt — much to the consternation of public health advocates and green groups, who view the effort as backdoor attack on the agency's ability to enact environmental regulations.
Since Pruitt announced plans for the new policy last month, researchers and public health proponents have raised alarms that it could restrict the agency’s ability to consider a broad swath of data about the effects of pollution on human health. But documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that top EPA officials are more worried the new restrictions would prevent the agency from considering industry studies that frequently support their efforts to justify less stringent regulations.
Emails between EPA officials obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists show that Nancy Beck, the top political official in the agency’s chemicals office who came to the agency after serving as a key expert for the chemical industry’s lead lobbying group, voiced major concerns after she received a draft of the not-yet-released policy on Jan. 31.
The new scientific transparency directive is expected to require that the raw data for all studies EPA relies on be publicly available, and that the studies be peer-reviewed. But Beck said these requirements would exclude a great deal of industry data about pesticides and toxic chemicals that her office considers when determining whether a substance is safe or must be restricted.
It costs companies “millions of dollars to do these studies,” Beck wrote in an email to Richard Yamada, the political official in EPA’s office of research and development who is spearheading work on the new scientific policy and is also a former staffer for the House Science Committee chairman.
“These data will be extremely valuable, extremely high quality, and NOT published,” Beck wrote. “The directive needs to be revised.”
Moreover, much of this data, Beck noted, is considered proprietary by companies. It is dubbed confidential business information, and even though EPA can consider it as part of its regulatory review, the data cannot legally be made public.
Yamada replied to thank Beck for the heads up. “Yes, thanks this is helpful – didn’t know about the intricacies of CBI,” he wrote. “We will need to thread this one real tight!”
The term “confidential business information” primarily applies to industry information. That data is separate from the personal medical information that public health researchers worry could block consideration of their work.
Yogin Kothari, a lobbyist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the emails show the Trump administration's EPA has been “trying to stack the deck in favor of the industries they’re supposed to be regulating.”
“They want to potentially create exemptions for industry, but if you look at this entire set of documents … you will see that there’s not a single consideration for the impacts on public health data, on long-term health studies, on studies that EPA does after public health disasters like the BP oil spill,” he said.
EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman emphasized the policy is not yet finalized.
“These discussions are part of the deliberative process; the policy is still being developed. It’s important to understand; however, that any standards for protecting [confidential business information] would be the same for all stakeholders,” she said in a statement.
The emails indicate Pruitt wanted the new science policy rolled out at the end of February, and teased his plans in an interview with conservative outlet The Daily Caller in mid-March. But the agency has yet to finalize the policy.
The transparency directive has its origins in legislation introduced by Smith during the Obama administration, that had the backing of a number of industry groups, including the American Chemistry Council. The House Science Committee chairman frequently charged that the Obama EPA used “secret science” to justify “costly new regulations.”
Although versions of the measure were approved by the House multiple times, the Senate never took it up. CBO estimated that one version of Smith’s legislation would cost EPA $250 million a year, at least in the initial years, and a leaked staff response to questions from the budget office said a later version would be even more costly, would endanger confidential medical and business information, and “would prevent EPA from using the best available science.”
But Smith found an ally in Pruitt. The emails indicate that Smith met with Pruitt in early January and show that Pruitt’s staff quickly began working on a directive to “internally implement” the legislation.
Industry’s backing for the new scientific approach began to waiver under the Trump administration, though. When a top American Chemistry Council scientist testified before Smith’s committee in February 2017, she emphasized the need to protect industry information if the transparency initiative moved forward.
“One of the things that we do need to take into consideration as making that data publicly available is that there are adequate protections for confidential business information to ensure that we keep innovation and competitiveness available for the marketplace,” Kimberly White told the committee.
Industry has historically claimed that a wide range of information about chemicals, ranging from the processes by which they are produced, to the locations of manufacturing plants, to their very identities, must be kept confidential in order to keep competitors from learning trade secrets. Environmental and public health advocates argue that industry claims this exemption in many cases where it’s not necessary and that it often keeps important health and safety information from public view.
The issue was a key point of debate when Congress considered a major overhaul of the nation’s primary chemical safety law passed 2016 and has reemerged as Pruitt’s EPA sets about implementing the law.
Asked for comment on EPA’s new effort to implement the scientific transparency approach internally, American Chemistry Council spokesman Scott Openshaw said the group looks forward to reviewing the directive once it’s finalized.
“It is critical that any final directive properly protect confidential business information and competitive intelligence,” he said in a statement.
The internal emails show that EPA political staff were particularly attuned to this concern. In a Feb. 23 email to colleagues, Beck forwarded language from a 2005 White House document that laid out narrow exemptions from its requirement that all “important scientific information” disseminated by the federal government go through peer review.
“[Y]ou may need to tweak but hopefully there is something helpful here that can be borrowed/adopted,” she wrote.
Richard Denison, lead senior scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, said that EPA's access to industry data is indeed important to its ability to review the safety of new chemicals and pesticides, but said the internal EPA communications show that Pruitt’s EPA wants to “have their cake and eat it too" with the new directive.
“They’re trying to force peer review studies done by academic scientists to disclose every last detail, while at the same time allowing industry studies to be kept private or aspects of those to still be kept private,” he said.
He pointed out that the concerns Beck raised about the burden the new policy would place on industry are the very same ones that the CBO report said the policy would place on EPA.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/04/epa-emails-show-industry-worries-slowed-new-science-policy-496159
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Apr 19, 2018 | Union of Concerned Scientists
By Yogin Kothari
Newly released documents obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists under three separate Freedom of Information Act requests and first reported on by POLITICO demonstrate that the Trojan horse “secret science” proposal being floated by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt is entirely driven by politics.
POLITICO writes:
“Since Pruitt announced plans for the new policy last month, researchers and public health proponents have raised alarms that it could restrict the agency’s ability to consider a broad swath of data about the effects of pollution on human health. But documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that top EPA officials are more worried the new restrictions would prevent the agency from considering industry studies that frequently support their efforts to justify less stringent regulations.”
Limiting the EPA’s ability to use vital public health studies
The documents also confirm that the anti-science chairman of the House Science Committee, Representative Lamar Smith, initiated a conversation with Administrator Pruitt about implementing his long-failed “secret science” legislation through administrative means on January 9, 2018. (See email below).
POLITICO continues:
“But Smith found an ally in Pruitt. The emails indicate that Smith met with Pruitt in early January and show that Pruitt’s staff quickly began working on a directive to “internally implement” the legislation.”
Chairman Smith also argued for and previously introduced legislation to limit the ability of independent scientists who received agency grants to provide EPA advice on its decisions. While the legislation never passed Congress, EPA implemented a similar directive last fall.
While EPA has argued on a partisan website that the policy would be about transparency in science-based decisions, the documents obtained by UCS confirm that this is not the case. The resurrection of Chairman Smith’s misguided proposal is nothing but a political attempt to restrict the ability of EPA to use the best available science to fulfill its mission of protecting public health and the environment.What the documents show
In the documents released by the EPA, there are no concerns raised about the policy’s impacts on public health protections, or any suggestion to receive feedback from the broader scientific community, which has slammed this distorted effort previously.
However, emails between several EPA political appointees, including Nancy Beck, a former staffer for the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the chemical industry’s trade association; and Richard Yamada, a former staffer for House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, show that the small group was grappling with how to incorporate loopholes and exemptions to limit the impact of the directive on industry data. (See below).
The emails also show that the concerns around confidential business information raised by Beck in her current job as the Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (which is in charge of protecting the public from risks from toxic chemicals) are eerily similar to concerns she raised about data transparency last year in front of a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee, on behalf of her previous employer at the time and ardent supporter of Chairman Smith’s ill-conceived legislative proposal, the ACC.
Ultimately, what is crystal clear is that the EPA is still finding ways to abandon the tools that the agency needs to do its job. The proposal, if it is ever released, is not scientifically driven, and is simply a political ploy to undermine EPA’s ability to use independent scientific analysis. You can go through all the documents that were released to UCS here, here, and here.
Email from a staffer for Chairman Smith and an EPA official discussing a meeting between Administrator Pruitt and Chairman Smith in January 2018 to discuss how best to implement “secret science” internally.
Nancy Beck shares ideas with other EPA colleagues on why a company’s scientific studies should be protected because of confidential business information and potentially exempt from EPA’s secret science directive. Her comments are remarkably similar to language she used in testimony (below) before a Senate subcommittee while representing the American Chemistry Council just last year.
Yogin Kothari, Washington Representative, Center for Science and Democracy
https://blog.ucsusa.org/yogin-kothari/internal-epa-emails-confirm-that-scott-pruitts-secret-science-proposal-is-entirely-driven-by-politics
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(ACC Mentioned) US Spot Ethylene Falls to 16-Year Low on Soft Sentiment, Ample Supply
Apr 20, 2018 | ICIS
By Jessie Waldheim
US spot ethylene on Thursday fell below the 14.25 cent/lb floor that it had been trading at for nearly two weeks, as supply remains long and sentiment remains soft. Front-month April ethylene traded at 14.00 cents/lb on Thursday, matching lows set 16 years ago in March 2002.
Front-month April ethylene had previously dropped to 14.25 cents/lb on 6 April, and trades had remained at that level until Thursday.
A value at about 14 cents/lb "does seem to be a floor against cash costs so far", a market source said.
The downward pressure on ethylene prices is due to long supply and concerns that proposed Chinese tariffs on some grades of polyethylene (PE) could slow downstream ramp ups and leave ethylene oversupplied.
Supply has outpaced demand in 2018 as good production and new cracker start-ups have outweighed the slow ramp-up of new downstream PE capacity. Several new PE units, which started up in late 2017, have not reached full operating rates due to logistical, certification and specification issues.
Although some of those issues have improved, some continue. PE average monthly production rates in January and February were flat to average monthly production rates in the fourth quarter of 2017, according to data from the American Chemistry Council (ACC).
Meanwhile, new ethylene capacity has come online.
Dow Chemical started up a new cracker at its complex in Freeport, Texas in September, and Chevron Phillips Chemical started up a new cracker at its Cedar Bayou complex in Baytown, Texas in March. Each unit has an ethylene capacity of 1.5m tonnes/year.
Ethylene spot prices have been on a downtrend since early 2018 as the growth in ethylene production outpaced the growth in consumption.
However, prices fell sharply following the announcement of Chinese tariffs in early April.
Much of the new ethylene and PE capacity that is coming online is geared toward future exports of PE, with China expected to be a key market.
Demand growth in the US and in traditional export markets like South America is not expected to be able to absorb the increased PE volumes.
Further downward pressure is possible if ethylene capacity expands before new PE plants are ramped up. Two more crackers are expected to start up in this quarter.
"The big wild card is the imminent Indorama start-up and if ExxonMobil starts their new cracker up in May," the market source said.
Indorama is expected to start up a previously idled cracker in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The unit is expected to have an ethylene capacity of 420,000 tonnes/year and propylene capacity of 20,000 tonnes/year.
ExxonMobil is expected to start up a new cracker at its complex in Baytown, Texas. The unit is expected to have an ethylene capacity of 1.5m tonnes/year.
Major US ethylene producers include Chevron Phillips Chemical, DowDuPont, ExxonMobil, INEOS Olefins & Polymers, LyondellBasell and Shell Chemical.
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2018/04/20/10213789/us-spot-ethylene-falls-to-16-year-low-on-soft-sentiment-ample-supply/
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Internal Emails Show EPA Working to Limit Agency's Use of Science
Apr 19, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green and Timothy Cama
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) political staffers have been working to internally replicate through agency action a bill that would restrict the kind of science that the EPA can use when writing regulations, internal emails show.
EPA head Scott Pruitt met with Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Science Committee, on Jan. 9, according to a copy of Pruitt’s public schedule.
Smith for years has been pushing to restrict the type of scientific findings accepted by the EPA. His repeatedly sponsored bill, now called the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment — or HONEST — Act, would mandate all scientific data and findings be made publicly available before they are used to justify agency regulations. Opponents of the idea say that it would exclude a number of public health studies.
Newly released emails show that Pruitt and his staff are working to essentially replicate Smith’s proposal, and spent a majority of February working to finalize the policy.
Versions of Smith’s bill passed the GOP-controlled House three times, but the full Senate hasn’t taken it up.
The week after Smith’s meeting with Pruitt, Joseph Brazauskas, the staff director for the Science Committee’s environment panel, emailed to set up a meeting with Aaron Ringel, Deputy Associate Administrator for Congressional Affairs at EPA, to “discuss further transparent science-based regulations at EPA,” according to an email dated January 16.
The communication with Smith was forwarded to other EPA staffers by Ringel, with a note telling his colleagues that it was part of a “pitch that EPA internally implement the HONEST Act,” explaining that the bill would require that “no regulation can go into effect unless the scientific data is publicly available for review.”
Pruitt told the Daily Caller News Foundation last month that he would implement a new policy to ensure that the data the EPA uses is “transparent.” But the agency has refused to provide more details.
The emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), confirm that EPA staffers have been having detailed talks to bring Smith’s goals to the agency. UCS opposes the policy.
The emails show that in mid-February, after EPA officials had been working on drafts of the directive for weeks, Nancy Beck, deputy assistant administrator in the EPA’s chemicals office, asked her colleagues for a recent version of Smith’s bill.
Richard Yamada, an official in the EPA’s research office and former aide to Smith, sent her to the version that the House passed last year.
The records also show some internal wrangling over the bill and realizations among staff that it might not be as simple as requiring all regulatory data to be public or published in journals.
Beck said that when pesticide companies want their products approved, they send in massive volumes of data that don’t get published in journals and are often confidential business information that companies don’t want to be made public.
Chemicals approved for sale under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) have similar restrictions, she told a small group of senior aides working on the policy.
“The directive needs to be revised. Without changes it will jeopardize our entire pesticide registration/re-registration review process and like all TSCA risk evaluations,” Beck wrote.
The EPA withheld the drafts of the directive, but it appears that staffers were receptive to Beck’s objections.
The records additionally show that the EPA officials working on the project were under deadline pressure.
By mid-February, Pruitt was getting antsy to see a final version of the draft. In a Feb. 12 email, Deputy Associate Administrator Brittany Bolen emailed the staffers working on the policy that Pruitt’s Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson “asked to have this rolled out by the end of the month.”
The policy change, called the “data access memo” internally, has yet to be announced, beyond Pruitt’s interview with the Daily Caller.
"These discussions are part of the deliberative process; the policy is still being developed. It’s important to understand; however, that any standards for protecting [confidential business information] would be the same for all stakeholders," said EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman.
A representative for UCS said the emails confirm EPA’s push to restrict science.
“The biggest takeaway was the policy to restrict the use of science that has been floated around, but not officially confirmed — hatched by political appointees doing their best to make sure independent scientific analysis does not get in their way,” said Yogin Kothari, senior Washington representative at UCS.
This is not the first time that EPA has floated policy changes that would shift the way the agency uses scientific findings.
Over the course of Pruitt’s first year as administrator, he pushed a “Red team, Blue team” initiative that aimed to get more industry voices into EPA’s science panels, but that effort was ultimately abandoned. He also lead an organizational overhaul of science advisory boards, pushing a new policy that limited scientists receiving federal EPA grants from serving on the boards.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/384039-internal-emails-show-epa-working-to-limit-agencys-use-of-science
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Smith Pitched Pruitt on 'Secret Science.' Now It's Happening
Apr 20, 2018 | E&E - Climatewire
By Scott Waldman and Niina Heikkinen
EPA coordinated with House Republicans about their plans to restrict the science used in crafting regulations, newly released emails show.
In early January, EPA chief Scott Pruitt met with Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, to discuss one of Smith's pet projects — overhauling how EPA uses science. Smith hasn't been able to get legislation to do so through Congress, so he pitched Pruitt to do so internally, according to emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The emails were obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists and shared with E&E News.
In March, Pruitt announced that he would follow through. He said EPA plans to require that data and methodology from studies used to craft regulations be made public (Climatewire, March 16). The topic has long been contentious. Smith and others describe the effort as a way to ensure science used to craft regulations can be properly scrutinized. Critics have said it is an effort to limit air pollution research and other studies that have been cited as reasons for regulations.
EPA has said little about its plans to make science more transparent, other than Pruitt's brief interview with a conservative news outlet to say the plan was coming at some point.
The new emails reveal how Pruitt's staffers have worked behind the scenes with Smith's office.
On Jan. 16, a few days after Pruitt met with Smith at EPA headquarters, a Smith staffer followed up with Pruitt's shop.
"It was great to see you last week and appreciate the Administrator's time. Chairman Smith is very keen for our staff to get together to discuss further transparent science-based regulations at the EPA," Smith's aide Joe Brazauskas wrote to EPA congressional affairs staffer Aaron Ringel. "We can meet at your earliest convenience with the appropriate EPA staff to discuss this matter further."
Within an hour of receiving Brazauskas' email, Ringel circulated the message to colleagues at EPA.
"All, see below follow up from Chairman Smith's meeting with the administrator," he wrote. "Want to check on who would be the most appropriate [for] them to speak to. In short, this is in regards to his pitch that EPA internally implement the HONEST Act (no regulation can go into effect unless the scientific data is publicly available for review)."
One of the aides copied on Ringel's email was Richard Yamada, the deputy assistant administrator of EPA's Office of Research and Development. Yamada previously worked for years on the Republican staff of the House Science Committee led by Smith.
The emails also show that EPA staffers wanted to have the program rolled out by the end of February.
Brittany Bolen, who works in EPA's policy office, sent an email dated Feb. 12 saying that Pruitt's chief of staff Ryan Jackson "asked to have this rolled out by the end of the month."
Timing for the rollout of the policy is still unclear.
EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said yesterday, "These discussions are part of the deliberative process; the policy is still being developed."
The Union of Concerned Scientists said the emails show the plan was crafted by political staff with little input from scientists. They also show that EPA's political appointees are mostly concerned about industry, rather than environmental or health protections, said USC spokesman Yogin Kothari.
"This idea to restrict the use of science at EPA was hatched solely and worked on almost exclusively by political appointees who are doing everything they can to ensure that independent science doesn't get in the way of policy decisions at the agency," he said. "It's an effort to stack the deck in favor of industry that EPA is supposed to regulate."'This directive needs to be revised'
The emails also reveal that an EPA political appointee — a former chemical industry executive — raised concerns about the science overhaul.
Nancy Beck, deputy assistant administrator of EPA's chemicals office, raised pointed concerns about what a secret science policy would mean for both pesticide registration and for chemical companies and regulating chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
In an email sent on Jan. 31, Beck warned Yamada; Erik Baptist, EPA's senior deputy general counsel; and Justin Schwab, deputy general counsel, that requiring underlying data to be public would affect pesticide registrations and TSCA implementation.
"This directive needs to be revised. Without change it will jeopardize our entire pesticide registration/re-registration review process and likely all TSCA risk evaluations," she wrote. "Let me know what more you may need from me to facilitate a change."
Beck noted that under EPA regulations, pesticide registration requires companies to submit studies that include a "huge amount of data" and cost the companies millions of dollars to conduct. "Guideline studies of this type are never put in journal publications — there is no audience for them, thus in IARC's eyes they are not published," she wrote.
The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, develops an international database of chemicals that could potentially cause cancer. Beck notes that most of the data in this process are considered confidential business information, but the "CBI" tag can be waived to make the data available in many instances.
"Making data available is very different than requiring a publication requirement. Such a requirement would be incredibly burdensome, not practical and you would need to create a whole new arm of the publishing industry to publish these types of studies that nobody is interested in," she wrote.
Beck added that there would be a similar problem under TSCA, where data for many existing chemicals aren't published because there is "no incentive for anyone, anywhere to publish them."
"Yes, thanks this is helpful — didn't know about the intricacies of CBI — ok, we will need to thread this one real tight! Thanks Nancy!" Yamada wrote in response to Beck's warning.
Richard Denison, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, noted that EPA staff and members of Congress had previously objected to Smith's "Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act" — the basis for the potential EPA policy — for the data collection burden it would put on researchers, who would have to go back and identify which data could be made public.
Critics also warned at the time that the impact would be to significantly reduce the number of studies that could be used to develop research, and many suspected this was the real purpose of the bill.
"What Nancy Beck is ironically pointing to is the same set of issues would fall on the industry, because it is not only whether the information would be made public or not, it's the cost and burden associated with doing so," Denison said.
EPA spokeswoman Bowman did not comment on whether EPA planned to follow Beck's suggestion to revise its proposal. "It's important to understand, however, that any standards for protecting CBI would be the same for all stakeholders," she said.
At least one "secret science" policy proponent said he was open to requiring researchers and companies to make data available when they are requested by "legitimate researchers" rather than publishing all underlying data.
"This data has to be somewhere, and if someone needs to see it then arrangements have to be made," said Steve Milloy, former EPA transition team member. "You can't attack this stuff with a broad brush."
In another email from March, months after the process had started, Beck found a passage from documents the agency's pesticide program released in December 2016 saying EPA "does not believe that it is appropriate to refuse to consider published studies in the absence of the underlying data."
The document Beck referred to also said, "The EPA frequently relies on peer reviewed studies in the public literature across agency programs without possessing underlying data and the federal courts have made clear that the EPA is not required to obtain or analyze the raw data in order to rely on such studies."
Beck wrote in the email, "I'm sharing for awareness, particularly regarding court cases that are cited."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/04/20/stories/1060079655
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EPA Internal Watchdog to Probe Pruitt's Security Spending
Apr 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
The EPA's internal watchdog will investigate the agency's around-the-clock security protection for Administrator Scott Pruitt, including the possibility bodyguards accompanied him to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl, in addition to its four other probes into Pruitt and his staff.
Environmental Protection Agency Inspector General Arthur Elkins confirmed he was opening the probe in a letter to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the Democrat who asked for the investigation.
“While I consider matters of personal security to be extremely serious, personal security should never be used as a pretext to obtain special treatment,” Whitehouse said in a news release and his original request.
Whitehouse asked the inspector general to probe whether Pruitt flew first class even when traveling on personal business—and if his bodyguards were seated there, too. In addition, he pressed for an investigation into whether the government paid for tickets for the security detail to join Pruitt during personal trips to the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1 and Disneyland over the following two days.
Pruitt is already under investigation for his unorthodox $50-per-night rental of a Capitol Hill bedroom from a lobbyist, frequent travel to his home state of Oklahoma and what one former aide has described as a practice of retribution against employees who challenge the administrator.
EPA officials have defended Pruitt's 24/7 security protection and his previous use of first-class travel, saying it was necessary amid escalated threats. Pruitt's long history challenging the agency he now leads and his current work to roll back some Obama-era environmental rules have made him a target for criticism.
At least 19 agents guard the EPA chief day and night, and the number may be higher depending on travel and other needs.
The White House budget office is scrutinizing whether the EPA violated spending laws by authorizing the construction and purchase of a $43,000 soundproof phone booth without first notifying Congress, and lawmakers are investigating Pruitt's travel.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=132518975&vname=dennotallissues&fn=132518975&jd=132518975
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EPA Inspector General to Probe Pruitt's Use of Security Detail on Personal Trips
Apr 19, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Brady Dennis
Another day, another inquiry.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general on Thursday said he plans to examine Administrator Scott Pruitt’s use of his round-the-clock security detail while on personal trips, including a family visit to Disneyland and attendance at sporting events, such as the Rose Bowl and a University of Kentucky basketball game.
The latest probe comes as Pruitt faces more than a half-dozen inquiries into his spending habits, living arrangements and management at the agency. The investigations are taking place within both the House and Senate, the EPA and the White House. Earlier this week, an investigation by the Government Accountability Office found Pruitt’s installation of a $43,000 soundproof phone booth had violated federal spending laws.
The latest inquiry follows a March 20 request from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who told officials that he had obtained work schedules and other documents detailing how Pruitt’s 24/7 protective detail accompanied him on personal trips. The arrangement resulted in taxpayers footing the bill for travel and lodging for agents, even when Pruitt wasn’t on officials business.
Whitehouse also said several sources had indicated to his office that Pruitt frequently requested per diem lodging expenses above the government’s established rate.
“The documents and information that have been provided to me raise many troubling questions,” the senator wrote Inspector General Arthur Elkins in March. “While I consider matters of personal security to be extremely serious, personal security should never be used as a pretext to obtain special treatment.”
In a letter to Whitehouse dated Tuesday, Elkins said his office would pursue an inquiry into the matter, despite time and budget constraints.
“After analyzing your request, we have decided to conduct a review,” he wrote. “The new engagement will review the Administrator’s personal travel and various other elements of your request.”
The EPA has argued that Pruitt’s personal security detail, which demands far more resources than for his predecessors and has cost taxpayers an estimated $3 million, is necessary given the intensity and number of threats he has received.
“Administrator Pruitt follows the same security protocol whether he’s in his personal or official capacity,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said Thursday in a statement.
Elkins already had opened inquiries into Pruitt’s frequent travel home to Oklahoma, his use of noncommercial and military aircraft, and his security expenses.
A top government ethics official also has urged the EPA to look into possible violations linked to Pruitt’s spending habits, his favorable condo lease from a lobbyist last year and his personnel decisions.
In a letter this month, David J. Apol, the acting director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, took the unusual step of telling EPA officials that Pruitt’s actions deserved additional scrutiny. “Public trust demands that all employees act in the public interest, and free from any actual or perceived conflicts,” Apol wrote.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/04/19/epa-inspector-general-to-probe-pruitts-use-of-security-detail-on-personal-trips/?utm_term=.c4e32e82427e
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US Lawmakers Introduce Resolutions Calling for Pruitt Resignation
Apr 20, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Democratic lawmakers in the US House of Representatives and Senate have introduced companion resolutions formally calling on EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt (pictured)to resign.
Co-sponsored by 131 representatives and 39 senators, the resolutions say Mr Pruitt's actions as administrator "fundamentally undermine the mission of the EPA". They come amid a flurry of scrutiny over Mr Pruitt's alleged ethics violations.
The resolutions say, among others, that Mr Pruitt has:undermined the agency's science-based mission by censoring scientists, skewing membership of advisory committees, and restricting the use of scientific research unless it "complies with criteria that are intentionally nearly impossible to meet";delayed the effective dates and implementation of regulations and eased enforcement on existing regulations, to the detriment of public health; and"continually overridden the recommendations of the scientists of the agency in order to provide relief to industry, leaving in place the use of harmful chemicals".
The resolutions call for Mr Pruitt's resignation and request that President Trump appoint a replacement "who is able to fully and faithfully discharge the public duties entrusted to the office."
The 39 co-sponsoring senators represent the highest number in US history to sign a resolution formally calling for a cabinet official's resignation.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66115/us-lawmakers-introduce-resolutions-calling-for-pruitt-resignation
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Open Data and Protecting Privacy — We Can Do Both
Apr 19, 2018 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Rep. Lamar Smith
After EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that he will implement a policy to make our government more accountable to the American people, we’ve seen massive media coverage misrepresenting the potential effects of such a policy.
Regrettably, the EPA is able to make rules and regulations based on data that not even rule-makers at the agency have seen. It’s time to change that.
We all want clean air and clean water, both today and for future generations. It is the EPA’s mission to ensure that happens. We all also agree that the best available science should underlie EPA’s rules and regulations.
I have long worked to implement a policy that requires the EPA to base its rules on science that is publicly available. Opponents disagree – they prefer to keep this data hidden. But if we do that, how could we – scientists, policymakers and American citizens – confirm that the regulations that dramatically impact our lives are based on the best available science? If all we can see are studies’ conclusions, we don’t know whether those conclusions are based on sound science.
Those who oppose making the data public claim it will expose personal information. But confidential patient data and other personal information should and can be kept private. Making data publicly available, as I’ve advocated in the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act (HONEST Act), does not mean making confidential information available to anyone with a keyboard.
In fact, there are several ways to make data public without revealing any confidential information. Redacting personally identifying information is one option that agencies across the federal government have used for years. Where redaction would limit the quality of datasets for individuals who wish to see the data underlying a study, access could be granted after they agree to keep the data confidential.
Much of the data that is currently available already requires those requesting datasets to fulfill contractual obligations, preventing them from disseminating confidential patient information. While the HONEST Act’s opponents ignore these facts, others in the scientific community recognize the importance of access to data.
The Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities (APLU) recently provided recommendations for agencies implementing the Obama administration’s public access requirements. The AAU and APLU highlight the “growing demand among scholars and the public to have broader access to each other’s data” and recommend that the minimum standard be “data that are essential to understanding and reproducing peer reviewed publications … to be accessible for re-analysis,” while adhering to rules protecting personal information.
Those in the scientific community who support disclosing data while protecting confidential information should also support the HONEST Act, which furthers the same goals.
Many opponents of open data have wrongly concluded that requiring new regulations to be based on “publicly available” data will disqualify studies from being considered. A recent article alleges that such a policy would “force the EPA to ignore” studies based on confidential health information. This argument is fraudulent. The reality is that the EPA will consider these studies when they adhere to the publicly available standard.
Open access to science is a goal that furthers public debate and benefits the American people. So the HONEST Act is receiving unfounded criticism from those who know that the data may not justify the regulations.
The American people have a right to understand why and how regulatory decisions are made.
Smith is chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/384002-open-data-and-protecting-privacy-we-can-do-both
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Plastic Makers’ Credit Ratings May Be Hit by Pollution Rules (1)
Apr 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anna Hirtenstein
Plastic packaging makers may be less credit-worthy in the future as governments try to curb marine litter, Moody's Corp. said in a report.
“There's a risk” that these actions will “have direct impact on these companies,” said Tobias Wagner, senior analyst at the rating agency in a phone interview. “If there's government-led actions around charges or taxes, that would impact potentially companies’ profitability.”
Packaging consumes about 40 percent of plastics worldwide and accounts for about 60 percent of the material that ends up as waste. Governments worldwide are concerned that plastics take decades or even centuries to degrade and that they've been working their way into the food chain as they seep into rivers and oceans. By 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Governments have made recent moves to try to cut use. The European Union announced a strategy last January for all plastic packaging in the bloc to be reused or recyclable by 2030. Currently, less than a third is recycled.
The plastics industry is “investing significantly” in reusable and recyclable products and has a “promising future,” Barry Turner, director of the British Plastics Federation and Flexible Packaging Group, said in a statement. “
“As the experts on plastics, we realize that we are critical to improving recycling rates and reducing plastic waste in the environment, and we are committed to working with the government, retailers and the public to help realize that ambition,” Turner said.
In Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May is seeking to eliminate “ avoidable plastic waste” by 2042. The government in London recently banned micro-beads, the tiny plastic particles in cosmetics that have been flowing through water treatment plants and into the sea.
Oil Companies Take Notice
The issue has garnered attention from one of the world's biggest oil companies. Earlier this year, BP Plc cut its forecast for oil demand from petrochemicals by 2 million barrels a day, citing the risk that regulations tighten on plastic products and shopping bags. Packaging makes up about 3 percent of global oil use, according to the company's chief economist, Spencer Dale.
Policy makers so far have focused on single-use plastic products such as cutlery and straws. Moody's also sees packaging for the beauty and personal care industry to be susceptible, as they are often made of several types of material, rendering them more complex to recycle. Makers of packaging for the food and beverage industry may also have similar issues, Wagner said.
Some companies could be affected include Faerch Plast A/S of Denmark and Guala Closures SpA in Italy make containers that hold food and beverages.
Moody's analysts plan to scrutinize how the trend impacts companies, though plastic risk hasn't prompted any change in credit ratings yet, Wagner said.
“If we see sustainability increasingly having an effect on growth rates and investment needs, I think that could become a greater focus,” he said. “I don't think any company that we rate is unaffected by this trend.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=132519013&vname=dennotallissues&fn=132519013&jd=132519013
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EPA Review Plans for Asbestos, Other Toxics, to Shape Regulation
Apr 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The EPA is poised as early as April 20 to release chemical review risk plans for 10 chemicals, including asbestos. Here's what you need to know.
The Question: How many uses and exposures of asbestos will the Environmental Protection Agency consider before regulating them under its new chemical oversight law? What the EPA considers or excludes could bring relief to some industries if their past uses of the mineral don't face the spotlight or catch others up in future regulations.
The Issue: Previous EPA attempts to ban or strictly limit the use of hazardous asbestos fibers in brake pads, construction materials, insulation and other applications were blocked by a federal court in 1991. Meanwhile, litigation over the mineral fiber has skyrocketed, already costing companies hundreds of millions of dollars. Environmentalists latched onto the issue, decrying the laxity of oversight powers that the EPA has to address chemical risks—an impetus for amending the nation's chemicals law in 2016.
Who's Involved: Industries such as the construction trades, oil companies, chemical makers, automotive companies and others—in addition to firefighters, and health and environmental groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund—will be closely tracking the upcoming asbestos risk review plans and policies.
If the EPA's risk review omits historic uses of asbestos—as the agency initially proposed last June—that would be good news for companies, such as the Building Abatement Demolition Co., that tear down buildings and claim they already safely handle both the demolition and debris disposal. But the possibility that the agency may ignore the ongoing exposure that firefighters and others face to asbestos—which remains in pipes, walls, floor tiles, siding and other materials—already is fueling environmentalists’ new litigation challenging the EPA's implementation of the chemicals law.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=132518991&vname=dennotallissues&fn=132518991&jd=132518991
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Vermont Senate Votes to Override Governor Toxics Bill Veto
Apr 20, 2018 | Chemical Watch
Vermont's Senate has voted to override governor Phil Scott's veto of a bill designed to expand the state's power to ban or restrict chemicals in children's products.
The governor turned down S103 earlier in the week, citing economic concerns and claiming it was "duplicative to existing measures".
The veto was met with disappointment among campaigners in the state, with one calling the governor's action "shameful".
However, needing a two-thirds majority, the Senate voted 22-8 on Thursday, to override the veto. There was no debate, but afterwards in a statement Senate president (pro tempore) Tim Ashe said: "Current law is bureaucratically cumbersome and the legislature believes the commissioner [of health] should be allowed to act quickly to protect our children from exposure to harmful chemicals."
Lauren Hierl, executive director of Vermont Conservation Voters, thanked the Senate for its actions, adding that the governor's veto message had created "a false narrative that we need to choose between jobs or toxic-free drinking water and children’s products. We can and should have both."
The bill will now move swiftly to a vote in the House, where once again a two-thirds majority will be needed to defeat the veto.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66118/vermont-senate-votes-to-override-governor-toxics-bill-veto
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Senate Overrides Scott Veto of Toxic Substances Bill
Apr 19, 2018 | Bennington Banner
By Ed Damon
The Vermont Senate voted Thursday to override Gov. Phil Scott's veto of a bill that would enact stricter regulation of toxic substances.
Senators voted 22-8 to override the governor's veto. The bill will now return to the House, where it originally passed on a vote of 96-42.
The bill, "An act relating to the regulation of toxic substances and hazardous materials," came after PFOA contamination was found around Bennington. It passed the Senate and House last month. Scott vetoed the bill earlier this week.
Brian Campion, D-Bennington, called it "a very strong vote with a very strong message."
Campion, a lead sponsor of the bill, said he was proud of his Senate colleagues, including Dick Sears, D-Bennington, "for showing leadership on this important issue."
"Jobs at any cost is not what Vermonters want....We have all learned from the PFOA contamination in Bennington how dangerous it can be when businesses are not regulated."
Scott, in his veto message Monday, said the bill "is duplicative to existing measures that already achieve its desired protections" and "will jeopardize jobs and make Vermont less competitive for businesses."
He also asked for changes to the bill, including the removal of a section that would give the state's health commission more authority to ban or restricts consumer products for children.
"We cannot afford to give manufacturers another reason to look elsewhere for their location or expansion needs," Scott said.
Scott drew criticism from some lawmakers and activists for the veto.
It was the first time the Republican governor has used his veto power this legislative session.
"Protecting children from harmful chemicals must always take precedence over the interests of polluters," Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe said in a statement after the Senate vote. But in vetoing the bill, he said, Scott "got it backwards."
The bill was proposed after widespread PFOA contamination was discovered in hundreds of drinking water wells in Bennington and North Bennington. State environmental officials believe the source is two former ChemFab manufacturing facilities. PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid, is a man-made chemical formerly used to manufacture products with the non-stick coating Teflon. It's been linked to cancers and other diseases.
Scott took issue with the bill establishing an Interagency Committee on Chemical Management and Citizen's Advisory Panel. That committee, made up of legislators and representatives of state agencies, is due to make its first round of recommendations by July 1.
Scott did not take issue with requirements around groundwater testing for drinking water sources. The bill would require any groundwater source to be tested for specified chemicals prior to its use as a well.
Under changes proposed by the bill, the regulatory standard would be based on the possibility that children "may be exposed" to a harmful chemical, rather than that they "will be exposed."
Ashe said it was "hard to see why anyone would object to giving" the commissioner "additional tools to protect children from toxic chemical exposure."
Now, the state commissioner of health can issue bans on the recommendation of a committee of leaders from several state agencies.
The bill would give the health commissioner new authority to ban children's products containing certain "chemicals of high concern."
The bill would allow the commissioner to issue bans "after consultation with" the committee. Any new rules would have to be reviewed by a legislative committee before they take effect.
Scott wrote that Act 188, passed in 2014, "creates a robust regulatory process that requires manufacturers of children's products disclose to the Department of Health whether a product contains any of the 66 chemicals listed in the law."
Ashe called the current law "bureaucratically cumbersome." He continued: "[The] Legislature believes the Commissioner should be allowed to act quickly to protect our children from exposure to harmful chemicals."
The bill had been opposed by The Associated Industries of Vermont, which represents manufacturers.
That group argued those provisions "would critically undermine the integrity and credibility" of what's already established in Act 188 "by eliminating key scientific and health criteria, making it easier to arbitrarily require testing and reporting on additional chemicals and to ban or otherwise restrict products in Vermont without appropriate scientific or health-based justification."
But groups like the Vermont Public Interest Research Group and Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility have urged passage of the bill.
"The Governor's veto message created a false narrative that we need to choose between jobs or toxic-free drinking water and children's products," Lauren Hierl, executive director for Vermont Conservation Voters, said in a statement. "We can and should have both."
One provision in the bill, regarding a controversial provision on liability for toxic or hazardous materials, had previously been stripped out and is being considered separately. S. 197, sponsored by Campion and Sears, is before the House Judiciary Committee.http://www.benningtonbanner.com/stories/senate-overrides-scott-veto-of-toxic-substances-bill,537579
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Top Democrats Urge EPA To Quickly Craft Enforceable SDWA Limit For PFAS
Apr 20, 2018 | InsideEPA
By Suzanne Yohannan and David LaRoss
More than two dozen Democratic senators are urging EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to quickly develop an enforceable, federal standard under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), though agency officials have said that development of such a standard would be a “multi-year” effort.
The April 13 letter from 25 Democratic senators increases pressure on EPA to agree to develop enforceable cleanup levels for the class of chemicals just weeks before the agency convenes a planned May 22 “National Leadership Summit” with state and tribal officials to share information on PFAS and identify near-term actions for addressing the substances.
But such calls are likely to increase amid a patchwork of differing state advisories and standards, and as public concerns grow over the chemicals' discovery in drinking water sources.
Environmentalists, for example, this week released new findings showing the number of known sites contaminated with PFAS has grown, jumping from 52 sites identified 10 months ago to 94 industrial and military sites now.
“With the alarming spread of known PFAS contamination sites, it's unconscionable that the [EPA] has taken only the most feeble steps to respond to the crisis,” Bill Walker of the Environmental Working Group says in an April 18 press release.
“States are stepping up to set cleanup standards, but a national crisis demands a national response.” Once again, EWG is “urging EPA to make this a priority,” Walker told Inside EPA.
The senators say while they are encouraged by the planned summit, they call on Pruitt for “more urgent action.” They urge him “to expeditiously declare [a drinking water maximum contaminant level (MCL)] for all PFAS, based on rigorous scientific evidence, as well as a cleanup number from the Office of Land and Emergency Management.”
“This will provide all states, and our local communities, with much-needed certainty to move forward on remediation activities and protection regimes for drinking water systems,” they say.
The letter, which was signed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), among others, cites serious public health concerns related to PFAS groundwater contamination in communities and at Defense Department (DOD) sites across the lawmakers' states.
The chemicals -- which have been used in a variety of applications due to their non-stick qualities -- have particularly been the focus of lawmakers and others at DOD sites due to their use in aqueous film forming foam (AFFF), used in firefighting training exercises. Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), in particular, has been linked to adverse health effects, including several types of cancer.
While EPA in 2016 set lifetime health advisory levels for two PFAS compounds -- PFOA and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) -- at 70 parts per trillion, the agency stopped short of setting an enforceable drinking water standard and provided limited guidance to states and public water systems on how to use the advisory levels.
As a result, some states, like New Jersey, have adopted standards stricter than EPA's, though they have also called on the agency to develop an MCL.
'Years-Long Effort'
Peter Grevatt, director of EPA's Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water, signaled recently that the agency is weighing the possibility of issuing an MCL for PFAS, although he cautioned it is a lengthy process. “This is one of the issues that he will certainly think about,” Grevatt told state officials last month.
“The administrator's direction is we are to be doing all we can to support you in facing these challenges,” Grevatt said. But he cautioned that crafting an MCL would require numerous steps including a regulatory determination and multiple rounds of public comment. “That is not going to happen in a year. That is a multi-year process.”
In their letter, the senators point out the drawbacks of advisory levels, saying they are not legally enforceable and “cannot be used to determine remediation responsibilities and transfers of surplus DOD property under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).”
They say while they applaud the action by a handful of states to set their own cleanup standards more stringent than EPA's advisory level, they express concern over the lack of a federal science-based drinking water MCL.
They say such a standard would offer “a clear and enforceable nationwide standard for permissible levels of these contaminants,” and would inform cleanup decisions at sites operating under CERCLA, noting the quandary the military is in on cleaning up such sites.
“DOD has identified military installations for cleanup and remediation, yet is unable to move forward under CERCLA without an MCL.” They say DOD has “highlighted the need” for EPA's waste office to develop a cleanup level, which the senators “strongly support.”
They add, “Without an MCL and cleanup number, the unintended result is that many military communities across the country remain in limbo.”
Travis Kline, vice-president at the environmental consulting firm AlterEcho, told an April 19 session at the American Bar Association Section of Environmental, Energy and Resources spring conference in Orlando, FL, said that EPA's initial development of the health advisory would aid any future development of an MCL.
He said the advisory is a “a pretty defensible, consistent standard” that has been peer reviewed, adding in an interview that it would likely translate well into a standard.
Kline said the level was developed using methods consistent with how the agency develops MCLs, which would make it relatively easy to translate into an MCL. But, he said, the catch is that the agency might choose to adopt different assessing methods for an MCL, such as using New Jersey's blood-level approach.
Kline added that the most likely change would be if the phase-out of certain PFCs lead the agency to adjusting its relative source contribution, an estimate of contributions from other sources, which would directly affect the advisory level.
As the assumed amount of PFAS going into the environment drops, the health advisory gets less stringent. “The [relative source contribution figure] could be cut in half tomorrow, and you'd see a doubling in the resultant health advisory,” he said.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/top-democrats-urge-epa-quickly-craft-enforceable-sdwa-limit-pfas
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US NGO Calls for Avoidance of Recycled-Content Building Products
Apr 19, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
A US NGO is calling for the avoidance of several recycled-content building products unless their contents are fully disclosed and evaluated to be lead-free.
According to Bill Walsh of the Healthy Building Network, there is a "significant regulatory gap" that allows lead-containing building products to be used, including in schools.
And he said that, while lead paint has long been illegal, the law has not caught up with changes in the building industry that incentivise the use of recycled content that can contain lead.
HBN researchers identified products they say to avoid, as they may contain recycled content contaminated by lead and other "toxic substances". These are:recycled vinyl flooring;carpet and ceiling tiles containing fly ash recycled from coal-fired power plants;tyre-derived recycled rubber flooring, often used on playgrounds and in gymnasiums, in which granulated tyres are pressed into resilient flooring tiles;crumb rubber playground mulch, made from ground up tyres; andartificial or synthetic turf in which the ground tyres are pulverised into granules resembling black soil.
Mr Walsh added that Health Product Declarations (HPD) should be provided for all building products. HPD is an industry-supported standard format for reporting product content and associated health hazards.
In a 2015 report, Optimizing Recycling, HBN identifies further steps recycling industry and building product manufacturers can take to reduce lead hazards.Lead in schools
HBN's recommendations follow publication earlier this month of the report Eliminating Lead Risks in Schools and Child Care Facilities. Published by the Children's Environmental Health Network, Healthy Schools Network and the Learning Disabilities Association of America, this sets out recommendations for reducing lead exposure to children .
These include:improving, promoting, and enforcing regulations and standards such as the EPA’s Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule (RRP);encouraging the private sector to commit to lead-free solutions;identifying sources of lead in schools and child care facilities;pressing for increased government funding to eliminate these exposures.
The Brazilian government recently passed a law limiting lead in products and materials used in buildings visited by children.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66107/us-ngo-calls-for-avoidance-of-recycled-content-building-products
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Energy Industry Puzzles over New White House Adviser
Apr 19, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Ben Lefebvre and Eric Wolff
The appointment of a 28-year-old former congressional staffer as the top White House energy aide left many industry lobbyists scratching their heads — and nervous that the new hire may have trouble filling the shoes of the more experienced adviser he's replacing.
The relatively unknown Francis Brooke will step into the role as replacement for Mike Catanzaro, who will exit the White House next week. Catanzaro and NSC energy adviser George David Banks, another energy adviser who departed earlier this year, have been the top two energy experts in the White House, and they'll take with them decades of experience.
Brooke spent the last year in Vice President Mike Pence's office serving in a junior role to Catanzaro and Banks. But energy lobbyists worry his elevation will leave them without steady hands in the White House just as the administration confronts big decisions on the coal industry, an intra-party biofuels fight and thorny energy trade issues. Putting a relative rookie into the role also shows that the administration may not devote as much attention to energy issues in the run-up to the 2018 elections, sources said.
“It shows you this administration doesn’t care about these issues,” said one lobbyist who works extensively with the administration on energy policy, but who requested anonymity to discuss people he expects to work with. “I expect agencies are now going to have to play a bigger role. There’s not going to be a lot of policy issues that will be determined over the next eight months or so.”
Brooke joins the White House with far less energy-sector experience than Banks and Catanzaro, who came to their jobs with long histories in industry and government. He started his career as an intern for Mick Mulvaney in October 2012 when the White House budget director was a South Carolina congressman. After that, he had stints as a staff assistant for Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) and legislative aide for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Pence’s office tapped him to be associate director of policy in February 2017.
His family was involved in international politics in the previous decade. His father, Francis Brooke Sr., helped foster the relationship between officials in the George W. Bush administration and Ahmed Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi exile who helped convince the U.S. to invade his country.
Pence’s office confirmed Brooke’s biographical information but did not offer further details about his time working with the vice president.
McConnell’s office did not respond to questions about Brooke. A spokeswoman for Barr said Brooke had been “one of the Congressman’s most trusted legislative assistants and handled a wide variety of issues including energy, environment, and health care.”
Previous to that, Brooke’s biggest notice came from pitching 97 innings in the 2012 season with Northwestern University, making 13 starts and ending with a 2.51 earned run average. He would later serve as a coach to the Republicans’ congressional baseball team, and he was on the Arlington, Va., practice field when a gunman shot Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana.
Lobbyists say they worry that with the departures of Catanzaro and Banks, Brooke will not be able to help the White House navigate complex energy issues with technical details that can be headache-inducing.
“There is angst downtown that without Mike there, no one knows who is going to make the trains run on time,” said Andeavor’s Stephen Brown said before Brooke was officially named to the position. “Mike was always the adult in the room on energy issues with substantive knowledge, not just a political perspective.”
Brooke, along with Wells Griffith, an Energy Department official on a three-month loan to the White House, will have almost no time to get acclimated to their jobs. The Department of Energy is grappling with whether to try to use emergency authority to keep economically distressed coal-fired power plants running. And the two new staffers may need to help Trump navigate the dispute between refiners seeking changes to the Renewable Fuel Standard and corn farmers who are counting on the president to live up to his promise to protect ethanol.
They will also have to cope with White House officials on trade issues, such as the steel tariffs that oil and gas companies have complained could hamper the construction of new pipelines.
But some current and former administration officials say they have confidence Brooke is up to the job. They say he worked closely with Banks and Catanzaro on all their key issues, including traveling with Banks to the U.N. climate conference at Bonn, Germany, as a key adviser.
"He knows all the players, he's been in all the meetings," said one administration source. "He has the right temperament, the right judgment. People get into these jobs and they use them for vanity tours. Brooke doesn't do that. He's going to be great."
Banks, who left the White House in February, agreed.
“I think that he’s ready for the role,” said Banks, former adviser to Trump on the NSC. “Francis has been deeply engaged in all of the major energy environment [initiatives]. Some people wouldn’t have the experience he’s had in working these issues for over a year in the White House. He’s incredibly bright, disciplined person.”
Critics of the administration’s energy policy rollbacks hoped Brooke’s lack of experience would depoliticize some of the big decisions before the administration.
“Of course it’s weird that there’s no senior person covering energy issues,” said John Morton, former senior director for energy and climate change on the NSC during the Obama administration. “Though with this administration, it’s often a blessing in disguise when a policy area gets neglected by Trump appointees, as it allows more talented career staff to manage affairs.”
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/04/energy-industry-puzzles-over-new-white-house-adviser-494665
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EPA to Unveil Policy Aimed at Avoiding Legal Action over Oil and Gas Polluters: Source
Apr 20, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) office of enforcement will announce a new policy aimed specifically at helping polluters in the oil and gas industry, The Hill has learned.
The new policy, which has not been finalized, will focus on offering more flexibility to oil and gas companies that choose to self-audit their emissions and report any failures to meet EPA’s regulations, according to an EPA employee with knowledge of the plan.
EPA's head of the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA), Susan Bodine, has plans to announce the policy Friday at the EarthX Law and Policy symposium in Dallas. The announcement is timed with Earth Day, which is Sunday. The date is also notable because it's the eight year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which dumped nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
Bodine will be speaking on a panel focused on sustainable and ethical corporate decision-making.
Since 1995, the EPA has offered incentives to industries who choose to self-audit their potential pollution. Under the policy called “Incentives for SelfPolicing: Discovery, Disclosure, Correction and Prevention of Violations,” companies that find they are breaking the law and report it to EPA promptly, and then fix the problem, will get certain fee exemptions. Another policy from 2008 offers exemptions to owners who buy companies and find during an audit that the previous owners were not in compliance.
The idea is that companies will choose to self-audit and fix their problems rather than wait for EPA to conduct its own investigation, which could lead to a costly and lengthy legal battle.
The new EPA pilot program will at first focus solely on offering more audit alternatives to the oil and gas industry and will first focus specifically on companies bought recently and audited by the new owner, according to the EPA source.
The program would slightly modify the national audit program and give more flexibility to that sector if they self-disclose. One of the areas of focus is jumpstarting more compliance in tank vapor control systems, of which the agency has seen an uptick in non-compliance, according to the source.
One of the flexibilities under consideration in the policy is extending the period of time that oil and gas polluters can take to fix the pollution after they reported their violations to EPA. Right now the program is solely focused on new owners.
The policy change is part of the Trump administration’s push to find alternatives to formal lawsuits and aims to highlight the message that the new “audit refresh” is “open for business,” according to the source.
EPA did not respond to a request for comment.
While EPA’s audit policy was available under the Obama administration, Bodine and others believe the policy should be at the forefront of the new administration’s compliance push.
In a letter Bodine wrote to staff in in early February, she highlighted the EPA's new approach to polluters. The memo was sent days before the agency released its annual enforcement data, which showed a distinct drop in lawsuits brought and filed against polluters under the Trump administration.
“Some outside entities that are unfamiliar with the true nature of our work here in OECA and have tried to measure the worth of what you do simply through the dollar amount of federal penalties and the number of federal case initiations,” Bodine wrote in the office-wide email reviewed by The Hill.
“However it is also important for EPA to help and, if necessary, persuade states to take actions to address violations and informal actions can bring about a return to compliance more quickly.”
The Justice Department (DOJ), which is responsible for bringing cases against polluters for EPA, has issued similar memorandum.
In a March 12 letter sent to the chiefs of the DOJ's Environment and Natural Resources Division, Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Wood highlighted a policy that would include "enhancing cooperative federalism.”
The idea involves findings ways to work with non-compliant individuals or industries to avoid taking them to court.
"In fact, many kinds of environmental violations can be, and often are, addressed and resolved without federal involvement," the memo read.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/384078-epa-to-unveil-new-policy-aimed-at-avoiding-legal-action-over-oil
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Costly Toxic Pollutant Limits on Power Plants Still Debated at EPA
Apr 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
The EPA is still on the fence about whether withdrawing toxic air pollution standards for power plants would benefit the energy industry.
The Environmental Protection Agency doesn't want to uphold a “costly,” “stringent” rule, but also can't ignore what industry has already spent on compliance, Bill Wehrum, assistant administrator for air pollution, said.
“The bell has been rung, and if you make the regulation go away, you can't make the costs that it incurred go away,” Wehrum said April 19 at the American Bar Association's Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources conference in Orlando, Fla.
A coalition of states and utilities have been fighting the Obama-era rule (RIN:2060-AP52), also known as EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics Standards or MATS, since 2012, arguing the toxic pollution limits were overly stringent and would drive power plants out of business.
Though the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 ruled in Michigan v. EPA that the EPA had failed to take an initial step of determining whether the health benefits of the regulation justified its costs, the rule was still allowed to take effect. That forced the power sector to install expensive pollution controls or shutter aging power plants.
Given that, Wehrum said the agency is undecided about whether to keep the standards.
“We're still thinking about it, and we're not quite sure what we're going to do here,” he said at the conference.
Bloomberg Environment sponsored the American Bar Association Section of Environment, Energy, and Resource's Orlando conference.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=132518988&vname=dennotallissues&fn=132518988&jd=132518988
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EPA Floats 'Flexible' Options For States' Interstate Ozone Air Quality Plans
Apr 19, 2018 | InsideEPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA is soliciting comment on a menu of “flexible” approaches states could pursue in their upcoming plans for mitigating interstate air emissions that are hindering attainment of the agency's 2015 ozone standard, as the Trump administration moves away from EPA-led emissions trading programs toward a state-led approach.
In a March 27 memo to all 10 EPA regional offices, EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards Director Peter Tsirigotis details the menu of options, including using a different initial year of emissions data for air quality planning purposes, placing greater emphasis on the role of international emissions in hindering attainment of the ozone limit, and several other possible strategies.
The memo also outlines EPA's latest projections for which parts of the country will be attaining or violating the 2015 ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) by 2023.
The agency now projects some 35 areas in 2023 will be labeled either “nonattainment” or “maintenance” for the 2015 ozone NAAQS, set by the Obama EPA at 70 parts per billion (ppb), tougher than the prior 75 ppb standard set by the George W. Bush administration in 2008. Many of those areas will be in California, but some are in the mountain West or Southwest and several in East Coast states including Connecticut and New York.
Areas designated “maintenance” are typically those that have violated NAAQS in the past, but now comply. However, the method for projecting “maintenance” in the future has been a major issue of dispute between EPA and some state and industry critics for some time and is likely to continue to be.
State implementation plans (SIPs) are due to EPA by Oct. 1 outlining how states will meet the Clean Air Act's “good neighbor” requirement to reduce emissions within their control that are hindering a neighboring state's ability to attain NAAQS.
The Obama administration crafted the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule emissions trading program that helped states meet good neighbor obligations for the 2008 ozone NAAQS. But without a follow-up transport rule from the Trump administration, states will have to arrive at their own conclusions on how to meet the obligations.
EPA air policy chief William Wehrum has further expressed a preference for a state-driven process, and the agency's new memo moves in that direction with its menu of SIP options.
The agency has also rejected Clean Air Act petitions filed by states asking the agency to directly regulate emissions in another state that are preventing the petitioning state from attaining NAAQS -- suggesting a high bar for states to win any new agency-led policy on reducing interstate ozone transport.
Memo's Options
Instead, Tsirigotis' memo aims to help states by supplying modeling that they could rely on to avoid mitigation obligations. It differs slightly from the approach taken for modeling with regard to the 2008 ozone standard, EPA says, broadly following the CSAPR methodology.
That method determines initially whether a state “contributes significantly” to another state's NAAQS attainment problems by projecting whether that contribution is at least 1 percent of the NAAQS, then applies an analysis of whether cost-effective pollution control measures are available to eliminate that contribution. EPA is offering states the chance to reduce their projected ozone levels by largely eliminating modeling of “over-water” areas, which can increase the estimated future ozone level of an air monitor near a lake or the ocean.
However, the agency is further suggesting various steps that states could take that would diverge from EPA's approach. These could include: using a different base year from which to project emissions into the future (EPA uses 2009-2013 average as a base); using a different “analytic year” than 2023; use of alternative power sector modeling; and consideration of state-specific information in identifying emissions sources and controls.
States might also adopt “alternative methodologies” to “give independent meaning” to the term “interfere with maintenance” of NAAQS; use an alternative approach to identify “receptors,” or air quality monitoring stations, that are likely to violate the NAAQS that does not rely on projected maximum ozone readings; give greater consideration of weather conditions that could have contributed to high ozone formation; give greater consideration of international emissions' role; and use a host of other novel concepts.
States might also consider “different contribution thresholds for different regions based on regional differences in the nature and extent of the transport problem.” And states could “consider whether the remedy for upwind states linked to maintenance receptors could be less stringent than for those linked to nonattainment receptors.”
EPA is also announcing it “is developing an action to evaluate and make a determination regarding remaining good neighbor obligations for the 2008 ozone NAAQS,” according to the agency's website. EPA anticipates proposing a rule on that issue by June 29, with a final rule due Dec. 6.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-floats-flexible-options-states-interstate-ozone-air-quality-plans
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Judge Ditches Suit Over EPA Delay of Power Plant Water Limits
Apr 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
A federal court tossed out a lawsuit over the EPA's indefinite delay of toxic wastewater limits at power plants.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia's decision April 18 marked a defeat for an environmental coalition led by Clean Water Action.
At issue was an Environmental Protection Agency decision in April 2017 to indefinitely delay the effective date of the limits on toxic wastewater released during power plant operations. The coalition accused the EPA of violating the Administrative Procedure Act by not giving the public a chance to comment on the agency's decision.
The court said the EPA in September 2017 announced 2020 to be the new compliance deadline for more than 1,000 power plants nationwide, as it reconsiders how strictly it should limit two of the waste streams. The court found that EPA action rendered the challenge moot.
The EPA in 2015 set limits for six categories of wastewater containing arsenic, selenium, nitrates, mercury, zinc, and other pollutants that power plants nationwide discharge. The substance of this rule is being challenged in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, where the environmental groups will now focus their energies.
The Sierra Club is among the environmental organizations involved in the case. The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg, the ultimate owner of Bloomberg Environment.
The postponement, which power plants requested, applies to new Obama-era limits on wastewater generated by transporting bottom ash and by operating scrubbers used to capture sulfur dioxide emissions from burning petroleum coke and coal.
Bottom ash transport wastewater refers to the water that power plants use to collect, cool, and convey ash and other slag from the bottom of a boiler to other parts of the utility for treatment.
The case is Clean Water Action v. Pruitt, D.D.C., No. 17-cv-00817, 4/18/18.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=132519009&vname=dennotallissues&fn=132519009&jd=132519009
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Federal Judge Sends Utility ELG Delay Suit to Appeals Court
Apr 19, 2018 | InsideEPA
A federal district court judge has rejected environmentalists’ bid to keep their suit over EPA’s authority to delay implementing its power plant effluent limitation guidelines (ELG) separate from challenges to the rule itself, shifting focus to a related appellate court suit over the Trump administration's delay of the ELG.
In an April 18 order, Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with EPA and industry groups that the agency's two-year delay of some compliance deadlines in the ELG is effectively a change to the power sector's effluent standards, and thus falls under the Clean Water Act (CWA) provision that sends any suit over effluent limitations to appeals court.
The order rejects environmentalists' argument that a change in deadlines is fundamentally different from a change in the ELG's substantive standards. As a result, litigation over the delay will be combined with a facial challenge to the 2015 effluent rule that is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, as EPA and industry groups sought.
“[C]onsider a road with a speed limit of forty miles per hour. Changing the road’s speed limit sets a new speed limit, and the analysis is no different if the change only affects future compliance deadlines. If a rule (like the ELG Rule) sets twenty miles per hour as a new speed limit that will apply on the road starting in late 2018, and a later rule (like ELG Rule Amendment) revises the compliance deadline to 2020, the later rule sets a different speed limit on that road for the period from late 2018 to 2020: forty miles per hour instead of twenty miles per hour.” reads Friedrich's order in Clean Water Action, et al., v. EPA.
She also held that the agency's “preliminary” stay of the entire ELG, which was issued without notice and comment in early 2017 but ultimately superseded by the more limited two-year delay, is moot despite the environmentalists’ push for a ruling that would limit EPA’s ability to invoke that authority again in the future.
“It would require . . . impermissible speculation to forecast that the ELG Rule Amendment will be vacated and that the EPA will then decide to reinstate the Indefinite Stay challenged in this case,” Friedrich writes.
The preliminary stay was part of the Trump administration's novel use of Administrative Procedure Act authority to delay rules’ effective dates “when justice so requires.” EPA and other agencies have argued that power allows them to postpone individual compliance dates in rules that have already taken effect, without a full rulemaking process, while environmental groups say it only applies to rules whose effective date has not yet arrived, and requires notice and comment.
An attorney for the environmental groups says they will continue to press for a ruling that would bring the ELG into force on its original schedule, noting that “the district court’s decision did not reach the merits of EPA’s illegal actions.”
“We will continue to seek our day in court to protect our waterways and downstream communities from toxic power plant pollution,” the source says.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/federal-judge-sends-utility-elg-delay-suit-appeals-court
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Energy Regulator Starts Inquiry on Gas Pipeline Approval Process
Apr 20, 2018 |
By Stephen Cunningham and Rebecca Kern
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will be seeking public comment on whether and how it should revise its natural gas permitting policies.
Comments will be due 60 days after the draft notice of inquiry is published in the Federal Register.
FERC staff will be taking comment on natural gas precedent agreements, which are the contracts that companies sign before building a pipeline, and whether such contracts for service are evidence of the need for pipelines.
Another topic for comments is how the commission evaluates environmental impacts of proposed projects, including the degree to which it should consider upstream and downstream greenhouse gas emissions.
FERC also is soliciting views about the use of eminent domain.
While the review takes place, gas applications will be subject to current policy guidelines.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=132518977&vname=dennotallissues&fn=132518977&jd=132518977
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FERC Tackles First Gas Policy Review Since 1999
Apr 20, 2018 | E&E - Energywire
By Rod Kuckro and Jenny Mandel
Federal regulators expect an outpouring of comments on an inquiry launched yesterday on whether they should change the way they review and approve interstate natural gas pipelines.
In what Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Kevin McIntyre described as an exercise in "good governance," the agency yesterday announced a "Notice of Inquiry" (NOI) on its policies for certifying pipelines.
FERC's current policy on how it reviews pipelines dates from 1999, before the shale boom pushed natural gas production to record highs and climate change became an urgent international policy priority.
In remarks on the launch of the process to reassess the agency's stance, McIntyre said he is "neutral" on whether the policy needs updating.
"I am looking forward to the input and will make my decision on that basis," McIntyre said, adding that the NOI should not be read "as a forecast of policy direction or action FERC may take" or an indication "that the current policy statement is ineffective or that changes are going to be made."
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McIntyre was just 15 days into his tenure at FERC on Dec. 21 when he announced at his first public meeting that a review of the 1999 policy would be his first significant initiative as chairman.
"We as a government institution owe it to all concerned to look at processes and policies from time to time," McIntyre said yesterday of the policy review.
"Much has changed in the energy world since 1999, and it is incumbent upon us to take another look at the way in which we assess the value and the viability of our pipeline application," he said. "Let's dust off the existing playbook and take a fresh look at it and ask ourselves the really hard questions around 'is there any way we can improve this?'" (Energywire, Dec. 22, 2017).
Comments on the 58-page NOI will be due 60 days after its publication in the Federal Register, likely to occur next week.
"We actually don't have a target date for issuance" of a revised policy, McIntyre said in response to a question from E&E News.
"We're kicking around that very timing question internally right now, but we're not even close to a final resolution of it. And of course we'll be driven in part by the volume and complexity of the input that we get from stakeholders in the NOI process," he said.
During the NOI proceeding, FERC will continue to process natural gas facility cases consistent with its current policy statement and to make determinations on a case-by-case basis, the agency said.4 questions
FERC is posing four questions in the NOI, asking first if the agency should adjust its methodology for determining whether there is a need for a proposed pipeline, including consideration of precedent agreements and contracts for service as evidence of such need.
It is also asking about consideration of the potential exercise of eminent domain and of landowner interests related to a proposed project, and its processes for evaluating the environmental impacts of a proposed project.
Lastly, FERC wants to know whether there are specific changes it should consider implementing to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its certificate processes, including pre-filing, post-filing and post-order issuance.
McIntyre said it is "quite coincidental but perhaps fortuitous" that FERC's NOI dovetails with a memorandum of understanding he signed April 9 along with leaders of a dozen federal agencies to streamline environmental permitting processes to reach decisions in two years.
"I salute that goal," he said. "What could be wrong with looking for ways to cooperate better, to achieve more efficient and streamlined outcomes?"
Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur said the NOI is an important and probably overdue first step in reviewing FERC's policy.
She suggested the commission should consider a regional approach to pipeline planning and "how we do our environmental review," as well as whether and how the agency factors in the social cost of carbon, and consideration of upstream and downstream greenhouse gas emissions in determining whether a project is in the public interest.
She urged those planning to offer comments to "really focus on the specificity and clarity of your comments and suggestions" about how FERC policies might change.
"It's much easier to criticize a current process than to design a new one thinking all the way through," she said.Big, divisive questions
The review promises to bring out starkly conflicting responses on divisive questions like eminent domain use and accounting for a project's contribution to climate change.
On eminent domain, for example, pipeline opponents have leaned on conviction around property rights to mobilize landowners across the political spectrum, finding it an effective rallying cry. Pipeline companies, on the other hand, have in some cases had trouble accessing properties to carry out even preliminary activities like environmental assessments that feed into state and federal permitting, as in the case of the PennEast pipeline (Energywire, Feb. 20).
One of the issues highlighted by LaFleur — the increasing incidence of corporate affiliations between pipeline developers and end users — was called out in a September report by the groups Oil Change International, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club. They made the case that several of the most contentious pipeline projects currently underway have been permitted in part based on customer demand evidenced largely by such precedent agreements.
Those affiliate-company agreements are susceptible to manipulation by corporate partners claiming inflated demand projections to support pipeline build-out, the groups said (Energywire, Sept. 19, 2017).
Another of LaFleur's highlighted questions, how FERC should incorporate greenhouse gas emissions into its permitting, is at the center of ongoing court battles over the Sabal Trail pipeline that triggered a highly unusual shutdown of a pipeline after it had been put into service. Shipping was subsequently restarted on the pipeline, though the climate question continues to be legislated (Energywire, March 16).
In response to the NOI, the Natural Resources Defense Council and 10 other environmental groups praised FERC's move to re-evaluate the policy and urged the agency to adopt a "21st century approach" to pipeline permitting.
In a preview of issues the groups are likely to submit in the NOI comment docket, they urged FERC to adopt "project need" as the first factor to consider in weighing a pipeline proposal, over the current approach of first considering who would pay for it. To evaluate need, they said, the agency should look at "all relevant factors" rather than simply end-user demand as evidenced by precedent agreements.
If those precedent agreements depend on affiliate contracts, the agency should set a more rigorous standard of review because the developer "essentially is contracting with itself," they said.
The groups also urged FERC to move to a regional review model, more closely consider climate change in its reviews and bolster public participation.
Natural gas industry advocates were quick to note that while the world has changed since 1999, the current review process has supported robust industry growth.
Don Santa, president and CEO of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, said it is "understandable" that FERC is evaluating its 1999 policy. But he said, "The ability to expand and modify interstate natural gas pipelines under FERC's existing policy has served the nation well. This pipeline infrastructure has facilitated the world's most competitive natural gas commodity market and has enabled American consumers and industry to benefit from our natural gas abundance."
The American Petroleum Institute, which represents both natural gas and oil interests, described FERC's current review process as successful. "FERC's robust review process has provided the commission with an effective tool to balance the concerns of the public and the industry and has enabled the U.S. to construct a safe, reliable and effective natural gas transportation system," said API Midstream Group Director Robin Rorick.
Click here to read the NOI: https://www.eenews.net/assets/2018/04/20/document_ew_02.pdf
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/04/20/stories/1060079613
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EPA GHG Inventory Sees 2.5 Percent Drop in 2016
Apr 19, 2018 | InsideEPA
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is touting a technology approach to reducing greenhouse gases after the agency released the final version of its annual greenhouse gas inventory showing that in 2016 the country emitted 6.511 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, a 2.5 percent reduction from 2015 levels.
The agency in the April 18 report says the decline was “a result of multiple factors including substitution from coal to natural gas consumption in the electric power sector, and warmer winter conditions that reduced demand for heating fuel in the residential and commercial sectors.”
It adds that the country's emissions total 5.795 billion tons after accounting for CO2 sequestration in the land sector.
The report finds that the power sector emitted 28 percent of the country's GHGs, which is nearly equal to the transportation sector. That finding reflects ongoing trends in which power sector emissions have been dropping while transportation sector emissions have remained stubbornly high.
Transport emissions ticked upward in 2016, compared with 2015 figures, largely due to increased vehicle travel.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in a press release announcing the report said the declines show that the country can reduce emissions using innovative technology -- a likely reference to fracking technology that has helped natural gas out-compete coal in the power sector -- without regulations.
The one-size-fits-all” regulations like the Obama-era Clean Power Plan utility GHG rule and the Paris Agreement are “not the solution,” he said.
Overall, the comments reflect a technology-first approach to climate policy that eschews federal regulations to cut emissions, though Pruitt in the past has cast doubt on the underlying need to cut GHGs by questioning mainstream climate scientific findings that human-released GHGs are the dominant source of climate change.
Pruitt's April 18 statement included none of that climate skepticism, instead calling the United States' efforts to reduce emissions “one of the great environmental successes of our time.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-ghg-inventory-sees-25-percent-drop-2016
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Challenges Remain for Crude-By-Rail Readiness — Report
Apr 20, 2018 | E&E - Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
Rail safety officials should assemble a "toolkit" for handling a worst-case train derailment involving crude oil or ethanol, according to a federal advisory group.
While North American crude-by-rail traffic has fallen dramatically since its 2014 peak, "many communities perceive rail hazmat transport as one of their top preparedness challenges," notes a new report approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency's National Advisory Council.
A "railroad emergency response toolkit" should include real-time information for first responders like firefighters, as well as data on available training and emergency resources, the report concludes. The document lays out six other recommendations for FEMA and the Department of Transportation, which regulates hazardous materials safety for U.S. railroads and pipelines.
The National Advisory Council also urged the federal government to compensate volunteer firefighters who may have to step away from their day jobs to prepare for "low probability/high consequence events they may never face," like hazmat train crashes. The council consists of 35 members drawn from regional sheriff's offices, health departments and tribal groups, among other organizations.
"Now, Congress and the federal government need to put these recommendations into action," said Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), who shepherded legislation through Congress in 2016 that laid the groundwork for the report. "Our first responders step up every day and put their lives on the line, and this report shows how we can make sure they have the tools and resources to do their jobs, keep our communities strong and safe, and come home to their families each night."
Heitkamp has trained a spotlight on the need to educate and train firefighters and other first responders to prepare for a crude-by-rail disaster. She introduced several bills on the subject following a dramatic 2013 oil train derailment and explosion outside Casselton, N.D. (Energywire, Jan. 6, 2014).
Her Railroad Emergency Services Preparedness, Operational Needs and Safety Evaluation (RESPONSE) Act, signed into law in 2016, established a subcommittee of officials from FEMA, the DOT's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, BNSF Railway Co., and other groups to draft ideas for improving rail emergency readiness.
The National Advisory Council signed off on seven of that subcommittee's recommendations earlier this year, according to the report released yesterday. Over the next two years, FEMA will provide annual updates to Congress on work to satisfy the recommendations, which include calls for better outreach to tribal governments about response resources and allowing for-profit companies to compete for federal hazmat training funds.
Karen Darch, village president of Barrington, Ill., and a vocal advocate for crude-by-rail safety, welcomed calls for a "toolkit" to include immediate access to railway data in the aftermath of an accident.
"Knowing how to get 'real time' information in the event of an incident should be part of everyone's preplanning and training," she said in an email. "The federal government is in the best position to require railroads to have that capability and to make sure local responders know about it."
Under current guidelines, community leaders can request information on hazardous materials traffic from railroads that pass through their towns. Firefighters can also download a rail-industry-developed app that shows them, in near real time, what a given tank car is carrying (Energywire, Feb. 25, 2015). In general, such material is considered security-sensitive, and government watchdogs have said that first responders aren't always aware such tools are available.
"Raising awareness of hazmat transported in communities remains a challenge despite efforts of the U.S. railroads and other stakeholders," the report to FEMA notes.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/04/20/stories/1060079617
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States Criticize EPA's Efforts to 'Delay' CWA Jurisdiction Rule Suit
Apr 19, 2018 | InsideEPA
States seeking a federal district court ruling on the legality of the Obama-era Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule's merits are pushing back against the Trump administration’s renewed effort to stay their suit, saying the government is mounting a baseless appeal in order to “delay” cases over the 2015 policy.
In an April 17 brief to the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota, seven states suing over the jurisdiction rule say the Department of Justice (DOJ) has offered no reasonable argument for the court to scrap a magistrate judge’s order that revived their case and teed up a potential first-time ruling on whether the Obama administration’s CWA rule was lawful.
DOJ is appealing that order, seeking a finding from a district judge that the magistrate failed to consider arguments in favor of keeping the North Dakota, et al, v. EPA, et al., stayed while EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers weigh repealing the Obama-era standard altogether.
The government has argued that forcing the agencies to take a position on the rule’s merits would prejudice their deliberations on the proposed repeal.
But the seven states -- North Dakota, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and South Dakota -- say there is no proof that Magistrate Judge Alice R. Senechal unfairly disregarded those arguments. Instead, they say, she considered and reasonably rejected them.
“The Agencies’ arguments boil down to this: they would prefer that this litigation remain stayed, but cannot lodge a single legal argument that compels that result. The Federal Defendants’ weak protestations do not even approach supporting the ‘definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed’ necessary to set aside the Order,” the brief says.
It continues, “it is clear that this Objection is no more than an attempt to further delay these proceedings based on essentially the same arguments already rejected by a unanimous Supreme Court.”
The high court rejected the Trump administration’s request for a stay on its case over whether district or appellate courts should hear challenges to the water law’s reach, before ruling on Jan. 22 that district court is the proper venue for those suits -- providing the precedent needed to restart the North Dakota suit and an array of other challengespending across the country.
The case in North Dakota is the most advanced of the CWA jurisdiction challenges, as former Chief District Judge Ralph Erickson -- now an appeals court judge -- had already granted an injunction barring enforcement of the rule within the 13 plaintiff states suing in that court. Other courts hearing revived cases are still considering whether to issue an injunction, especially in light of the Trump administration’s stay on enforcing the CWA rule until 2020 -- long after the point where EPA and the Corps are expected to have finalized their repeal proposal.
Only seven of the states are now trying to resume their suit; the other six filed joint briefs agreeing with EPA that there is no need for further litigation as long as the repeal plan is advancing.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/states-criticize-epa%E2%80%99s-efforts-delay-cwa-jurisdiction-rule-suit
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EPA Air Chief Plans To Speed NAAQS Reviews Using 'Close Enough' Data
Apr 19, 2018 | InsideEPA
By David LaRoss
EPA air chief William Wehrum plans to accelerate the long-delayed national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) review process by reducing some scientific advisory input and accepting data that is “close enough” to justify a review rather than “perfect,” suggesting Supreme Court precedent would allow the changes.
In a keynote address to the American Bar Association's Section of Energy, Environment and Resources spring conference here April 19, Wehrum said he sees a need to revisit EPA's approach to NAAQS reviews given its chronic failure to meet the Clean Air Act's requirement of reviewing each existing standard every five years.
He added that the “close enough is good enough” concept could provide a new framework for the process.
Speaking to Inside EPA after his address, Wehrum said he is trying to avoid a situation where EPA's quest for “perfect” understanding of the science on any particular pollutant -- there are six criteria pollutants, such as ozone, regulated by NAAQS -- leads to unreasonable delays on new NAAQS decisions.
“The agency historically has tried to do, as they should, the very best job they can . . . in understanding the science and applying the science to the decision-making,” he said. “The only point I was making is that you can take that to a fault. So you obviously need to look at all the science, you need to do a good job reviewing and assessing the science, but I think there are ways that we can streamline the process, get the benefit of the science but maybe not be as focused on perfection as we have,” he said.
The plan is likely to spark further controversy over the science EPA uses to justify its decisions as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is planning a policy that would require the agency to use only publicly available data as the basis for its decisions, though a top White House official said recently that the administration would not support agencies changing their procedures in ways that prevent them from using the “best available evidence.”
Environmentalists and other critics charge that could undermine several NAAQS, as EPA has historically relied on data that is protected by medical privacy as the basis for some of its standards.
During his address, Wehrum said he sees reworking the NAAQS reviews as a higher priority than revising the strict ozone standard the Obama administration adopted in 2015.
Industry and many states have charged that tightening the standard from the 2008 limit of 75 parts per billion (ppb) down to 70 ppb was unreasonable and creates a limit that will be all but impossible to meet in some areas. After President Donald Trump took office, EPA said it would reconsider the decision to strengthen the standard, and that process is still ongoing according to agency status reports to a federal appeals court.
Wehrum told ABA “While we are going to take a hard look” at the 2015 ozone standard, “the really more important thing we're going to do is look at the NAAQS standard-setting process.”
"What we already are doing is taking a fundamental look at how we do the NAAQS review, with an eye toward revising that so that we can do a very good job on the science and the law and the policy, but also do that comfortably within the five-year review cycle, so that we're not constantly under court-ordered deadlines to satisfy the five-year obligation,” he said.
'Wacky Results'
Wehrum also used his ABA address to preview a likely legal defense of the new streamlined review process, suggesting the agency will rely on an argument that the congressional mandate to review standards every five years creates “absurd results."
The air chief said a defense would be rooted in the Supreme Court's 2014 decision that rejected parts of EPA's “tailoring rule” that sought to raise statutory thresholds for triggering Clean Air Act prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) permits when regulating greenhouse gases.
The justices' 5-4 ruling in Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG), et al., v. EPA rejected the agency's argument that it was required to issue PSD permits for GHG releases, but could “tailor” the statutory trigger for a permit.
The Clean Air Act extends PSD mandates to any facility with at 250 tons per year (tpy) of pollutant emissions, but EPA adjusted that figure to 100,000 tpy for GHGs to avoid the “absurd result” of sweeping a huge number of new facilities into the PSD program, since GHG emissions are released at much higher volumes than other pollutants.
In UARG, the high court said EPA lacked authority for the tailoring rule and held that GHG emissions alone cannot trigger PSD.
During his April 19 talk, Wehrum -- whose career history also includes being a private lawyer representing industry groups in suits against EPA -- said the UARG decision stands for the principle that, “If you're getting wacky results in applying what appears to be the facial dictate of the statute, then maybe you're not interpreting the statute correctly and you need to go back and find another way to interpret the statute that avoids those wacky results.”
He added that applying UARG to the NAAQS program -- even though the ruling did not address the program -- weighs in favor of a less-demanding review of the science that can be reasonably completed within the five-year timeline, rather than a “perfect” review guaranteed to miss the air law's deadline.
“Perfect is great, but close enough is good enough. How does UARG apply to that? The statute could be interpreted to demand perfection, but I think here it could be interpreted to require 'close enough is good enough.”
Ozone Standard
Wehrum's remarks follow suggestions first reported by Inside EPA, that he favors a fresh review of the 2015 ozone NAAQS over a formal reconsideration of that standard, despite arguments by GOP groups and industry that the Obama-era rule is unlawfully strict and should be revoked.
Reconsidering the current NAAQS would require the Trump EPA to mount a new examination of the science that its predecessor used to justify tightening the limit, and would have to clear a high legal bar to prove that research at the time did not justify a 70 ppb limit.
But a fresh NAAQS review could rely on a new body of scientific evidence, which the agency could use to justify a finding that data since 2015 shows that a less stringent standard is safe after all. And Wehrum could apply his idea of a streamlined NAAQS review to such a standard, which under the air law five-year review mandate the agency is due to finalize no later than October 2020.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-air-chief-plans-speed-naaqs-reviews-using-close-enough-data
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Cutting Through the Smokescreen around Environmental Regulation
Apr 19, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Mike Carr
In a recent EPA press release, Administrator Scott Pruitt said, “American ingenuity and technological breakthroughs, not top-down government mandates, have made the U.S. the world leader in achieving energy dominance while reducing emissions.”
Setting aside for the moment the fact that a premier breakthrough in energy technology, hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling, was the culmination of over a decade of federally sponsored R&D, this statement reflects such a profound misunderstanding of innovation it should send chills through anyone concerned about U.S. competitiveness in global markets.
If this blinkered ideology had governed over the last few decades we never would have seen such leaps forward as airbags and catalytic converters, kids would still breathe toxic lead from car emissions, we would still suffer from acid rain, Denver would still be hidden within a brown cloud, and rivers would still catch fire. All of these failures of markets were solved by technologies, developed and produced by companies employing thousands of people, that simply would not have existed if governments had not mandated their costs and benefits be recognized by the marketplace.
Imagine Jack and Jill both have oil change shops. They follow tradition and dump the waste oil down the city sewer (this seems ridiculous today, but it was common practice within my lifetime).
Jenny introduces them to new technology to purify used oil so they can reuse it for their customers and avoid dumping in the sewer, but it will cost $1 more per quart until she can scale up her production. Jill adopts the new technology and feels validated, but only until Jack drives her out of business through a profit advantage on every single oil change.
He will always be able to undercut Jill on price, and her customers have no reason to pay more for what seems like essentially the same service. It’s not selfishness on their part; it’s just unclear to them that the benefits to them are worth the additional costs.
We see altruism every day, but no one will rely on it as a business strategy. In the end, the generosity of strangers will never be enough to overcome Jack’s advantage of being able pass off his disposal cost on society. Jack will shrug that “people aren’t willing to pay for a cleaner environment.” Jill’s business will fail, as will Jenny’s technology.
The customers aren’t selfish and Jack’s not evil, they are just responding to the incentives the market gives them. While the market in this example acted with ruthless efficiency to keep costs for oil changes low, the costs to society (invisible to both the company and the consumer) were massive, a pattern we see repeatedly. Just as it’s more expensive to rebuild a burned down house than it is to protect it with a sprinkler system, we find it’s much cheaper to avoid pollution (or foodbourne illness, a disease outbreak, or a financial system collapse) than to repair the damage later.
Yet, we implicitly opt into this expensive choice every day we let the market continue to ignore the social costs of burning fossil fuels.
As libertarian Alex Tabarrok accidentally found, regulations don’t constrain an economy; plenty of players will step up to deliver benefits once the market recognizes them. Far from letting markets work, the deregulatory agenda freezes markets in time to protect incumbents against innovators who can build a better mousetrap. So, whenever you hear someone say governments “should not pick winners and losers,” know that the speaker usually just wants to protect those currently on top from new competitors.
It goes beyond arguing that regulations to clean the air and water create benefits that far outweigh their costs — it’s that once the social benefits are given a value by the marketplace, innovators step up to create new jobs and industries. It’s a win-win, just not always for the incumbent industry.
In our Jack and Jill example, we could charge a disposal fee for oil, pay Jill to use recycled oil, or ban the dumping of used oil — each would have different specific effects, but would undo the implicit subsidy of socializing damages. Each method has been used in different circumstances in the past, but pretending away the costs as Pruitt suggests does nothing but prop up dying industries while our global competitors employ every tool to dominate the future.
It’s time to clear the air of this ideological smokescreen and reckon clearly with what’s happening here — powerful fossil fuel incumbents are stifling innovation and racking up costs on our children’s credit card.
Mike Carr is the executive director of New Energy America, an organization that promotes clean energy jobs in rural America. Previously, he served as principal deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the Department of Energy.
http://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/383975-cutting-through-the-smokescreen-around-environmental-regulation
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UK to Become First Country to Ban Plastic Straws
Apr 19, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Jacqueline Thomsen
The United Kingdom will implement a ban on plastic straws as soon as next year, becoming the first country to impose such a measure.
U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May announced the move Wednesday as part of a previously announced plan to get rid of all plastic waste by 2042, BuzzFeed News reported. The ban would also include stirrers and cotton swabs.
She also said that she plans to push Commonwealth nations, the 53 countries largely made up of former British colonies, to take up similar bans.
"Plastic waste is one of the greatest environmental challenges facing the world, which is why protecting the marine environment is central to our agenda at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting," May said in the statement announcing the ban.
The U.K. has already banned microbeads and placed fees on the use of plastic bags.
Bans on plastic straws to try and cut down on waste are growing in popularity, with some U.S. cities implementing the measures. Seattle and Malibu, Calif., are among those that have banned the straws.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/383880-uk-to-become-first-country-to-ban-plastic-straws
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