Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 5/28/18
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(ACC Mentioned) Who Else Wasn't at the EPA Chemical Meeting? the Victims
May 26, 2018 | CNN
By Gregory Wallace
Journalists weren't the only ones shut out from the Environmental Protection Agency's conference this week on chemically contaminated drinking water. -
(ACC Mentioned) The EPA’s Increasing Hostility Toward the Press, Explained
May 25, 2018 | Vox
By Umair Irfan
A national summit on drinking water contaminants at the Environmental Protection Agency this week was so exclusive that reporters from E&E News and CNN were turned away at the gates. -
(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Specialty Chemical Markets Start Q2 on Strong Note, ACC Says
May 25, 2018 | ChemEngOnline
By Scott Jenkins
The American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) reported that U.S. specialty chemical market volumes started the 2nd quarter of 2018 on a strong note, increasing 0.9 percent in April after an upwardly revised 0.5 percent gain in March and a 0.3 percent gain in February. -
Carlisle Construction Company Pleads Guilty to Violating Toxic Substances Control Act
May 25, 2018 | Carlisle Sentine
A Carlisle-area contractor entered a guilty plea to violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act in federal court Tuesday. -
(ACC Mentioned) One of Four Adults Admits to Peeing in the Pool. Is Your Pool Safe to Swim In?
May 25, 2018 | Charleston Post Courier
By Bo Petersen
If the community pool closes for the day and the kids ask why, Goose Creek mother Michelle Combahee tells them straight up: It has to get cleaned. -
(ACC Mentioned) Do You Know What’s in Your Nail Polish?
May 26, 2018 | Salon
By Sarah Okeson
Scott Pruitt’s EPA is said to be sitting on a study that concludes—for the second time—that formaldehyde causes leukemia. -
The Last Straw: San Francisco Targets Disposable Plastics
May 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joyce E. Cutler
Straws and takeout boxes made from fluorinated chemicals are the latest targets in San Francisco as the city looks to keep plastic out of its trash dumps. -
Bakken Facing Two-Phase, $9B Infrastructure Build-Out
May 25, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
North Dakota’s Bakken Shale’s next infrastructure buildout for growing crude oil production should begin in about two years, with overall needs estimated to cost $9 billion, according to the state’s chief oil and gas regulator. -
Industry, DOJ Plan High Court Appeal Of Landmark GHG NEPA Ruling
May 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
Energy industry firms and the Trump administration are signaling that they plan to seek Supreme Court review of a landmark ruling that required the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to assess the downstream greenhouse gas effects of a major natural gas pipeline -- even as the commission is moving to limit the scope of the ruling. -
Uniper Chief Defends ‘Important’ Gas Pipe in Face of U.S. Threat
May 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Elena Mazneva and Anna Shiryaevskaya
Germany’s biggest buyer of Russian natural gas doesn’t welcome U.S. efforts to regulate European energy security. -
Chemical Safety Board Finalizes Investigation into Arkema Fires Following Tropical Storm Harvey
May 25, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jeff Johnson
The U.S. Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) is calling on chemical companies to better prepare for the growing likelihood of a future of flooding, hurricanes, and extreme weather events. -
EPA RMP Rule Delay Challengers Warn Against Staying Litigation
May 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
Petitioners challenging EPA's delay of the Obama-era updates to its risk management plan (RMP) facility safety rule say the agency's recent proposal to rescind many of the updates should not be a reason to delay their lawsuit, raising a preemptive argument against such a request and also claiming that the proposal undermines EPA's legal defenses. -
Suit Adds To Challenges Over EPA's Raised Bar For Air Permit Objections
May 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Environmentalists are suing EPA to overturn the agency's denial of their petition objecting to a Clean Air Act Title V operating permit for an Exxon petrochemical facility, a new legal battle over the Trump administration's revised policy of no longer objecting to such “umbrella” permits based on alleged defects in underlying permits. -
The Energy 202: A Bunch of House Republicans Say They’re Serious About Climate Change. Do They Mean It?
May 25, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Dino Grandon
Last week, a bipartisan group of House members made a demand of congressional leaders: Block any provisions curtailing the federal government’s ability to deal with climate change from the next spending bill. -
Few GOP Members of House Climate Caucus Sign Anti-Rider Letter
May 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
The bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus is weighing in with a letter opposing anti-climate budget riders to the current round of fiscal year 2019 spending bills, but few Republican members signed onto the letter.
Congressional Hearings - There are no hearings to report at this time.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Who Else Wasn't at the EPA Chemical Meeting? the Victims
May 26, 2018 | CNN
By Gregory Wallace
Journalists weren't the only ones shut out from the Environmental Protection Agency's conference this week on chemically contaminated drinking water. Many victims of water polluted by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances were also left out, and are struggling to get clear answers about the dangers to their communities.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/26/politics/epa-chemical-water-conference-victims/index.html
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(ACC Mentioned) The EPA’s Increasing Hostility Toward the Press, Explained
May 25, 2018 | Vox
By Umair Irfan
A national summit on drinking water contaminants at the Environmental Protection Agency this week was so exclusive that reporters from E&E News and CNN were turned away at the gates.
EPA guards didn’t just keep some reporters out of the meeting; they shoved one reporter trying to cover it, the Associated Press’s Ellen Knickmeyer.
While some outlets, including Politico and Bloomberg BNA, were permitted to cover the Tuesday morning session, the EPA blatantly excluded others, pitting reporters who cover the agency against one another (full disclosure: I’m friends with several of them).
The following day, no reporters were allowed in, even the ones who were let into the earlier session. When reporters raised a stink, the EPA said there was a limited capacity at the event on the first day and the second day of the event was for government officials only and did not constitute a public hearing.
But let’s be clear: The EPA is a public agency responsible for protecting the health of Americans, and this week we saw it limiting media coverage and trying to shield its work from scrutiny.
It’s not surprising that the EPA is trying to control press coverage to protect its administrator, the scandal-plagued Scott Pruitt, who is facing more than a dozen federal audits, inquiries, and investigations. But the EPA is also throttling media access to its work on everything from toxic chemicals in drinking water to limiting the science used to develop regulations.
The EPA’s adversarial relationship with the press is nothing new and predates the Trump administration. What is different about the current administration is how much further it has gone, antagonizing reporters and even being openly hostile toward them while trying to shroud the agency’s activities in secrecy.In trying to avoid a PR nightmare, the EPA created another one
This week’s summit was convened to discuss per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a.k.a. PFAS. These are synthetic chemicals used in everything from stain-resistant fabrics to nonstick pans.
There are concerns that these compounds could cause cancer, immune deficiencies, and thyroid problems when you ingest them, but the question is how much is safe. According to the Environmental Working Group, 110 million people could be drinking PFAS-contaminated water.
Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services was preparing to release a study from its Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry looking at two PFAS varieties, PFOA and PFOS. These chemicals have been leaching into groundwater around 126 military bases above levels that the EPA considers safe, but the new study found that the safe limit for these chemicals is actually 10 times lower, as low as 12 parts per trillion.
Politico obtained emails that showed the White House and the EPA scrambling to block the release of the study, which one unnamed official at the White House Office of Management and Budget described as a “public relations nightmare.”
“The impact to EPA and [the Department of Defense] is going to be extremely painful,” the official wrote.
So the EPA was on high alert going into the two-day summit, which was convened to hear from industry groups, environmental groups, and states as to how PFAS should be governed.
Hence the tight limits on the press. Even the reporters who were allowed in Tuesday morning were initially not permitted to stay for the whole event.
The EPA’s excuse was that there wasn’t enough room for all the press and parts of the event were live-streamed, though a reporter inside noted there were plenty of open seats:
However, after the story of Knickmeyer’s physical removal from the building gained legs, the EPA relented and allowed all media to attend the afternoon portion of the event.
Lincoln Ferguson, a senior advisor to Pruitt, also called Knickmeyer to apologize. But the second day of the PFAS summit on Wednesday was completely closed to press.
Press groups like Society of Environmental Journalists were none too pleased with the whole ordeal.
“It beggars understanding that the EPA would prevent any reporters from covering a topic of such intense nationwide interest and concern,” they wrote in a letter to the EPA this week about the summit. “But these are just the latest additions to your pattern of antagonism toward the press, and disregard for the public’s right to know what EPA is or is not doing to protect their health and the environment.”Like the White House, the EPA sees the media as the enemy
The EPA’s adversarial relationship with the press is nothing new and predates the Trump administration. I’ve directly or indirectly covered the EPA for six years, and the agency has always been defensive and slow to respond to inquiries, if it bothered to respond at all, and would often direct me to press releases rather than making officials available to comment.
Once in 2015, I was speaking to an EPA scientist after a hearing on Capitol Hill. As the scientist was answering some of my questions, an EPA press official stepped in between us and cut him off mid-sentence and told me I would have to direct all my questions to the press office. The office then never responded to my follow-up.
Reporters covering the EPA in the past have also seen the agency leak their scoops to other outlets when reporters did their due diligence in asking for comments before publishing a story.
But President Trump has used the media as his favorite punching bag, and that attitude has spread throughout his administration, including the EPA, which is now behaving as if it’s on war footing with the press and operating with unprecedented secrecy.
In addition to surrounding himself with a full-time 20-person security detail that costs $3 million a year and building a $43,000 soundproof phone booth in his office, Administrator Pruitt doesn’t release his public schedule, leaving the press to determine his whereabouts after the fact. This is in contrast to his predecessors, or even other administration officials (the State Department sends out an advance schedule for top officials every night, for example).
Pruitt has also barred media from important EPA events, including an announcement for a new initiative for transparency in the science used in devising regulations. The agency is now even less responsive to press questions (only a third of my inquiries this year have generated any kind of response at all) and is selectively sending out press releases to various news outlets and withholding them from others.
Mother Jones reported that Pruitt approved and then scrapped a $120,000 no-bid contract last year with an opposition research firm for an “aggressive style of campaign-style delivery of real-time coverage” of how news outlets reported on the EPA.
And EPA press officials themselves have been startlingly hostile to reporters.
This week’s incident wasn’t even the first time the agency attacked the Associated Press. The EPA’s press shop has repeatedly disparaged reporter Michael Biesecker.
“Michael very rarely opens a positive story about Scott Pruitt,” an EPA official told the Washington Post. “He only opens stories where he tries to create problems.”
In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, Biesecker reported on the EPA’s highly polluted Superfund sites around Houston affected by the storm, noting that some sites experienced damage, threatening water contamination, and that the EPA hadn’t made it to the scene.
The EPA then put out a press release criticizing Biesecker personally.
“Despite reporting from the comfort of Washington, Biesecker had the audacity to imply that agencies aren’t being responsive to the devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey,” according to the release. “Not only is this inaccurate, but it creates panic and politicizes the hard work of first responders who are actually in the affected area.”
This was despite the fact that the AP sent reporters to seven Superfund sites in person to survey the damage. The agency also didn’t dispute any of the reported facts in the story. Nonetheless, the press release boosted morale at the EPA, signaling just how much the agency sees the press as the opposition. “I was with 20 to 30 career folks who were appalled by the [AP] story and they nearly teared up when [the] press release went out,” an agency official told the Washington Post.
The Associated Press is not the only outlet to be singled out by the EPA.
When New York Times reporter Eric Lipton asked the EPA for comments on his story about how a former staffer for the American Chemistry Council, a lobbying group for the chemicals industry, was now at the EPA weakening PFOA regulations, the agency’s press office stalled for weeks, before responding with a whine.
“No matter how much information we give you, you would never write a fair piece,” then-EPA spokesperson Liz Bowman wrote to Lipton. “The only thing inappropriate and biased is your continued fixation on writing elitist clickbait trying to attack qualified professionals committed to serving their country.”
Bowman herself spent four years working at the ACC and is now working for Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA).
The EPA’s press shop has also tried to pit reporters against one another. When Lipton contacted a spokesperson to confirm details reported by other outlets, the spokesperson accused him of trying to “steal work from other outlets and pretend like it’s your own reporting” and then forwarded the message to other reporters from USA Today and E&E News.
Unlike with White House reporters, there is no official pool system with EPA reporters to share their work. The EPA and Pruitt have taken advantage of that, granting more access, documents, and interviews to conservative media outlets and friendly journalists to shape press coverage.
Some reporters are now informally keeping tabs on the agency together and occasionally tipping off others to events, a rare occurrence in a notoriously competitive industry:
This week’s incident with the press at the PFAS summit has once again brought unwanted attention to the EPA, which in another world might call Pruitt’s leadership into question. But under Trump, who loves to pick fights with the media, the ordeal is unlikely to register at the White House. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to comment on the issue Tuesday at a press briefing.
“I’m not going to weigh into random hypotheticals that may or may not exist,” she said. “I don’t know any information about this specific incident.”
But some in Congress want the EPA’s inspector general to review this week’s incidents with the press, adding yet another investigation to the growing list:
The EPA did not respond to a request for comment on this article.
https://www.vox.com/2018/5/25/17386172/epa-ap-scott-pruitt-media-water-pfas
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(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Specialty Chemical Markets Start Q2 on Strong Note, ACC Says
May 25, 2018 | ChemEngOnline
By Scott Jenkins
The American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) reported that U.S. specialty chemical market volumes started the 2nd quarter of 2018 on a strong note, increasing 0.9 percent in April after an upwardly revised 0.5 percent gain in March and a 0.3 percent gain in February.
All changes in the data are reported on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis. Of the twenty-eight specialty chemical segments monitored by ACC, twenty-four expanded in April, one market experienced decline and three featured no change. During April, large market volume gains (1.0 percent and over) occurred in adhesives & sealants, mining chemicals, oilfield chemicals, plastics compounding and rubber processing chemicals, according to the ACC data.
The overall specialty chemicals volume index was up 4.7 percent on a year-over-year (Y/Y) 3MMA basis, and the index stood at 112.5 percent of its average 2012 levels, ACC says. This is equivalent to 7.75 billion pounds (3.52 million metric tons). On a Y/Y basis, there were gains among 21 market and functional specialty chemical segments. Compared to last year, volumes were down in five segments.
Specialty chemicals are materials manufactured on the basis of the unique performance or function and provide a wide variety of effects on which many other sectors and end-use products rely. They can be individual molecules or mixtures of molecules, known as formulations. The physical and chemical characteristics of the single molecule or mixtures along with the composition of the mixtures influence the performance end product. Individual market sectors that rely on such products include automobile, aerospace, agriculture, cosmetics and food, among others.
Specialty chemicals differ from commodity chemicals. They may only have one or two uses, while commodities may have multiple or different applications for each chemical. Commodity chemicals make up most of the production volume in the global marketplace, while specialty chemicals make up most of the diversity in commerce at any given time, and are relatively high value with greater market growth rates.
http://www.chemengonline.com/u-s-specialty-chemical-markets-start-q2-on-strong-note-acc-says/?printmode=1
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Carlisle Construction Company Pleads Guilty to Violating Toxic Substances Control Act
May 25, 2018 | Carlisle Sentine
A Carlisle-area contractor entered a guilty plea to violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act in federal court Tuesday.
Charles H. Bitner Jr., 45, of Carlisle, entered the plea as the president and owner of Bitner Brothers Construction Co. in Carlisle.
U.S. Attorney David J. Freed said Bitner Brothers was an experienced construction contractor certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a lead renovator since October 2010.
Bitner himself was certified as a lead renovator by the EPA since October 2010.
The company pled guilty to violating applicable work practices under the Toxic Substances Control Act governing the reduction of lead exposure during renovations at a residential facility by conducting power grinding of lead-based surfaces without a shroud or containment system equipped with a HEPA vacuum.PauseCurrent Time0:00/Duration Time0:00Stream TypeLIVELoaded: 0%Progress: 0%0:00Fullscreen00:00Mute
“By ignoring important rules regarding the presence of lead in older buildings, the defendant’s actions put children in the local community at risk for serious injury,” said Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge Jennifer Lynn of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation Division in Pennsylvania.
The case was investigated by the EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division. Assistant U.S. Attorney William A. Behe is prosecuting the case.
The maximum penalty under federal law for this offense is five years’ probation and a $200,000 fine. Bitner Brothers Construction agreed not to be involved in lead abatement projects for the period of probation.
Under the guidelines, the judge is required to consider and weigh a number of factors, including the nature, circumstances and seriousness of the offense; the history and characteristics of the defendant; and the need to punish the defendant, protect the public and provide for the defendant’s educational, vocational and medical needs.
For these reasons, the statutory maximum penalty for the offense is not an accurate indicator of the potential sentence for a specific defendant.
http://cumberlink.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/carlisle-construction-company-pleads-guilty-to-violating-toxic-substances-control/article_c0af65dd-fd03-52fa-b714-c8f15773ec32.html
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(ACC Mentioned) One of Four Adults Admits to Peeing in the Pool. Is Your Pool Safe to Swim In?
May 25, 2018 | Charleston Post Courier
By Bo Petersen
If the community pool closes for the day and the kids ask why, Goose Creek mother Michelle Combahee tells them straight up: It has to get cleaned.
The day her younger daughter asked why, Combahee told her that, too.
"Ewwwwww" was the reply.
The Memorial Day weekend is underway, the unofficial click of the burners on another very hot Southern summer. Everyone who doesn't go to the beach wants to go to the pool. There, beside the dazzling lapping waters and the fresh scent of chlorine, few stop to wonder whether they should jump in.
But the water's not always pure.
One of every four adults admits to peeing in the pool on occasion, according to the Water Quality & Health Council trade group.
Imagine what it might be like in a pool of adults and kids.
So, is your pool safe to swim in? Here are some things to think about and watch for, and a few ways to dip your toe to test the waters first.Common sense
Chlorine and other chemicals are added to pools to keep the water clean and still swimmable. But the more people you put it a pool and the hotter it gets, the quicker the chemicals break down. State health rules are strict, and public pools are tested and inspected regularly.
You can help. Shower before swimming. Don't pee in the pool. Encourage young children to take regular bathroom breaks. Never go swimming after a recent bout of stomach distress.
Does the pool water look clear and blue? You should be able to see through the water down to the drain or stripes painted on the pool's floor. If the water is cloudy and colored, there may be algae in it, according to the American Chemistry Council.
Does the pool wall around the water line feel slimy? If it does, there are probably germs living on the wall.
Listen to make sure pool cleaning equipment is running. You ought to be able to smell the chlorine, but not too much.One more glance
Chemical controllers are Matt Fagan's secret weapon, he likes to say. They are automated testing and cleaning-chemical installers that keep a pool's chlorine and acidity levels in balance, ensuring a clean pool. At his Sweetwater Pools, a commercial pool service based in North Charleston, staff is required by state law to do their own tests at least once per day.
Despite the controllers, the staff will test four times per day or more depending on the heat and how crowded the pool gets, he said.
"Clean water is not always a good indicator. There's no real way for a swimmer to tell about the water just by looking at it," he said.
Fagan has his own eyeball tip for people deciding whether a pool is clean: Look down. A pool that's dirty along the bottom hasn't been vacuumed, and might not be maintained well otherwise, he said.The odds
Eight in 10 routine inspections of public pools turned up at least one health and safety violation, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2016.
One in eight of those had to be closed immediately.
One in every three swimming-related disease outbreaks occur at hotels, according to the CDC.
Those were pools in the most populated states. The best news here is that the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control stays on top of pool health issues, according to industry representatives.
"South Carolina is very stringent," said Susan Wichmann, an environmental health specialist with the National Swimming Pool Foundation. "They are very strict with their inspections, very strict with their pool operator certifications. That keeps a pool safer."
DHEC hires nearly 30 extra seasonal pool inspectors each year to work alongside a full-time staff of 21. They cite some 200 pool or spa facilities per year for health or safety violations, according to spokeswoman Cristi Moore.
The only type of facility cited more often is food establishments, which racked up 540 violations in 2017.
By comparison, there are fewer than 8,000 public swimming pools in the state. There are about 19,000 food facilities.Code red?
In the pool service business, it's derisively called a "Code Brown." And not-so-potty-trained children are notorious for it, swim diapers or not.
Such diapers are not leak proof, the CDC notes. A lot of public pools nowadays confine diapered children to the kiddie pool, which is far easier and less costly to clean than a full-size pool.
Keeping the child out of the adult pool is the safest bet. At a minimum, the CDC also recommends frequent checks of the diaper.
Pools with a treatment issue are closed to get the shock treatment — a super dose of chlorine and other chemicals. The worst could end up drained for a scrubbing.
The CDC also recommends a regularly shocking at larger, more heavily used pools. The city of Charleston's four public pools, which average about 2,000 users per day per pool, get a shock every other Saturday, said J.J. Ayers-Millar, city of Charleston aquatics manager.
The chemical balance in the pools is checked multiple times during the day, she said.
"Unforeseen things inevitably happen," Ayers-Millar said. But because of the protocols "we don't have to shut down very often."
https://www.postandcourier.com/news/one-of-four-adults-admits-to-peeing-in-the-pool/article_1ccdd68c-5ea1-11e8-b110-8ffc1cb5a8ec.html
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(ACC Mentioned) Do You Know What’s in Your Nail Polish?
May 26, 2018 | Salon
By Sarah Okeson
Scott Pruitt’s EPA is said to be sitting on a study that concludes—for the second time—that formaldehyde causes leukemia.
Three Democratic senators wrote Pruitt on May 17, asking when the assessment will be released.
“It appears that the agency may be succumbing to pressure from industry in its attempt to delay or block the publication of the formaldehyde health assessment,” they wrote.
A 2010 study by Luoping Zhang, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and other researchers found that Chinese factory workers exposed to high levels of formaldehyde had an increased risk of leukemia. The EPA relied on that study in 2010 when it first concluded formaldehyde causes leukemia.
The American Chemistry Council, the industry mouthpiece, has been trying to trash Zhang’s study since then. The council sued to get the data underlying her study and funded another study, this one done by scientist Kenneth Mundt known for biased research for the tobacco industry.
Mundt, who found flaws in conclusions by the National Cancer Institute on low-tar cigarettes, also found problems with Zhang’s work. The EPA redid its assessment, the one Pruitt and other Republican appointees at the EPA are now blocking from being released.
Formaldehyde is used in building materials, insulation, glues, paints, cosmetics and dishwashing liquid. An EPA assessment that formaldehyde causes leukemia would lead to more regulation and expense for the chemical industry. The U.S. allows workers to be exposed to more formaldehyde than other countries.
Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., one of the letter signers, asked Pruitt in January when the assessment would be released. Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., another letter signer, asked about it in February. The third signer is Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.
Pruitt’s staffers involved in blocking the assessment from being released include Byron Brown whose wife has been a lobbyist for an oil and gas company, Bill Wehrum who sued the agency at least 31 times as a corporate lawyer and Clint Woods who used to work for a nonprofit funded by the Koch brothers.
The Toxic Substances Control Act, passed by Congress in 1976, regulates chemicals, but it was so weak that the EPA couldn’t use it to ban asbestos. Congress amended the act in 2016 to give the agency more power to regulate dangerous chemicals by using “the best available science,” not junk science such as that practiced by Mundt and his ilk.
https://www.salon.com/2018/05/26/do-you-know-what-will-in-your-nail-polish_partner/
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The Last Straw: San Francisco Targets Disposable Plastics
May 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joyce E. Cutler
Straws and takeout boxes made from fluorinated chemicals are the latest targets in San Francisco as the city looks to keep plastic out of its trash dumps.
An ordinance set to be debated by the city Board of Supervisors’ Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee in June comes 11 years after the city restricted use of plastic bags, which were eventually banned all across California in 2016.
The city’s ordinance banning single-use plastic straws and other plastic foodware is similar to neighboring Berkeley’s proposed Disposable Free Dining law. The Berkeley ordinance also includes a 25-cent fee for each disposable beverage cup or food container provided. The Oakland City Council on May 15 banned plastic straws unless a customer asks for one.
The plastic straw ban mirrors other state efforts to study or restrict use of products containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are linked to a range of health effects from low birth weights to elevated cholesterol levels.
The chemicals, commonly used in nonstick coatings and firefighting foams, can contaminate groundwater and soil. The Environmental Protection Agency hosted a two-day summit this week with state officials from across the country to discuss options for the substances. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has vowed to label two of the most pervasive of those chemicals—perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS)—hazardous under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
“We have to think of this a part of a spectrum of laws designed to help shift our culture around single-use disposable wear, and especially around plastics,” San Francisco Supervisor Katy Tang told Bloomberg Environment.
Chemicals a Statewide ConcernWhile San Francisco cracks down on the 1 million straws being used in the city each day, California is debating several bills also targeting disposable plastics and PFAS products. The measures would bar use of some plastic cups or require warning labels on clothing made from mostly 50 percent plastic fibers saying they shed microfibers when washed. Another bill would require the California Department of Toxic Substances Control to identify food packaging containing PFAS as a priority for further study and possible regulation.
“What we know is that plastic in the water environment is effectively a carrier. The chemicals attach to it. It’s not just that we’re ingesting the plastic—we’re ingesting the chemicals that accumulate on the plastics,” Mark Murray, executive director of the nonprofit environmental research and advocacy organization Californians Against Waste, told Bloomberg Environment.
San Francisco’s potential ban on persistent chemical-containing foodware containers may be wider-reaching when combined with the provision mandating that foodware offered as compostable have a Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) certification. That has restaurant operators concerned.
“The fluorinated chemicals is kind of a new focus, so we are still assessing what that means exactly in terms of overall cost,” Golden Gate Restaurant Association Executive Director Gwyneth Borden told Bloomberg Environment. “Obviously, nobody wants food material to be leaching terrible chemicals in the food,” especially in a community that cares about local, sustainable agriculture and a healthy food system, Borden said.
Zero Waste Goal“By and large, many restaurants are already compliant. The question of whether or not they’re BPI certified is a little bit more complicated,” Borden said.
San Francisco isn’t requiring that all foodware be certified, Jack Macy, senior San Francisco zero waste coordinator, told Bloomberg Environment. “We want to make sure it meets the scientific standard for compostability. A large majority of these products are certified” with the BPI website listing products it certified.
Representatives for Starbucks Corp. and McDonald’s Corp. couldn’t be reached for comment.
Plastic straws, stirrers, and plugs that go into coffee are made of materials “that are theoretically possible” to recycle, “but they are so small and light that they drop through the cracks,” Debbie Raphael, San Francisco’s Department of the Environment director, told Bloomberg Environment.
The city’s goal, she said, is zero waste.
“I know it can be annoying, but sometimes we need government to pass laws in order to create that cultural shift. Because until someone enlightens you about the impacts of your daily behavior, you won’t realize it,” Tang said. “We’re hoping that the plastic straw ban is one of many, many things we need to address through legislation.”
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/the-last-straw-san-francisco-targets-disposable-plastics
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Bakken Facing Two-Phase, $9B Infrastructure Build-Out
May 25, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
North Dakota’s Bakken Shale’s next infrastructure buildout for growing crude oil production should begin in about two years, with overall needs estimated to cost $9 billion, according to the state’s chief oil and gas regulator.
Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms outlined the coming infrastructure needs on Thursday at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference (WBPC) in Bismarck. He expects a production surge to a "bigger, faster, stronger" Bakken, but said the industry won't get there without adding more pipelines and an estimated 2,000-2,500 miles of gathering lines per year to handle production volumes of 1.5-1.7 million b/d.
The conference, which drew more than 2,500, was focused on the industry's increasing ability to roll out exploration and production efficiencies. The theme, “Bakken Now,” dovetailed into what Helms said was "Bakken Next," a forecast for the 2020s.
All of the major infrastructure work cannot be streamlined by technological advances and innovation, as costs are not likely to decline nor will the permitting process be shorter.
"Ideally, we should have begun two years ago planning the next major pipeline out of the play," Helms said, and he urged the upstream-heavy audience to commit early to new pipeline capacity.
"Get the pipeline built because there is no time to get that project started. If we go back to the numbers of completions we anticipate annually, we need to be building 2,000-2,500 miles of gas gathering pipelines every year through 2025," Helms said. "There is no time like the present for operators to get their rights-of-way in place."
About $3 billion worth of pipelines and five gas processing plants are underway, which should keep volumes flowing smoothly through 2021, but beyond that, “another $6 billion in infrastructure that will have to be built," Helms said.
There are some near-term options, he said, such as the Keystone XL oil pipeline's northern segment from Canada. In addition, Alliance Pipeline is testing support in an open season through Wednesday (May 30) for 400 MMcf/d of added capacity.
Even with some options in place, the state by by 2026 needs additional gas capacity, Helms said.
Chicago is getting surfeited as a market for Bakken gas, so Helms said the state needs to look fertilizer plants, petrochemical plants and/or a new pipeline to the West.
"We need to put our thinking caps on, get some capital and build new infrastructure to move natural gas” and natural gas liquids (NGL) as the Bakken “has some of the wettest gas on the face of the earth.”
Marathon Oil Corp.'s Mike Henderson, vice president for resources plays in the northern United States, also addressed the conference. He acknowledged why concerns about future infrastructure are real as he thinks the Bakken is "the benchmark for a high-tech shale oilfield.”
Operators have been ingenious in finding better ways to generate data, analyze it and apply it back to drill sites, Henderson said.
Marathon historically has produced more than 100 million bbl of oil in the Bakken, but Henderson said a trademark of the company’s employees and operators throughout the basin is "to never be satisfied with the status quo." Marathon has come back from being "nearly inactive" in the Bakken two years ago, but "that's when the story got interesting for us, and our teams got real focused on maximizing well productivity."
Other Bakken producers said the 2014-16 oil price crash motivated their teams to develop the innovations that today are reducing production costs.
"In the second half of 2016, we began bringing on record wells," said Henderson. Marathon had no rigs operating then, but by the end of 2017 it had five rigs online.
He said Bakken operators also need to pay close attention to data sets, as operators are doing across the industry as plays increasingly become digital oilfields. Key questions can be answered with greater precision and accuracy, "but we have to really look closely at the data.”
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/114514-bakken-facing-two-phase-9b-infrastructure-build-out
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Industry, DOJ Plan High Court Appeal Of Landmark GHG NEPA Ruling
May 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
Energy industry firms and the Trump administration are signaling that they plan to seek Supreme Court review of a landmark ruling that required the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to assess the downstream greenhouse gas effects of a major natural gas pipeline -- even as the commission is moving to limit the scope of the ruling.
A coalition of pipeline companies and electric utilities, as well as the administration, have each received two extensions of time to file a writ of certiorari for review of the August ruling (/node/204603) in Sierra Club v. FERC, which vacated key permits for the Sabal Trail pipeline system in the Southeast over FERC's failure to assess downstream GHG impacts in its original National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review of the project.
In May 23 decisions, Chief Justice John Roberts granted the latest requests for more time to file a cert petition, giving industry until June 30 and the Department of Justice (DOJ) until July 2.
If allowed to stand, the ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit “threatens to fundamentally alter FERC’s statutory role in reviewing natural-gas pipeline applications, turning its longstanding case-by-case review of pipeline projects into a venue for litigating issues of national (and perhaps even global) energy and climate policy, as well as for second-guessing electric-generation decisions reserved to the States,” the pipeline firms and utilities write in their initial request, filed April 20.
A subsequent request from the companies, filed May 21, notes DOJ's pending requests and says more time “would allow the industry parties and the federal government to consult and coordinate as necessary and appropriate. That coordination will help ensure the efficient presentation of issues for this Court's review.”
Following a protracted dispute in the D.C. Circuit about remedy, FERC in March issued revised Natural Gas Act (NGA) certificates for the Sabal Trail project on March 14, after it issued a supplemental NEPA review with the downstream GHG analysis in early February.
That review found that Florida emissions could increase by as much as 10 percent, though FERC reiterated its stance that the Obama administration's social cost of carbon estimate is not an appropriate tool to measure the significance of such emissions for NEPA purposes.
Sierra Club has asked for rehearing of the revised certificates, a move that could lead to a new lawsuit if FERC rejects those requests.
The potential appeal comes as FERC declined to analyze the upstream or downstream GHG effects of a separate natural gas project in New York, known as the New Market Project. That included installing compressor stations and other upgrades for an existing pipeline.
The commission in a 3-2 order said such upstream and downstream emissions were not “indirect” and “cumulative” effects under NEPA because both the suppliers and end users of the gas are unknown. This contrasts with the Sabal Trail project, in which the pipeline system is being built to serve several specific gas plants in Florida.
'Scope' Of Indirect Emissions
A May 24 research note from ClearView Energy Partners says FERC appears to be changing the “scope” of what qualifies as indirect emissions, “but not its ultimate application.” The firm adds that even when FERC estimated downstream GHGs, it has found there is “no clear metric for judging when or how a particular project’s GHG emissions lead to 'significant' environmental impacts locally or otherwise for purposes of NEPA.”
In addition, the commission has never denied an NGA certificate based on GHGs.
ClearView says a successful appeal of Sierra Club by DOJ or industry to the Supreme Court could “validate the majority’s position in the New Market order and could . . . keep narrow the scope of NEPA reviews in terms of indirect impacts.”
However, if the high court upholds the D.C. Circuit's ruling, it could validate the FERC minority's interpretation that the commission should assess a broader range of indirect GHG effects, it says.
If the high court accepts the case, it could rule by June 2019, the firm says.
But some observers are raising doubts about FERC's stance.
In a May 23 blog post, Foley Hoag attorney Seth Jaffe cites a portion of a dissent by Democratic FERC member Richard Glick, who wrote that boosting “capacity has the potential to 'spur demand' and, for that reason, an agency conducting a NEPA review must, at the very least, examine the effects that an expansion of pipeline capacity might have on production and consumption. Indeed, if a proposed pipeline neither increases the supply of natural gas available to consumers nor decreases the price that those consumers would pay, it is hard to imagine why that pipeline would be 'needed' in the first place.”
Jaffe adds: “To which I can only say, touché.”
Ultimately, what FERC's order shows is that “one person's 'reasonably foreseeable' is another person's 'speculation.' This issue is not going to go away.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/industry-doj-plan-high-court-appeal-landmark-ghg-nepa-ruling
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Uniper Chief Defends ‘Important’ Gas Pipe in Face of U.S. Threat
May 25, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Elena Mazneva and Anna Shiryaevskaya
Germany’s biggest buyer of Russian natural gas doesn’t welcome U.S. efforts to regulate European energy security.
“Getting third countries, and the U.S. in that sense is obviously a third country, mingled into the European energy security I personally find very difficult,” Uniper SE Chief Executive Officer Klaus Schaefer said in an interview in St. Petersburg, Russia, during President Vladimir Putin’s annual investment forum.
“I don’t believe it should be a topic of U.S. sanctions.”
Russian Gas Pipeline Moves AheadThe U.S. imposing sanctions on Nord Stream 2, the 9.5 billion euro ($11 billion) pipeline from Russia that Uniper has agreed to help Gazprom PJSC finance, would be like Europe penalizing a link between the U.S. and Alaska, Schaefer said during a panel at the forum.
The U.S. opposes the project, saying it jeopardizes European energy security and makes the region more dependent on the Russian pipeline gas export monopoly.
“It’s strategically very important for the European market, for our customers - and we have an obligation to serve our customers reliably with gas,” Schaefer said in the interview. “The strategic rationale and the financial rationale have not changed. We are very supportive of Nord Stream 2.”
New Coal UnlikelyOther comments from the interview:
“The likelihood of anyone building a new coal plant in Europe is very low”
“We’ll have to come to gas-powered generation because in a market driven more and more by renewables, gas is the only way to seasonally store energy, transport it over long distance to existing infrastructure. Why are we investing in big overhead lines that cost billions when we have a gas infrastructure that is easily set out to transport gas and more importantly connected to existing storage?”
Gas rally in Europe that has seen next-month Dutch gas rise 44 percent over the past year is supported by oil-price indexation in Asia driving liquefied natural gas rates, resulting in “little to none LNG coming to Europe and therefore positive price changes in the European market”
Higher gas prices may damp demand in Europe “a bit”
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/uniper-chief-defends-important-gas-pipe-in-face-of-us-threat
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Chemical Safety Board Finalizes Investigation into Arkema Fires Following Tropical Storm Harvey
May 25, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jeff Johnson
The U.S. Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) is calling on chemical companies to better prepare for the growing likelihood of a future of flooding, hurricanes, and extreme weather events. The board’s recommendation springs from fires last year at the Arkema chemical facility in the Houston area during Tropical Storm Harvey.
CSB released its guidance to companies and final report on the Arkema fires at a Houston briefing May 24. The Arkema plant manufactures and distributes organic peroxides used to produce consumer goods, such as solid surface countertops and polystyrene cups and plates.
In late August 2017, the Houston area faced days of record rainfall as Harvey stalled over the region, dropping some 50 cm of rain. Although the Arkema facility is spread across a plain that has flooded in the past, it had never experienced storms of this magnitude, according to CSB.
A facility warehouse stored some 159,000 kg of reactive organic peroxides that needed to be kept at temperatures below freezing to avoid decomposition and combustion. Peroxides are also stored in relatively small containers to allow for heat dissipation and to prevent self-ignition.
As flood waters rose more than 1.5 meters, the warehouse lost primary and backup power. Workers had to transfer some 10,000 containers holding organic peroxides by hand in driving rain to nine refrigerator trailers. Then the trailers also began to lose power.
Eventually three of the trailers caught fire, and soon the company was forced to ignite the others in a controlled and contained burn. Some 200 nearby residents were evacuated and 21 people, mostly emergency responders, sought medical treatment for smoke inhalation.
What happened to Arkema could happen to other chemical companies, CSB warns in its report, adding past weather may not predict the future in today’s environment.
CSB did not issue recommendations for specific fixes to avoid weather-related chemical accidents. Instead, it urges that companies analyze their susceptibility to extreme weather events by evaluating flood maps and other material to determine if any portions of their plants are vulnerable. Companies should then prepare safeguards based on that analysis. CSB recommends such information be included in a facility’s process safety management program.
To aid companies in this effort, the board also recommends that the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), a nonprofit, industry membership organization, develop guidance to help companies evaluate the likelihood of weather-related problems and options for how to respond.
CSB has already reached out to CCPS and received a “very enthusiastic and receptive response,” says CSB member Kristen Kulinowski. CCPS has been working on guidance, she says, and historically, CCPS material has been widely adopted by industry and regulators.
Also, the board repeats a 20-year-old recommendation to EPA to add reactive chemicals, such as organic peroxides, to its list of potentially hazardous chemicals covered under federal risk management program provisions that call for added safeguards.
https://cen.acs.org/safety/industrialSafety/Chemical-Safety-Board-finalizes-investigation/96/web/2018/05
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EPA RMP Rule Delay Challengers Warn Against Staying Litigation
May 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
Petitioners challenging EPA's delay of the Obama-era updates to its risk management plan (RMP) facility safety rule say the agency's recent proposal to rescind many of the updates should not be a reason to delay their lawsuit, raising a preemptive argument against such a request and also claiming that the proposal undermines EPA's legal defenses.
In a May 25 letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Democratic states, labor unions and environmental groups suing to overturn the delay in Air Alliance Houston, et al., v. EPA and E. Scott Pruitt say the proposed RMP amendments that the agency signed on May 17 underscore the need for a speedy ruling in their case. The letter is in response to a filing by EPA where it notified the court of its proposed rewrite of the rule but did not ask for any particular action on the case based on that news.
“EPA’s proposal does not change the need for a swift disposition of this expedited proceeding to end the harm from the Delay Rule. . . . Indeed, EPA does not argue that its proposal moots this case or provides grounds to defer a ruling. Nor could it; EPA’s unlawful Delay Rule must be evaluated on the record the agency created for its action at the time, and an after-the-fact proposal cannot provide grounds to support an unlawful rule,” reads the letter.
The D.C. Circuit heard oral argument in the delay case on March 16, with judges generally seeming to backing the Trump administration's authority to delay the Obama-era rule but questioning whether the agency had justified extending compliance deadlines from the original target of June 19, 2017, until Feb. 19, 2019.
EPA is now proposing to scrap most of the requirements that the Obama-era rule added to the RMP, including mandates for safer technologies, third-party auditing and alternatives analyses.
However, the petitioners say in their letter that the justification for the proposal undermines EPA's arguments to the D.C. Circuit on why it was reasonable to delay the rule's compliance deadlines in the first place.
“For example, EPA characterized the Amendments’ immediate compliance obligations as minor and 'nonsubstantive' yet proposes to rescind nearly all of these important changes. . . . And EPA previously insisted that its delay did not affect post-2019 deadlines, but the proposal would formally extend those compliance deadlines as a direct consequence of the Delay Rule,” the letter says.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-rmp-rule-delay-challengers-warn-against-staying-litigation
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Suit Adds To Challenges Over EPA's Raised Bar For Air Permit Objections
May 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Environmentalists are suing EPA to overturn the agency's denial of their petition objecting to a Clean Air Act Title V operating permit for an Exxon petrochemical facility, a new legal battle over the Trump administration's revised policy of no longer objecting to such “umbrella” permits based on alleged defects in underlying permits.
After a state issues an air permit under delegated authority from EPA, environmental organizations and other third parties can then petition the agency to object to the permit. But the Trump administration's new position of not objecting to a Title V permit if it contains an allegedly defective permit raises the bar for such challenges.
Title V permits are overarching documents that do not generally impose substantive new requirements, but must contain all applicable Clean Air Act permits for a facility, including new source review (NSR) permits. The Obama EPA when reviewing Title V permits would on occasion consider flaws with underlying permits, but the Trump EPA last fall rejected this approach, a move seen as making it harder for groups to win objections to permits.
Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) and Sierra Club filed suit May 22 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit over EPA's March 1 order rejecting the groups' Aug. 8, 2016, petition seeking an objection to the Texas-issued Title V permit of the Exxon Baytown olefins plant. The plant is part of a huge complex including one of the largest oil refineries in the United States.
EPA's order cites the change in Title V policy as justification. It follows similar refusals to object to the Title V operating permits for the PacifiCorp Hunter power plant in Utah and the Big River Steel plant in Arkansas.
In those decisions, EPA announced it would not consider flaws in underlying permits, or state permit authorities' decisions on whether “major source” permits were required in the first place, in Title V reviews.
Environmentalists are already testing this decision in parallel lawsuits filed over the Hunter petition denial in the 10th Circuit and D.C. Circuits, in two suits both styled Sierra Club v. EPA. In that litigation, Sierra Club is fighting to hear the case in the D.C. Circuit -- which reviews challenges to rules that are “nationally applicable” or of “nationwide scope or effect.” EPA, however is seeking to limit the case to the 10th Circuit because it says the air permit at issue is only locally applicable, and the legal battle continues.
Second Lawsuit
The EIP and Sierra Club challenge over the Baytown permit order, which the agency published in the March 23 Federal Register, would appear to be the second legal action to challenge the Hunter and Big River Steel doctrine.
The groups allege various flaws with underlying NSR permits based on plantwide applicability limits (PALs), which are overall caps on pollution for a facility. Facilities can increase emissions from specific emissions sources, without triggering air permit review, so long as they remain within the PAL.
Meanwhile, EPA is scheduled to publish in the May 29 Federal Register its partial denial and partial approval of another Title V permit petition, this time concerning the separate Title V permit of the Exxon Baytown refinery located close to the olefins plant at issue in the 5th Circuit case.
EPA issued its decision on the refinery April 2. EIP, Sierra Club and Air Alliance Houston in that Sept. 26, 2016, petition again challenged alleged deficiencies in PALs and also Texas “flexible permits,” which are “minor source” NSR permits imposing plantwide emissions caps.
Environmentalists have previously challenged both PALs and flexible permits in court as incompatible with the Clean Air Act, without success.
The Obama EPA also challenged flexible permits as a possible way for industry to skirt NSR “major source” review, only to reverse course after an adverse ruling on the issue by the 5th Circuit.
EPA in its pending Register notice denies a number of objections, again citing the Hunter precedent.
However, the agency grants the petition with respect to a failure by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state's air regulator, to identify sufficiently clearly permit conditions included from “permits by rule,” referenced in the Title V permit. Publication of the decision in the Register will open a 60-day window for environmentalists to sue over the refinery permit, should they choose to do so.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/suit-adds-challenges-over-epas-raised-bar-air-permit-objections
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May 25, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Dino Grandon
Last week, a bipartisan group of House members made a demand of congressional leaders: Block any provisions curtailing the federal government’s ability to deal with climate change from the next spending bill.
The letter came from members of the House Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan group of representatives who have vowed to find “economically-viable” ways of dealing with sea-level rise, drought and other effects of climate change.
Half of the group's 78 members are Republicans. These GOP members are bucking the rest of their party, and their president, on climate change by at the very least acknowledging that it is real, giving some progressives hope that Republicans writ large will one day again take climate change seriously.But critics say the caucus is all talk, and accuse the group of granting green credentials to Republicans without requiring any consequential votes or other actions of its members.
When it came time to sign the May 18 letter pushing back against a right-wing effort to prohibit or limit the federal government from researching climate change or preparing for its impacts, only nine of the group's 39 Republicans in the caucus put their pens to paper.
“I’m very disappointed,” Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), one of the co-founders of the caucus, told The Post. “I’m really serious about the Climate Solutions Caucus. It’s been a place where we can bring together Democrats and Republicans to talk about climate change, and that’s been really helpful. But the caucus was created to come up with bipartisan legislation to address climate change. Part of that should be to reject any anti-climate language or bills that would undermine our efforts.”
Deutch added that he thought the letter addressed to Reps. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) and Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the chairman and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, “would be an easy sell.” A majority of the climate caucus’s Democrats did sign the letter.
It was hard to lock down members signatures before Congress went into recess next week for Memorial Day, a key time for House members to lay the groundwork for reelection campaigns, Deutch explained. “In the next weeks, we’re actually going to consider appropriations bills,” Deutch said, “and the fact is that actions speak louder than words and what’s really going to matter is their votes.”
Spokespeople for two Republican climate caucus members, Reps. David Joyce (Ohio) and Mark Amodei (Nev.), said the members are both part of the Appropriations Committee and generally do not sign onto letters addressed to committees they serve.
Founded by Deutch and Republican Carlos Curbelo, two South Florida congressmen whose constituents are already grappling with sea-level rise, the Climate Solutions Caucus was designed to be bipartisan from the start. House members can only be admitted a pair at a time — one Republican for every Democrat — leading some to dub it the “Noah’s Ark Caucus.”
The young caucus is still growing, adding eight members since February and three new GOP members just last week. But the additions of some House members with what environmentalists consider checkered legislative pasts on climate issues have caused confusion about what exactly the group is stands for.
Among the head-scratchers is Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, who in 2017 introduced a bill to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency. After joining the caucus, Gaetz told the Pensacola News Journal, a newspaper in his Florida district, that he believes the Earth is warming but that the EPA has a poor track record on conservation.
"We should be focused on solutions," he told the paper.
As a group, Republicans in the climate caucus receive low marks from environmentalists. The League of Conservation Voters gave GOP climate caucus members only a 16 approval rating in the group’s annual scorecard, with a majority of them dinged for voting to block agencies from considering the social cost of carbon when writing rules and for voting to open a coastal plain in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, a provision of a much larger Republican tax cut package.
“When faced with real votes that will take real action on climate,” said Melinda Pierce, legislative director of the Sierra Club, “the Climate Solution Caucus Republicans are nowhere to be found.”
Mark Reynolds, executive director of the Citizens' Climate Lobby, a grassroots environmental group that helped organize the caucus, wrotein February that “we don’t think the scorecard accurately captures the emerging work being done by the caucus to develop bipartisan solutions to climate change,” noting that a plurality of caucus Republicans’ scores improved between 2016 and 2017.
When it comes to proactive legislation on climate change, critics say the caucus falls short, too. Last year, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) and two other Democratic caucus members introduced a carbon-pricing bill designed to be business-friendly, but failed to find any GOP co-sponsors. Beyer’s office said it continues to seek Republican support among Climate Solutions Caucus members.
However, caucus leaders take credit for helping defeat a defense amendment last year from Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) that would have stripped out language directing the Pentagon to assess the vulnerabilities of military bases to the effects of climate change.“Last Congress, many Members worked behind the scenes to defeat harmful amendments,” Curbelo spokeswoman Joanna Rodriguez wrote by email. “We expect a similar effort this year.”
―Another day, another study unreleased: The EPA has delayed the release of a study on the cancer risks from formaldehyde, after pressure from the chemical industry, according to Reuters. According to internal communications, top agency officials would not review the study or receive briefings on the studies findings from experts. “The EPA already lists formaldehyde, used in building materials like plywood and foam insulation, as a probable carcinogen. The new report is expected for the first time to detail its links to leukemia,” Reuters reports. “The delay could further heighten scrutiny of EPA, already fending off complaints that it and the White House considered blocking a study on water contamination by PFOA and PFOS, chemicals used in Teflon and firefighting.”
― Time is on your side: The EPA announced Thursday will extend the public comment period for its controversial “secret science” rule. The comment period was initially meant to conclude on May 30, but will now continue until August 17. Under the proposed rule, the agency would only consider studies where the underlying data is publicly available. But scientists and public health groups warn such a restriction would prevent the agency from using long-standing studies on air pollution and pesticide exposure when crafting regulations.
― Energy funding cuts, rejected: The Senate Appropriations Committee voted on Thursday to advance an energy and water spending bill for next year, rejecting the Trump administration’s proposed cuts, the Washington Examiner reports. A $43.8 billion bill was advanced on a 30-1 vote, $566 million more than the funding for 2018 and $7.2 billion more than what was proposed by the administration. The bill includes $6.65 billion for the Energy Department's Office of Science and $375 million for its energy startup incubator, Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.
― For the birds: A coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging the Trump administration’s move clipping the wings of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act. “For 100 years, the United States has committed with other nations to protect migratory birds through international treaties and laws,” Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of Defenders of Wildlife, said in a statement. “The Trump administration’s meddling with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act threatens to reverse decades of progress."
The law was used to prosecute Exxon following the Exxon Valdez crash and BP following the Deepwater Horizon explosion. But under the Trump administration's new interpretation, the MBTA will no longer apply after such catastrophes.
― Panel urges chemical plants to weigh disaster risks: The U.S. Chemical Safety Board is calling on chemical plants to consider natural disaster risks in the same way they consider risks from pipes and production equipment, Reuters reports. The recommendations follow an analysis of the chemical fire at the Arkema plant in Crosby, Tex. that occurred as a result of damage from Hurricane Harvey. “Such facilities should perform an analysis to determine their susceptibility to extreme weather events,” the board said in its final report, per Reuters. “In addition, companies should assess seismic hazard maps to determine the risk of earthquakes and consider the risk of other extreme weather such as high-wind events.”
― Pompeo urges limits on uranium enrichment for Saudis: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration wants Saudi Arabia to accept the same limits on uranium enrichment as other Middle East nations that are seeking commercial nuclear energy deals with the United States. “Saudi Arabia has said it wants to build two nuclear reactors to burnish its international prestige, keep up with Iran and free up oil now being used to generate electricity,” The Post’s Steven Mufson reports. “Yet to use U.S. technology, Saudi Arabia needs to negotiate an agreement with the United States called a 123 Agreement, named after a section of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. And previous administrations have insisted on what is called the gold-standard terms accepted by the United Arab Emirates. That agreement bars uranium enrichment and the reprocessing of spent fuel.”
― Trump team defends Keystone XL in court: The Trump administration defended the Keystone XL pipeline in federal court on Thursday against the environmental and Native American groups who have sued to stop the line. The Obama administration rejected the proposed pipeline in 2015 because of its potential to exacerbate climate change, but Trump revived the project soon after taking office. “U.S. government attorneys asserted that Trump’s change in course from Obama’s focus on climate change reflected a legitimate shift in policy, not an arbitrary rejection of previous studies of the project," according to Reuters.
― Climate change in colors: A climate scientist at the University of Reading in Britain created a visualization of temperature over time using 123 red, white and blue stripes. The blue stripes portray cooler years and the red stripes are hot, as The Post’s Jason Samenow reports, in “scientific representations that unambiguously reveal a long-term warming signal.”
As the researcher, Ed Hawkins, put it: “This visualization removes all the distractions of standard graphs and allows the viewer to just see the long-term trends and variations in temperature without needing to interpret anything else.”
― Fish feel pain, and that could change the fishing industry:In recent years, scientists and biologists have been pushing back on a certain U.S. attitude toward fish -- that their brains are not complex enough to feel pain. Victoria Braithwaite, professor of fisheries and biology at Penn State University who co-authored a groundbreaking study in 2003, told The Post’s Tim Carman the scientific consensus is that fish do feel pain, though it is "not that they experience the pain that we do, which is more sophisticated," she added.
So why is decades worth of research coming up again now?“For starters, the U.S. government might have to amend the Animal Welfare Act and the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, both of which exclude fish,” Carman reports. “Weekend anglers might have to kill their fish first before throwing them in a cooler. Fish farms might have to adopt new methods of slaughter. Commercial trawlers, the boats that roam the world’s oceans, might have to upgrade their equipment to kill fish humanely.”
― Camouflage mismatch: In the Bialowieza Forest along the border of Poland and Belarus, one subspecies of a species known as the least weasels, sheds its brown coat each autumn into a bright winter white, which evolved as a way to blend in with the snow. But according to new research published in the journal Scientific Reports, snow is no longer covering the forest as long as it once did, and there are fewer white weasels, The Post’s Ben Guarino reports. “This drop is a case of what wildlife biologists call camouflage mismatch: White fur, which should be a stealthy trait, becomes a vulnerability when there's no snow,” Guarino writes. “Camouflage mismatch may cause the local extinction of white subspecies,” Karol Zub, at the Mammal Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, told The Post.
― Closer to normal: After a record and catastrophic hurricane season last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts the next one will likely be closer to “normal” or slightly above normal, The Post’s Angela Fritz reports. Here’s what NOAA is predicting for 2018:10-16 named storms5-9 hurricanes1-4 major hurricanes (category 3 or stronger)
That’s compared with 17 named storms in 2017, 10 of which became hurricanes. It was the most destructive and active season in a dozen years, Fritz writes. The 2018 hurricane season starts June 1.
According to a Time magazine examination of 15 years of forecasts, the agency’s predictions “are usually correct or close to correct.” But Time notes there are “major exceptions.” “The estimates that NOAA’s model produces are accurate about 70 percent of the time, its developers say, and are often only off by one or two storms outside the projected range,” per the analysis. “In the mythically tricky world of predicting the weather even a day in advance, this is not a bad track record.”
― Meanwhile: A cluster of showers and thunderstorms in the Caribbean is likely to spin up into at least a tropical depression, and perhaps the season’s first named tropical storm within the next five days, Fritz reports. The National Hurricane Center on Thursday said the cluster has a 40 percent chance of developing in the next 48 hours and an 80 percent chance over the next five days. “At the very least, several inches of torrential rain are likely across the Gulf states east of Texas,” she adds.
― New study says dino-killing catastrophe created global hothouse for 100,000 years: Scientists have long believed that when a massive mountain-sized object slammed into the Earth 66 million years ago, there was an initial pulse of heat followed by a global winter — but that as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surged, the planet began to warm. “A new study published Thursday in the journal Science has produced hard data to support that global warming hypothesis, and it may have unnerving implications for the world we live in today,” The Post’s Joel Achenbach reports. The researchers concluded the effects of the impact in modern-day Mexico produced a 9 degrees Fahrenheit average warming in a subtropical sea, which persisted for 100,000 years.
― Nuclear push: The United States is leading an international alliance to promote nuclear power and urge investment in new nuclear technology, Reuters reports. Dan Brouillette, the No. 2 official at the Energy Department, launched on Thursday the effort with international partners Japan, Canada, Russia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Poland, Argentina and Romania. “The group of nations aims to promote areas such as improved power system integration and the development of technologies like hybrid nuclear-renewable systems,” per the report.
— And finally, here are some great longreads for your long weekend (that is, if you have Memorial Day off):Former EPA head still has hope: Even as Gina McCarthy has watched her successor at the EPA work to dismantle the Obama administration’s environmental efforts, she is hopeful, Neil Swidey writes in a Boston Globe Magazine profile. “McCarthy has always been known for her blunt, no-nonsense style. But as the 64-year-old new Harvard professor travels the country these days, feeling unencumbered because she’s out of government for the first time in nearly four decades, and dumbfounded by the demolition work going on at the EPA, she is letting loose even more. She now comes across as one part tent-revival preacher and one part take-your-lumps therapist.”
“I expect great science from this event:” The volcanic eruptions at Kilauea on Hawaii's Big Island that began on May 3 are giving scientists a lot of raw data to work with. They’re studying oozing fissures, explosive eruptions and magma flow patterns, The Post’s Scott Wilson and Sarah Kaplan report. “What they are learning is not simply a boon for pure science, though it certainly is that. Where the volcano cracks into fissures, how the magma tracks through the ground and what warning signs may exist that point to future eruptions will be used to better plan and protect Hawaiian communities in the future.”https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2018/05/25/the-energy-202-a-bunch-of-house-republicans-say-they-re-serious-about-climate-change-do-they-mean-it/5b06fbe71b326b492dd07e81/?utm_term=.0cefc485e88f
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Few GOP Members of House Climate Caucus Sign Anti-Rider Letter
May 25, 2018 | Inside EPA
The bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus is weighing in with a letter opposing anti-climate budget riders to the current round of fiscal year 2019 spending bills, but few Republican members signed onto the letter.
The May 18 letter to the chair and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee says, “As appropriations bills for Fiscal Year 2019 are considered, we urge that the Committee oppose harmful provisions on policy riders that undermine efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change.”
But of the 78-member group -- equally divided between Democrats and Republicans -- only nine GOP lawmakers signed on to the letter, whereas 35 of the 39 Democratic members did.
One of the caucus' founders, Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), told the Washington Post that he is “very disappointed” by the low representation from the other side of the aisle.
“I'm really serious about the Climate Solutions Caucus. It's been a place where we can bring together Democrats and Republicans to talk about climate change, and that's been really helpful. But the caucus was created to come up with bipartisan legislation to address climate change. Part of that should be to reject any anti-climate language or bills that would undermine our efforts.”
He added that he thought the letter “would be an easy sell,” but noted it was difficult to track down members for their signatures ahead of the Memorial Day recess.
The GOP founder of the caucus, Rep. Carlos Curbelo (FL), did sign the letter as did Reps. Ryan Costello (PA), Mike Coffman (CO), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Jennifer Gonzalez-Colon (PA), Dan Donovan (NY), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA) and Dave Reichert (WA).
The letter says, “Appropriations provisions and policy riders that prohibit or limit the use of funds to study initiatives to reduce climate change impacts, or prohibit or limit the use of funds to make our infrastructure more resilient to the impacts of climate change will make our country more prone to the damaging effects of climate change. We agree that provisions in the appropriations bills must advance our fight against climate change, not undermine progress.”
It asks the leaders to remove any policy provisions or riders in FY19 appropriations bills that undermine climate change research or efforts.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/few-gop-members-house-climate-caucus-sign-anti-rider-letter
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