Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 5/24/2018
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(ACC Mentioned) Editor’s Opinion: Embed Economics into Industry Goals
May 23, 2018 | Plastics Recycling Update
By Dan Leif
Lately, the wider plastics industry has been feeling the heat on materials disposal and litter. -
(ACC Mentioned) On Honesty and 'Honest Brokers' in Government Science
May 24, 2018 | Competitive Enterprise Institute
By Marlo Lewis, Jr.
Today’s E&E News has an interesting article about Richard Yamada, a Ph.D. mathematician who is the key official helping Administrator Scott Pruitt reshape science policy at the Environmental Protection Agency. -
Deregulatory Proponents Urge Lawmakers to Codify Trump's 2-1 Order
May 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Rebecca Rainey
Supporters of the Trump administration's deregulatory agenda are urging lawmakers to codify President Donald Trump's executive order (EO) forcing OSHA, EPA and other agencies to repeal two existing rules for every new measure, though their call is drawing strong pushback... -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Pulls Back from Total Ban on Dangerous Paint Stripping Chemical
May 24, 2018 | Salon
By Sarah Okeson
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt plans to lightly regulate the sweet-smelling solvent methylene chloride, commonly used in paint strippers, after meeting with the mothers of two men killed by the chemical. -
(ACC Mentioned) Pruitt Downplays EPA Role in PFAS Study Row
May 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
US EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has defended the agency's role in the recent controversy over a withheld PFAS study, arguing that the agency "does not have the authority" to release the document. -
Agencies Hashing out 'Consistent Messaging' for ATSDR's PFAS Study
May 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
Patrick Breysse, director of the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR), says federal agencies are working on developing “consistent messaging” for rolling out ATSDR's controversial draft risk numbers for perfluorinated chemicals... -
US FDA Consults on Guidance for Sunscreen Ingredient Studies
May 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The US FDA is consulting on draft guidance for studies evaluating the skin absorption of active ingredients in sunscreen and other over the counter products. -
States Seek to Leverage Federal Science in Battling Teflon Toxics
May 24, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
Cleaning up water and soil contaminated with widely used fluorinated chemicals is a top concern of state regulators, who despite addressing the problem on their own say they still need more direction and information from the federal government. -
Washington State to Evaluate Six Flame Retardants
May 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Washington state is developing a report evaluating and setting out policy recommendations for six flame retardants: TPP, TCPP, TBPH, V6, IPTPP, and TBB. -
US Retail Giants Push for Sustainable Cosmetics with Industry Scorecard
May 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Vanessa Zainzinger
A group of organisations led by US retailers Walmart and Target has published a science-based scorecard for the personal care industry, aimed at helping manufacturers create safer and more sustainable products. -
BPS Rapidly Replacing BPA in Thermal Paper – Echa Survey
May 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
EU paper manufacturers are increasingly substituting bisphenol A with bisphenol S in thermal paper, an Echa market survey has found. -
European Union’s BPA Limits Show Potentially Harmful Substitute
May 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
A European Union restriction on the chemical bisphenol A might have backfired by encouraging companies to switch to a similar substance that could be equally hazardous, the European Chemicals Agency said. -
UBA Scientist: EU Needs Single Source of PBT Guidance and Expertise
May 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Andrew Turley
The process for identifying persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic substances (PBTs) should be harmonised across EU legislation via a unified source of guidance and expertise, a German regulatory scientist said. -
EU Member States Prepare RMOAs on Potential CMRs
May 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
Two member states are developing risk management option analyses (RMOAs) of new substances under Echa’s public activities coordination tool (PACT), which also assesses hazards. -
Bakken Poised to Set New Oil Production Mark, Continue Record Natural Gas Gains
May 23, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
Bakken Shale oil production in North Dakota is on track to establish a new daily production record, most likely this summer, while natural gas production is also expected to keep increasing, state and industry officials said Tuesday at the opening of the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference... -
Federal Court to Weigh Pipeline's Fate Today
May 24, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
A closely watched legal debate over the Keystone XL pipeline is set for a federal court hearing today. -
Oklahoma Judge Approves Quake Lawsuit Class Action; More Wastewater Wells Shut
May 23, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
A judge in Oklahoma has determined that a lawsuit filed after an earthquake, currently the second most powerful temblor recorded in the state's history, can move forward with class action status. -
CSB Chair Steps down Unexpectedly, Clearing Path for Another Trump Pick
May 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Rebecca Rainey
Vanessa Allen Sutherland, who the Obama administration appointed to lead the federal board that investigates and advises EPA and other agencies on industrial chemical accidents, announced unexpectedly May 21 that she will be resigning from the board next month... -
Digital 'Timebomb' Discovered in Devices Worldwide
May 24, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
At least half a million devices in 54 countries have been infected with dangerous malware that could be used to snoop on critical infrastructure, according to an alert shared yesterday by Cisco Talos. -
Committee Approves Spending Bill with Riders
May 23, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Maxine Joselow
The House Appropriations Committee yesterday approved a transportation and infrastructure spending bill for fiscal 2019 after rebuffing Democrats' attempt to strike 10 "poison pill" riders. -
(ACC Mentioned) New York City to Consider Banning Plastic Straws
May 23, 2018 | The Guardian
By Amanda Holpuch and Oliver Milman
A New York City council member announced on Wednesday his plan to ban plastic straws from the city of 8.5 million people, amid a growing effort across the globe to cut back on plastics. -
(ACC Mentioned) Glass Straws? Straw Straws? Here Are Some Eco-Friendly Alternatives to Plastic
May 23, 2018 | USA Today
By David Carrig
The war on plastic straws is growing as more companies like McDonald's face pressure to find sustainable and eco-friendly alternatives that won't pollute our oceans, litter our beaches or wind up harming animals. -
States Use Lawsuit to Pressure EPA Release of Ozone Designations
May 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
Several states suing EPA over the agency's long delay in designating areas of the country as either attaining or violating federal ozone standards are using their suit to pressure the agency against any further stalling in issuing the designations... -
In an Internal Memo, the White House Considered Whether to Simply ‘Ignore’ Federal Climate Research
May 23, 2018 | Washington Post
By Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin
White House officials last year weighed whether to simply “ignore” climate studies produced by government scientists or to instead develop “a coherent, fact-based message about climate science,” according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post. -
Panel Approves Bills to Boost Science, ARPA-E
May 23, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Christa Marshall
The House Science, Space and Technology Committee today advanced bills by voice vote that would expand the mission of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy and authorize Department of Energy science programs on everything from climate change research to fusion. -
Pruitt Focuses on 'Process,' Not Science, of Climate Finding
May 24, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen
EPA's air chief says Scott Pruitt is concerned that individuals with "alternative views" on climate change didn't get a chance to weigh in on whether a warming planet is hurting humanity. -
Oil Giants to Tell Judge Everyone Adds to Warming
May 24, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Anne C. Mulkern and Debra Kahn
Lawsuits that blame oil companies for damaging cities in California by sharpening climate change should be tossed out to avoid a cascade of similar cases, according to legal arguments being made by an oil company today.
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(ACC Mentioned) Editor’s Opinion: Embed Economics into Industry Goals
May 23, 2018 | Plastics Recycling Update
By Dan Leif
Lately, the wider plastics industry has been feeling the heat on materials disposal and litter.
The ocean plastics problem has been rightly amplified over the past two years through the work of nonprofit groups and concerned citizens, and government leaders across the globe have begun crafting product bans and other policy documents that specifically reference the marine debris issue.
Meanwhile, concerns over plastics are being highlighted on the cover of this month’s National Geographic as the publisher rolls out its multi-year “Planet or Plastic?” reporting and awareness initiative.
And now, recycling – a central component in the plastics industry’s list of sustainability talking points – is losing some of its luster among the general public. That’s because more and more news reports are detailing China’s import ban and the systematic shortfalls of the materials recovery industry that led to the contaminated bales at the heart of Beijing’s crackdown.
Plastics have had an environmental image problem for decades. But what was once a black eye now seems more like a fully battered body.
It’s little surprise, then, that plastics stakeholders are taking action. In early May, the Plastics Division of the American Chemistry Council (ACC), which counts among its members some of the world’s largest resin makers, announced a series of ambitious goals. The group wants all plastic packaging put on the market in the U.S. to be recyclable or recoverable by 2030. And it wants such packaging to actually be recycled or recovered by 2040.
As readers know well, hitting 100 percent recovery will take a lot of work, if not an outright miracle. Today, the plastic bottle sector, which enjoys a recovery infrastructure that is as robust as that of virtually any other material, sees a recovery rate in the U.S. below 30 percent. And the trend in packaging innovation has been to move toward pouches and other designs that are less recyclable than their predecessors.
In a press call announcing the recycling goals, the ACC’s plastics chief, Steve Russell, acknowledged that the numbers were “stretch” targets. But he also said his group was serious about them. “While plastics already contribute to sustainability, we also realize more needs to be done,” Russell said.
The group outlined its recycling areas of focus, which include market development, design for recycling, sortation innovation, and pyrolysis and other technologies geared toward hard-to-recycle products.
Those are all key realms, and it’s now up to the plastics recycling industry to work with the ACC and others to put aspirations into action.
But it’s also important to point out one key consideration that was not mentioned by resin makers: the fact that the current economics around prime plastics production inherently undercut opportunities for recycling evolution.
The shale oil boom in North America and other global factors have made it economically viable to continue to develop giant new petrochemical plants on the U.S. Gulf Coast and elsewhere.
The billions of dollars in investment in prime plastics manufacturing – on top of the billions that have flowed into that sector for decades – have created a situation where our bloated supply of new plastics has resulted in low virgin resin prices.
Recycled resin prices have had to follow suit, and margins in plastics recycling today are often far too tight to allow reclaimers and others to spend money on the processes that would be needed to grow recovery rates at all, let alone allow us to dream of hitting 100 percent.
Late last year, when it was reported that plastic bottle recycling rates in the U.S. had dropped 1.4 percentage points to 29.7 percent, Dave Cornell of the Association of Plastic Recyclers tied the slide to pricing factors.
“What we saw was recycled materials had to sell at competitive prices,” Cornell noted. “The prices dropped, [and] as the prices dropped there was pressure exerted on all aspects of the recycling stream, from the collection through the processing through the use.”
One could argue that it’s in this area that the ACC and their “big plastics” brethren can make the most impact in lifting recycling. If prime plastics giants commit to strategies that ensure resin prices are high enough across the board to support a healthy plastics recycling sector, bolstered plastics recovery rates will naturally follow.
And plastics giants will be able to honestly report that they had a hand in the progress.
Dan Leif is the managing editor at Resource Recycling, Inc., which publishes Resource Recycling, Plastics Recycling Update and E-Scrap News. He has been with the company since 2013 and has edited different trade publications since 2006. He can be contacted at dan@resource-recycling.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not imply endorsement by Resource Recycling, Inc. If you have a subject you wish to cover in an op-ed, please send a short proposal to news@resource-recycling.com for consideration.
https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2018/05/23/editors-opinion-embed-economics-into-industry-goals/
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(ACC Mentioned) On Honesty and 'Honest Brokers' in Government Science
May 24, 2018 | Competitive Enterprise Institute
By Marlo Lewis, Jr.
Today’s E&E News has an interesting article about Richard Yamada, a Ph.D. mathematician who is the key official helping Administrator Scott Pruitt reshape science policy at the Environmental Protection Agency.
The article quotes Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who have harsh words for Yamada and his boss.
Democratic Sens. Tom Carper of Delaware and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island sent a document to the Government Accountability Office detailing Yamada’s connection to the initiative.
“Political appointees at EPA under Administrator Pruitt are disregarding normal procedures and advice from career staff,” the lawmakers wrote, referring to Yamada. “By doing so, they are avoiding the procedures put in place by the agency to ensure compliance with federal law and risk undermining the integrity and impartiality of these boards.”
I would be tempted to dismiss their criticism as unselfconscious irony if deliberate misdirection were not the more likely explanation.
Every combatant in the nation’s major regulatory battles either is or has a dog in the fight. In such controversies, there are no honest brokers—i.e., persons who have no interest or stake in the outcome. EPA career staff are stakeholders. So are lawmakers like Carper and Whitehouse.
To be sure, some of the participants are honest people. However, they all have one thing in common—they do not pretend to be honest brokers.
If this simple insight were more widely shared, there would be less flimflam in the public square, because it would be harder for partisans to pose as impartial representatives of “The Science.”
Al Gore’s book and film, An Inconvenient Truth, exemplifies the rhetorical trickery I’m talking about. Gore presents himself as an apolitical Mr. Science and then, sometimes in the same breath, invokes the moral authority of science to trash his opponents as coal- and oil-industry shills. He relishes a famous quote by Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” (AIT, pp. 266-67).
Well, those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. The greenhouse gravy train feeds legions of scientists, advocacy groups, energy-rationing profiteers, regulatory bureaucrats, eco-litigators, and progressive politicians. It is difficult to get a man to question climate alarm when his federal grant, direct mail income, industrial policy privilege, regulatory power, prosecutorial pillage, or political career depends on his not questioning it.
Returning to the issue at hand, Senators Carper and Whitehouse complain that, under Dr. Yamada’s direction, EPA appointed “Dr. Tony Cox, a private consultant who had previously done work for ExxonMobil, the American Chemistry Council, and the American Petroleum Institute,” to serve as chair of the agency’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC). The senators note that Cox has “a possible financial conflict of interest” and “a possible appearance of a lack of impartiality.” They also fret that Mr. Pruitt appointed Cox instead of “independent scientists” preferred by agency “career scientists and lawyers.” They further note that “Normally, the Administrator follows career staff’s recommendations.”
In a recent op-ed, Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com handily debunks such criticism. Pruitt and Yamada are not attempting to replace “independent” with “conflicted” science advisors but to ensure that EPA’s critics, not just its clients, have a voice in the agency’s advisory committees. The “normal” arrangement is not only conflicted, it is also one-sided. Milloy explains:
Pruitt’s first move last fall was to reform the agency’s practice of appointing its own university research grantees to its science advisory boards so they would be in position to rubber-stamp agency actions. This practice contravened federal law that requires these boards to be made up of unbiased scientists.
In one example, a 26-member board had 24 EPA grantees who had received more than $200 million in research grants from the agency. These scientists were “reviewing” either their own research or the research of their colleagues. It was pal review, not peer review.
So, Pruitt changed the EPA’s policy. Researchers now must choose whether they want to receive research grants from the EPA or serve on its advisory boards. But they can’t do both.
Pruitt also appointed new members to some of these boards. For the first time in at least 20 years, individuals were appointed who are prominent critics of how the EPA uses science—including the chairmen of the two most important science advisory boards.
Pruitt rightly recognizes these boards are advisory in nature and he is not bound to accept their advice. As such, Pruitt should be commended for wanting to get different points of view from the members of his advisory boards. In contrast, the Obama EPA boards were largely just echo chambers of a single point of view.
When Senators Carper and Whitehead demand that agency advisors be “impartial” and “independent,” what they really mean is that all advisors should agree with them. They seek to marginalize and thus effectively silence experts whose views differ from theirs. Not coincidentally, Sen. Whitehouse is famous for demanding RICO investigations of companies and organizations that do not toe his party line on climate science and policy.
Democracy is an adversarial process. It relies on the marketplace of ideas to sort out the claims and counterclaims of rival interests, parties, and movements. Politicians and activists who invoke “honest broker” status for themselves, their party, or ideological faction are not honest. Their increasingly frequent attempt to use the prosecutorial powers of the state to chill debate is just plain cheating.
https://cei.org/blog/honesty-and-honest-brokers-government-science
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Deregulatory Proponents Urge Lawmakers to Codify Trump's 2-1 Order
May 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Rebecca Rainey
Supporters of the Trump administration's deregulatory agenda are urging lawmakers to codify President Donald Trump's executive order (EO) forcing OSHA, EPA and other agencies to repeal two existing rules for every new measure, though their call is drawing strong pushback from Democrats who say it will undermine protections by limiting rules' estimated benefits and devalue human lives.
Republican lawmakers held a May 23 hearing before the House Workforce Protections subcommittee to seek testimony on ways to build on the economic successes that they say stem from the administration's deregulatory efforts and their tax reform legislation.
“Despite the significant improvements to the economy thanks to regulatory reform and Republican-led tax reform efforts, more work is needed to build on this success. We still have 6.3 million Americans out of work, and we cannot afford to stop looking for ways to improve economic conditions and support American workers,” said subcommittee Chairman Bradley Byrne (R-AL) in his opening statement.
While witnesses representing small business and free-market groups touted the rollback of several Obama-era rules, some urged lawmakers to seek greater oversight over agency's ability to implement new regulations by codifying EO 13771.
Among other things, Trump's January 2017 order requires agencies to repeal two rules for every new measure issued, offset any new “net” regulatory costs their rules may impose and set a regulatory cost budget.
The order has drawn legal challenges from labor and environmental groups, who charge that it is unconstitutional and violates a host of statutory requirements. While a federal court dismissed the suit, Public Citizen v. Trump, finding that the plaintiffs lacked standing, they subsequently filed an amended complaint that sought to bolster their argument.
But the Department of Justice earlier this month filed a brief urging the court to again dismiss the case.
In addition, many economists have warned that the order's focus almost exclusively on rules' costs while ignoring their benefits will likely undermine future environmental health and safety protections.
But deregulatory proponents strongly back the order. In response to questions from Rep. Karen Handel (R-GA) on how to further ensure the regulatory climate “keeps pace with what's going on in the workplace,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a free-market group, touted the order's requirements.
Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, explained that “the goal is to provide safety at the least cost to the economy as a whole by improving the regulatory process to do that."
Such requirements “will discipline agencies with the new kind of regulations they issue, and provides incentives to go back and see if these regulations are doing what they’re supposed to do . . . the Congress could move further and actually codify this and it could take on the job to say that we need a smarter regulatory state and pass legislation requiring that of all agencies, including independent agencies."
Rules' Benefits
But Democrats during the hearing charged that the administration's efforts to delay, weaken or rollback regulations, puts “anti-regulatory ideology ahead of efforts to protect workers from lost pay, preventable workplace accidents, and continued discrimination in the workplace.”
“We do not have to choose between an economy that is strong and an economy that treats workers with dignity and respect . . . Committee Democrats believe that protecting workers from being killed on the job and ensuring that workers earn a fair wage for their work are basic principles that nearly all Americans share,” said Ranking Member Mark Takano (D-CA).
And in a tense exchange, Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ) questioned how the administration calculates the cost of a human life in a cost-benefit analysis for implementing safety regulations as required by the EO.
“If the cost of a human life was more than a net benefit does that mean we shouldn't impose the rule?” Norcross said referencing Holtz-Eakin's earlier comments.
Holtz-Eakin responded that while he did not have an exact number, that “You should impose the rule if the value of the lives saved are greater than the cost of implementing the rule. That's how the rule is implemented."
“So it's okay to kill people if there's a net benefit?” pressed Norcross who argued that the Trump cost-benefit analysis assigns a dollar value to human life. “Apparently people making rules seem to think that it's okay that small business, because they are small, shouldn’t play by the same rules and that's false. . .the loss of a human life is intolerable.”
“I think we need to remember the human side of this equation when we start talking about net benefits . . . when it comes to the human side of this that's what we're forgetting, how much money we're making but we're losing people at the same time,” said Norcross.
“Yeah these rules cost money,” he added. “But everyone comes home from the job."
The Democrats' witness, Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute also argued that regulations produce some benefits that the executive order may not allow agencies to consider.
“Rhetoric attacking regulations generally alleges that regulations are overly burdensome for employers and cost jobs, and opponents of regulations routinely emphasize the costs associated with regulations while ignoring their benefits. However, research shows that federal regulations in fact provide an overall net economic benefit and that they have a modestly positive or neutral effect on employment,” Shierholz said in her opening testimony.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/deregulatory-proponents-urge-lawmakers-codify-trumps-2-1-order
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Pulls Back from Total Ban on Dangerous Paint Stripping Chemical
May 24, 2018 | Salon
By Sarah Okeson
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt plans to lightly regulate the sweet-smelling solvent methylene chloride, commonly used in paint strippers, after meeting with the mothers of two men killed by the chemical.
Wendy Hartley, the mother of Kevin Hartley who died at age 21 in April 2017, and Cindy Wynne, mother of Drew Wynne, 31, who died in October, met with Pruitt. They brought photos of their sons and their sons’ death certificates.
“We do not need any more lives lost due to this,” Hartley said.
Under former President Barack Obama, the EPA proposed banning retail sales of the solventwhich, like milk, is sold by the gallon at stores such as Ace Hardware, Home Depot and Lowe’s.
But Pruitt’s EPA could propose only minimally tougher regulation. The only current federal regulations on the chemical, approved in 1997, say workers shouldn’t be exposed to more than 25 parts per million of methylene chloride.Nancy Beck, a top deputy in the EPA’s toxic chemical unit who also met with the two mothers, has worked to weaken regulation of dangerous chemicals. Beck, a former executive at the American Chemistry Council, has said that perhaps people weren’t following the directions on the labels on methylene chloride.
Since 1980, more than 50 accidental deaths have been linked to methylene chloride in the United States. Deaths from the chemical have been documented since 1947 when four men were overcome, and one died.
The solvent can be inhaled or absorbed through the skin. It can cause heart attacks and turns to carbon monoxide in the body. The solvent can only be used safely with a respirator and special gloves and is especially dangerous in confined spaces such as bathrooms or basements.
Kevin Hartley died while refinishing a bathtub with White Lightning Low Odor Stripper. Wynne was using a product named Goof Off, made by W.M. Barr, on the floor of a walk-in refrigerator.
Read more articles from the DC Report here.
The Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, which has opposed tougher regulations, spent $30,000 on federal lobbying in 2017.
The Environmental Defense Fund says the EPA should ban using methylene chloride to remove paint and not put exemptions in the regulations based on training, labeling or using protective equipment.
A rule on methylene chloride would be the first time the EPA has used the amended Toxic Substances Control Act to ban chemicals that are an “unreasonable risk” to health or the environment.
The European Union banned most consumer and professional uses of the chemical in 2011.
“How is it possible that you can go to a home improvement store and buy a paint remover that can kill you?” asked Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, who was the top official at the EPA overseeing pesticides and toxic chemicals. “How can we let this happen?
Wendy Hartley has her son’s last heartbeats tattooed on her chest. She asked doctors to print out a tracing of them after they turned off his life support. The heart-shaped locket around her neck holds his ashes.
https://www.salon.com/2018/05/24/epa-pulls-back-from-total-ban-on-dangerous-paint-stripping-chemical_partner/
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(ACC Mentioned) Pruitt Downplays EPA Role in PFAS Study Row
May 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
US EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has defended the agency's role in the recent controversy over a withheld PFAS study, arguing that the agency "does not have the authority" to release the document.
Mr Pruitt was responding to House Representative Dan Kildee (D – Michigan), who had raised concerns around recent reports that the EPA had helped suppress the release of a toxicology profile of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs).
He told the lawmaker – who represents Flint, Michigan, home to a widely publicised drinking water lead contamination crisis – that the EPA "is prioritising this issue".
But he said the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) is preparing this study and "has the authority to release it."
"As with all issues related to PFAS, EPA is working with our federal partners to participate in a unified dialogue," he added.
The controversy around the ATSDR study came up when Mr Pruitt testified in front of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee meeting last week. At the time, he said he was "not aware that there had been some holding back of the report."
"We need more information, not less," he added.
Mr Pruitt reiterated that sentiment in a letter to Mr Kildee. And he promised "concrete steps" to address PFASs. The letter is dated 21 May – the day before the EPA convened a two-day summit addressing the substances.
But Mr Kildee responded with a statement that said Mr Pruitt's EPA has demonstrated "lots of talk, but little action". And he demanded the Trump administration "get serious" about updating drinking water standards.
'Conspiracy theories'
Meanwhile, the American Chemistry Council has accused the NGO Union of Concerned Scientists of peddling "conspiracy theories" about its potential role in the PFAS controversy.
Its comments came in response to a blog post from UCS highlighting a House Democrats' inquiry into a January meeting between the ACC and EPA on PFASs. The NGO said the ACC has "a history of obstructing stronger science-based public health protections from harmful chemicals and [has] frequently used tobacco industry tactics to pressure policymakers."
But the ACC fired back in a blog post of its own, saying the allegations "are not based in fact and are incredibly irresponsible". The industry group says the ATSDR study did not come up at the meeting.
In recent weeks, the two organisations have also made public statements directed at one another over the EPA's proposed science 'transparency' rule.
https://chemicalwatch.com/67158/pruitt-downplays-epa-role-in-pfas-study-row
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Agencies Hashing out 'Consistent Messaging' for ATSDR's PFAS Study
May 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
Patrick Breysse, director of the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR), says federal agencies are working on developing “consistent messaging” for rolling out ATSDR's controversial draft risk numbers for perfluorinated chemicals that were blocked after EPA and the Defense Department (DOD) raised concerns that they were much stricter than EPA values.
His comments suggest that ATSDR, EPA, DOD and other agencies are working to resolve their differences over how to assess the risks of two of the most common per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), though it was not clear if this means ATSDR will roll back its earlier conservative estimates or maintain them while seeking to emphasize how its values are used.
“Right now, because there's such a concern across the greater federal government, we're working with our federal partners to come up with some consistent messaging around that tox profile,” Breysse told EPA's National Leadership Summit on PFAS May 22.
“So we're committed to making sure that everybody is on the same page about what our minimal risk levels (MRLs) are, and what they mean, and what our PFAS value numbers are and what they aren't.” He could not provide a date for release of the tox profile, but said “we look forward to releasing that soon."
His remarks come in the wake of a firestorm of criticism from community groups and the lawmakers who represent them after reports that the Trump administration blocked ATSDR's draft toxicological profile for four PFAS.
The chemicals are part of a ubiquitous class of substances -- widely used for their non-stick properties -- but which are linked to certain cancers and other harms and are turning up in the drinking water of hundreds of community water systems.
As first reported by Inside EPA, ATSDR's proposed MRLs for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) -- contained in a draft toxicological profile -- were as much as 10 times stricter than the risk estimates EPA used in its 2016 drinking water health advisories.
ATSDR's draft risk level for PFOS was stricter than EPA's because it sought to account for immunotoxicity risks, while ATSDR's PFOA assessment relied on a study that was issued weeks after EPA issued its May 2016 risk assessment and health advisory for the substance.
ATSDR in the draft tox profile also proposes two other MRLs for the PFAS chemicals perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA) and perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS), neither of which EPA has health advisories for.
But ATSDR's proposed MRLs -- which are used as public health screening levels -- drew concerns from EPA and DOD officials, who asked the White House to intervene and block their release. In January emails, they charged that because the draft MRLs were so much stricter than EPA values, their release would cause a “public relations nightmare.”
In the face of the criticism, ATSDR and EPA officials have committed to publicly releasing the draft document.
'Important New Information'
But it is not clear how or whether the agencies will be able to reach agreement.
Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, expressed confidence in ATSDR's draft toxicological profile for the four PFAS.
When asked by Inside EPA whether the agency's draft profile was valid, she said she had not reviewed the whole document but that “their approach and the use of MRLs, I think, provides important new information about the toxicity of these chemicals."
She added, “I don't think that they've done anything inappropriate in their analysis."
Breysse also suggested that the draft values would be maintained, telling the summit that “we're coming out with MRLs for four chemicals, and if you read the press, you probably already know what those numbers are.”
But he and other officials signaled that they may release the draft values but seek to improve their risk communication by emphasizing how an MRL is different from EPA's drinking water advisory levels and other standards.
“An MRL is a very unique number,” he told Inside EPA on the summit's sidelines, “and we use it in a very specific way.” He said federal agencies want to make sure everyone talks about the risk levels in the same way.
When asked about the length of time it was taking to develop the messaging -- given ATSDR had developed a draft dated August 2017 -- he said it had only been a couple months since the latest draft in January was getting close to being finalized, before the White House and other agencies intervened.
But EPA officials in January expressed concern with ATSDR's strict draft values and continue to warn about overly conservative approaches.
Peter Grevatt, director of EPA's Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water who is leading EPA's PFAS work, in internal January email exchanges disagreed with ATSDR's view that its draft MRLs, when converted to represent a drinking water intake level, did not differ much from EPA's health advisory.
During a May 22 panel discussion with Breysse, Grevatt also warned that adopting a risk safety level of zero would pose problems for the agency.
He also cited “risk communication” challenges EPA is facing. For instance, he responded to one audience member's comment that EPA's 70 parts per trillion health advisory for PFOA and PFOS was being too heavily leaned on by public health officials when determining if a water system should be deemed clean.
Leaning “in the direction of only zero is acceptable . . . [would be] very problematic for us,” he said. With advancing technologies, detection levels will be able to find contaminants at very small levels of concentration, he said, which raises a “risk communication challenge for us.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/agencies-hashing-out-consistent-messaging-atsdrs-pfas-study
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US FDA Consults on Guidance for Sunscreen Ingredient Studies
May 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The US FDA is consulting on draft guidance for studies evaluating the skin absorption of active ingredients in sunscreen and other over the counter products.
The guidance addresses Maximal Usage Trials (MUsT) studies, used to collect data on the potential risks of topical drugs – those applied to the body – when used at the maximum limits described on product packaging.
Once finalised, the guidance will make recommendations for how industry should conduct studies on topical active ingredients the FDA is evaluating.
MUsT studies are included as a method for demonstrating the safety and efficacy of sunscreen ingredients in a 2016 FDA final guidance document. This approach met resistance from the Public Access to Sunscreen (PASS) coalition – comprising health NGOs, chemical and sunscreen manufacturers and dermatologists – who said the studies' methodologies have no "established protocol" for use on sunscreen ingredients.
The FDA has not approved a new active sunscreen ingredient since the 1990s, and has a backlog of eight substance applications dating to as early as 2002.
Congress passed legislation in 2014 in part to address this issue. But the agency says it has yet to receive sufficient data to demonstrate the ingredients are "generally recognised as safe and effective" (Grase), and the backlog remains.
Barbara Kochanowski, senior vice president of regulatory and scientific affairs at the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, said in response to the latest draft guidance that it is "helpful to have FDA's current thinking". But she reiterated concerns that the MUsT methodology "has not been previously used or validated for sunscreen products".
"Industry uses many different methods to assess product safety, including rapid nonhuman testing and modelling," said Ms Kochanowski. "We encourage FDA to be open minded about the totality of available methods when evaluating ingredient safety."
https://chemicalwatch.com/67157/us-fda-consults-on-guidance-for-sunscreen-ingredient-studies
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States Seek to Leverage Federal Science in Battling Teflon Toxics
May 24, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
Cleaning up water and soil contaminated with widely used fluorinated chemicals is a top concern of state regulators, who despite addressing the problem on their own say they still need more direction and information from the federal government.
“We all recognize these are important issues and that we have to figure out a better way to address them,” Shawn Garvin, secretary for Delaware’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, told Bloomberg Environment.
“There needs to be some floor from which we all can work,” Garvin added as other state officials raised questions about water, soil, and even crop contamination.
Garvin joined other state officials and industry representatives at an Environmental Protection Agency summit May 22 and May 23 in Washington where EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced a long-term plan to address the ubiquitous class of several thousand chemicals.
They are used to create heat-, grease- and water-resistant products such as cookware, food wrappers, and firefighting foams. At sufficient exposure levels the compounds have been linked to a range of health effects from low birth weights to elevated cholesterol.
Pruitt said the agency would designate as hazardous two fluorochemicals—perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS)—develop maximum contaminant levels in drinking water for the chemicals, and follow up with recommendations on groundwater standards before the year’s end.
Though state officials welcomed the federal announcement, they say for the most part they are forging ahead on their own without federal leadership to respond to contamination concerns.
Forging AheadPruitt’s hazardous substance designation means states and localities could hold a responsible party liable for the contamination at various contaminated sites, meaning they can recover some of the cleanup costs, Kirk Koudelka, assistant commissioner for Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s land policy and strategic initiatives, said.
Minnesota reached a $850 million settlement with former producer 3M Co. in February over a Scotchgard ingredient that contaminated drinking water supplies, he said.
The settlement helped the state with cleanup costs at former 3M sites, but other states don’t have access to that pool of money.
New Jersey has had to dip into its own funds to conduct research into the risks posed by three of these chemicals. The state is poised to set state drinking water standards at 14 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS, Catherine McCabe, acting commissioner of New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said at the summit.
That’s compared to the EPA’s unenforceable advisory level of 70 parts per trillion it uses as guidance for any combination of the two chemicals.
States are generally ahead of federal agencies in addressing contamination from these chemicals, “and frankly EPA is catching up,” Brad Hutton, deputy director for New York State Department of Health, told Bloomberg Environment.
New York isn’t waiting for the U.S. EPA on PFOA and PFOS, but like New Jersey also is setting its own drinking water standards for the two chemicals, he said.
Test Methods, Science NeededMeanwhile, Michigan has found 31 sites—including five Department of Defense sites—contaminated with these fluorochemicals, Heidi Grether, director of state’s Department of Environmental Quality, said at the summit.
To gauge the extent of contamination, the state will test its public water sources which supply water to 75 percent of its residents. But, Grether said, the state needs direction from the EPA about the technical methods to use to test for the two targeted chemicals and what else should be evaluated.
For example, Grether asked if the state should also be testing its crops because the farmers have been using biosolids to fertilize their lands.
“How do we focus our activities when there is so much to ask for? How do we find that collective path?” she asked.
Seeking More SupportThe federal government has the scientists, funding, and laboratories that states lack to be able to research the dangers posed by these chemicals, state officials said.
“We prefer that EPA do the heavy lifting,” Scott Mandirola, director of West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, told Bloomberg Environment.
For instance, they are looking to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to release draft toxicological profiles for four fluorochemicals, including PFOA and PFOS, found at Superfund sites.
Patrick Breysse, who heads the agency, said the study would be released after the agency finalized its risk communication plan, but stopped short of providing a timeline.
The report is important because state public health officials can use these levels to set cleanup standards, Minnesota’s Koudelka said.
The federal government is aware that preventing fluorochemical contamination is a challenging issue that will require collaboration among all levels of government and the scientific community, David Ross, EPA assistant administrator for water, told the summit’s participants.
“There are no easy answers that have come out of this discussion, but we are committed to solving this problem,” Ross said.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/states-seek-to-leverage-federal-science-in-battling-teflon-toxics
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Washington State to Evaluate Six Flame Retardants
May 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Washington state is developing a report evaluating and setting out policy recommendations for six flame retardants: TPP, TCPP, TBPH, V6, IPTPP, and TBB.
The state's health department is acting in line with a law passed by the legislature in 2016. This banned five flame retardants from children's products, and directed the Department of Ecology to consider listing the latest six as chemicals of high concern for children (CHCC) under the Children's Safe Product Act.
The six were added to Washington's CHCC list last autumn.
As required by the bill, the health department is convening an advisory committee "to provide stakeholder input, expertise, and additional information in the development of recommendations" on the substances.
It will make recommendations to the legislature on policy options for reducing exposure, developing safer alternatives and restricting or prohibiting the use of the substances.
The committee's first meeting will be on this 15 June in Tumwater, Washington. Meetings have also been set for 17 August and 28 September.
https://chemicalwatch.com/67155/washington-state-to-evaluate-six-flame-retardants
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US Retail Giants Push for Sustainable Cosmetics with Industry Scorecard
May 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Vanessa Zainzinger
A group of organisations led by US retailers Walmart and Target has published a science-based scorecard for the personal care industry, aimed at helping manufacturers create safer and more sustainable products.
The two rival retailers and NGO Forum for the Future (FFTF) began work on the project three years ago. Addressing chemicals of concern and ingredient transparency emerged as one of the main issues from actions agreed at the 2014 beauty and personal care (BPC) product sustainability summit.
A core group of eighteen organisations across the BPC value chain - including Henkel, Johnson & Johnson, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Sustainability Consortium - has worked on the scorecard since.
The final result is made up of 32 key performance indicators (KPIs) for sustainable personal care products. These KPIs are clustered into four areas:
human health impact of ingredients and product formulations;
resource usage and emissions during sourcing, manufacturing and product use;
ingredient disclosure to consumers; and
environmental and health impacts of packaging.
The scorecard awards the highest number of points - 130 out of 400 - to the human health cluster, which focuses on aspects of chemicals in products.
The section includes a stewardship list of chemicals of concern. On it are all compounds on, among others, California's Prop 65 list of suspected carcinogens, the EU priority list of endocrine disruptors, and the list of carcinogens, mutagens and reprotoxicants (CMRs) under REACH Annex XVII.
Cosmetics manufacturers gather points on the scorecard by making sure their product does not include any chemicals on the stewardship list. Extra points are given to companies with a publicly stated policy not to include any of these substances in their formulations.
The stewardship list covers both intentionally and unintentionally added ingredients. For good practice, it says, companies should certify their product for safety by a third party, such as the Safer Choice or Cradle to Cradle Certified product standard.
Boma Brown-West, senior manager of consumer health at NGO the Environmental Defense Fund, told Chemical Watch that through the scorecard major retailers are sending a joint signal to suppliers that it’s time to improve product sustainability.
"This scorecard will incentivise a race to the top for safer, more sustainable products. While federal regulation continues to lag, this sets a clear, market-driven benchmark for sustainability performance," she said.
"There’s a divide in the marketplace between companies who make safer product innovation a cornerstone of their business and those who do not. This scorecard will shed more light on the performance divide in the industry," Ms Brown-West said.
However, in a blog post following the announcement. she said that despite major retailers’ aligning on the stewardship list, the group could not reach consensus on how much the reduction of the use of chemicals on the lists should contribute to a product’s sustainability score.
"This was disappointing to EDF; we hope that in the future, activity regarding the stewardship list will be sufficiently rewarded in practice," she said.
Other KPIs cover compliance with the International Fragrance Association (Ifra) standards for fragrance ingredients in final formulations; and a product’s chemical footprint. Companies gain points by measuring their chemical footprint, according to the NGO Clean Production Action's initiative, and publicly disclosing it.
And several KPIs cover ingredient disclosure. To score the highest points, suppliers should provide information on all chemicals on the stewardship list that are reasonably expected to be present at detectable levels, whether they were intentionally or unintentionally added.
Lists of allergens, the function of each ingredient in the product, and names of any nanomaterials contained in it, should be publicly available, either on the pack or on online.
https://chemicalwatch.com/67145/us-retail-giants-push-for-sustainable-cosmetics-with-industry-scorecard
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BPS Rapidly Replacing BPA in Thermal Paper – Echa Survey
May 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
EU paper manufacturers are increasingly substituting bisphenol A with bisphenol S in thermal paper, an Echa market survey has found.
From 2 January 2020, BPA cannot be placed on the market in thermal paper in a concentration equal to or greater than 0.02% by weight.
BPS has widely been seen as the obvious replacement, but concernshave been raised that it has a similar structure to BPA and can function in the same way in chemical products.
BPA is on the candidate list because it is toxic to reproduction, and has endocrine-disrupting properties which cause probable serious effects to human health and the environment.
Use of BPS in thermal paper has almost doubled between 2016 and 2017, Echa’s survey – which was requested by the European Commission – found.
This contrasts with an earlier Echa survey which revealed that in the period 2014-16 use of BPS instead of BPA in thermal paper did not show a marked rise.
About 30% of thermal paper in the EU is imported from China, India, Japan, Korea and the US, Echa says. Information on how the use of different chemicals, or ‘developers’, in these products changed during the inspected period was not available for the survey, it says.
The substitution of BPA with BPS is "worrisome", given that the Opinion of Echa’s Risk Assessment Committee on BPA indicated that BPS "is suspected to have many of the same adverse health effects", the agency said in a press release.
The Commission will use the market survey report, while it considers whether a proposal to restrict BPS is necessary, Echa says. And it will carry out the next survey in early 2019.
Substances used in thermal paper placed on the EU market by EU manufacturers in 2016 and 2017 (tonnes)
https://chemicalwatch.com/67156/bps-rapidly-replacing-bpa-in-thermal-paper-echa-survey
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European Union’s BPA Limits Show Potentially Harmful Substitute
May 23, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
A European Union restriction on the chemical bisphenol A might have backfired by encouraging companies to switch to a similar substance that could be equally hazardous, the European Chemicals Agency said.
And the agency said it is in favor of an evaluation of the whole class of bisphenol compounds to address future substitution risks.
In 2016, the EU decided to limit bisphenol A—commonly known as BPA—in thermal paper used for cash register receipts to no more than 0.02 percent by weight, on the basis that bisphenol A is classified in the EU as toxic to reproduction and can disrupt the endocrine system. The restriction takes effect in 2020 to give manufacturers time to phase out the substance from thermal paper.
However, in anticipation of the phaseout, use of a similar chemical—bisphenol S—in thermal paper almost doubled in 2017 compared to 2016, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) said in a report published May 22.
WorriesThe substitution is worrisome because bisphenol S is thought to have the same harmful properties as bisphenol A, ECHA said in a statement. The EU might consider a similar restriction on bisphenol S in thermal paper, the agency said, but gave no date by when such a restriction might be proposed.
The use of bisphenol A in thermal paper actually increased by around 7 percent in 2017, in the context of an overall increase of 10 percent in the amount of thermal paper sold in the EU, the agency said. Bisphenol A is a widely used chemical that is produced in, or imported into, the EU in annual volumes of up to 10 million metric tons, according to ECHA data.
BPA is banned or limited in the EU in infant feeding bottles and toys. Some of the EU’s 28 member countries have national bans on certain uses of the substance, such as in France, where it is banned in food packaging and containers.
Costlier AlternativesAlternatives to bisphenol A and bisphenol S in thermal papers exist but are more expensive, Stefan Kauer, a spokesman for the European Thermal Paper Association, told Bloomberg Environment May 23.
Thermal paper manufacturers have different views on the issue, with those that use bisphenol A and bisphenol S maintaining, “it’s not been proven to do any harm,” Kauer said.
Germany’s Koehler Paper Group—which claims to manufacture half the cash register rolls used in the EU—offers paper that contains bisphenol A and paper that is phenol-free. Katja Frede, a spokeswoman for Koehler, told Bloomberg Environment the company was unable to respond to a request for comment May 23.
Thermal paper manufacturers Schades A/S and KANZAN Spezialpapiere GmbH did not respond to requests for comment May 23.
Address Whole ClassWhen deciding on restrictions on hazardous chemicals, EHCA and the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, should consider groups of chemicals rather than individual substances, Natacha Cingotti, a senior policy officer with the Health and Environment Alliance, told Bloomberg Environment May 23.
In addition to bisphenol A and bisphenol S, there are bisphenols F, AF and Z, among others, and “what would make sense would be to assess all bisphenols at the same time,” Cingotti said.
ECHA agreed.
It would be “meaningful, from scientific point of view, to address the risks of bisphenols that could be alternatives to bisphenol A as a group, rather than to do this only on a substance-by-substance basis,” the agency told Bloomberg Environment May 23.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/european-unions-bpa-limits-show-potentially-harmful-substitute
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UBA Scientist: EU Needs Single Source of PBT Guidance and Expertise
May 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Andrew Turley
The process for identifying persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic substances (PBTs) should be harmonised across EU legislation via a unified source of guidance and expertise, a German regulatory scientist said.
Speaking at a scientific conference run by the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (Setac) in Rome last week, Caren Rauert from the German Environment Agency (UBA) said the process should be the same, regardless of the legislative implications.
To this end, there should be just one official source of guidance and just one PBT expert group, with authority across all relevant EU legislation. She added that all regulatory PBT assessments should take into account transformation products.
Several distinct pieces of EU legislation require substance registration and PBT assessment, including:
· REACH;
· the biocidal products Regulation (BPR);
· the pesticides, or plant protection products" (PPP), Regulation;
· the veterinary medicinal product (VMP) Regulation; and
· the POPs Regulation.
With help from UBA colleagues, Ms Rauert identified substances that had been registered under multiple regulations and undergone PBT assessment. The data came from sets maintained by Echa, the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
They found that, in some cases, the way the substance had been assessed varied with the legislation. Assessors generally interpreted decision criteria in the same way, but took different approaches to acceptance of data, both in terms of quality and quantity, and derived endpoint values differently.
The variation could be partly accounted for by lack of consistency in the guidance, Ms Rauert said, with documents coming from Echa, the EMA and the European Commission. The various regulations require different approaches to:
· transformation products;
· bioaccumulation studies that have not been conducted according to OECD-validated methods;
· in silico methods, such as Qsar prediction; and
· derivation of endpoint values in the case of multiple studies with different outcomes.
Furthermore, some pieces of legislation, such as the BPR, require PBT assessment of all registered substances, but others, such as REACH, require PBT assessment of only some substances.
Ms Rauert outlined how PBT assessment might be harmonised across relevant EU legislation in a paper published in Environmental Sciences Europe in 2014.
https://chemicalwatch.com/67151/uba-scientist-eu-needs-single-source-of-pbt-guidance-and-expertise
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EU Member States Prepare RMOAs on Potential CMRs
May 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
Two member states are developing risk management option analyses (RMOAs) of new substances under Echa’s public activities coordination tool (PACT), which also assesses hazards.
Austria is preparing to assess 2-methyl-1-(4-methylthiophenyl)-2-morpholinopropan-1-one due to concerns it has potential carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic (CMR) properties.
The Netherlands is also developing plans to assess ammonium 2,3,3,3-tetrafluoro-2-(heptafluoropropoxy)propanoate because of its suspected CMR properties and specific target organ toxicity via repeat exposure (Stot RE).
And three member states and Norway are preparing hazard assessments on potential persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) chemicals. They are:
· Belgium: 2,4,6-tri-tert-butylphenol;
· Italy: quaternary ammonium compounds, tri-C8-10-alkylmethyl, chlorides;
· Norway: n,n'-ethylenebis(3,4,5,6-tetrabromophthalimide); and
· Spain: a mixture of n,n'-ethane-1,2-diylbis(decanamide), 12-hydroxy-N-[2-[1-oxydecyl)amino]ethyl]octadecanamide, n,n'-ethane-1,2-diylbis(12-hydroxyoctadecanamide).
Meanwhile, France is planning an assessment of the suspected endocrine disruptor, tetraphenyl m-phenylene bis(phosphate).
https://chemicalwatch.com/67162/eu-member-states-prepare-rmoas-on-potential-cmrs
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Bakken Poised to Set New Oil Production Mark, Continue Record Natural Gas Gains
May 23, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
Bakken Shale oil production in North Dakota is on track to establish a new daily production record, most likely this summer, while natural gas production is also expected to keep increasing, state and industry officials said Tuesday at the opening of the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference (WBPC) in Bismarck.
"We think this is the month we break the oil production mark above 1.2 million b/d, but natural gas has set records month after month after month, too," said Lynn Helms, director off the Department of Mineral Resources, which oversees the oil and gas industry.North Dakota Petroleum Council (NDPC) President Ron Ness echoed Helms predictions, noting that this year's conference may draw up to about 2,700 participants. NDPC is hosting the event.
"I think we all agree that now that the road restrictions [statewide since winter] have been lifted, we are going to break the all-time oil production record and it will probably be in June, and that's a big deal," Ness said. "It seems like we're definitely back in a growth mode."
Helms and Ness previewed the three-day industry meeting as a showcase for change in the industry’s operations. The last WBPC meeting in Bismarck was two years ago. Well completion technology has totally changed since the, said Helms. "Two years ago it was bigger hydraulic fracturing jobs, with more stages, and now it is very focused and the way it is being applied is brand new, even though the size of the frack jobs haven’t changed," he said.
"They are measuring rock properties while they are drilling these wells and focusing the fracture on foot-by-foot rock properties," Helms said.
Another topic Helms was touting for discussion at the WBPC is enhanced oil recovery (EOR), and it is an oilfield practice he expects to see a lot more of in the Bakken in the months and years to come. Bakken EOR is being tested, and Helms is expecting a lot more discussion about the prospects. "We have the potential to double or triple the recovery from the Bakken formation," he said.
Ness responded to a news media question about gas capture to underscore its position as a major focus of the NDPC, but he also called out the Fort Berthold Reservation as a growing major source of Bakken production, noting that the latest volumes there stand at about 315,000 b/d. Helms added that all four of the most recently added rigs were on Fort Berthold, where flaring has been an issue in a part of the state that has long been a production stronghold.
Regulatory and rights-of-way permitting bottlenecks on the reservation are a focus of the petroleum council as are a number of new pipeline technology advances that are being developed, Ness said. "The [North Dakota] Industrial Commission last week approved $1.4 million for the i-Pipe Project, which is being led by a half-dozen Bakken producers that have formed a collaboration on advancing leak detection and mitigation technology.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/114476-bakken-poised-to-set-new-oil-production-mark-continue-record-natural-gas-gains
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Federal Court to Weigh Pipeline's Fate Today
May 24, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
A closely watched legal debate over the Keystone XL pipeline is set for a federal court hearing today.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Montana is scheduled to hear arguments over whether the Trump administration violated the law when it approved a permit for Keystone XL last year.
President Trump pushed to expedite approval of the contentious TransCanada Corp. oil project as soon as he took office in 2017, and the State Department issued a critical cross-border permit two months later.
But a coalition of environmental and tribal advocacy groups says the administration's reliance on a 2014 environmental impact statement violated federal law, falling short of the National Environmental Policy Act's requirement that agencies take a "hard look" at potential impacts of major projects.
The Sierra Club, Bold Alliance, the Indigenous Environmental Network and several other groups filed lawsuits in Montana, claiming violations of NEPA and the Administrative Procedure Act.
The groups face off today with lawyers from TransCanada and the Trump administration. Both sides have asked the Montana district court to grant summary judgment in their favor. Government lawyers argue that Trump officials were well within their authority to approve the project and had discretion to reject the conclusions of the Obama administration, which rejected Keystone XL in 2015.
The environmental groups, meanwhile, are focused on claims that the government cannot support its approval with the 2014 EIS, especially in light of route changes required by Nebraska regulators last year (Energywire, April 3).
The groups cleared a major hurdle last November when Judge Brian Morris, an Obama appointee, rejected government requests to toss the lawsuits (Greenwire, Nov. 22, 2017).
Morris is presiding over today's hearing at 10 a.m. MDT in Great Falls, Mont., and will issue a decision in the coming months on the fate of the project. The losing side is likely to challenge the decision at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The litigation is one of a few remaining hurdles to construction of the pipeline. After Nebraska regulators approved an alternative route last year, developers were left scrambling to gain route access from a new set of landowners and secure investment dollars. TransCanada officials have said they have substantial market support for the project.
The pipeline also needs a right of way from the Bureau of Land Management to cross federal land in Montana. The government is working on a supplemental environmental analysis for that application.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/05/24/stories/1060082529
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Oklahoma Judge Approves Quake Lawsuit Class Action; More Wastewater Wells Shut
May 23, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
A judge in Oklahoma has determined that a lawsuit filed after an earthquake, currently the second most powerful temblor recorded in the state's history, can move forward with class action status.
Meanwhile, state regulators on Wednesday issued a directive for operators to shut in four wastewater disposal wells and curtail injection volumes at 21 others, after a 3.7-magnitude earthquake struck last week near Crescent in Logan County.
The directive by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) and its Oil and Gas Conservation Division (OGCD) calls for three operating disposal wells targeting the Arbuckle formation to cease operations. It also directed a fourth well not be allowed to resume operations. All the wells are within a three-mile radius of the earthquake that struck 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) north of Crescent on May 17.
The OGCD called for an additional 21 disposal wells within three to 10 miles of the Crescent quake, to make a 20% reduction to average daily volumes that are above 500 b/d. The reduction is in addition to any past directives that reduced volumes.
"Based on the last 30-day average, this action is calculated to result in an overall further reduction in Arbuckle disposal of 2,848 b/d," the OGCD said. "Further, operators of those wells which have reduced their depth to avoid injecting too close to the basement rock will be required to verify the well's bottom hole plug integrity."
The directive applies to 25 disposal wells in total, of which 20 have operated within the last 30 days. Of the 25 wells, 13 are operated by White Star Petroleum LLC and five are operated by Stephens Energy Group LLC. Kirkpatrick Oil Co. Inc. is listed as the operator of two wells, as is Dorado E&P Partners LLC. Berexco LLC, Longfellow Energy LP and Stephens Production Co. each operate one of the three remaining wells.
Of the four wells ordered shut in by the directive, two are operated by Stephens Energy and two are operated by White Star.
In the lawsuit, Judge Lori Walkley in a summary order filed last Friday ruled that class action status is appropriate for the case Jennifer Lin Cooper v. New Dominion LLC et al, No. CJ-2015-24, which is in Lincoln County District Court.
"In particular, this court finds that the questions of law or fact common to the members of the class predominate over any questions affecting only individual members, and that a class action is superior to other available methods for fair and efficient adjudication of the controversy," Walkley wrote.
The lawsuit was filed in 2015, in response to a 5.7-magnitude temblor that shook the area around Prague, OK, on Nov. 6, 2011. Two people suffered minor injuries from the earthquake, which also damaged several buildings. A 4.8-magnitude aftershock was recorded two days later. At the time, the Prague temblor was the largest recorded in Oklahoma history; it was surpassed by a 5.8-magnitude earthquake that struck the Pawnee, OK, area on Sept. 3, 2016.
According to attorney Scott Poynter with the Little Rock, AR-based firm Poynter Law Group who is representing Cooper, Walkley's order will allow citizens with residential or business properties in nine counties to participate in the class action. Poynter will serve as counsel for the class. The counties are Cleveland, Creek, Lincoln, Logan, Okfuskee, Oklahoma, Payne, Pottawatomie and Seminole.
Poynter said the case is scheduled for trial beginning Sept. 10. It is expected to last two weeks. "If plaintiffs are successful in September, anyone within the class area will only have to prove their damages related to the earthquakes to win a judgment against New Dominion," he said.
Regulators with the OGCD have been attempting to mitigate induced seismic activity across the state since 2015. The agencies have focused on wastewater injection wells targeting the Arbuckle formation -- especially the Mississippian Lime and the Hunton Dewatering play -- within a 15,000-square mile area of interest in the state.
Scientists with the Oklahoma Geological Survey attribute many of the recent quakes to the disposal of extremely salty water -- a byproduct of oil and gas production -- in underground injection wells.
OCC records show that Tulsa-based New Dominion operates 41 wastewater disposal wells in the state. Of those, 14 are in Seminole County, while eight are in Pottawatomie County and six are in Oklahoma County. Lincoln and Okfuskee counties each have five of the company's disposal wells, while the remaining three are in Hughes County. Twenty-eight wells are listed as targeting the Arbuckle and other formations.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/114484-oklahoma-judge-approves-quake-lawsuit-class-action-more-wastewater-wells-shut
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CSB Chair Steps down Unexpectedly, Clearing Path for Another Trump Pick
May 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Rebecca Rainey
Vanessa Allen Sutherland, who the Obama administration appointed to lead the federal board that investigates and advises EPA and other agencies on industrial chemical accidents, announced unexpectedly May 21 that she will be resigning from the board next month, though it is not clear if or who President Trump will select to fill two vacant slots on the panel given his administration's push to eliminate it.
While Sutherland did not provide a reason for her early departure from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), she said in a May 21 statement that she is “saddened to leave the wonderful mission and incredible work of the CSB. This mission is unique and critically important because we are the only agency conducting independent, comprehensive root cause chemical incident investigations.”
“As we continue to recognize the agency’s 20th anniversary of operations, we still have much work to do to achieve our vision of a nation safe from chemical disasters. And I️ am absolutely certain that this team, and future hires, will both excel in execution and outshine our prior efforts. I’m fortunate to have been a part of the work,” added Sutherland.
While it is not clear why Sutherland is leaving, her announcement came days after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt issued a proposed rule that rolls back an Obama-era measure that sought to strengthen the agency's facility safety Risk Management Plan (RMP) program.
CSB, created by the Clean Air Act amendments, is tasked with investigating industrial facility accidents that inform regulations at Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), EPA and other agencies.
The board is typically comprised of five members but has been operating with just four after the March 2015 departure of former chair Rafael Moure-Eraso, who stepped down after charges of mismanagement.
But the Trump administration has not nominated a replacement for that vacant slot and has sought to eliminate the board in budgets that it proposed for fiscal years 2018 and 2019, though appropriators have preserved and even increased the board's funds.
As Sutherland's resignation was unexpected, observers are uncertain of who -- or whether -- the Trump administration will pick one or more nominees to fill the vacancies.
The board members will be required to vote on an interim executive, unless and until the White House nominates and the Senate confirms a new chairperson, according to the announcement.
'Straight Down The Line'
Jordan Barab, former deputy OSHA chief under the Obama administration said that Sutherland was “fairly straight down the line” regarding her performance and did not weigh heavily for or against industry in her decisions. He expects that the reason why she is stepping down is unrelated to her performance.
Jim Frederick of the United Steelworkers says that “there have been certainly some good things that have transpired,” during Sutherland's tenure, including “some really important and significant recommendations issued by that agency that made workers safer today”
He adds that the agency is “vitally important to members across the Steelworkers' unions in industries where we have had there catastrophic events” and added that the administration should be “keeping an eye on the ball” in regards to “the importance of what the CSB does,” especially in the wake of recent proposals to eliminate the agency.
Frederick notes that while he was concerned with efforts “moving towards less in-depth investigations in exchange for completing them in a quicker time frame,” adding that “it's a dual edged sword.”
“We don't want to complain about getting the reports sooner but we would rather have a quality investigation than something that's less in-depth."
Some industry attorneys were surprised at Sutherland's sudden departure.
Eric Conn, an industry attorney of the firm Conn Maciel Carey reacted to the news on Twitter: “This is unexpected news. I have been very impressed with Chairwoman Sutherland’s leadership at the @chemsafetyboard. She really helped heal an environment of distrust between the CSB and employer community. Hopefully the agency continues on that path after she leaves.”
Sutherland was nominated by former President Barack Obama in March 2015 and previously served as chief counsel for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration at the Transportation Department.
Three Members
But her departure in June will mean that the five-member Board will only have three members, compounding staffing issues that are already weighing down the agency.
“The CSB has been plagued by internal issues over its entire lifetime and many employees are reportedly concerned about deskilling of their jobs, dumbing down of reports with a focus on the technical causes of an incident, rather than the root causes and recommendations related to the flawed regulatory and public policy environment that can more effectively address the ongoing serious industry incidents,” wrote Barab in a May 16 post to his blog Confined Space.
“Close to one-third of CSB investigators left the agency in the last year mostly due to management issues, and no investigators have been hired to replace those that have left.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/csb-chair-steps-down-unexpectedly-clearing-path-another-trump-pick
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Digital 'Timebomb' Discovered in Devices Worldwide
May 24, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
At least half a million devices in 54 countries have been infected with dangerous malware that could be used to snoop on critical infrastructure, according to an alert shared yesterday by Cisco Talos.
The "VPNFilter" malware can steal data and wreck internet routers and appears to have been built by nation-state hackers, the cyber intelligence branch of Cisco Systems Inc. concluded.
"Both the scale and the capability of this operation are concerning," Talos said in a blog postshared yesterday.
The U.S. Justice Department said it had taken control of the "botnet" of hacked devices in the wake of Talos' announcement, according to a press release issued last night. Law enforcement officials said the hackers, identified as the Russia-linked Sofacy or "Fancy Bear" group, have been active since 2007 and target "government, military, security organizations, and other targets of perceived intelligence value."
"By seizing a domain used by malicious cyber actors in their botnet campaign, the FBI has taken a critical step in minimizing the impact of the malware attack," said Scott Smith, assistant director for the FBI's Cyber Division.
Researchers cautioned that they were still analyzing the full extent of the campaign, which first keyed in on Ukrainian targets but has spread worldwide.
Talos cited several "concerning" characteristics of the malware, including its authors' interest in the industrial control systems underpinning the power grid and other critical infrastructure networks.
VPNFilter includes a component capable of scooping up Modbus communications protocols, enabling hackers to spy on specialized grid equipment. Modbus is a kind of digital language shared by many common industrial control system (ICS) devices.
Talos said VPNFilter carries technical echoes of the "BlackEnergy 3" malware unearthed in Ukrainian power utilities 2 ½ years ago. But unlike BlackEnergy 3, which helped suspected Russian hackers burrow farther into Ukraine's grid and ultimately cut off power in late December 2015, the VPNFilter tool isn't known to have been used in any damaging cyberattacks.
"I'm not sure that monitoring Modbus means much without additional context," noted Adam Crain, founder of the Automatak LLC consultancy and an expert in control system communication protocols. He pointed out that control system traffic isn't normally encrypted, allowing attackers to eavesdrop without much effort. "If the intelligence gathering is used to gain enough context to later control [or] manipulate the process — yeah, that's a big deal."
Talos security researcher Joe Marshall said that the ICS sniffer module wasn't well-written compared with the rest of VPNFilter and "has a possibility of missing certain types of traffic it was likely intended to detect."
Still, he added that an attacker with access to control system traffic "can perform reconnaissance for future potentially disruptive attacks."
"Modbus is an incredibly common ICS protocol, and is found in all major industrial verticals," Marshall pointed out in an emailed response to questions.
Destructive potential
VPNFilter could wipe infected routers en masse, blocking internet access for hundreds of thousands of users and perhaps causing headaches for infrastructure operators who rely on the networking devices. Products from Linksys, MikroTik and Netgear are among those affected, according to a rare alert from the Department of Homeland Security.
The depth and reach of the campaign drew warnings from former White House security officials.
Rob Joyce, who until this month served as President Trump's cybersecurity coordinator, called VPNFilter an "important intrusion to address," while Michael Daniel, who served in the same role during the Obama administration, urged organizations "to review Cisco's blog and implement its recommendations as soon as possible."
U.K. cybersecurity firm SophosLabs likened VPNFilter to a "malware timebomb" in a blog postyesterday, emphasizing that homes and small businesses aren't immune from being roped into the "zombie" army of hundreds of thousands of hacked devices.
"As far as we can see, performing a firmware refresh on many home routers will wipe the VPNFilter malware, along with many other strains of router malware," SophosLabs said.
Talos offered similar advice, urging everyone to reset routers to factory defaults and reboot them.
But the company noted that "this threat is extremely difficult" to defend against, given the number of known vulnerabilities in routers that average users will have trouble fixing.
"Most devices targeted, particularly in older versions, have known public exploits or default credentials that make compromise relatively straightforward," Talos said. "All of this has contributed to the quiet growth of this threat since at least 2016."
Talos noted a May 17 uptick in malicious activity involving VPNFilter in Ukraine, prompting the company to go public with its preliminary findings.
For its part, Ukraine's security service has blamed Russia for the cyber intrusions, suggestingthe VPNFilter tool may be part of an effort to disrupt the upcoming Champions League final soccer match in Kiev, Ukraine, this Saturday.
The Security Service of Ukraine added that the malware's focus on control systems is "of particular concern," saying that the country's critical infrastructure networks are "priority targets."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/05/24/stories/1060082573
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Committee Approves Spending Bill with Riders
May 23, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Maxine Joselow
The House Appropriations Committee yesterday approved a transportation and infrastructure spending bill for fiscal 2019 after rebuffing Democrats' attempt to strike 10 "poison pill" riders.
The vote was 34-17.
Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.), chairman of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee, hailed the bill as a "historic down payment to rebuild our nation's infrastructure."
With President Trump's much-touted infrastructure plan failing to gain traction on the Hill, Díaz-Balart said, "this is the infrastructure bill that Congress will be dealing with."
Republicans successfully blocked an amendment from Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), ranking member on the subcommittee, that would have eliminated the 10 riders.
The amendment was rejected 21-29.
Price argued that the riders "attack high-speed rail, harm labor rights and roll back transportation safety for the traveling public."
He added, "I understand there are highway crash victims in attendance this afternoon. Their stories provide powerful testimony about the dangers of relaxing our transportation safety laws."
Díaz-Balart countered that the riders were all designed to benefit average Americans. "As members of Congress, we have an obligation to craft commonsense legislation that benefits the people who send us here," he said.
"Now, whether it's ensuring that hard-working truck drivers have uniform rest break regulations or saving taxpayer dollars from unfeasible projects with runaway cost estimates, the policy provisions in this bill fulfill that obligation to the people we represent," he said.
One rider would prohibit federal funding from being used to buy passenger transit rail cars from Chinese firms, which have been known to engage in cyberespionage. Republicans on the panel defended the provision as necessary for national security.
Another rider would pre-empt laws in California and 20 other states to provide meal and rest breaks for truck drivers. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) gave an impassioned speech opposing the provision.
"When we share the highways with trucks during our commutes or when driving our families, we shouldn't have to worry if a driver is being pushed to his or her limits of fatigue," she said.
A third rider would prohibit federal funding of a high-speed rail project in California. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), a longtime supporter of the project, blasted what she called the "anti-worker, anti-safety provision."
The committee did agree in a voice vote to an amendment from Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) that would include language in the bill requesting that the Department of Transportation release studies on the impact of increasing twin trailer truck size from 28 feet to 33 feet.
Fleischmann clarified, "This amendment is for report language only and does not change existing law."
Lawmakers also agreed in a voice vote to an amendment from Wasserman Schultz that would increase funding for Section 202, a program that helps expand affordable housing for the elderly, to the fiscal 2018 enacted level. Without the amendment, the bill would have reduced the program's funds.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/05/24/stories/1060082583
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(ACC Mentioned) New York City to Consider Banning Plastic Straws
May 23, 2018 | The Guardian
By Amanda Holpuch and Oliver Milman
A New York City council member announced on Wednesday his plan to ban plastic straws from the city of 8.5 million people, amid a growing effort across the globe to cut back on plastics.
“We depend on plastic, and that is a trend we have to reverse immediately,” said city council member Rafael Espinal, who discussed his proposed ban at a press conference on the southern tip of Manhattan, with the Statue of Liberty in the background.
Various governments and businesses have been jolted by concerns over plastic pollution by cracking down on the humble straw.
Alaska Airlines on Monday said it would phase out plastic stirrers and straws from its in-flight service. In April, the British government announced plans to ban plastic straws, along with stirrers and cotton buds, by next year. And McDonald’s has said its customers in the UK will have to ask for straws if they want them and has announced a trial of paper straws.
Espinal’s proposed ban follows a failed effort by the city council to add a 5-cent fee to plastic and paper bag use. New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, has said he supports banning plastic bags but has not advanced a plan to enact such a ban, which already exists in California and Hawaii.
Espinal spoke at an observation point on the Hudson river nestled between crowds of tourists, including two men who sipped iced coffee using plastic straws.
The pair gestured at their straws as Espinal spoke about his concerns, then left just after the council member said he would be introducing a bill to ban plastic straws to the city council that afternoon.
In the interim, Espinal has advised New York City businesses to stop automatically providing plastic straws at restaurants and in takeaway orders and instead only provide them at the customer’s request.
Espinal also announced that more than 130 restaurants in the city had signed on to the “Give a Sip” campaign, which promotes using straws made from plastic alternatives including biodegradable paper, bamboo and metal.
The city’s Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is leading this campaign, which has signatories including museums, hotels and Michelin-starred fine dining restaurants. Notably absent from the list are some of the main culprits of New York City’s straw use: coffee shops, juice bars and fast-food restaurants.
John Calvelli, WCS’s executive vice-president of public affairs, said plastic straws were deadly for local turtles, whales, fish and birds. “A single straw may seem like nothing; it’s not,” Calvelli said.
This effort was also supported by the Yemeni American Merchants Association, a group that represents hundreds of owners of New York City corner stores, known as bodegas.
“You would be amazed to see how many people use doubles straws, how many people use straws as a toothpick,” said Zaid Nagi, vice-president of the association.
If the bill is enacted into law, restaurants that continue to use straws, or plastic stirrers, would be warned, then face fines between $100 and $400. It would also make exceptions for people with disabilities or medical conditions that require them to use straws.
In the US, the west coast cities of Seattle – following a campaign dubbed “Strawless in Seattle” – and Malibu, near Los Angeles, have declared war on straws, while statewide bans of the items are being considered in California and Hawaii.
Industry groups, meanwhile, are calling for improved recycling processes and more customer choice, rather than outright bans. Steve Russell, vice-president of plastic business lobbyist the American Chemistry Council, has said that “providing straws through an ‘on-demand’ system gives customers choice and helps prevent waste by ensuring that straws are distributed only to those who need them”.
A recent study estimated that there are about 7.5m plastic straws strewn on America’s beaches, amid 35m tons of plastic pollution produced worldwide every year, an estimated quarter of which is dumped in rivers, streams and the oceans.
Fishing equipment and plastic bags generally cause more widespread harm to wildlife than straws when discarded in the environment. The lightweight nature of straws makes the items difficult to recycle, however, meaning they slowly break down into harmful microplastics. Whole straws are also capable of causing harm, as evidenced by a viral video from 2015 that showed a straw stuck up the nose of a sea turtle.
“Few people realize that straws are among the top 10 items found during beach clean ups and can do so much harm to seabirds, turtles and other marine creatures,” according to For A Strawless Ocean, a campaign group.
“As an item of convenience for the vast majority of us, we believe refusing the single-use plastic straw is the easiest and simplest way for everyone to take action today to address plastic pollution.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/23/new-york-plastic-straws-ban-proposal-city-council-policy
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(ACC Mentioned) Glass Straws? Straw Straws? Here Are Some Eco-Friendly Alternatives to Plastic
May 23, 2018 | USA Today
By David Carrig
The war on plastic straws is growing as more companies like McDonald's face pressure to find sustainable and eco-friendly alternatives that won't pollute our oceans, litter our beaches or wind up harming animals.
It is estimated that more than 500 million single-use plastic straws are used and thrown away every day in the U.S. alone as Americans use them at an average rate of 1.6 straws per person per day, according to the National Park Service. That translates into 175 billion straws a year.
It's no wonder that sea turtles are being found with plastic straws stuck up their noses.
Only 14% of plastic packaging is collected for recycling and "a staggering 32% of plastic packaging escapes collection systems," according to a 2016 study by the World Economic Forum.
A study by the University of California Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) found that 8 million metric tons of plastic trash end up in our oceans every year. That's equivalent to five grocery bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world.
And while plastic straws represent only a fraction of the overall tonnage of ocean plastic, they are less likely to make it into recycling bins and their small size make them dangerous for marine animals and are consumed by fish.
This has led environmentalists and conservation groups to add plastic straws to the growing list of plastic products it is seeking to ban, tax or boycott in an attempt to reduce plastic waste.
The United Kingdom announced plans in April to ban the sale of plastic straws, stirrers and cotton swabs as the global war against plastic pollution gains momentum.
Straws are oftentimes not really needed when drinking a beverage so simply refusing a straw is the most eco-friendly choice a person can make. But if you need to use or like to use a straw, there are alternatives.
"There are plenty of options for trash-free sipping. We all have a drawer of reusable silverware at home, so why not toss in a few reusable straws?" Nick Mallos, director of Ocean Conservancy's Trash Free Seas program, writes in the non-profit organization's Ocean Current blog.
Here are some of the top alternatives:
Straw straws
Before the invention of the modern-day paper and plastic straws, people were drinking beverages through stalks of grain like wheat and rye grass, which were popular in the 1800’s. Straws made out of straw, or natural grains, are still available and though they may sound strange, they are biodegradable and eco-friendly alternatives to plastic straws. Current options: Harvest Straws are made from non-GMO grain grown without any chemicals. You can get a pack of 100 Hay Straws for $8.00.
Paper straws
Paper straws were created by Marvin Stone of Washington, D.C., who hated the gritty residue rye grass straws left as it broke down, according to the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. Stone wrapped strips of paper around a pencil and glued the strips together after removing the pencil. He switched to paraffin-coated manila paper to keep the straws from becoming soggy and patented the product in 1888. Paper straws remained popular until they were largely replaced by plastic in the 1960s.
Paper straws remain a single-use alternative to plastic straws. Some on the market now are made from renewable sources and are biodegradable. The non-profit Lonely Whale’s For A Strawless Ocean campaign chose Aardvark Straws as a preferred partner for its durable and biodegradable paper straws that decompose in just 45-90 days. Paper straws are also widely available at major retailers, but not all are biodegradable.
Metal straws
Straws made of aluminum, stainless steel and titanium are durable and more eco-friendly than single-use plastic straws since they are reusable. Many of these straws are made from high quality metals and have brushes available for easy cleaning. Some are even bendable.
Bamboo straws
Straws made out of all-natural bamboo sourced from sustainable forests are a lightweight and reusable alternative to plastic straws. And they are great at tiki parties. Companies making bamboo straws include: Brushitwithbamboo.com, Bambuhome.com, Strawfree.org, Bambaw.
Glass straws
Glass is another material that can be used to make a reusable and durable alternative to the plastic straw. One advantage to a glass straw is that you can see through it to make sure it’s clean. A disadvantage is the potential risk of breakage. Seller Strawesome recommends cleaning its glass straws in the dishwasher or using a stainless steel straw cleaner.
Plastic industry urges recycling
In response, the plastic industry urges the responsible use and disposal of plastic straws and focuses on the importance of recycling.
"The focus on single-use products like straws shouldn’t be whether we have them or not but instead that they are disposed of properly," the Plastics Industry Association states on its website. "The real challenge is making it easier for everyone to better dispose of straws and other single-use products by enhancing our recycling and recovery technologies."
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) argues the use of plastic alternatives has an environmental impact as well. It cites a study that claims “the environmental cost of using plastics in consumer goods and packaging is nearly four times less than it would be if plastics were replaced with alternative materials.”
The study prepared for the ACC by Trucost, an S&P Global financial research firm, takes into account the consumption of natural water and emissions to air, land and water and argues that lightweight plastics have environmental benefits because it does more with less material.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/05/23/sustainable-alternatives-plastic-straws-recyling/632993002/
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States Use Lawsuit to Pressure EPA Release of Ozone Designations
May 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
Several states suing EPA over the agency's long delay in designating areas of the country as either attaining or violating federal ozone standards are using their suit to pressure the agency against any further stalling in issuing the designations, refuting EPA's claims in a recent status report that it has all but completed designations.
In a May 22 filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in American Lung Association, et al. v. EPA, states including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington say EPA's latest status report to the court is misleading.
States and environmentalists in the case are suing EPA over its June 2017 decision to delay by one year, from Oct. 1, 2017, to Oct. 1, 2018, all area designations for the 2015 ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) of 70 parts per billion. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt subsequently withdrew the decision, reinstating the original Oct. 1, 2017, Clean Air Act deadline.
However, petitioners in the case refused to drop their case, arguing that EPA could again delay its designations and that the suit is necessary as a backstop legal challenge to the agency's power to issue such a delay.
Meanwhile, EPA missed the Oct. 1 deadline, issuing most “attainment” designations in the fall but only issuing the majority of “nonattainment” designations in April, in line with a judicial deadline set by a federal district court in separate litigation brought by many of the same petitioners. Nonattainment designations are required for states to begin crafting state implementation plans outlining steps they will take to comply with the NAAQS.
In a May 15 status report in the D.C. Circuit suit, the agency said, “EPA has now made all final designations for the 2015 ozone standard, except for the designations for the eight counties in the San Antonio area. EPA intends to make final designations for those eight counties by July 17, 2018.”
But states in that suit say that EPA is still delaying the effective date of those designations, and has failed to discharge its air law duty. “In its order, the District Court repeatedly emphasized EPA’s commitment to make the designations effective within 30 to 60 days of the April 30 promulgation deadline,” states say.
EPA has made the designations effective 60 days from publication of the nonattainment designations in the Federal Register, but has yet to publish them in the Register, the states say.
“Given the repeated delays in the promulgation and publication of these designations, EPA cannot show that its voluntary withdrawal of the designations extension has mooted this case,” the states say. They again urge the court to vacate the agency's original, but now withdrawn, extension of the deadline for designation.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/states-use-lawsuit-pressure-epa-release-ozone-designations
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In an Internal Memo, the White House Considered Whether to Simply ‘Ignore’ Federal Climate Research
May 23, 2018 | Washington Post
By Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin
White House officials last year weighed whether to simply “ignore” climate studies produced by government scientists or to instead develop “a coherent, fact-based message about climate science,” according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post.
The document, drafted Sept. 18 by Michael Catanzaro, President Trump’s special assistant for domestic energy and environmental policy at the time, highlights the dilemma the administration has faced over climate change since Trump took office. Even as Trump’s deputies have worked methodically to uproot policies aimed at curbing the nation’s carbon output, the administration’s agencies continue to produce reports showing that climate change is happening, is human-driven and is a threat to the United States.
Catanzaro, who prepared the memo for a meeting of senior White House and agency officials that took place a couple of days later, asked whether the Trump administration should “consider having a firm position on and a coherent, fact-based message about climate science — specifically, whether, and to what extent, anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are affecting the climate system, and what level of concern that warrants.”
The memo presented three options without endorsing any of them: conducting a “red team/blue team” exercise to “highlight uncertainties in climate science”; more formally reviewing the science under the Administrative Procedure Act; or deciding to just “ignore, and not seek to characterize or question, the science being conducted by Federal agencies and outside entities.”
It did not consider touting federal scientists’ findings.
Although administration officials did not adopt a formal policy in the wake of these deliberations, in practice they have largely ignored the findings of U.S. government researchers. As a result, these scientists have continued to sound the alarm on climate effects such as sea-level rise and wildfires — even as top Trump officials emphasize that they can neither endorse nor repudiate these findings.
Last month, U.S. Geological Survey scientists released a Pentagon-funded study that found that low-lying coral atoll islands around the world — a number of which host military bases — could become “uninhabitable” within decades because rising seas will spoil their drinking water supplies well before entirely swallowing the islands themselves.
On Friday, the National Park Service issued a report — without a news release or official announcement — projecting that sea-level rise linked to human activity could damage park sites including Virginia’s Jamestown and Assateague Island as well as Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas and New Orleans’ Jean Lafitte National Historical Park.
“The scientific evidence about accelerating effects of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is so strong, and so prevalent, that it would be impossible to hush it up even if you wanted to,” Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said in a phone interview. “Coral deaths and glacier melting and sea-level rise, and all of these things are just so well documented and there’s just new evidence every day, whether it’s from USGS, or [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration], or NASA, or Department of Energy, or various academic institutions. It just can’t be swept under the rug.”
At the time the memo was drafted, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt was pressing Trump to authorize a government-wide “red team/blue team” debate about whether there was a sufficient scientific basis to conclude that human-generated greenhouse gas emissions are fueling recent climate change. This came just a few months after the president had pulled out of the 2015 global climate agreement reached in Paris, which committed the United States to cutting its overall carbon output by 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
“The idea was to have a basic approach, or agree to some principles, when it comes to climate policy,” said George David Banks, who served on the National Economic Council as a special assistant to the president on international energy and environment before leaving in February.
The overwhelming majority of scientists, along with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have concluded that human activity has driven warming over the past half a century or more. But Trump has repeatedly questioned this scientific consensus, both as a presidential candidate and since taking office.
Catanzaro, who left his job last month to return to the consulting and lobbying firm CGCN, declined to comment on the memo.
A separate raft of documents, released this month through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, shows that the White House blocked Pruitt in November from starting the red team/blue team exercise.
Those emails include a draft news release that Pruitt edited, which described him as “leading the effort” to assemble a team of experts that could “write a detailed criticism” of a massive climate science report the federal government released on Nov. 2. That report, largely drafted by the Obama administration, affirmed that climate change is caused by humans and that there is “no convincing alternative explanation.”
The climate science report Pruitt was hoping to reevaluate was released without political editing, said several scientists who worked on it.
“That made it through unscathed,” Phil Duffy, the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, said of the document, for which he served as a National Academy of Sciences reviewer. “I haven’t seen any evidence of any rewrite or any censorship or anything in there.”
Meanwhile, when reporters asked deputy White House press secretary Raj Shah about the report’s findings, he replied, “The climate has changed and is always changing,” adding that the administration “supports rigorous scientific analysis and debate.”
Other top Trump officials have taken a similar approach. Last week, when Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was asked whether he endorses NOAA’s conclusion that human activity is driving climate change, he demurred. “Commerce Department’s NOAA has issued various reports that reflect the thinking of their scientists, and those reports in general have been reviewed, sometimes favorably, sometimes less so by other people in that field,” he said.
The administration has scaled back some federal climate programs over the past 1½ years, and sought to curtail grants to outside researchers focused on climate change.
NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System program was canceled because of a lack of funding (although Congress is trying to restore it), and NOAA cut back onits climate and global change postdoctoral fellowship offers this year, also citing funding concerns. Officials at EPA and the Interior Department have specifically singled out “climate change” as a phrase that should not be used in applications for agency funding.
“We hear from federal scientists that they’re getting the hint that they shouldn’t talk about climate, shouldn’t work on climate, they should downplay it in what they’re doing,” said Gretchen Goldman, research director at the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy.
But the federal climate science establishment will nonetheless continue to generate findings that could clash with Trump’s push to expand fossil fuel production in the United States. Although many of these studies do not advocate specific policy approaches, they often outline negative outcomes from CO2 emissions that stem from burning fossil fuels.
The government is on track this year to release the fourth National Climate Assessment, another vast document compiling specific climate-related damages across the United States. That document, along with last’s year’s climate science special report, are produced by a program that pulls together the work of 13 federal agencies invested in climate science.
Those agencies, which range from the National Science Foundation to NASA, have continued much of their scientific work.
NASA will put up two new satellite systems this year to study melting ice in the Earth’s polar regions, and will continue airborne missions that study ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica.
NOAA continues to release monthly updates showing how much the Earth’s temperature is deviating from what has been seen in the past. It’s also steadily tracking ever-rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — which recently lingered above 410 parts per million, averaged over a month, for the first time.
The National Science Foundation continues to run massive Antarctic research operations and fund a wide variety of climate-related research in the field of geosciences. These includes a multimillion-dollar investment to send scientists to study Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica — the single greatest threat for fast-rising seas in our lifetimes, several scientific experts said.
Still, even without the “red team/blue team” exercise going forward for now, Pruitt’s allies say that he may have succeeded in giving them more opportunities to interrogate the findings of federal climate research. Tim Huelskamp, a Republican former congressman who serves as president of the Heartland Institute, cited the rule Pruitt proposed last month that would require the public release of all data underlying studies used in EPA rulemaking.
“We’ll see where the data goes. That’s why the ‘red team/blue team’ debate; that’s on our field,” said Huelskamp, whose group has long questioned scientific studies showing a strong human role in driving climate change. “We’re happy to take on those who have been wrong in their modeling of climate studies for years.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/05/23/in-an-internal-memo-the-white-house-considered-whether-to-simply-ignore-federal-climate-research/?utm_term=.914abd3ce89e
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Panel Approves Bills to Boost Science, ARPA-E
May 23, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Christa Marshall
The House Science, Space and Technology Committee today advanced bills by voice vote that would expand the mission of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy and authorize Department of Energy science programs on everything from climate change research to fusion.
Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and ranking member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) supported all three bills, although Johnson said she was disappointed by efforts before the markup.
"With a more deliberative and collaborative process, we certainly could have produced more comprehensive, well-vetted language that better reflects input from national laboratories, academic institutions and industry," she said.
Smith said the bills would increase the productivity of the labs and enable technologies "for the next generation."
The committee passed the "ARPA-E Act of 2018" (H.R. 5906) from Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) and Johnson.
It would expand ARPA-E's mission to cover environmental cleanup of nuclear waste sites and require the agency to coordinate with other DOE programs to avoid duplication. An amendment from Lucas approved by voice vote would prevent ARPA-E funding for projects unless a potential grantee demonstrates attempts to secure private financing first. The agency funds potential breakthrough energy technologies considered high-risk for investors.
The measure includes language aiming to ensure that companies' sensitive proprietary information collected by the agency is not subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. It mirrors text from an earlier bill sponsored by Johnson. The goal is to facilitate more private-sector interaction with ARPA-E.
ARPA-E currently is funded at $353 million. President Trump has called for its elimination twice in budget proposals. Critics have questioned whether the agency duplicates private-sector work and distorts energy markets.
Last year, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who leads the House Appropriations panel that funds energy agencies, said its decision at the time to cut ARPA-E funding stemmed from objections by the Science Committee (Greenwire, June 28, 2017).
"I understand some of my majority colleagues have not always been the biggest supporters of ARPA-E, but after years of successes and several independent assessments ... we are finally passing a bill out of this committee reauthorizing this now vital component of our energy innovation pipeline," Johnson said today.
The committee also passed the "Department of Energy Science and Innovation Act of 2018" (H.R. 5905) from Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas), which would authorize much of DOE's Office of Science for fiscal 2018 and 2019, including fusion, advanced computing, and biological and environmental research programs.
It would support upgrades and construction of multiple user facilities at DOE's national labs and allow modeling in the Biological and Environmental Research program considered critical for understanding climate change impacts.
The legislation also would direct DOE to support the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, a multinational project under construction in France to demonstrate fusion at scale. The Trump administration currently is weighing whether to continue financing ITER, which has experienced cost overruns and delays.
Last year, Senate appropriators voted to eliminate funding for ITER. But the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine urged the U.S. to continue funding the project (Greenwire, Dec. 21, 2017).
Smith said the bill was the product of four years of bipartisan work and builds on legislation that passed the House last year. It would authorize the Office of Science at $6.6 billion for fiscal 2019, a 5.4 percent increase over current levels.
Additionally, the committee passed the "National Innovation Modernization by Laboratory Empowerment Act" (H.R. 5907) from Reps. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.) and Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.), which would instruct the secretary of Energy to delegate signature authority to national laboratory directors for any technology transfer agreement with a total cost of not more than $1 million. The idea is to speed up agreements that often take months to complete, Hultgren said.
"This provides the labs with more flexibility and removes red tape that makes it more difficult for businesses to partner with the labs," Smith said.
The bill parallels language reported out of the Science Committee during the 114th Congress.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/05/23/stories/1060082541
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Pruitt Focuses on 'Process,' Not Science, of Climate Finding
May 24, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen
EPA's air chief says Scott Pruitt is concerned that individuals with "alternative views" on climate change didn't get a chance to weigh in on whether a warming planet is hurting humanity.
Bill Wehrum told the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week that Pruitt is unsatisfied with the way the agency reached its conclusions that climate change is harmful to human health. The administrator is not currently planning to reopen that determination, called an endangerment finding on greenhouse gases, Wehrum said.
The comments come as conservative groups close to Pruitt are pressuring him to weaken the endangerment finding, a key determination that gives the agency its authority to regulate greenhouse gases in sectors across the economy. Critics of the administration suggest that Wehrum is discrediting the process by which the finding was established, rather than the climate science that underlies it, because it's a softer target.
California Rep. Scott Peters (D), who pressed Wehrum on Pruitt's climate views last week, described his comments as a diversionary tactic.
"When you don't want to talk about product, you talk about process. It's all bunk. Everyone at that agency knows there is health impacts of climate change," Peters told E&E News.
"I just think that the whole notion of the Environmental Protection Agency expressing this ignorance about climate change is pretty damn Orwellian," Peters added.
The question of will he or won't he review the endangerment finding for greenhouse gases has followed Pruitt since his earliest days at EPA. For groups like the Heartland Institute, undoing the endangerment finding could unravel a suite of regulations on automobiles, power plants and landfills.
Wehrum told the committee that Pruitt "at minimum" is concerned by how EPA crafted the endangerment finding.
"He's very concerned about process and believes — and the way he talks about is, I believe, the way to talk about it — is people with a different view haven't had a voice so far in this process, and he's been trying to find a way to allow them to have some voice," Wehrum said.
The air chief added that the agency had no plans to revisit the endangerment finding "right now."
"We've talked a lot about the integrity of the process that led to that determination, and so far we're focused on process and integrity, and we haven't talked about outcome," he said.
The debate over process falls in line with Pruitt's push to instill "rule of law" at the agency and to only regulate under a clear mandate from Congress. The administrator has frequently discussed how Congress had not given the agency the authority to control carbon emissions. Wehrum has also stated that he does not think Congress intended EPA to address climate change under the Clean Air Act (Climatewire, Sept. 8, 2017).
Since taking office, the EPA administrator has made clear he intends to move the agency away from the climate action pushed forward by the Obama administration. In public, he casts doubt on the degree humans are responsible for climate change and has championed the agency hosting a public debate on climate science in a military-style red team-blue team exercise. He has begun the process of repealing or limiting rules controlling greenhouse gases and oversaw the removal of climate-related content from the agency's website.
EPA did not respond to requests for comment on whether Pruitt has received briefings on climate change, like those held by Wehrum.
The administrator's critics reject the idea that the agency did not give ample opportunity to the public to comment on the endangerment finding while it was under development.
Pruitt's criticisms of that process comes a decade after EPA began to formally consider how greenhouse gases impacted humans. The process was started under former President George W. Bush, and it concluded under former President Obama in 2009, when the agency determined that six greenhouse gases harmed human health and welfare.
"That EPA (and, later, the courts) did not accept their objections does not mean that there were any defects in the process," Andres Restrepo, staff attorney at Sierra Club, said in an email.
He called Pruitt's concerns "baseless" and noted that the agency received thousands of public comments and published 10 volumes of detailed responses.
There have been other chances for critics to challenge EPA's decision. In 2012, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld EPA's endangerment finding in its ruling on Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, a case brought by industry groups challenging the agency's vehicle greenhouse gas program. The Supreme Court later declined a request from the Coalition for Responsible Regulation to review the endangerment finding.
"To now claim that the Endangerment Finding's opponents didn't receive a fair shake to make their views heard is just another example of Pruitt's 2 + 2 = 5 approach to running the EPA," Restrepo said.
Dissenters have also had the opportunity to express their views in other scientific processes like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Climate Assessment, said David Doniger, senior strategic director of the climate and clean energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"Pruitt has been listening only to the right-wing nuts from Heritage [Foundation], Heartland and Koch-funded groups — plus an errant Catholic bishop — who habitually complain that they have been excluded from traditional scientific processes," Doniger said.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/05/24/stories/1060082553
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Oil Giants to Tell Judge Everyone Adds to Warming
May 24, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Anne C. Mulkern and Debra Kahn
Lawsuits that blame oil companies for damaging cities in California by sharpening climate change should be tossed out to avoid a cascade of similar cases, according to legal arguments being made by an oil company today.
Lawyers for Chevron Corp. plan to make that assertion at a hearing that could determine whether the cases filed by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland go forward. Judge William Alsup in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco will decide whether to dismiss the lawsuits against the world's five biggest oil companies: Chevron, BP PLC, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC.
The cities argue that the oil giants make products that create a public nuisance by triggering sea-level rise and other impacts when they're burned in cars. They claim the companies knew about the damaging effects of climate change decades ago but hid it to protect their profits.
Josh Lipshutz, a lawyer for the companies, told reporters yesterday that the cities' claims could spark runaway court cases and heap massive amounts of liability on anyone who releases greenhouse gases.
"Plaintiffs' claims, if accepted, would create an unprecedented global warming tort that could be asserted against any company, government or individual whose activity has contributed to global warming — essentially anyone on Earth," Lipshutz said. "That is contrary to federal and state law, as well as common sense."
Chevron also plans to argue that EPA, not the courts, has jurisdiction over greenhouse gases. Its lawyers will point to precedent-setting cases that give the agency that authority through the Clean Air Act.
Other oil companies sued by the cities have also filed court documents arguing that the cases lack jurisdiction, because the companies are not based in California. The cities contend that those companies have Golden State operations and are liable.
The lawsuits by San Francisco and Oakland are the first to go forward among a growing group of climate cases. Also in California, Imperial Beach, San Mateo, Marin County, Richmond, Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz County are suing two dozen or more fossil fuel companies and trade associations in separate cases. A decision in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is pending on whether to uphold an order by federal Judge Vince Chhabria that moved those suits from federal to state court.
The city of Boulder and the counties of San Miguel and Boulder in Colorado are suing Suncor Energy Inc. and Exxon Mobil, demanding "past and future damages" for climate impacts. King County, Wash., sued the same five companies named in the San Francisco and Oakland suits (Greenwire, May 10).
Today's hearing follows an April "climate tutorial" overseen by Alsup, the federal judge presiding over the San Francisco and Oakland cases. No decision came out of that event, and it's unclear when Alsup is expected to rule on whether the cities' cases will proceed.
If he rejects the motions to dismiss today, that would allow the cities to start the process of discovery, looking for documents to support their claims that the oil giants knew about climate risks decades ago and then conspired to create doubt about climate science.
The oil companies likely would appeal, and the case could get pushed up to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It's not clear whether discovery could proceed while that court decided whether to intervene, said Ann Carlson, faculty director of the UCLA Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
Oil companies "are going to use every tool they can to try to get these cases dismissed," she said.
If discovery is allowed, "that is a big deal," Carlson said. City attorneys likely will seek documents and legal questioning of "everybody from the CEO down to internal scientists, marketers, people engaged in the campaigns to try to dissuade people about the reality of climate change."
She compared it to past cases against tobacco companies.
"One of the big important things that happened in the tobacco litigation is we started to uncover information about defendant concealment," Carlson said. "That could be very, very damaging to the fossil fuel companies." If the cities prevail on the motions to dismiss, "that's where we're headed."
If Alsup dismisses the cases, the cities would likely appeal.
Do past precedents apply?
Chevron attorneys talked yesterday about cases they see as important precedents.
Lawyer Ted Boutrous will likely point to American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, in which states sought to cap greenhouse gas emissions in the power sector. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations cannot be sued for greenhouse gas emissions because EPA regulates those through the Clean Air Act.
There's a difference of opinion about whether Alsup thinks the AEP case acts like a barrier to the cities' suits. Carlson and other legal experts have said the judge seemed to indicate so in his ruling to keep the cases in federal court. The cities had unsuccessfully sought to have them returned to state court where they were originally filed.
Lipshutz said Alsup didn't clarify his views about the AEP case.
"All the judge was deciding at that time was whether there was federal jurisdiction, federal common law in this area," Lipshutz said. "He didn't say there are viable federal claims here. ... That's a question he has not yet decided, and that's what we're asking him to decide here."
He added that "if the claims weren't viable in AEP, they're even less viable here."
Chevron also cites the Native Village of Kivalina v. Exxon Mobil Corp., in which the governing body of an Iñupiat Eskimo village sued 24 oil and utility companies. The nuisance claim charged that excessive greenhouse gas pollution caused global warming, which triggered loss of Arctic sea ice on the Kivalina coast, forcing the relocation of residents. The 9th Circuit in its 2012 decision ruled that the climate-change-based nuisance claims were displaced by the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court declined to take up the case.
"This case makes even less sense than AEP and Kivalina," Lipshutz said. "Here, the claims are targeting the production of oil and gas. The production of oil and gas by itself doesn't create climate change."
Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that climate science has advanced since the AEP and Kivalina cases. That's important when assessing liability, he said.
It's now possible to attribute greenhouse gas emission impacts directly to each company's products, he said. Frumhoff said that 15 percent of sea-level rise can be attributed to the 20 largest fossil fuel producers and that 6 percent can be linked to Exxon Mobil, BP and Chevron, defendants in these cases.
The oil companies "make the claim that there's no realistic possibility of tracing any alleged effect of global warning to any particular action, any particular group," he said. "That's in fact not true."
Trump's filing
The Trump administration and 15 states are supporting the oil companies, arguing the suit would interfere with state and federal policies on climate change (Climatewire, May 14; Climatewire, April 20). It also claimed that a potentially infinite number of entities could be found liable.
Chevron attorneys called the Justice Department's amicus brief "very powerful" and pointed out that the Obama administration also argued that the federal government has Clean Air Act jurisdiction over greenhouse gases in AEP v. Connecticut.
"The U.S. government's brief really explains, just as we do, that these claims raise significant constitutional concerns," Lipshutz said. "The position of the U.S. government has remained unchanged from the Obama administration to the Trump administration, and I believe it's a powerful brief that supports our arguments."
Carlson said it wasn't clear whether the Trump administration arguments will help the oil companies. The Department of Justice brief argues that the federal government regulates greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the Trump administration is repealing the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, which sought to regulate emissions at power plants, she said.
"A court could be pretty skeptical that it should say the plaintiffs can't go forward, given that the federal government seems to be rolling back its efforts to regulate emissions," Carlson said. "I'm not sure it's a huge benefit to the defendants to have the Department of Justice in there given the political and policy positions that the Trump administration has taken on climate change."
Lipshutz argued that the states' amicus briefs on both sides of the argument support the need to defer to the federal government. California, Washington and New Jersey support the cities' claims (Climatewire, May 8).
"The very fact there are dueling state amicus briefs," he said, "really underscores the need here for federal, congressional policymakers' control over these complex national policy issues."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/05/24/stories/1060082589
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