Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 5/10/18
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(ACC Mentioned) American Chemistry Council Defends EPA 'Secret Science' Proposal
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The American Chemistry Council has defended aspects of the US EPA's new science transparency proposal that have come under fire from NGOs. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Obscures Deadline for Science Transparency Plan
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
The EPA has yet to release a timeline for its plans to increase the transparency of the scientific studies it uses to set environmental protection standards, according to the Office of Management and Budget’s regulatory agenda released May 9. -
(ACC Mentioned) Pruitt Resumes Courting Industry as Ethics Controversies Swirl
May 10, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Ari Natter
Embattled EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is seeking to shift the limelight away from questions about his ethics and instead focus attention on his efforts to eliminate regulations on oil drillers, farmers, home builders, and automakers. -
(ACC Mentioned) Industry Clamors for EPA’s Ear on Revising Cost-Benefit Reviews
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
Industry groups are lining up to share their thoughts on how the EPA should evaluate the costs and benefits of regulations differently, just as the agency is poised to release an overhaul of its approach. -
(ACC Mentioned) White House Delays Key Rules and Rollbacks
May 9, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Arianna Skibell
The White House this afternoon released the administration's latest regulatory plan, a sweeping survey for all federal agency actions. -
(ACC Mentioned) NPE ’18: Sustainability, Circular Economy Persist as Trends for Plastics
May 9, 2018 | ICIS
By Amanda Hay
Sustainability will continue to be a trend driving the plastic packaging industry, with recycled polyethylene terephthalate (R-PET) at the forefront of the circular economy effort, delegates said at this year’s National Plastics Exposition (NPE). -
(ACC Mentioned) ACC Wants to Hit 100 Percent Recovery for Plastic Packaging
May 9, 2018 | Plastics Recycling Update
By Jared Paben and Dan Leif
A major U.S. industry group has announced ambitious long-term goals related to the recycling of plastic packaging. -
(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Plastics Producers Set Goals to Recycle or Recover 100% of Plastic Packaging by 2040
May 9, 2018 | Sustainable Brands
Three new goals to enhance the circular economy for plastics and reduce packaging waste have been announced by leading U.S. plastic producers including BASF, Dow, DuPont and Braskem. -
(ACC Mentioned) Enhancing the Safety of New Chemicals Under Reformed TSCA
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Liz Hitchkock
Decades of health studies have led to a growing consensus that chemicals play a significant role in the prevalence of many diseases and disorders in the US. -
TSCA Gets a New Acronym
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Robert De Mott
In the corners of Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform, far from the limelight, the US EPA has released a strategic plan that starts a protracted march towards reducing animal testing and includes extensive research elements. -
US NTP Requests Data on Identifying Developmental Toxicants
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Julie Miller
The US National Toxicology Program (NTP) Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods is requesting data on approaches for identifying potential developmental toxicants. -
EPA Sends Mercury Inventory Rule for White House Review
May 9, 2018 | Inside EPA
EPA has sent to White House review its final rule requiring workers who handle mercury to report those uses to the agency, a rule the agency is required to promulgate by June 22, per the 2016 law that reformed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
Federal Court Orders EPA to Revisit Lead Risks
May 10, 2018 | The Regulatory Review
By Jennifer Ko
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission ordered the removal of lead from house paint in 1978. Yet four decades later, young children continue to be exposed to lead that remains in homes built before the ban. -
(ACC Mentioned) States Seek Limits on Persistent Chemicals as EPA Readies Study
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
Rhode Island discovered heat-resistant, water-repellent chemicals contaminating its groundwater and finding their way into drinking water wells. -
(ACC Mentioned) Asbestos Controls, Testing Flame Retardants Among New EPA Rules
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The EPA would restrict some uses of asbestos and require manufacturers to generate new toxicity data for some flame-retardant chemicals under updated regulatory plans the agency released May 9. -
(ACC Mentioned) Families Tell EPA Chief of Deaths Linked to Paint Stripper
May 9, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times)
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt has met with families of two men whose deaths were linked to a toxic compound in a widely sold paint stripper, weeks after lawmakers pressed him about an Obama-era rule that would limit sales to consumers. -
(ACC Mentioned) To Save Corral Reefs, Hawaii on Verge of Banning Sunscreen
May 9, 2018 | OB Rag
By Frank Gormlie
In order to save the corral reefs and other marine life that surrounds Hawaii, state legislators there just passed a measure banning sunscreen. -
OSHA Plans More Consistent Labels for Toxics in Trade in 2019
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
OSHA will update next year how companies must communicate the hazards of chemicals they sell and export, aligning those regulations with what other nations use. -
US Body Seeks Nominees for Flame Retardant Hazard Assessment
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
A US National Academies committee is recruiting people to help assess organohalogen flame retardants, following a request from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC). -
EU Seeks Proposals for 'Polymers of Concern' Project
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The European Commission is seeking proposals for a project on how "polymers of concern" (PoCs) could be identified and registered under REACH, according to a call for tenders, which has opened. -
Belgian Nano Registrations 'Need Improvement'
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The quality of registrations for nanomaterials submitted to the Belgian national register needs to be improved, the country's Federal Public Service for Public Health (FPS) said. -
Australian Panel Says PFAS Ill-Health Links Limited or Non-Existent
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Ellen Tatham
A report from Australia's Expert Health Panel for PFAS has concluded that evidence linking exposure to polyfluorinated substances (PFASs) with human disease is limited or non-existent, and that there is "no current evidence that suggests an increase in overall cancer risk". -
Georgia Fracking Covered Under Groundwater Law if Drillers Come
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Chris Marr
Georgia will regulate hydraulic fracturing in advance of potential natural gas drilling under a new law that requires groundwater monitoring and disclosure of chemicals used in drilling. -
EPA Eyes June to Roll Out Revisions to Power Plant Climate Rules
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
The EPA has big plans for June: It intends to release its replacement of the Obama administration’s greenhouse gas limits for existing power plants, as well as its companion standards for new plants. -
Energy Department Rethinks Market-Based Approach on Efficiency
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
The Energy Department has no immediate plan to move ahead with changes to its home appliance efficiency program, as it considered doing last year, according to the agency’s spring regulatory agenda released May 9. -
Interior Signals Final Venting and Flaring Rule Due in July
May 10, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
The Interior Department is moving forward with a final rule to revise the venting and flaring rule for oil and gas operations on federal and Indian lands, saying May 9 it would issue a final action by July. -
Cybersecurity Bills for Grid, Gas Pipelines Sent Up by House Panel
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
The electric grid and natural gas pipelines would get new tools to protect against cybersecurity threats and physical attacks on their facilities under four bills approved May 9 by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. -
Trump Infrastructure Plan Ailing, But Not Dead, In Senate
May 10, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz
A water resources bill under consideration in the Senate appears to reject the White House’s $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan, but top Republicans say parts of the Trump proposal may eventually make it into the legislation later this month. -
Praise for Senate Infrastructure Bill; House's Forthcoming
May 10, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Ariel Wittenberg
Senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee yesterday cheered the release of bipartisan water infrastructure legislation. -
Emails Show EPA Turned to Climate Skeptics to Craft ‘Red Team-Blue Team’ Exercise
May 9, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
Emails and other documents from the Environmental Protection Agency shed new light on internal deliberations behind one of the most colorful proposals to come out of the agency during Administrator Scott Pruitt’s tenure — an ill-fated attempt to set up opposing teams to debate the science of climate change. -
EPA Plan to Update Air Pollution Permitting Expected in September
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
The EPA’s plan to smooth out air pollution permitting for upgrades and expansions at factories and power plants is expected in September. -
States, Cities Oppose Trump Bid to Stall Litigation
May 9, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Amanda Reilly
In her first full day on the job, New York's acting attorney general stood firmly today against Trump administration efforts to unravel the Clean Power Plan. -
States, Environmentalists Object to Continued CPP Suit Abeyance
May 9, 2018 | Inside EPA
Defenders of the Obama EPA's Clean Power Plan (CPP) are objecting to the Trump EPA's recent request for an appellate court to continue to hold off issuing a ruling in a lawsuit over the rule while the agency repeals and then possibly replaces it with a narrower requirement for utilities to limit their greenhouse gas emissions.
Industry and Association News
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Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) American Chemistry Council Defends EPA 'Secret Science' Proposal
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The American Chemistry Council has defended aspects of the US EPA's new science transparency proposal that have come under fire from NGOs.
Formally issued late last month, the agency's proposed rule on "secret science" seeks to allow increased transparency and public validation of studies underpinning agency regulatory decisions.
Among other provisions, it proposes to "increase transparency of the assumptions underlying dose response models". NGOs have raised the alarm that discarding default linear dose models will remove health-protective assumptions and "invite literally an infinite number of model options" on which the agency can base its decision.
But the ACC argues that the EPA has this aspect of the policy right. "For far too long and far too often EPA has relied on default linear dose-response models that have frequently resulted in inflated risk estimates," the trade group said in a blog post.
These, it says, create "misperceptions and confusion about true risks and can lead to unwarranted and costly risk management decisions."Default linear models concerns
The ACC told Chemical Watch that an example of this occurred with the draft Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) risk assessment of formaldehyde. It says the programme's use of "overly conservative default assumptions" led it to proposing a cancer risk value at 0.008 parts per billion – a level significantly lower than the 0.8 to 8.0ppb reported to naturally occur in humans.
The IRIS formaldehyde assessment prompted a scathing review from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2011. And industry has continued to question the science underlying the programme’s conclusion.
The ACC also pointed to the case of 1,4-dioxane, in which the EPA's use of a default linear approach served as the basis for a drinking water guidance as low as 0.35ppb. The trade group said that Health Canada, the EU and other authoritative bodies have concluded the substance acts by a non-linear mechanism, resulting in a drinking water guidance of 350ppb.
The EPA’s plan to consider non-linear models is not satisfying an industry 'ask', added the ACC. Instead, it is "simply a recognition by EPA that old default assumption may not always represent the most up to date science".Transparency
Separately, the ACC's formaldehyde panel has taken aim at critics who have suggested that industry groups would attempt to use the EPA's new policy to discredit legitimate studies underpinning health protections.
"Industry does not seek access to research to discredit it nor to limit regulation," said the formaldehyde group's blog post.
"In order to help improve public confidence in the decision-making process, it is critical data be made available in a timely and transparent way to ensure decisions are based on scientifically defensible information," the post said.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66716/american-chemistry-council-defends-epa-secret-science-proposal
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Obscures Deadline for Science Transparency Plan
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
The EPA has yet to release a timeline for its plans to increase the transparency of the scientific studies it uses to set environmental protection standards, according to the Office of Management and Budget’s regulatory agenda released May 9.
Limiting the science that the Environmental Protection Agency can consider could affect all future regulations, Steph Tai, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, told Bloomberg Environment.
Industry critics and their allies in Congress, including Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who chairs the House Science Committee, argue that many EPA regulations are based on confidential information, dubbed “secret science.”
These could include studies using patients’ private health information. They argue the agency shouldn’t base policy decisions on data that can’t be publicly reviewed for accuracy.
The proposal (RIN:2080-AA14) would determine which scientific studies the agency could consider while drafting new regulations.
It would have multiple parts, including provisions encouraging studies to be as transparent as possible to allow independent validation and protecting sensitive data that the agency may review, such as confidential business information, intellectual property, and patient records.
Limiting the research the EPA is allowed to consider could open the agency’s rules up to legal challenges for being “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act, Tai said.
The proposal is intended to help the public make more informed comments on EPA regulations, Pruitt said in House committee hearings April 26. The proposed rule is open to public comment until May 30.
Working Out DetailsThe EPA’s apparent goal with the rule is to make as much research data available as possible for people to analyze studies in different ways, Lorenz Rhomberg, a principal at environmental consulting firm Gradient Corp. in Cambridge, Mass., told Bloomberg Environment.
The agency has lots of details to define, from the way it will protect sensitive data, to the regulations that could be affected, to what falls under the new term “pivotal regulatory science.”
“As a technical matter, it’s always possible to build a database that can be shared,” S. Stanley Young, a statistician based in Raleigh, N.C., and member of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, told Bloomberg Environment.
At universities and other research institutions, Institutional Review Boards are responsible for reviewing research proposals to ensure researchers are conducting them ethically. Those boards might find a challenge in the EPA’s regulation, Tai said, especially because it is unclear whether the agency will want to access confidential information.
If a researcher wants the EPA to consider his or her study when setting regulations and cannot meet the Institutional Review Board’s confidentiality standards, the institution wouldn’t be able to support that study, she said.
Environmental groups are concerned that allowing more interpretations of studies will allow the agency to choose the ones provided by companies and industry groups.
Young said allowing more data to be open to the public will improve the EPA’s regulatory process.
“It will be more complicated, but it will be open, and more like a scientific process is supposed to be,” he said.
The American Chemistry Council, based in Washington, told Bloomberg Environment that its members want to increase transparency and public confidence in EPA regulations while protecting sensitive information.
This is the first time the proposed rule has been part of the EPA’s regulatory agenda.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-obscures-deadline-for-science-transparency-plan
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(ACC Mentioned) Pruitt Resumes Courting Industry as Ethics Controversies Swirl
May 10, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Ari Natter
Embattled EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is seeking to shift the limelight away from questions about his ethics and instead focus attention on his efforts to eliminate regulations on oil drillers, farmers, home builders, and automakers.
Pruitt convened a May 9 meeting of industry representatives, ranging from the National Mining Association to the Association of American Railroads, with a pledge to collaborate.
The session marked the second meeting of the Environmental Protection Agency’s newly revived “Smart Sectors” program, designed to formally solicit the input of the industries the agency regulates. Although 13 specific sectors, including mining, agriculture, and chemical manufacturing are part of the program, it doesn’t include environmentalists and public health experts.
Pruitt told the group they no longer had to choose between protecting the environment and industry, as he outlined plans to accelerate permitting of new factories and refineries. Other industry groups that participated in the session included the National Association of Home Builders, the American Chemistry Council, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Portland Cement Association.
“Permitting should not be used as obstruction,” Pruitt told the industry leaders who assembled in a wood-paneled room at the EPA headquarters. “It should not be used to delay and obstruct so people don’t invest capital,” he said.
The session took place amid criticism the EPA has taken a pro-business tilt at the expense of environmental issues.
’We Like Him’It also came amid a swirl of controversies around Pruitt, who has been dogged for weeks by disclosures about his unorthodox condo rental from a lobbyist, questionable spending decisions, and frequent taxpayer-funded travel.
There was no mention of that at the May 9 meeting.
When asked by a reporter if he still had the confidence of the White House, Pruitt said: “I think they’ve spoken very clearly.”
Earlier in the day, Marc Short, the White House’s legislative director, said the administrator would remain in his position “for the foreseeable future.”
“We like him,” Short told reporters at the Capitol. “He’s doing a good job.”
The meeting was in keeping with Pruitt’s business-focused schedule recently. He has tried to maintain a low profile with continued public appearance in front of generally friendly audiences. For instance, he said on Twitter that he also met with the Industrial Minerals Association to highlight how the EPA is “striving to provide greater regulatory certainty for miners.”
Pruitt also has met with the National Association of Farm Broadcasting to highlight policy changes that could benefit farmers and ranchers, and last month visited Georgia to talk about forest management.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/pruitt-resumes-courting-industry-as-ethics-controversies-swirl
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(ACC Mentioned) Industry Clamors for EPA’s Ear on Revising Cost-Benefit Reviews
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
Industry groups are lining up to share their thoughts on how the EPA should evaluate the costs and benefits of regulations differently, just as the agency is poised to release an overhaul of its approach.
The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to release plans that are expected to alter how the agency determines the costs and benefits of proposed regulations.
And a litany of industry groups and several fossil fuel companies have met with officials from the EPA, the White House regulatory review office, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality in the past few weeks to give their input.
The Trump administration’s spring regulatory agenda, released May 9, projects the EPA will release an advance notice as soon as this month addressing the issue. The regulation (RIN:2010-AA12) aims to increase consistency and transparency across EPA offices, according to an agency description of the effort.
But the effort is expected to take aim at the EPA’s treatment of co-benefits—its measure of reductions of other pollutants that result from the regulation of a specific pollutant. For example, many of the Obama administration’s climate regulations also reduce emissions of fine particles and other pollutants, so the agency includes the associated health benefits in its analyses.
Conservative and industry groups have long argued the practice allowed the EPA to justify too stringent regulations—particularly those limiting greenhouse gas emissions—by inflating the benefits of proposed rules.
In the past two weeks, EPA and White House officials have held several meetings with industry groups to discuss regulatory plans, White House Office of Management and Budget records show.
The American Chemistry Council, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the National Association of Corporate Directors met with officials April 23.
Days later, on April 25, the American Forest and Paper Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the American Petroleum Institute gave their input. And the American Petroleum Institute met again with officials May 3, joined by representatives of oil and gas majors Marathon Petroleum Corp., Chevron Corp., ExxonMobil Corp., and ConocoPhillips.
Mercury StandardsThe EPA also will have a chance to reconsider benefits and costs in plans to re-open Obama-era toxic pollution standards for the power industry. Utilities were required to comply with that rule years ago, but the EPA plans to revise that regulation beginning in August, according to the regulatory agenda.
Bill Wehrum, EPA’s assistant administrator for air and radiation, said in April that the agency was still debating whether to reopen the rule—known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards—given that the power industry has already spent millions on measures to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants.
The Obama administration found the health benefits outweighed the costs, but the upcoming EPA proposal (RIN:2060-AT99) would give the Trump EPA the chance to reconsider. The upcoming proposal would also consider whether the current emissions standards are sufficient or should be revised.
Critics of the regulation say the overwhelming majority of benefits associated with the emissions limits come from reducing fine particles, rather than the pollutants the regulation is designed to address.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/industry-clamors-for-epas-ear-on-revising-cost-benefit-reviews
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(ACC Mentioned) White House Delays Key Rules and Rollbacks
May 9, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Arianna Skibell
The White House this afternoon released the administration's latest regulatory plan, a sweeping survey for all federal agency actions.
President Trump has promised broad regulatory reform, namely rolling back red tape that conservatives say stymies economic growth. But in a departure from his fall 2017 agenda, the latest one does not designate "deregulatory" actions.
"I wonder if this sudden shyness is motivated at least in part by concerns over judicial review," James Goodwin, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Progressive Reform, said in an email.
"In general, agencies have to demonstrate an open mind when undertaking a rulemaking. Perhaps, they're afraid that by signaling an intent to weaken or eliminate a rule, they might be creating the impression that their mind is not adequately open."
For example, the Clean Power Plan replacement rule was designated as "other," while in the fall 2017 agenda it was marked "regulatory."
The agenda also delays a number of key rules, including the Lead and Copper Rule, the Waters of the U.S. replacement rule, and the CPP repeal.
While a number of pending rules were part of the "long-term agenda" in fall 2017, many of those are now back in the active agenda.
"And it appears they are moved because they are all subject to pending legal deadlines," Goodwin said. "In short, there's a lot of evidence that the administration is engaging in some creative accounting to try to make their 2-out, 1-in [executive order] is accomplishing a lot more than it really is with respect to its effect on the rulemaking pipeline."
The White House Council on Environmental Quality outlined its intent to update its National Environmental Policy Act regulations for the first time since 1986, a move that could reverberate in permitting agencies across the federal government.
The agency earlier last month issued a draft advanced notice of proposed rulemaking as part of President Trump's sweeping August executive order on environmental permitting (E&E News PM, May 7).EPA
The new agenda includes two proposed initiatives that could carry profound consequences for EPA's overall approach to assessing the need for new or stiffer regulations to protect public health and the environment.
The first, titled "Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science," would effectively bar EPA from using studies in crafting significant new regulations unless the underlying data and models are "publicly available in a manner sufficient for validation and analysis," according to the text of the draft rule published last week (Greenwire, April 30).
The second, dubbed "Increasing Consistency and Transparency in Considering Costs and Benefits in the Regulatory Process," is undergoing a standard review by the White House Office of Management and Budget.
While EPA has not yet published a draft version, the proposal is attracting close attention from the business community. In recent weeks, for example, representatives of the American Petroleum Institute, American Forest and Paper Association, American Chemistry Council, National Association of Manufacturers, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce have all met with staffers from EPA and OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, according to listings posted on the Reginfo.gov website.
EPA also set a target date for rethinking Obama-era standards for methane emissions from new oil and gas sites. The agency plans to reconsider how the regulation addresses fugitive emissions of the planet-warming gas, including how often monitoring should be required and how low-production wells should be handled.
The agenda shoots for a final decision in November. For now, the full Obama rule is in effect; a federal court rejected previous EPA efforts to stall it last summer.Air pollution
The new agenda is the first to fully reflect the priorities of EPA air chief Bill Wehrum, who was sworn in to the job in mid-November.
For Wehrum, who worked in the air office during George W. Bush's administration before returning to private law practice, an abiding concern has been EPA's New Source Review program, which sets the terms for pre-construction permits for new factories and other major industrial projects.
Under Wehrum's watch, EPA has already said it will not challenge companies' forecasts of the emissions expected from a particular project.
The agency has also reworked the forecasting process used to decide whether a planned plant expansion is substantial enough to trigger New Source Review permitting requirements.
While EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Wehrum undertook both those steps through guidance that allowed no opportunity for advance public comment, EPA now plans to launch a rulemaking on what's known as "project emissions accounting" for New Source Review. The agency also intends to issue a final rule related to reconsideration of "project aggregation" requirements under the program.
Of approximately 75 other air-related rulemakings on the agenda, more than a dozen are statutorily required "risk and technology" reviews that cover air toxics emissions standards for cement manufacturers and other industries.
Five others relate to overdue responses to petitions from Delaware and Maryland asking EPA to crack down on pollution sources outside their borders.
More broadly, EPA plans to issue a final rule that sets requirements for states to follow in putting together cleanup plans for areas that are out of compliance with its 2015 ground-level ozone standard.
Also on the agenda is a proposed federal implementation plan for a Ute Indian reservation in northeastern Utah that's a hot point of oil and gas drilling.
Yesterday, the agency published a proposed stopgap rule to allow streamlined permitting for new production facilities on the reservation, even though the area was just designated in nonattainment for the 70-parts-per-billion ozone standard.Water
The agenda indicates the administration will not finalize its repeal of the Clean Water Rule, also known as the Waters of the U.S., or WOTUS, rule, until November. The agency is expected to release a "supplemental" proposal for the repeal this month.
In the meantime, EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers will be working to release a new definition of "waters of the U.S." to clarify which wetlands and waterways are covered by the Clean Water Act.
The agenda states a new definition will be proposed in August, with a final rule expected more than a year later, in September 2019.
The administration is also planning to issue new regulations for toxic metals in power plants' wastewater. EPA finalized a two-year delay of Obama-era standards this past September. The Trump administration expects to propose new standards this December, with a final rule expected one year later.
EPA is again pushing back its timeline for revising lead and copper drinking water standards. It plans to propose a new rule in February 2019 and finalize the standard one year later. That's a one-year delay from the previous unified agenda.
The agency also does not expect to finalize its regulation for the amount of lead allowed in pipes until June 2019.Energy
At the Department of Energy, multiple efficiency standards continue to not have set timelines for release, despite deadlines by Congress.
Regulations for portable air conditioners, commercial packaged boilers and uninterruptible power supplies are among the products classified as "long-term actions."
Those three appliances are part of a lawsuit because the new administration never published final Obama-era rules in the Federal Register.
Microwave ovens, pool heaters, walk-in freezers and other products also do not have a current schedule for efficiency rules.
Environmentalists threatened additional lawsuits after the Department of Energy first moved many efficiency standards to "long-term" status last year (E&E News PM, Dec. 14, 2017).
In the new plan, DOE moved some products back onto set timelines, including residential gas furnaces, which have long been a subject of disagreement between environmentalists and industry. Action on furnaces is now scheduled for September. Test procedures for microwave ovens were moved to August.
The agency also is putting the brakes on plans to transform its efficiency program into a "market-based" approach. Last fall, the administration released a schedule for the concept, but it has now also been moved to long-term status.
Late last year, DOE floated the idea of making efficiency standards more like corporate average fuel economy standards for vehicles (Greenwire, Nov. 27, 2017).Transportation
The Trump administration is speeding ahead with its rollback of clean car rules. EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are aiming to put out their new vehicle rules for fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions by June.
The rules would be finalized next February, according to the agenda. This month, EPA will also grant a long-standing petition by automakers for regulatory tweaks that would ease compliance and could erase some of the greenhouse gas benefits of the rules.
EPA also said it would finalize its repeal of an emissions rule for glider kits, which are refurbished trucks using old engines, this month.
The move has come under heavy criticism from lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, manufacturers of modern trucks, and environmental and public health advocates.
The Transportation Department is set to repeal a controversial Obama-era rule that sought to make urban planners take greenhouse gas emissions from traffic into account when designing roads in September.Chemicals
The regulatory agenda outlines several significant actions EPA plans to take on chemicals and public health, including to implement the latest Toxic Substances Control Act redo.
As part of the administration's deregulatory push, EPA is moving forward with actions to roll back requirements for pesticide applicators and protections for agricultural workers. It plans to begin the process of modifying those rules by the end of the fiscal year.
In response to a court order, the agency is also poised to issue new standards for lead dust in some residential buildings.
Also, the TSCA law requires EPA to finalize a rule by June 22 that would establish an inventory of mercury supply, use and trade in the United States and authorizes the agency to establish fees for administering the statute.
Separately, the agency continues to delay rules proposed at the end of the Obama administration that would restrict commercial use of the solvents trichloroethylene, n-methylpyrrolidone and methylene chloride — the last of which has killed more than 50 people in the last 35 years.
Three families who lost loved ones to methylene chloride met with Pruitt yesterday to urge him to finalize an effective ban on the chemical (Greenwire, May 8).
Also on the back burner are significant rules that would set limits on certain persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic substances; address lead-based paint hazards in public and commercial buildings; and strengthen data requirements for compounds targeting ticks, mosquitoes, cockroaches, termites, the Asian long-horned beetle and other pests.Onshore energy
The agenda suggests a slightly faster-than-expected timeline for rolling back Obama-era methane standards. BLM is working on paring down its methane venting and flaring rule for oil and gas drillers on public and tribal lands. Though government lawyers have said the final rewrite is expected in August, today's agenda sets a target date of July.
Interior also hopes to make some headway on updates to how royalties are calculated for federal oil, gas and coal. The Office of Natural Resources Revenue started collecting comments on a potential update last year after scrapping the Obama administration's valuation rule. It plans to issue a more detailed proposal in November.Offshore drilling
The bureaus of Ocean Energy Management and Safety and Environmental Enforcement — the two agencies responsible for offshore energy policy and accountability — don't have any major new upcoming regulatory actions on tap, according to the spring agenda.
BOEM and BSEE continue to review Obama-era rules related to oil and gas drilling on the outer continental shelf, with an eye toward the administration's priorities of increasing offshore energy leasing and development and establishing a friendlier business climate for industry.
To that end, a proposed rule would revise a 2016 regulation related to requirements for exploratory drilling on the outer continental shelf of Alaska within the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas Planning Areas, seeking public comment by October. It replaces a previously proposed rule published in the agenda last winter.
Final action is expected in December on revisions to a 2016 BSEE rule related to well blowout preventers — the safety equipment whose failure contributed to the BP PLC spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The agenda also indicates final action this month for a proposal that would revise an Obama-era rule on production safety systems related to oil, gas and sulfur operations on the outer continental shelf, which BSEE has been reviewing to determine "whether it potentially burdens the development or use of domestically produced energy resources," according to the agenda notice.Fish and Wildlife
The Fish and Wildlife Service will make a number of Endangered Species Act decisions, including a determination expected in June whether to list the lesser prairie chicken and a proposal expected this month to reclassify an experimental population of red wolves in North Carolina.
Dozens of other species, from the Sierra Nevada red fox to the Tinian monarch butterfly, are also due for listing decisions.
In a new twist, FWS revealed that it expects next month to propose reclassifying the politically high-profile American burying beetle from endangered to threatened, accompanied by a tailored Section 4(d) rule limiting some protections.
Also for the first time, the agency said it expects in October to propose establishing the North Cascades Ecosystem in Washington as a nonessential experimental population area for grizzly bears.NOAA and National Park Service
NOAA said its agenda includes revising regulations this year for seafood inspection and for the licensing of remote sensing space systems by 2020. The agency noted that the seafood inspection regulations have not been significantly updated since the 1970s.
NOAA also said it wants to come up with new procedures for licensing vessels in the western and central Pacific Ocean purse seine fishery and for managing summer flounder and black sea bass in the Atlantic Ocean this year.
The National Park Service said it's working on revising outdated regulations for demonstrations and special events on the National Mall this year, but no specifics were cited in the report.
The Park Service also said it wants to designate the Chicken Strip dirt airstrip in Death Valley National Park as an appropriate space for aircraft to use and to allow the superintendent of Colonial National Historical Park in Virginia to designate areas where nonmotorized vessels could be launched.Coal and mining
For the second year in a row, the only regulatory change under consideration at Interior's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement relates to inflation adjustments for civil penalties due in January 2019.
EPA also once again made no mention of a pending rule on new underground water protections for in-situ uranium mining that the agency delayed more than a year ago (Greenwire, Jan. 6, 2017).
At the Department of Labor, the Mine Safety and Health Administration will continue to gather input on existing standards and regulations that could be "made more effective or less burdensome" on industry.
MSHA unveiled two new requests for information. The first in September will target improving safety around trucks, bulldozers and other "power haulage equipment" that accounted for more than half of coal miner deaths last year.
The second, expected in December, will seek information on alternatives to the way MSHA approves mine safety modifications.
In June, the agency plans to begin a retrospective study required under the 2014 update to coal dust regulations designed to protect miners from a primary cause of recently resurgent black lung disease.
Information will also continue to be gathered on miners' exposure to diesel exhaust, a known carcinogen, until March 26, 2019.
Dates for any action on MSHA's new standards for crystalline silica, another cause of lung disease for miners, and proximity detection systems, which alert miners to mobile machinery, both remain undetermined.Agriculture and forests
The Department of Agriculture said it would issue regulations to speed environmental reviews for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and for the Forest Service.
A final rule for APHIS is expected by June, the department said, and a notice of proposed rulemaking is due at the Forest Service in August.
USDA also said it would publish final regulations on disclosure of bioengineered ingredients in foods by July, in line with legislation requiring disclosure of genetically modified organisms.
And the Natural Resources Conservation Service said it would publish an interim rule in July clarifying how wetland determinations are made for farms that have to comply with conservation requirements as a condition of participating in farm programs.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/05/09/stories/1060081279
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(ACC Mentioned) NPE ’18: Sustainability, Circular Economy Persist as Trends for Plastics
May 9, 2018 | ICIS
By Amanda Hay
Sustainability will continue to be a trend driving the plastic packaging industry, with recycled polyethylene terephthalate (R-PET) at the forefront of the circular economy effort, delegates said at this year’s National Plastics Exposition (NPE).
Delegates in different sectors, from machinery makers to industry analysts, noted a focus on R-PET and circular economy.
One exhibitor in the renewable sector of the show said most attendees stopping by their booth inquired about R-PET.
“It seems to have the highest demand,” he said, compared with other plastics.
The industry has “picked the low-hanging fruit” of using more recyclable materials, reducing packaging material and becoming more energy efficient, Ron Puvak, managing director of the Contract Packaging Association (CPA), told NPE delegates.
Now, brand owners are making sustainability part of their identities and zeroing in on more complex issues of creating bio-based materials that can compete on cost with traditional petrochemicals.
“Sustainability continues to be something we’ll drive,” Puvak said, adding “if they can make money at it, they’re going to do it.”
Plastic needs to be viewed as a resource if global PET bottle consumption continues to grow, Italy-based SIPA general manager Enrico Gribaudo told NPE delegates.
Each year, 32% of plastic consumed ends up in the ecosystem, creating marine litter that harms wildlife and human health.
Gribaudo highlighted his company’s joint effort with Austria-based recycling technology firm EREMA to use the companies’ existing technologies to create an integrated system that makes preforms from 100% recycled PET.
The technology differs from traditional systems in that it processes the raw material bales directly into clean washed flake, eliminating pelletising and associated emissions.
Traditional recycling systems reduce emissions by 63% whereas the SIPA/EREMA technology reduces them by 83%, SIPA general manager Enrico Gribaudo told delegates at NPE.
“It’s not a problem of technology. It’s a problem of society,” he said, pointing to the need for better recycling to yield uncontaminated collection streams.
The EU has set out to make all plastic packaging recyclable by 2030 in an effort to reduce single-use packages.
In the US, the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) Plastics Division has established three goals for the recycling and recovering of all plastic packaging in the US by 2040.
The US R-PET market has an opportunity for growth amid a tight market for virgin PET resin through the remainder of 2018 and 2019.
Sponsored by the Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS), NPE2018: The Plastics Show takes place on 7-11 May in Orlando, Florida.
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2018/05/09/10220330/npe-18-sustainability-circular-economy-persist-as-trends-for-plastics/
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(ACC Mentioned) ACC Wants to Hit 100 Percent Recovery for Plastic Packaging
May 9, 2018 | Plastics Recycling Update
By Jared Paben and Dan Leif
A major U.S. industry group has announced ambitious long-term goals related to the recycling of plastic packaging.
In a release issued this morning, the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) Plastics Division laid out the following targets:100 percent of plastics packaging is reused, recycled or recovered by 2040.100 percent of plastics packaging is recyclable or recoverable by 2030.100 percent of the U.S. manufacturing sites operated by ACC’s Plastics Division members will participate in Operation Clean Sweep-Blue by 2020, with all of their manufacturing sites across North America involved by 2022.
Operation Clean Sweep-Blue is a voluntary campaign designed to ensure plastic-handling operations take steps to reduce the loss of pellet, flake or powder into the environment.
“In setting these goals our industry is publicly affirming our vision of the future we want for safe, sanitary plastic packaging and our intention to get there quickly,” Steve Russell, ACC’s vice president of plastics, stated in the press release.
Hitting 100 percent recovery will require major movement on the part of the wider plastics industry. For instance, the U.S. plastic bottle recycling rate was 29.7 percent in 2016, the most recent year for which data is available. That represented a decrease of 1.4 percentage points from the year before.
The U.S. EPA pegged the nation’s overall plastics recycling rate for 2014 at just 9.5 percent (that number includes all type of plastics, not just packaging).
Russell and Rick Wagner, global sustainability manager at Chevron Phillips Chemical Company, held a press briefing on the announcement this morning.
On the call, Russell said that ACC is defining “recovery” to include a variety of methods, including pyrolysis, gasification systems and plastics-to-fuel technologies. He specifically mentioned Hefty’s EnergyBag program. “There are similar programs that will help communities collect and process materials that are not traditionally recycled,” Russell said.
He added that a variety of tools may be needed to bring more plastics into the recovery system. “Quite frankly, there may be a role for policy here,” he said. “We would prefer industry-led or voluntary initiatives. … We have previously not gone out and supported [extended producer responsibility] schemes. That remains our position, but we are open to thinking about ways the communities could finance growth in their systems and enable technology breakthroughs with our investment.”
According to an ACC press release, plastics producers will focus on multiple strategies to meet their goals. They’ll focus on designing new products for greater efficiency, recycling and reuse; developing new technologies and systems for collecting, sorting, recycling and recovering materials; making it easier for more consumers to participate in recycling and recovery programs; expanding the types of plastics collected and repurposed; aligning products with key end markets; and expanding awareness that used plastics are valuable resources awaiting their next use.
On the call, Russell said the time had come for his group to take a more active role on the recycling issue.
“We’ve been working for a long time at improving recycling, and we are dissatisfied at the rate it’s grown,” Russell said.
https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2018/05/09/acc-wants-to-hit-100-percent-recovery-for-plastic-packaging/
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May 9, 2018 | Sustainable Brands
Three new goals to enhance the circular economy for plastics and reduce packaging waste have been announced by leading U.S. plastic producers including BASF, Dow, DuPont and Braskem. Together as part of the American Chemistry Council (ACC)’s Plastics Division, 15 leading resin manufacturers and an affiliated trade association have strengthened their commitments to capturing, recycling and recovering plastics.
The announcement follows recent news that 42 consumer packaged goods (CPG) giants have committed to eliminate plastic packaging waste under the new UK Plastics Pact. Around 8 percent of current fossil fuel dependency is attributed to plastic production, and much of the world’s plastic is used just once and then thrown away – resulting in 95 percent of the value of plastic packaging, worth up to $120 billion annually, being lost to the economy. Trucost has estimated that the environmental cost to society of plastic use by the consumer goods sector alone is around $75 billion, and that scaling up the use of sustainable plastic could deliver environmental savings of $3.5 billion.
“We are embracing the drive toward a circular economy for plastics because it helps demonstrate our overarching commitment to sustainable materials management,” said Steve Russell, the ACC’s vice president of plastics. “In setting these goals our industry is publicly affirming our vision of the future we want for safe, sanitary plastic packaging and our intention to get there quickly.”
Specifically, the goals are:100% of plastics packaging is re-used, recycled or recovered by 2040.100% of plastics packaging is recyclable or recoverable by 2030.100% of the U.S. manufacturing sites operated by the ACC’s Plastics Division members will participate in Operation Clean Sweep - Blue by 2020, with all of their manufacturing sites across North America involved by 2022.
Operation Clean Sweep (OCS) is a voluntary stewardship program designed to help facilities that handle plastic materials achieve zero pellet, flake and powder loss. Led by the ACC and the Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS), OCS commits members to report on amounts of resin pellets shipped and lost, as well as to brief all relevant resin-handling employees, provide OCS program education as part of employee onboarding and for shipping contractors, share best practices with other members, and more. Companies join by making an annual pledge as an OCS member, and companies excelling within the program can apply to become an OCS Blue member. Only one of the ACC’s Plastics Division members is currently an OCS Blue member, Shell Chemical.
The other two goals will likely be more challenging to achieve. The resin producers plan to focus on six key areas:Designing new products for greater efficiency, recycling and reuse;Developing new technologies and systems for collecting, sorting, recycling and recovering materials;Making it easier for more consumers to participate in recycling and recovery programs;Expanding the types of plastics collected and repurposed;Aligning products with key end markets; andExpanding awareness that used plastics are valuable resources awaiting their next use.
“Our industry has a long history of leading on stewardship initiatives, such as Responsible Care®, and supporting recycling through research, technology, infrastructure, and education,” said Rick Wagner, global sustainability manager at Chevron Phillips Chemical Company, another of the ACC’s Plastics Division members. “Today’s announcement marks the next step in this critical journey.
“Plastics resin producers are accelerating their commitments by building new coalitions and forging new business models that will help optimize a range of environmental, economic and societal outcomes,” he added. “Some of these involve turning used plastics back into their basic building blocks so we can create new plastics.”
http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/chemistry_materials_packaging/sustainable_brands/us_plastics_producers_set_goals_recy
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(ACC Mentioned) Enhancing the Safety of New Chemicals Under Reformed TSCA
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Liz Hitchkock
Decades of health studies have led to a growing consensus that chemicals play a significant role in the prevalence of many diseases and disorders in the US. Alarmed by this evidence and recognising that the 40-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was a dismal failure in protecting against unsafe chemicals, the American public demanded far-reaching improvements in the way chemicals are regulated.
The June 2016 overhaul of TSCA through the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act (LCSA) gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) more authority to evaluate and protect against the risks of chemicals. But whether these reforms actually deliver significant reductions in risk depends on whether the agency makes good use of the new tools that Congress provided. So far, the Trump administration has been intent on weakening these protections.
The premanufacture notice (PMN) programme for new chemicals is one of the bedrock elements of TSCA. Its purpose is to ensure that protection for health and the environment is in place before new chemicals that could be harmful or lack meaningful data enter the marketplace.
Without careful review, good data and effective restrictions on exposure, release and use, chemicals will be embedded in the economy and distributed throughout the environment that are later linked to cancer, learning disabilities, reproductive abnormalities and other health and environmental harm.
Many dangerous chemicals, including polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin, asbestos and lead and vinyl chloride, escaped review before TSCA was enacted. Others, like brominated flame retardants and perfluorinated compounds, slipped through the review process under the original law, further underscoring the importance of a strong PMN programme.
Intentions of reforms
Congress was concerned about the inadequate safeguards against unsafe new chemicals in the original law and therefore significantly strengthened the new chemicals programme in LCSA, requiring the EPA to make an affirmative determination of safety before a new chemical can enter commerce. Thus, the agency can no longer allow the 90-day review period to expire without reaching a conclusion about the chemical’s risks. This loophole in the original law gave a green light to chemicals simply because they lacked data or the EPA failed to act.
Now, if a chemical lacks sufficient information to assess safety or may have substantial production volumes and exposure, the law requires the agency to issue an order to restrict the chemical and/or require testing. And, if there is evidence that the chemical may present an unreasonable risk but the data are inconclusive, restrictions are required while testing is conducted. As a result, for the first time, manufacturers now have strong incentives to demonstrate likely safety in order to gain entry to the market.
Initial steps under attack
For the first few months following the enactment of LCSA, EPA staff diligently worked towards the goals of the new law. After careful review, the agency found that, in most cases, it either had insufficient information to evaluate the safety of a given chemical and/or that, under its conditions of use, the PMN substance might present an unreasonable risk.
As a result, nearly 75% of new chemicals were placed under orders via Section 5(e) of LSCA, limiting human exposure and environmental release and requiring increased testing to better understand potential hazards. But chemical manufacturers mounted relentless and misleading attacks on the EPA’s supposed "overreaching", falsely claiming that the changes in the law were insignificant and did not alter the status quo.
Rather than standing its ground, the EPA’s political leadership - including a former advocate of the American Chemistry Council, Dr Nancy Beck, who is in charge of chemical regulation - intervened to roll back the programme improvements that career EPA staff had put in place. In November 2017, the agency issued a ‘framework’ for evaluating new chemicals that reversed recent progress, replacing an effective review process with one that is legally dubious, poorly conceived and a major step backwards in protecting public health and the environment.
Proposed new framework
As the first step in curtailing the use of these orders, the EPA will evaluate new chemicals based only on the ‘intended’ use conditions identified in the PMN. Where these activities raise human health or environmental concerns that may present an unreasonable risk of injury, the agency will recommend limits on exposure and release that were not identified in the PMN and encourage the submitter to amend the notice to incorporate these.
Although the controls in the amended PMN would be strictly voluntary, the EPA would then rely on them to make a determination that the chemical is "unlikely to present an unreasonable risk". Such an approach fails to protect the public or comply with the law, since the conditions of use described in PMNs have no binding effect and are unenforceable.
By contrast, the EPA had previously made "may present an unreasonable risk" findings on chemicals with potential health and environmental concerns and then used Section 5(e) orders to impose enforceable restrictions that protected against that risk. This approach is the path that Congress plainly directed the agency to follow in LCSA.
Before the framework was issued, Section 5(e) orders required both exposure controls and testing so that the EPA could assess whether additional protections were needed, based on more complete information. The framework abandons this approach, by-passing the important new LCSA requirement that the agency should determine the adequacy of information on a given chemical and require testing to fill any critical gaps, in parallel with taking initial steps to limit exposure.
Under LCSA, safety determinations under Section 5(e) must address risks presented by a new chemical under its "conditions of use". The law defines this term to include uses of a new chemical that may not be the immediate focus of the PMN but can be "reasonably foreseen" in the future. The EPA typically identified these uses during its PMN review, then placed restrictions on them in its Section 5(e) orders if they could result in increased risks to health or the environment. The framework eliminates the role of Section 5(e) orders in this respect.
This change in approach is contrary to TSCA and represents a step back in the agency’s ability to protect the public. If the EPA identifies a reasonably foreseeable future use of the PMN substance raising health or environmental concerns, the law states that the agency "shall" issue an order restricting this use, whether or not it is currently intended by the PMN submitter.
Snurs: no substitute
The framework calls for replacing Section 5(e) orders with another type of regulatory action under TSCA, called a significant new use rule (Snur). Snurs would require manufacturers to notify the EPA if they do not plan to use the exposure controls in the amended PMN or to produce the chemical for a new use that raises health or environmental concerns.
The replacement of orders with Snurs is a big step in the wrong direction. Snurs were never intended to be the primary mechanism for reducing the risks of new chemicals, nor are they an effective means of doing so. Their role under TSCA is to build on Section 5(e) orders by extending their requirements to other manufacturers and processors, not to be a substitute for them. The EPA understood this when it issued Snur regulations in 1989 and throughout its implementation of the PMN programme under the old law.
Section 5(e) orders are not only legally required, they also serve key protective functions that Snurs cannot perform when addressing new chemical risks. Orders must be based on and incorporate explicit conclusions about the nature and magnitude of the new chemical’s risks; no such risk findings are required in Snurs. In addition, they must prohibit or limit activities involving the restricted chemical "to the extent necessary to protect against an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment".
However, the EPA can make Snur provisions as weak or strong as it chooses. For this reason, the agency does not have to include all the protections now included in Section 5(e) orders in Snurs. For example, as it has acknowledged, Snurs would not include testing requirements that are now an essential feature of many orders. The shift from Section 5(e) orders to Snurs thus will mean much less protection and testing for new chemicals of concern.
The strengthened PMN requirements are among the most important enhancements of chemical safety in the 2016 TSCA reforms. Due to grave concerns surrounding the EPA’s implementation of these reforms, Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families and the Natural Resources Defense Council are challenging the lawfulness of the framework in court.
The goal is for the court to require the agency to reinstate the effective PMN review process that the framework dismantled. It is critical to public health protection that the EPA adheres to the letter and spirit of the chemical safety improvements intended by Congress and does not backslide in response to pressure from the chemical lobby.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66784/enhancing-the-safety-of-new-chemicals-under-reformed-tsca
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May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Robert De Mott
In the corners of Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform, far from the limelight, the US EPA has released a strategic plan that starts a protracted march towards reducing animal testing and includes extensive research elements. All this will have complex and expensive implications for product development. In a draft plan dated 7 March, the agency rolled out the acronym adopted to put a box and definition around this initiative: new approach methodologies (NAM).
Since TSCA reform through the Frank R Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, most attention has been focused on three major provisions:the switch to a mandatory, affirmative approval by the EPA for the manufacture and processing of new chemical substances;the EPA’s selection of existing substances for multi-million dollar risk evaluations; and updating the status of substances in the TSCA inventory.
Meanwhile, the agency’s draft strategic plan to promote the development and implementation of alternative test methods fulfils another statutory directive of the reform: to take steps to develop, use and encourage other parties to use alternatives to animal testing for safety information used in TSCA decision making. This topic was noted in early coverage of TSCA reform but was promptly relegated to a various-other-revisions level of attention.
This is understandable – the directive language that the administrator should be "encouraging and facilitating the use of scientifically valid test methods and strategies" (Section 4(h)(1)(B)) engenders a clearly different level of priority than the part projecting charges of several million dollars to evaluate existing chemicals. However, in less than a decade, the regulated community should expect even higher costs related to the development and adoption of new testing methods.
NAM is not a TSCA creation – it was imported from European initiatives encouraged by Echa. The name actually reflects a redefinition of the acronym; researchers had initially defined it as ‘non-animal methods’, which was then broadened. In parallel, the EPA has defined the term specifically to refer to technologies, approaches and combinations of them, in addition to testing methods, that serve to reduce, refine or replace vertebrate animal testing.
The distinction is not just semantic. For example, while a ‘non-animal method’ would be a toxicity test where the substance is added to laboratory-raised cell cultures, ‘new approach methodologies’ could also include extrapolating the results of existing animal testing from one substance to another, or using modelling approaches to characterise dose-response relationships.
The breadth of the initiative, and the correspondingly large number of tools that could be included in it, are among the factors that will drive efforts and expenditures navigating NAM.
Accelerating expenditures
There is a contrarian element to the thesis that NAM will be a stealth budget breaker. The standard rationales for reducing animal testing include the view that non- animal methods are less expensive and facilitate more efficient decision making.
The first point is clearly true, when an analogous test can be conducted on a cell culture plate instead of a large group of rats. It is all the stages of developing, validating and agreeing sets of tests and approaches suitable for use in decision making that will take a couple of decades and extensive, expensive efforts from a broad range of professionals.
The draft strategic plan discusses these various steps and outlines a process the agency will use to advance NAM through these hurdles. Companies that make new chemical submissions under TSCA and their trade associations will face a new line item for NAM engagement in their budgets. These will grow substantially, long before the one-dollar culture plate test is a reality.
The expectation that there will be efficiencies through faster testing cycles and decision making is complicated by another all-other-things-being-equal limitation. The presumption that a suitably robust set of information will be available upon which to make and defend decisions remains just a goal at this point.
Working through the technical aspects of determining when the information set for a given chemical, or especially chemicals that are grouped together, is adequately strong and certain, and the corresponding regulatory and legal aspects of new decision matrices, will actually drive up the effort and cost per chemical.
Reducing animal testing is expected to be advantageous for both technical and policy reasons, and researchers were working actively on both toxicological testing alternatives and approaches to using NAM information prior to TSCA reform. The pace and course of these studies was driven primarily by typical scientific and R&D-type forces.
What TSCA reform has done is shift the driving factor in the US from market forces and scientific priorities guiding steady progress focused on certain chemicals and key toxicity endpoints towards priorities set by a government mandate pushing for progress on NAM that can support decisions across a broad set of technical questions. This shift will accelerate both research on NAM and the review and translation of NAM-derived information for use in decision making.
Viewed from one perspective, the attention from the EPA and the strategic plan can be expected to encourage more rapid improvement of the decision making tools available and help sort out the feasible and usable NAM options from those with currently insurmountable technical hurdles.
From another perspective, all of this takes funding. In the horizon-scale long term, the use of NAM in testing and decision making should become more efficient and cost less. Until then, the contrarian view that a lot of additional effort and expense will go along with reducing reliance on animal testing is a good bet.
Making NAM better
TSCA reform directs that NAM tools should provide information of equivalent or better scientific quality than existing animal-based testing in order to be promoted and endorsed through listing in the strategic plan (Section 4 (h)(2)) or required for consideration by parties making TSCA submissions (Section 4 (h)(3)).
Conceptually, this is a straightforward policy goal. A move to weaker scientific information would result in a corresponding greater uncertainty in decision making, working against the overall goal of reforming the programme to enhance safe uses of chemical substances.
From a technical perspective, however, the simple goal turns into complex questions. What constitutes ‘equivalent’ and ‘better’ when comparing information derived from different methods and approaches? What criteria and metrics will be applied to determine when this standard has been met? And, of particular importance, who declares when the evaluation of NAM is good enough for government work?
Scientists are already coming to the rescue on some of the details. Toxicology and decision science are intersecting as researchers establish a standardised, systematic approach for reviewing different test results and extracting information on study design and quality, doses and responses. This is termed, conveniently, ‘systematic review’.
A key element in this approach is establishing upfront criteria and decision points used in filling in such a database, so that users get the information they need and the biases of ad hoc or retrospective comparisons and evaluations are reduced. Systematic review is a useful tool for putting testing information and results from pre-existing reports, traditional methods and NAM together to determine when more definitive information is available.
Another noteworthy acronym on these questions is AOP – adverse outcome pathway. This is a substantial current research focus in toxicology and relates to elucidating the mechanisms underlying responses.
To illustrate, treatment with a particular dose of a chemical may impair kidney function in a rat. Testing it on plates of cells can never generate the same specific outcome, because the cells do not function as actual kidneys. However, if the mechanisms and steps by which the chemical exposure in the rat impairs kidney function can be described, the cell culture testing can be evaluated to see if the same processes are being triggered at a cellular level.
AOPs are essentially flowcharts that allow the sequences of steps connecting chemical reactions to cellular responses, organ- and tissue-level effects and outcomes for the health of organisms to be recognised. Testing information from pre-existing, traditional methods and NAM can then be compared and NAM tools best tracking the AOPs relevant to the actual adverse outcomes of chemicals can be identified and prioritised.
The summation of all the science relates to one last acronym: WoE – weight of evidence. From the scientific community in general, to various EPA programmes and specific directives in TSCA (Section 26), WoE is identified as a decision-making approach to integrate information from multiple, dissimilar sources.
Results from different tests and information obtained from different approaches can be ranked and prioritised on various quality and relevance metrics. Stronger, more definitive information then influences the decision more, with a heavier weighting in the database of available evidence.
Again, the concept is straightforward, but the details of what metrics and criteria should be applied for the various test methods and potential types of effects constitute a daunting research agenda.
The draft strategic plan identifies AOP compilations and databases, along with a European programme called Integrated approaches to testing and assessment and an approach termed ‘defined approach’, for its upfront setting of decision rules, as resources the EPA will rely upon in developing WoE characterisations for NAM.
Conclusion
The EPA met its initial statutory requirement of advancing non-animal testing through the TSCA programme, by preparing the draft strategic plan in March. And, it has created a relevant, defined set of tools for pursuing the long-term goal by adopting NAM and building the strategy framework around this approach.
However, this step forward also represents moving along an expensive, technically demanding and eventually controversy-triggering path. Nothing about NAM, from the research and interpretation to the regulatory decision matrix, will be easy. Meanwhile, determinations on chemical safety and their commercial implications rely upon the best answers being achieved that can be reached as test tubes replace animals.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66778/tsca-gets-a-new-acronym
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US NTP Requests Data on Identifying Developmental Toxicants
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Julie Miller
The US National Toxicology Program (NTP) Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods is requesting data on approaches for identifying potential developmental toxicants.
Niceatm provides scientific and operational support to the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (Iccvam), which is charged with implementing a strategy for new, non-animal approaches to evaluating the safety of chemicals and medical products.
The project is required under the amended 2016 TSCA. In March, the EPA published its draft strategy for promoting the development and implementation of alternative test methods. The goal is to reduce and eventually replace vertebrate animal testing under TSCA.
And the agency recently issued guidelines on alternative test methods for determining skin sensitisation.
The new data request, published in the 5 May Federal Register, will feed into the ongoing initiative. The information "will be used to assess the state of the science and determine technical needs for non-animal test methods, used to evaluate the potential of chemicals to induce adverse effects in offspring".
Niceatm specifically requested information "relevant to the development or validation of alternatives to in vivo developmental toxicity test methods, currently used by federal agencies for regulatory and other decision contexts". It also asked for data from animal or human studies evaluating the same chemicals for comparison.
The deadline for submissions is 15 June.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66749/us-ntp-requests-data-on-identifying-developmental-toxicants
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EPA Sends Mercury Inventory Rule for White House Review
May 9, 2018 | Inside EPA
EPA has sent to White House review its final rule requiring workers who handle mercury to report those uses to the agency, a rule the agency is required to promulgate by June 22, per the 2016 law that reformed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
The rule has yet to be made public, and it is unclear how it will address issues raised in comments submitted on the rule last January, particularly a concern among stakeholders over how the new federal mercury inventory will co-exsist alongside a similar inventory run by states.
EPA sent the rule to final White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) review May 7, just over a month before the statutory deadline, raising questions of whether the agency will be able to meet the requirement. The deadline is one of many facing EPA in the revised TSCA, which has EPA's toxics office scrambling to keep up.
OMB's website describes the review's priority as “other significant.” It also provides a lengthy list of industrial and commercial sectors potentially effected by the measure, ranging from metal ore mining to circuit board and semiconductor manufacturing to toy manufacturing.
The TSCA reform law gives EPA a June 2018 deadline to finalize the rule, intended to create an inventory of mercury "supply, use and trade," as well as reporting deadlines and other requirements for relevant industries.
EPA's pending notice explains that in accordance with the revised TSCA, the rule's “reporting requirements would apply to any person who manufactures mercury or mercury-added products or otherwise intentionally uses mercury in a manufacturing process.”
But the 13 states that operate the Interstate Mercury Education and Reduction Clearinghouse (IMERC) are concerned of a potential scheduling conflict presented in the draft rule.
Companies reporting to IMERC's member states provide their information on products containing mercury on a three-year cycle that began in 2001, with data for 2016 due in April 2017 and data for 2019 due in 2020.
By contrast, EPA's draft rule proposed a reporting deadline of July 1, 2019 for 2018 data.
“EPA's proposed Rule states that companies may be exempt from reporting to EPA if they have already reported to IMERC,” the states wrote in their comments. “So, a company that submitted its 2016 report to IMERC, will be able to claim an exemption to the EPA 2018 reporting requirement. Thus, the data will be based on different years, preventing the U.S. from having an accurate national mercury inventory.”
IMERC suggests some alternatives, including removing the exemption for companies that already report to IMERC; changing IMERC's reporting schedule or changing EPA's schedule -- and outlines the issues attached to each. The Chemical Users Coalition, a group of downstream companies, urge EPA to match its schedule to IMERC's in its comments.
EPA is advancing the rulemaking based on new TSCA section 8(b)(10)(D), requiring a final rule no later than June 2018.
The draft rule underwent White House review last summer. Once completed, the rule could help the United States comply with its international obligations to regulate mercury under the United Nations' Minamata Convention on Mercury, signed by the Obama administration. The treaty took effect last August.
The mercury inventory and reporting rule requirements were included in the TSCA reform law after EPA in 2015 rejected a petition from environmentalists and some states urging EPA to collect information about uses of mercury produced, imported, or used in the United States, also citing TSCA section 8 authority. At that time, the petitioners argued that section 8(a) -- since revised -- rules were warranted when data is not otherwise available. The petitioners included the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Northeast Waste Management Officials' Association, which manages IMERC.
EPA rejected the petition in October 2015, saying that although the general premise behind the petition was correct, the agency's then-voluntary strategy on reducing mercury use was more efficient and effective.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-sends-mercury-inventory-rule-white-house-review
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Federal Court Orders EPA to Revisit Lead Risks
May 10, 2018 | The Regulatory Review
By Jennifer Ko
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission ordered the removal of lead from house paint in 1978. Yet four decades later, young children continue to be exposed to lead that remains in homes built before the ban. Peeling paint, crumbling walls, and minor renovations can scatter lead around a home, causing serious and irreversible developmental effects in children.
According to a recent decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must reevaluate the risks from lead-based paint. The court ordered EPA to issue a proposed rule that sets revised hazard standards for household dust that contains lead and a modified definition of lead-based paint. The agency must further issue a final rule within a year of the proposed rule.
The court’s decision came in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of environmental and community organizations seeking to challenge EPA’s failure to set more stringent dust-lead hazard standards and update the agency’s existing definition of lead-based paint. Emphasizing the dangers of childhood lead exposure, the challengers argued that EPA “unreasonably delayed” its fulfillment of its duty to address these risks. In light of the eight-year delay between the challengers’ original petition to EPA and the lawsuit they filed, the challengers requested that the court order EPA to begin a rulemaking.
In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the challengers, holding that EPA has a duty to act and that the agency’s failure to act constituted an unreasonable delay.
Although EPA set a hazard standard for lead-contaminated dust in 2001, the challengers noted that the agency has not updated these standards despite new research indicating that there is no level at which lead exposure is safe for young children. Additionally, the challengers argued that EPA has failed to revisit an outdated technical definition of lead-based paint in the Toxic Substances Control Act that remains well above currently accepted thresholds.
The court also held that EPA has an ongoing duty to identify lead-based hazards and amend regulations as needed under the Toxic Substances Control Act and its amendments contained in the Paint Hazard Act. Citing these statutes, the majority noted that the EPA Administrator is required to “promulgate regulations which shall identify…lead-based paint hazards, lead-contaminated dust, and lead-contaminated soil” and that these regulations “may be amended from time to time as necessary.”
Additionally, the court found that EPA has a duty under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) to conclude regulatory proceedings “within a reasonable time.” The court rejected EPA’s argument that the agency fulfilled its duty under the APA by simply deciding to “begin a proceeding.” It observed that EPA specifically granted a petition for a rulemaking—so it needed to complete the making of a rule.
Moreover, the court noted that failing to find a duty could create a “perverse incentive” for EPA because it would allow the agency to grant a petition and then choose to take no action. This type of indefinite delay, according to the majority, would allow the agency to skirt judicial review.
The court further held that EPA unreasonably delayed by not taking final action on the dust-lead hazard standards and its revised definition of lead-based paint. A delay of eight years, combined with the clear threat to children’s health, and congressional intent to eliminate the threat of lead poisoning, weighed in favor of a finding that EPA’s delay was unreasonable.
EPA estimated that it could propose a rule by 2021 and issue a final rule by 2023, but the majority dismissed these timeframes as being “speculative.”
The dissenting judge in the case disputed the majority’s conclusion that EPA has a clear duty to act under the Toxic Substances Control Act and the APA. That judge argued that any obligation on the agency to update the standards was, in fact, discretionary. In the absence of a clear duty, the court lacked the authority to order EPA to take any regulatory action, the dissent argued.
Noting that it was difficult to understand EPA’s inaction thus far, the dissent concluded that nonetheless, “it is for Congress, not the courts, to mandate the EPA achieve the goals” set forth in the Toxic Substances Control Act.
The court’s decision marked a victory for the challengers and the beginning of a tight deadline for EPA. The agency, however, has still not proposed a new lead hazard standard in response to the court order, even though Administrator Scott Pruitt has said that reducing lead exposure is a top EPA priority.
Eve Gartner, one of the Earthjustice attorneys who argued the case, has reportedly stated that EPA has “been studying this since 2010 by their own accounts” and, at this point, “we just need to act.”
https://www.theregreview.org/2018/05/10/ko-court-orders-epa-revisit-lead-risks/
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(ACC Mentioned) States Seek Limits on Persistent Chemicals as EPA Readies Study
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
Rhode Island discovered heat-resistant, water-repellent chemicals contaminating its groundwater and finding their way into drinking water wells. But without federal standards for those chemicals, the state didn’t know how to treat and dispose of that contaminated water.
So the nation’s smallest state is closely watching the Environmental Protection Agency’s intent to study potential industrial sources of these toxic class of chemicals, which include perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), to establish federal wastewater limits for discharging treated groundwater.
“That’s the question out there. What do we do, and how much do we treat it, and how stringent does the treatment have to be so we can discharge the treated groundwater safely into local streams?” Terrence Gray, an associate director for environmental protection in Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental Management, told Bloomberg Environment May 8.
PFOS and PFOA are two of a family of 70 toxic chemicals known as polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that have been linked to low infant birth weights, immune system effects, and cancer, according to the EPA.
States increasingly are seeking guidance from the federal government on dealing with the ubiquitous chemicals, which are used in non-stick coatings like Teflon and in electronics manufacturing and firefighting foams.
Water RequirementsMunicipal wastewater utilities don’t control for those pollutants because they haven’t been required to yet. However, that could change if the EPA eventually sets federal limits.
The Water Environment Federation, an Alexandria, Va.-based not-for-profit educational group for water and wastewater quality professionals, told Bloomberg Environment it is uncommon to see contamination caused by treated municipal wastewater.
The EPA could have more guidance for states, as it studies how the chemicals and others like them are discharged by industries and municipal wastewater utilities into local waterways at concentrations sufficient to warrant new federal pollution standards.
Otherwise, states may be left to regulate the contaminants on their own, which could lead to a patchwork of standards across the country.
States, wastewater officials, and the EPA hope to spend May 22 and 23 tackling some of the tough questions surrounding regulation of this class of chemicals at an upcoming summit.
Concerns About EPA StudyThe American Chemistry Council is concerned about imprecise and overly broad language the EPA used when describing the class of chemicals.
As part of the study, the EPA said it still doesn’t know how much PFOA and PFOS remain in circulation after the chemicals have been mostly phased out, or whether substitutes for those substances pose a risk to public health and the environment.
“It is critical that any potential wastewater limits are risk-based and warranted,” Jonathan Corley, a spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, told Bloomberg Environment.
The FluoroCouncil, which represents chemical manufacturers in Japan, Europe, and the U.S. such as the Chemours Co. LLC, Asahi Glass Co., and Arkema France, has managed to phase out most PFOA and PFOS aside from stockpiles remaining in use and some imports from India and China.
The FluoroCouncil said that environmental and human health effects of the substitutes to PFOA and PFOS that the industries are now using are a significant improvement over their predecessors. The council deferred further comment to the American Chemistry Council.
States Aren’t Testing for ItRhode Island and Minnesota officials haven’t yet found evidence of contamination by those chemicals through wastewater releases either directly from industries or indirectly from the plants treating that water.
“We haven’t seen it, yet, but then again we haven’t been testing for it,” said Gray, adding the EPA study is necessary because states will need a single federal standard for treating groundwater contaminated with those toxic chemicals before releasing it into the local streams.
Neither Rhode Island nor Minnesota officials said such municipal wastewater releases have been linked with drinking water contamination to date. In most instances, officials of these states said these chemicals percolated through the soil into groundwater, contaminating drinking water wells.
In the Great Lakes region, firefighting foam containing PFAS made its way into local waterways through stormwater runoff or direct spraying.
In states like Michigan, however, industrial releases have been responsible in part for contaminating rivers. Wolverine World Wide Inc., which has been sued by Michigan for contaminating soil, groundwater, and streams underlying a former tannery operations site, did not return calls seeking comment.
The company on its website claims the pollution was caused by groundwater contamination.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/states-seek-limits-on-persistent-chemicals-as-epa-readies-study
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(ACC Mentioned) Asbestos Controls, Testing Flame Retardants Among New EPA Rules
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The EPA would restrict some uses of asbestos and require manufacturers to generate new toxicity data for some flame-retardant chemicals under updated regulatory plans the agency released May 9.
The plans also describe when chemical manufacturers may get their first look at a proposed rule the Environmental Protection Agency will issue describing how it will review their claims that the identity of a chemical must be kept confidential.
Federal agencies, including the EPA, issued their spring regulatory agendas, which lists rules under development.
AsbestosAmong the new rules the EPA added to its rulemaking plate is one that could prevent phased-out uses of asbestos from being resumed.
The regulatory agenda doesn’t offer details on the planned “significant new use rule” it plans to release for asbestos later this year.
But the agency has previously used this type of rule to prevent unsafe uses of a chemical from occurring or resuming. Less frequently, this type of rule is employed to bar products posing too great a health or environmental risk from entering the country.
The rule could accomplish that by defining as a “new use” any phased-out uses of the mineral fibers. Any company wanting to resume a phased-out use would have to seek the agency’s approval, which could be withheld or restricted.
If the rule includes importers in its definition of manufacturers, the regulation could stop the import of brakes, roofing tiles, and other products containing asbestos at the border.
Flame Retardants DataThe agency also is reconsidering a 40-year old plan to secure from chemical manufacturers toxicity or other information for a group of chemicals called aryl phosphates, which are used as flame retardants in plastics and other materials.
The EPA’s Interagency Testing Committee urged the agency to obtain the information in 1978, and the agency formally proposed a process to secure data from chemical makers in 1993.
Since then, a group of chemical manufacturers convened by the American Chemistry Council voluntarily provided some of the information the agency sought.
EPA is deciding whether it needs additional information that it could obtain from an enforceable consent agreement or rule mandating submission of the data.
Lead StandardsThe EPA also is working on several expected or required decisions and regulations on lead. These include making a court-ordered decision by June to keep or revise its standards for the metal, which affects the nervous system, cognition and behavior.
The standards define how much lead must be in paint for it to be classified as “lead paint.” That designation triggers obligations, such as requiring the seller of a home to notify the purchaser of its presence.
Lead-dust limits issued by the agency would determine, for example, whether a re-modeler working on walls or windows of a home decorated with lead-based paint cleaned up sufficiently after the project was done.
Confidential Business InformationBy early 2019, chemical manufacturers and other interested parties could see a proposed rule about what businesses claim as proprietary information.
The rule—required by the Toxic Substances Control Act amendments of 2016—would establish the process by which the agency will review all corporate claims that a chemical’s identity be kept secret.
Chemical manufacturers say keeping such information confidential is essential to prevent competitors from gaining inroads into a particular market.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/asbestos-controls-testing-flame-retardants-among-new-epa-rules-1
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(ACC Mentioned) Families Tell EPA Chief of Deaths Linked to Paint Stripper
May 9, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times)
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt has met with families of two men whose deaths were linked to a toxic compound in a widely sold paint stripper, weeks after lawmakers pressed him about an Obama-era rule that would limit sales to consumers.
Kathy Davis, the grandmother of a 21-year-old Nashville man who died in April 2017 after using a paint stripper containing methylene chloride, urged Pruitt to rethink his moves to roll back regulations.
"Americans are stupid. That's why we have rules. That's why we're told to wear seatbelts," Davis told the EPA administrator, according to her daughter, Wendy Hartley, who also was in the half-hour meeting Tuesday at EPA headquarters.
The Obama administration proposed a rule designed to keep paint strippers containing methylene chloride off the shelves of hardware and home-improvement stores for use by do-it-yourselfers. Exposure at close range can overcome and kill users, the EPA has acknowledged.
EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in a statement Wednesday that the agency was considering public comments on the proposed rule, meant to limit sales of methylene chloride to businesses with the training and equipment to handle it safely.
In 2017, the American Chemistry Council trade group said it supported "reasonable and efficient" regulation of the compound. The council, which helps oversee chemical-safety regulation at the EPA, did not immediately respond to an email asking if it supported the pending rule.
Pruitt has been one of the most successful members of the Trump administration in rolling back government regulation.
At a congressional hearing last month, Rep. Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, appeared with the brother of a 31-year-old South Carolina man, Drew Wynne, who died while stripping paint from the concrete floor of his cold-brew coffee warehouse.
"You have the power to finalize the ban of methylene chloride now and prevent more deaths, but you haven't done it," Pallone told Pruitt at the hearing. "Do you have anything to say to these families at this point?"
Pruitt told Pallone that the EPA still was considering whether to adopt the new rule.
The Environmental Defense Fund arranged Tuesday's meeting between Pruitt and the families. It was also attended by Nancy Beck, a former executive at the American Chemistry Council.
At the families' urging, Pruitt looked at photos of men whose deaths in 2017 were linked to paint strippers, and at the current warning labels on cans of paint stripper with methylene chloride, said Brian Wynne, brother of Drew.
At one point, Wynne said he asked Pruitt if he thought it was a problem. And he said, "I do,'" according to Wynne.
Pruitt didn't indicate that any action on the rule was coming soon, the families said.
"I don't think we swayed him," said Hartley, 36, whose son, Kevin, was found last April collapsed over a bathtub he was refinishing for his family's business.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/05/09/us/politics/ap-us-epa-pruitt-families.html
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(ACC Mentioned) To Save Corral Reefs, Hawaii on Verge of Banning Sunscreen
May 9, 2018 | OB Rag
By Frank Gormlie
In order to save the corral reefs and other marine life that surrounds Hawaii, state legislators there just passed a measure banning sunscreen. In particular they want to ban the sale of sunscreens containing oxybenzone and octinoxate by 2021. The governor has yet to sign the bill, making it law.
Scientists have determined oxybenzone and octinoxate can be toxic to coral – a vital part of the ocean ecosystem. Only with a medical prescription, would people be able to purchase sunscreen with the chemicals. Plus the measure itself doesn’t ban online purchases or does it ban tourists from bringing their own to Hawaii.
But sunscreen makers would be forced to change their formulas or be banned from selling the lotions in Hawaii.
If Governor David Ige signs the measure, It would make Hawaii the first state to enact a ban on the chemicals; Ige reportedly has not indicated what he will do.
And of course, there’s pressure from those who profit off the $2 billion market for sun care products in the country on Ige not to sign it. State legislators tried a similar thing a year ago but it failed.
Hawaii state senator Donna Mercado Kim, a Democrat who introduced the measure said it’s “a first step to help our reef and protect it from deterioration,” and “hopefully, other jurisdictions will look at this legislation and follow suit.
Craig Downs is a scientist whose 2015 peer-reviewed study found oxybenzone was a threat to coral reefs, stated:
“This is the first real chance that local reefs have to recover. Lots of things kill coral reefs, but we know oxybenzone prevents them from coming back.”
Downs added the toxic chemical also affects sea urchins and kills algae, a source of food for sea turtles. As much as 14,000 tons of sunscreen lotion ends up in coral reefs annually, he has found. He also stated many sunscreen manufacturers already sell “reef-friendly” sunscreens, such as Edgewell Personal Care, the maker of Banana Boat and Hawaiian Tropic sunscreen lotions. They make products free of the two chemicals, the company says, and”will continue to ensure we comply with all relevant regulations concerning oxybenzone and octinoxate.”
Dr. Yuanan Lu, a professor and director of the environmental health laboratory at the University of Hawaii, applauds the bill. He said:
“We have so many problems with coral bleaching, and there is already so much contamination. We have so many people who come to Hawaii, and some of the sunscreen ingredients can be toxic, harmful to marine systems.”
As part of the corporate pushback Tina Yamaki, president of the Retail Merchants of Hawaii, stated:
“What we’re really concerned with is that there aren’t very many independent studies out there that have gone for peer review.”
She’s concerned consumers won’t buy sunscreen products from local brick-and-mortar stores. Also opposed to the bill is the American Chemistry Council as its concerns are about the dangers of sun exposure.
https://obrag.org/2018/05/to-save-corral-reefs-hawaii-on-verge-of-banning-sunscreen/
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OSHA Plans More Consistent Labels for Toxics in Trade in 2019
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
OSHA will update next year how companies must communicate the hazards of chemicals they sell and export, aligning those regulations with what other nations use.
The agency plans to initiate a revision of the hazard communication standard (RIN:1218-AC93) by February 2019, according to the spring 2018 regulatory agenda, which the White House published May 9. That is a rare continuation of an Obama-era regulatory initiative that wasn’t stalled by the change in administrations.
The update would align OSHA’s hazard communication standard with a United Nations system called the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals, or GHS.
Universal WarningsThe GHS sets international standards for what health and safety information must be included on hazardous materials labels and how the information should be presented. OSHA aligned the two systems in 2012, but the United Nations program updates their system every two years.
The most recent version of the GHS, released in July 2017, changes a variety of definitions and categories for chemical hazards, including new rules for how flammable gases should be classified.
Updating OSHA’s rules to match what companies have to do in other nations will prevent firms from having to use different labels when products are sold in multiple countries, Eric Conn, founding partner at the law firm Conn Maciel Carey in Washington, D.C., told Bloomberg Environment May 9.
“Without seeing what the actual proposal is, the concept of just sort of updating it as the GHS model updates doesn’t sound too controversial,” Conn said.
Bridging AdministrationsThe hazard communication update was planned during the Obama administration, but action stalled after the Trump administration took office. OSHA in the fall of 2017 had placed the standard on its list of long term actions, which aren’t expected to advance in the foreseeable future.
The 2012 update was more far-reaching for companies because it was the first time OSHA aligned its hazard communication standard with the international system, Conn said.
A future rewrite, Conn said, also could be a chance for OSHA to address unclear language in the earlier rule in an effort to simplify compliance for firms.
An OSHA spokesman declined to comment in response to a May 9 request by Bloomberg Environment.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/osha-plans-more-consistent-labels-for-toxics-in-trade-in-2019
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US Body Seeks Nominees for Flame Retardant Hazard Assessment
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
A US National Academies committee is recruiting people to help assess organohalogen flame retardants, following a request from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC).
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s (NASEM) board on environmental studies and toxicology is forming a committee to develop a scoping plan to assess additive, non-polymeric organohalogen flame retardants (OFRs) for their potential chronic health hazards.
Their findings will ultimately be used to inform a CPSC assessment of the risk these substances pose to human health from the following four consumer products categories:children's products;upholstered residential furniture;mattresses; andthe external casings of electronics devices.
The CPSC’s request follows its September decision to grant an NGO petition to begin a rulemaking process under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act (FHSA). It could see OFRs banned from these applications.
To start this, the CPSC will convene a Chronic Advisory Panel (CHAP) – a group of experts charged with evaluating the scientific evidence on the substances. NASEM will provide the hazard assessment plan which the CHAP will use – together with exposure data – to complete a quantitative risk assessment.
To develop its scoping plan, the NACEM committee will:review existing hazard data and identify gaps;evaluate the potential for treating OFRs as a single class of substances, for purposes of a hazard assessment; anddetermine recommendations for how to conduct additional research to evaluate OFRs under the FHSA.
NASEM is seeking individuals with expertise in toxicology; epidemiology; pharmacology; statistics and modeling; QSAR/SAR; and risk assessment.
Nominations will be accepted through 20 May.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66739/us-body-seeks-nominees-for-flame-retardant-hazard-assessment
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EU Seeks Proposals for 'Polymers of Concern' Project
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The European Commission is seeking proposals for a project on how "polymers of concern" (PoCs) could be identified and registered under REACH, according to a call for tenders, which has opened.
REACH does not currently require registration or evaluation of polymers, but under Article 138(2) the Commission is required to review the risks they pose and the need for registration of certain types of polymer.
A 2015 study conducted for the Commission proposed two possible registration systems. The first system was based on identification of polymers of low concern (PLCs) and lower or no registration obligations for them; the second on grouping similar polymers.
According to the current call, the successful contractor will:propose criteria for the identification of PoCs, including the possibility of grouping based on physico-chemical properties or indication of hazard;estimate the potential risks to human health and the environment posed by them, compared with other substances; andprovide a detailed cost-benefit analysis of the registration requirements for the purposes of impact assessment.
One of the primary tasks will be to "assess which registration requirements would be appropriate for PoCs under REACH". The call for tenders does not discuss registration of polymers that do not meet the PoC requirements.
The maximum budget for the project is €300,000.Mirror image
Speaking at this week's Chemical Watch Food Contact Regulations Europe 2018 summit, Paul Ashford, managing director of Anthesis-Caleb, said the new project would be a mirror image of the 2015 study that proposed the PLC system. But it was time to ask the authorities to address the polymer identity question, Mr Ashford said.
"If you start to deal with polymers of concern, you have to decide pretty quickly what your polymer substance is," he told the audience in Brussels. "The interesting thing about the Commission's request for a proposal is that is has no mention whatsoever of any further interrogation about what a polymer substance is.
"So this is really speeding up the supply chain bit, saying [stakeholders in the supply chain] really need to engage at least with the [successful contractor], and probably with Echa as well, on this agenda to make sure there is no misunderstanding of at least where the industry has got to on this subject.
"I think the plea the supply chain would make, is it wants to do this with as many downstream user industries as possible, and understand that we are not crossing each other's purposes."
https://chemicalwatch.com/66747/eu-seeks-proposals-for-polymers-of-concern-project
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Belgian Nano Registrations 'Need Improvement'
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The quality of registrations for nanomaterials submitted to the Belgian national register needs to be improved, the country's Federal Public Service for Public Health (FPS) said.
In its first report about the nanoregister since its launch in 2015, FPS said an evaluation of submitted registrations showed quality can be improved. It added that not all potential registrants are aware of the obligation to register under a 2014 Royal Decree.
About 77% of the registrations were updated before the April 2017 deadline, the report said.
Importers submitted 56% of the registrations, while distributors and manufacturers accounted for 22% and 11% respectively.
Around a third of the 'active' accounts – those created for one or more registrations – were registered on a voluntary basis, with the remaining two thirds coming from those placing the nano substances on the market themselves, the report said.
Half of the 475 nanomaterials registrations made in 2016 concerned substances in quantities below one tonne, and would therefore be considered out of scope of REACH.Amendments
EU member states have recently agreed on changes to REACH annexes to address specific requirements for nanomaterials.
The amendments, due to come into effect in 2020, include a provision giving Echa the legal right to request additional information on substances above ten tonnes when safety of those substances is not demonstrated.
NGOs had pressed for the provision to apply to all REACH registered nanomaterials above 1 tonne.
Substances registered to Belgian authority in quantities of more than 1,000 tonnes were:amorphous silica;calcium carbonate;calcium carbonate treated with stearic acid;carbon black;diiron trioxide;iron hydroxide yellow; andsilicon oxide.European action
In June last year, Echa launched its EU observatory for nanomaterials (EUON), a public website aimed at increasing transparency of information on nanomaterials on the EU market.
This comes after the Commission opted not to create an EU nano register, given delays in the introduction of new REACH information requirements for nanomaterials.
Elsewhere in Europe, Denmark, France, Norway and Sweden also require companies to report information on nanomaterials to their national inventories.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66744/belgian-nano-registrations-need-improvement
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Australian Panel Says PFAS Ill-Health Links Limited or Non-Existent
May 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Ellen Tatham
A report from Australia's Expert Health Panel for PFAS has concluded that evidence linking exposure to polyfluorinated substances (PFASs) with human disease is limited or non-existent, and that there is "no current evidence that suggests an increase in overall cancer risk".
The panel, established in October last year to advise the government, reviewed 20 Australian and international reports and reviews examining potential health effects of exposure to PFASs, as well as carrying out a public consultation.
The conclusions concur with advice from the country's health department that "there is no current evidence that supports a substantial impact on an individual’s health from PFAS exposure."
PFASs are bioaccumulative substances that were present in fire-repellent foams widely used in Australian military airbases across the country from the early 1970s. The decision to phase them out was made about ten years ago.
They have been linked with long-term health problems.
The expert panel consistently found a number of health effects in reports, reviews and research. But they concluded that, even for those with the highest exposure levels, health effects were still "within normal ranges" for the whole population.Fears not allayed, says MP
Meryl Swanson, member of parliament for Paterson, New South Wales, an area affected by contamination from PFASs, told Chemical Watch the report "in no way answered questions or allayed fears".
Ms Swanson called the report "contradictory" and cited the summary, which advises both that "important health effects for individuals exposed to PFASs cannot be ruled out based on the current evidence"; and that "evidence does not support any specific biochemical or disease screening or other health interventions for highly exposed groups in Australia, except for research purposes".
She also expressed anger at the timing of the 400-page report's release. It was dated March, but published on 7 May on the eve of the Federal budget, a particularly busy time for parliament, she said.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66756/australian-panel-says-pfas-ill-health-links-limited-or-non-existent
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Georgia Fracking Covered Under Groundwater Law if Drillers Come
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Chris Marr
Georgia will regulate hydraulic fracturing in advance of potential natural gas drilling under a new law that requires groundwater monitoring and disclosure of chemicals used in drilling.
The law requires the state’s environmental agency to draft rules to govern fracking by July 1, 2019. The state has no history of oil or natural gas production, but its northwest corner sits on a known natural gas reserve—the Conasauga Shale—where companies have drilled a few test wells and talked to landowners about buying mineral rights.
“That was kind of the initial drive” behind the legislation, said Jesse Demonbreun-Chapman of the Coosa River Basin Initiative, referring to “wildcatters” coming to northwestern Georgia three years ago to buy mineral rights.
Fears of water contamination from fracking helped the legislation (H.B. 205) win support in a Republican-led Legislature, he told Bloomberg Environment May 9.
Gov. Nathan Deal (R) signed the legislation May 8.
Hydraulic fracturing has been a contentious issue subject to varying state and federal proposals to regulate it, or in cases such as New York state, to ban it altogether. Environmental advocates blame the practice for groundwater contamination, while the industry says it’s a safe way to stimulate oil and gas production.
Legislation Had Broad SupportDemonbreun-Chapman said the bill faced little if any industry opposition in the state Legislature, and called it “a good bill that people could get behind. It wasn’t a ban.”
Buckeye Exploration Co., the Oklahoma-based oil and gas company that drilled the most recent test wells near Dalton, Ga., didn’t immediately respond to a May 9 Bloomberg Environment request for comment on the bill. The American Petroleum Institute didn’t immediately respond to Bloomberg Environment’s request May 9 for industry perspective on the law.
The law would establish fracking regulations requiring public notice and comment periods for permit requests; monitoring groundwater before, during, and after well stimulation; and restoration of abandoned well sites.
The state’s Environmental Protection Division also must decide how to require safe disposal of fracking fluids and how to handle disclosure of the chemicals used. The law requires that the chemicals be disclosed to the state’s environmental and public health directors but gives the division leeway in devising a “fair process” for balancing transparency with companies’ rights to keep their trade secrets.
Public Comment, Tax ProvisionsIn addition to the hydraulic fracturing rules, the new law revises the permitting process for all oil and gas drilling, creating a 30-day public comment period.
The state also established a severance tax of 3 cents a barrel of oil and 1 cent per thousand cubic feet of gas. Cities and counties can impose a local tax up to 9 cents a barrel of oil or 2 cents per thousand cubic feet of gas.
The law also preserved local governments’ ability to regulate oil and gas drilling through zoning and land-use ordinances.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/georgia-fracking-covered-under-groundwater-law-if-drillers-come
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EPA Eyes June to Roll Out Revisions to Power Plant Climate Rules
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
The EPA has big plans for June: It intends to release its replacement of the Obama administration’s greenhouse gas limits for existing power plants, as well as its companion standards for new plants.
The Environmental Protection Agency is projecting a June release for a long-awaited proposal that would replace the Clean Power Plan, the Obama-era regulation that required greenhouse gas reductions from existing power plants.
The agency also anticipates it will release plans next month to revise a companion rule setting greenhouse gas limits for new and modified power plants—a rule that serves as the legal underpinning of the Clean Power Plan.
Both timelines are set in the Trump administration’s spring regulatory agenda, released May 9. But it’s possible that those deadlines could slip.
Advance NoticeThe EPA in December issued an advance notice seeking comments on whether and how to replace the Clean Power Plan, which Administrator Scott Pruitt argues overstepped the agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act. The EPA is widely expected to pursue a replacement rule that only seeks emissions reductions that can be achieved at an individual power plant, such as heat rate reductions.
The Obama administration’s rule also encouraged shifting power to cleaner energy sources, including natural gas and renewable energy.
The agency is working to repeal the Clean Power Plan in a separate action. The comment period closed April 26 on that effort, and the regulatory agenda projects a final repeal to be released in December.
But while the Clean Power Plan repeal and replacement efforts have taken center stage, the EPA has said little publicly about the companion Obama-era greenhouse gas limits for new and modified power plants.
Coal industry groups and free market conservative think tanks have urged the EPA to drop a provision in the rule that requires new coal-fired power plants to install partial carbon capture and storage technologies to prevent carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. The proposal slated for June release will be the first indication of the agency’s thinking on that rule.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-eyes-june-to-roll-out-revisions-to-power-plant-climate-rules
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Energy Department Rethinks Market-Based Approach on Efficiency
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
The Energy Department has no immediate plan to move ahead with changes to its home appliance efficiency program, as it considered doing last year, according to the agency’s spring regulatory agenda released May 9.
Appliance manufacturer and energy efficiency advocates widely opposed the potential change.
The department issued a request for information in the spring 2017 regulatory agenda on changing the appliance energy efficiency standards program to one based on averages rather than individual product performance. Opposition to the plan was reflected in many of the comments the agency received.
The Energy Department said it is still reviewing the responses.
“The fact that no action appears on the new reg agenda regarding market-based approach to appliance regulation is indicative of nothing other than that we are evaluating what to do next,” a department official told Bloomberg Environment.
The official and the regulatory agenda provided no new information on any next actions on the rulemaking.
Manufacturer, Environmental OppositionMoving to a fleetwide system would be illegal under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, which sets minimum efficiency levels for individual products, manufacturers and efficiency groups said.
The department’s energy-efficiency program oversees more than 60 home appliances, including refrigerators and air conditioners, by setting minimum efficiency performance standards. It suggested an alternative market-based policy mechanism, akin to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy program, which uses averaging, banking, and trading of credits for vehicles.
“We’re not clear what it means that the RFI is no longer listed in the regulatory agenda,” Lauren Urbanek, senior energy policy advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Bloomberg Environment.
“The standards program, in its current form, has worked well for decades, and a shift to a market-based program is unnecessary and, in fact, would likely be detrimental to consumers and the program’s enormous savings,” she said.
New Timeline for Gas Furnace StandardSeparately, the agency set out timelines for actions it plans to take on other home appliance efficiency standards. Timelines were missing for all of the home appliance standards in the previous fall 2017 agenda, published in the Federal Register Jan. 12, with “to be determined” in place of actual dates.
Most notably, a timeline of September 2018 was listed for a supplemental proposed rule for the highly contested gas furnace appliance rulemaking, which has been in the works since 2014. The rulemaking was added back to the agenda after being omitted in the fall 2017 agenda.
What remain missing from the list are four Obama-era efficiency standards that were finalized in December 2016 but never published in the Federal Register by the Trump administration. These standards would strengthen the energy efficiency of portable air conditioners, air compressors, commercial packaged boilers, and uninterruptible power supplies.
A lawsuit filed by environmental groups is under review by U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California over the delayed publication of the four rules.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/energy-department-rethinks-market-based-approach-on-efficiency
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Interior Signals Final Venting and Flaring Rule Due in July
May 10, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
The Interior Department is moving forward with a final rule to revise the venting and flaring rule for oil and gas operations on federal and Indian lands, saying May 9 it would issue a final action by July.
Interior, through a Bureau of Land Management rule issued in December, delayed some provisions of the venting and flaring rule in order to give itself time to revise or rescind the regulations.
The rules aimed to reduce venting, flaring, and leaking of the potent greenhouse gas methane and other gases. Venting of natural gas releases it directly into the atmosphere. Flaring, or burning, the gas contributes to air pollution.
The BLM proposed to scrap requirements February, arguing that the regulation would unnecessarily restrict energy production. Oil companies have argued that the Obama-era rule would be a burden on operators of low-producing wells.
The date for final action, which could change, was announced in the department’s spring regulatory agenda.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/interior-signals-final-venting-and-flaring-rule-due-in-july
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Cybersecurity Bills for Grid, Gas Pipelines Sent Up by House Panel
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
The electric grid and natural gas pipelines would get new tools to protect against cybersecurity threats and physical attacks on their facilities under four bills approved May 9 by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Another bill (H.R. 4606), designed to speed approval of smaller-scale liquefied natural gas applications, also won committee approval. It would apply to export or import volumes of no more than .14 billion cubic feet per day.
The cybersecurity measures generally seek to address cybersecurity threats through improved coordination between the Energy Department and other federal and state agencies or launch voluntary initiatives to help industry fend off cyberattacks. They passed on voice votes and had the support of the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Frank Pallone (N.J.).
Committee chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) told Bloomberg Environment May 8 that it is unclear whether the bills would be packaged or brought separately to the House floor.
Cybersecurity MeasuresTwo of the cybersecurity measures were authored or co-authored by Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.): the Cyber Sense Act (H.R. 5239), co-authored by Rep. Robert Latta (R-Ohio), which would direct the Energy Department to create a voluntary program to identify and promote products that could help the bulk power system; and the Enhancing Grid Security Through Public-Private Partnerships (H.R. 5240), which would direct the energy secretary to coordinate with state regulatory authorities and industry in providing training to electric utilities to address and eliminate cybersecurity risks.
Two energy cybersecurity bills also were approved.
The Energy Emergency Leadership Act (H.R. 5174) introduced by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), would direct the Energy Department to ensure that its leadership addresses energy emergency and ensure security issues including those related to infrastructure, cybersecurity, and emergency planning.
The Pipeline and LNG Facility Cybersecurity Preparedness Act (H.R. 5175), introduced by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), calls for the energy secretary to work with other federal agencies, states, and the energy sector to improve the physical security and cybersecurity resiliency of natural gas pipelines, hazardous liquid pipelines, and liquefied natural gas facilities.
Debate on LNG MeasureThe LNG measure drew some opposition from Democrats, who argued that it benefits only one company, Eagle LNG Partners, specifically its Jacksonville, Fla., Maxfield facility. The facility has a pending application before both the Energy Department and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The Ensuring Small Scale LNG Certainty and Access Act was introduced by Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) with the backing of one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas.
The committee adopted an amendment offered by Johnson, which was meant to was meant to address Democratic concerns that the National Environmental Policy Act environmental review exclusion for small-scale export projects was too broad.
Under Johnson’s amendment, the small export projects would go forward as long as the Federal Energy Regulation Commission did not require an environmental impact statement or assessment.
Pallone said the amendment didn’t go far enough to gain his support. The vote to adopt it was 35-15.
The bill was backed by the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, which represents natural gas producers, shippers, and terminal operators.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/cybersecurity-bills-for-grid-gas-pipelines-sent-up-by-house-panel
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Trump Infrastructure Plan Ailing, But Not Dead, In Senate
May 10, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz
A water resources bill under consideration in the Senate appears to reject the White House’s $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan, but top Republicans say parts of the Trump proposal may eventually make it into the legislation later this month.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee plans to mark up the bill, S. 2800, later this month, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the committee chairman, told reporters after a May 9 hearing on the bill. And Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the panel’s second-ranking Republican, said senators may modify the bill then to insert provisions from the infrastructure plan, which has stalled on Capitol Hill since the White House unveiled it in February.
As of now, however, the bipartisan bill shies away from the more contentious items in the Trump plan—specifically its calls to speed up the permitting process for big federal infrastructure projects by stripping some environmental review requirements. Inhofe told reporters the committee has already accomplished much on this issue, but that he may use the water resources bill as a vehicle to push further.
“If there’s something more that can be done that hasn’t been done, I’ll make sure we have an amendment,” he said.
Inhofe’s plans to amend the bill with environmental permitting measures could jeopardize its bipartisan support. Democrats have strongly opposed legislation in the past that sought to remove federal agencies’ obligations to study the ecological impacts of their decisions.
The White House did not immediately respond to Bloomberg Environment’s request for comment.
Senators Want to Honor TraditionBoth Inhofe and Barrasso said they were committed to following Congress’ traditional biennial timeline for passing a water resources bill, which gives the Army Corps of Engineers the go-ahead to move forward on dozens of flood control and reservoir projects across the country. These bills also typically make significant policy changes for the Environmental Protection Agency’s drinking water and wastewater programs.
This year’s bill, unveiled May 8, received bipartisan praise at the hearing before the committee, signaling that its chances of advancing through the Senate are good.
“We don’t want to spike the football too early, but this is a day to celebrate,” Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the top Democrat on the committee, said.
The House has not yet released its version of a water resources bill. But Barrasso said he spoke recently with Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, about coordinating the two chambers’ actions on this legislation.
Senate BillThe bill would allow the EPA to continue operating its new subsidized infrastructure loan program, the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, through the 2021 fiscal year. It also would allow water utilities to use portions of EPA grants to clean up the lakes and rivers that serve as the sources of their drinking water, something currently outside the scope of the EPA’s main water grant program.
For the Army Corps, the legislation would require the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to re-examine the way it conducts cost-benefit analysis for the Corps’ projects. The bill would also change Army Corps rules on outside parties sharing in the cost of a project.
Congress failed to pass a water resources bill for decades, but then enacted a version in 2014 and again in 2016.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/trump-infrastructure-plan-ailing-but-not-dead-in-senate
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Praise for Senate Infrastructure Bill; House's Forthcoming
May 10, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Ariel Wittenberg
Senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee yesterday cheered the release of bipartisan water infrastructure legislation.
"America's Water Infrastructure Act," unveiled yesterday, includes multiple provisions aimed at revamping the way water projects are authorized.
That includes requiring the Army Corps of Engineers headquarters and districts to provide Congress with a work plan and four-year projected budget on an annual basis, which senators said would lead to the authorization of more projects. Districts would be required to take local input into account in drafting their budgets.
EPW Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) called the requirement "an addition to the benefit-cost-ratio framework" the corps and Office of Management and Budget currently use to make recommendations to Congress about which projects to authorize.
"The addition will give local stakeholders a greater role in prioritizing Army Corps projects," he said. "Under this new provision, more projects are likely to be built in small, rural and inland states."
Ranking member Tom Carper (D-Del.) agreed. "Hopefully this participation will allow for a more transparent and long-term look at the corps' activities and serves to build a better groundswell of support for increased appropriations for the agency's initiatives," he said.
Barrasso focused many of his comments on how the bill would increase water storage nationwide. It would create a board of appeals for water storage projects, which Barrasso said would "facilitate the permitting of additional reservoirs."
"Expanding water storage will give our farmers, ranchers and communities a reliable supply of water in order to keep their livestock and their crops healthy," he said. "More water storage also provides an economic incentive for new businesses to grow and create jobs throughout the nation."
Pat Riley, an advisory committee member for the Family Farm Alliance, said he particularly appreciated that provision in the bill.
"Usually when these projects are blocked, we have already spent millions of dollars of state and private money to get to that stage, so it's like running into a roadblock when the Army Corps puts their foot down," he said. The appeals board, he continued, "allows us to have people in the room who understand what we are talking about."Reservoirs, sediment, flood control
The legislation would also direct the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps to develop sediment management plans for federal reservoirs.
Riley told senators that "siltation is a chronic problem throughout the West" and thanked them for including the provision. "Some of the reservoirs I work with are 50 percent full of silt right now," he said.
Carper praised the bill for its requirement that the corps give greater weight to "green" infrastructure in feasibility studies for man-made flood control programs.
He said he was "particularly proud" of the provision because it "will support the selection of natural infrastructure alternatives as a practicable alternative where the development of gray — or more traditional — infrastructure alone may not work."
Tony Pratt, president of the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association, agreed.
"In the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, we were trying to contain the forces of nature from impacting the coast" by building sea walls and bulkheads, he said. "But if you stop and think what attracts so many people to the coast, it's the beaches, it's the dunes, it's the wetlands. They can perform [flood control] very well."Outside support
Many interests outside the EPW Committee have already expressed their support for the legislation.
The Senate Western Caucus said the bill "secures Western priorities," like expanding water storage and assisting rural communities in complying with the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Caucus Chairman Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said the bill is "an important first step for Montana families, farmers, ranchers, the Blackfeet Tribe and Western states."
The Nature Conservancy also issued a statement in support. Senior Water Policy Adviser Jimmy Hague said the bill includes policies and projects "that will advance the restoration of critical ecosystems and will encourage the use of nature in solving our country's water resources challenges."
In particular, the group applauded the bill's inclusion of habitat restoration projects in the Lower Mississippi River Basin.
Madeleine Foote, the League of Conservation Voters' legislative representative, noted the bill does not include any policies to streamline the National Environmental Policy Act or other permitting processes targeted by the Trump administration.
Rather, she said, the bill focuses "on steps such as water efficiency and nature-based solutions that lead toward a smarter, more sustainable future."Outlook
An aide for House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) said the committee was looking to release its own water resources legislation.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/05/10/stories/1060081303
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Emails Show EPA Turned to Climate Skeptics to Craft ‘Red Team-Blue Team’ Exercise
May 9, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
Emails and other documents from the Environmental Protection Agency shed new light on internal deliberations behind one of the most colorful proposals to come out of the agency during Administrator Scott Pruitt’s tenure — an ill-fated attempt to set up opposing teams to debate the science of climate change.
Pruitt pitched the so-called “red team-blue team” exercise as a way to suss out the truth of scientific claims that the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities are pumping greenhouse gases into the air and are warming the planet.
A new cache of emails show that EPA staff primarily sought out conservative advocates who have worked for years at the fringes of mainstream climate science for advice on the debate, rather than the staffers who traditionally identify scientific research priorities for the agency.
The emails were provided to The Washington Post by environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council which obtained them as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.
They show Pruitt’s schedulers, press aides and other political appointees were collecting information from outside conservative groups — even putting it in binders for Pruitt to read.
“[T]he ‘Red Team’ idea is superb,” Rodney Nichols, a science and technology policy consultant for the CO2 Coalition, wrote in an May 2017 email to Pruitt aide Lincoln Ferguson. “We will be glad to help the initiative in any way we can.” It wasn’t until last June that Pruitt began publicly floating a red team-blue team debate.
Nichols, whose group argues that additional atmospheric carbon dioxide aides plant growth and boost farm productivity, passed along a paper titled “Carbon Dioxide Benefits the World” for Pruitt’s perusal. By February, Pruitt appeared to latch onto that idea. “We know humans have most flourished during times of what, warming trends,” Pruitt told a Las Vegas television station
Pruitt and his staff pursued the two-sided debate format, popular with military planners, despite the existence of multiple scientific assessments at home and abroad that have concluded man-made climate change is real and poses substantial risk.
Many within the climate science community countered that staging such an exercise was unnecessary because scientists already have plenty of forums, such as academic journals and scientific conferences, where ideas are debated.
After months of back-and-forth with conservative advocates, the White House ultimately stopped the plan. The EPA declined to comment for this story.
The emails show parts of the EPA were not involved at first in the controversial proposal.
One email message suggests career staff at the agency’s main scientific research arm, the Office of Research and Development (ORD), had little to do with its development.
“The red team blue team exercise is not an ORD effort, and we are not involved,” Samantha Linkins, an ORD staffer, wrote to other EPA staffers in response to an inquiry from Democrats on the House Science Committee. “The Administrator is the one who wants to do this and I’m guessing his folks are putting it together.”
Behind the scenes, in November, Rupert Darwall, author of the book “Green Tyranny,” forwarded to Pruitt’s an unreleased Competitive Enterprise Institute paper he authored that echoed that idea, titled “A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm.” Darwall told the EPA chief’s aides that the essay is “best go-to justification for Administrator Pruitt’s red/blue team appraisal.”
Agency staffers also corresponded with a pair of Ivy League professors, J. Scott Armstrong at the University of Pennsylvania and William Happer at Princeton, who have both publicly questioning whether policymakers should be concerned about human-caused global warming despite holding professorships outside climate science.
“Scientists at the EPA who know something about climate science want nothing to do with the Red team, Blue team exercise,” NRDC spokesman Ed Chen said in a statement regarding the released emails. “But a host of outsiders, non-scientists and know-nothings want everything to do with it.”
Pruitt’s chief of staff Ryan Jackson appeared to be working with Happer, a physics professor, to vet potential red-team members who would challenge climate science in the exercise.
“I am sorry that distractions prevented me for getting this material about potential red team members to you,” Happer wrote to Jackson in a Nov. 2017 email. “Please keep it confidential.”
In a separate message, Armstrong, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, sent a paper he co-authored to EPA staffers that argued Pruitt should impanel a group of judges to decide after the red team-blue team debate whether climate regulation would provide a “substantial net benefit … beyond reasonable doubt.”
Pruitt even conferred with a senior Roman Catholic prelate, who once in a speech called “hysteric and extreme claims about global warming … a symptom of pagan emptiness.”
During a dinner in Italy last June, Pruitt and Cardinal George Pell discussed a April 2017 Wall Street Journal op-ed by New York University professor Steven Koonin, which had first brought the red team-blue team idea to prominence in Washington.
“I am at dinner with Cardinal Pell and Mr. Pruitt,” Pruitt aide Samantha Dravis wrote a Vatican official. “They discussed this article. Can you print a copy for His Excellency?”
The following month, in July, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest general scientific society in the United States and publisher of the prestigious journal Science, asked for a meeting with Pruitt to discuss the red team-blue team proposal.
The newly released emails show Jackson and other political staffers weighing the request, which AAAS sent on behalf of it and more than a dozen other scientific societies specializing in disciplines like limnology (the study of lakes) and herpetology (the study of reptiles and amphibians).
“Given your interest in the state of climate science, we would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to better understand your perspective and rationale for the proposed activity; and to discuss climate science, including which areas are at the frontiers of scientific knowledge and which are well-established because of thousands of studies from multiple lines of evidence,” the leaders of the scientific societies wrote to Pruitt.
But the AAAS told The Post the meeting never came to fruition.
“We did not hear back from EPA in response to that letter and have not met with the administrator or EPA staff on this matter,” said Joanne Padrón Carney, AAAS’s director of government relations.
Even into January of this year, Pruitt’s staff was coordinating having Oren Cass, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, make a presentation to Pruitt touching on the red team-blue team idea.
“I expect generally that the objective is to discuss the opportunity to examine emissions baselines and economic analyses of climate change in the context of a red-team/blue-team exercise,” Cass asked Pruitt’s aides. “Is that right?”
“We were thinking this meeting could be purely informative in nature, and not necessarily in the context of a specific EPA exercise,” responded Elizabeth “Tate” Bennett, who is currently associate administrator of the Office of Public Engagement and Environmental Education.
Bennett may have hesitated because one month earlier, White House chief of staff John Kelly had made it clear to the EPA it should not move forward with the debate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/05/09/emails-show-epa-turned-to-climate-skeptics-to-craft-red-team-blue-team-exercise/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bb901e62878f
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EPA Plan to Update Air Pollution Permitting Expected in September
May 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
The EPA’s plan to smooth out air pollution permitting for upgrades and expansions at factories and power plants is expected in September.
The Environmental Protection Agency wants to revise the air pollution permitting program, known as New Source Review, in a bid to encourage growth and expansion among the domestic industrial and power generation sector, according to the federal government’s semiannual regulatory agenda issued May 9.
The upcoming proposal (RIN:2060-AT89) would revise how large industrial sources such as power plants and boilers calculate changes in their emissions that might trigger requirements that they install new air pollution controls.
The EPA has already issued a series of guidance documents for facilities to tally the emissions that trigger new pollution control requirements under the program.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt changed all that when he told the House Energy and Commerce Committee in late April that the agency would institute these changes through a “comprehensive” rule to update the larger permitting program.
The regulatory agenda only includes the emissions accounting regulation.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-plan-to-update-air-pollution-permitting-expected-in-september
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States, Cities Oppose Trump Bid to Stall Litigation
May 9, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Amanda Reilly
In her first full day on the job, New York's acting attorney general stood firmly today against Trump administration efforts to unravel the Clean Power Plan.
Barbara Underwood, who was sworn in yesterday afternoon, led a coalition of states and cities in a court brief opposing the administration's request to further delay litigation over the Obama-era climate rule.
"This office's commitment to protecting New Yorkers from the devastating impacts of climate change is unwavering," Underwood said in a statement. "Our coalition has long fought to defend the Clean Power Plan, including strongly opposing the EPA's efforts to block court review of its legality."
Underwood was named acting attorney general after former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman resigned Monday over allegations that he abused and was violent to four women.
Schneiderman had led states in opposing the Trump administration's deregulatory actions. Today's brief, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, signals that Underwood will continue the fight and push for climate action.
The Clean Power Plan aimed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. Led by West Virginia, numerous states and industry entities challenged the rule in the D.C. Circuit. A New York-led coalition of states sided with EPA.
The court put the litigation on hold in April 2017 to allow the Trump EPA time to figure out what it wanted to do with the rule.
The Trump administration last year announced plans to repeal the rule and has sought comment on whether it should be replaced. The D.C. Circuit has since extended the hold on the litigation.
The brief filed today by the states and cities argues the Trump administration has displayed a "lack of urgency" in acting on the rule. EPA is trying to "stave off judicial review of the legality of the Clean Power Plan," the brief says.
"It has now been over a year since this court's April 2017 grant of EPA's initial motion for abeyance premised on additional rulemaking," the brief says, "and EPA has neither completed a rulemaking nor even committed to a deadline for doing so."
Joining New York on the brief: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia.
Several cities, including New York, also signed on to the brief. Environmental groups filed their own brief opposing any additional delay in the litigation, which was argued in front of the full D.C. Circuit in September 2016.
"We continue to appeal to the D.C. Circuit to reject the Trump EPA's weak promises related to repealing (and possibly replacing) the Clean Power Plan at some undisclosed future date — and rule on legal merits of this critically important measure," Underwood said.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/05/09/stories/1060081277
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States, Environmentalists Object to Continued CPP Suit Abeyance
May 9, 2018 | Inside EPA
Defenders of the Obama EPA's Clean Power Plan (CPP) are objecting to the Trump EPA's recent request for an appellate court to continue to hold off issuing a ruling in a lawsuit over the rule while the agency repeals and then possibly replaces it with a narrower requirement for utilities to limit their greenhouse gas emissions.
The states' May 9 opposition brief-- filed in West Virginia, et al. v. EPA, et al., in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit -- was authored by acting New York Attorney General (AG) Barbara Underwood's (D) office.
In a statement accompanying the filing, Underwood signaled that the Empire State will continue to be a leading opponent of EPA regulatory rollback efforts even after former AG Eric Schneiderman (D) was forced to abruptly resign May 7 after sexual abuse allegations were made public.
“This office's commitment to protecting New Yorkers from the devastating impacts of climate change is unwavering,” Underwood said. “Our coalition has long fought to defend the Clean Power Plan, including strongly opposing the EPA's efforts to block court review of its legality.”
She added that the state continues to urge the D.C. Circuit “to reject the Trump EPA's weak promises related to repealing (and possibly replacing) the [CPP] at some undisclosed future date -- and rule on the legal merits of this critically important measure.”
Other state AGs in the coalition have sought to project a similar message. For example, Maryland AG Brian Frosh (D) told Bloomberg Environment that the coalition would not “miss a beat” following Schneiderman's departure, and Massachusetts AG Maura Healy (D) said the work “isn't about one person. It’s about the dedicated women and men in Attorneys Generals' Offices around the country who enforce the law and protect people’s rights. That work continues.”
The states' filing, as well as a similar opposition brief from environmental groups, respond to EPA's May 2 status report that asks the D.C. Circuit to continue to keep the case on hold “pending conclusion of rulemaking,” referencing an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) Administrator Scott Pruitt published Dec. 28 and took comment on until Feb. 26.
“EPA is currently reviewing the comments submitted, and preparing a proposed rule package that will be published in the Federal Register for public comment,” EPA's status report says.
The states' opposition brief asks the court to reject the request because “it has now been over a year since this Court's April 2017 grant of EPA's initial motion for abeyance premised on additional rulemaking, and EPA has neither completed a rulemaking nor even committed to a deadline for doing so. . . . Nothing in EPA's latest filing provides a persuasive reason for this Court to further refrain from issuing a ruling on the merits of this critically-important measure limiting power plant pollution that is harming State Intervenors.”
Similarly, environmentalists argue in a May 9 filing that “EPA has never laid out a clear legal basis for this delay.” The filing notes that EPA originally wanted to avoid having to brief legal issues to potential Supreme Court petitions while it conducted a review of the CPP.
“EPA still relies on this rationale. That these reasons have never justified the major countervailing public costs of putting this case in abeyance becomes clearer with every passing report that EPA files. But whatever limited merit they had more than a year ago, EPA's grounds for abeyance are unpersuasive today.”
The case was argued before the full D.C. Circuit in September 2016, but the court has not issued a ruling, and in the ensuing months the Trump administration took office and began taking steps to repeal and replace the rule, with a public comment period on a proposed repeal ending April 26, along with issuing the ANPR.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/states-environmentalists-object-continued-cpp-suit-abeyance
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