Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 6/11/2018
-
Hearing On Chemical Terrorism Standards
Jun 12, 2018 | Homeland Security and Government Affairs
Location: 324 Dirksen / 10:00 AM. -
Hearing On FERC
Jun 12, 2018 | Energy and Natural Resources
Location: 366 Dirksen / 10:00 AM -
Hearing On Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Program
Jun 14, 2018 | Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment
Location: 2123 Rayburn / 10:30 AM -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Hiring 40 New Chemicals Staff Members to Help Implement Law
Jun 11, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The Environmental Protection Agency is hiring 40 new staff members to help it carry out the heavy workload required by an amended chemicals law that the agency administers. -
(ACC Mentioned) G7 Plastics Charter Details Some Specific Goals
Jun 10, 2018 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
Ocean litter, recycling and more environmentally sustainable uses of plastics in general get significant attention in the Ocean Plastics Charter adopted June 9 by five of the G7 member nations. -
(ACC Mentioned) Primary Preview: Open Seats Take Spotlight as Maine, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina and Virginia Heads to Polls on June 12
Jun 8, 2018 | Open Secrets
By Nihal Krishan
Congressional primaries next week in Maine, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina and Virginia feature half a dozen open seats and a few toss up districts which will be closely watched by both parties. -
(ACC Mentioned) GOP Donor Involved in Science Adviser's Appointment
Jun 8, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
Michael Honeycutt, a top staffer at Texas' environmental agency, waged an unusual campaign two years ago to secure a seat on a key EPA advisory panel. -
(ACC Mentioned) Speaking Of The EPA: Chemical Industry Gets Win Under Trump
Jun 8, 2018 | Politico
By Marianne LeVine and Theodoric Meyer
“The Trump administration, after heavy lobbying by the chemical industry, is scaling back the way the federal government determines health and safety risks associated with the most dangerous chemicals on the market, documents from the Environmental Protection Agency show,” -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Staff Say the Trump Administration Is Changing Their Mission From Protecting Human Health and the Environment to Protecting Industry
Jun 11, 2018 | Desmog
By Chris Sellers, Lindsey Dillon, Santa Cruz and Phil Brown
The Environmental Protection Agency made news recently for excluding reporters from a “summit” meeting on chemical contamination in drinking water. Episodes like this are symptoms of a larger problem: an ongoing, broad-scale takeover of the agency by industries it regulates. -
D.C. Circuit Backs EPA Rule Allowing 'Nonacquiescence' to Court Rulings
Jun 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has upheld EPA's rule saying its regions do not have to adhere to adverse appellate rulings from circuit courts outside of a particular region, rejecting an industry coalition's suit over the “nonacquiescence” policy and correcting prior precedent in an earlier similar case. -
In the Trump Administration, Science Is Unwelcome. So Is Advice.
Jun 11, 2018 | The New York Times
By Coral Davenport
As the president prepares for nuclear talks, he lacks a close adviser with nuclear expertise. It’s one example of a marginalization of science in shaping federal policy. -
(ACC Mentioned) Industry: TSCA New Chemicals Fees Could Hamper Innovation
Jun 11, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Specialty chemicals trade group Socma has warned that the US EPA's proposed fees for the TSCA new chemicals programme will threaten innovation, and it is urging the agency reconsider them. -
EPA's Chemical Evaluation Documents Suggest Key TSCA Rules Are Stalled
Jun 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Despite plans to advance an Obama-era proposal to regulate a paint stripping chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), recently released EPA documents suggest the agency will not -- or at least not soon -- be pursuing other proposed TSCA rules restricting uses of two other substances, a move that is worrying environmentalists. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA to Ignore 68 Million Pounds of Chemical Emissions in Limited Risk Assessment
Jun 8, 2018 | EcoWatch
By Olivia Rosane
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will limit the criteria it uses to determine the health risks of 10 dangerous chemicals including asbestos, The New York Times reported Thursday. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Scales Back Risk Assessments for Common Chemicals: Documents
Jun 8, 2018 | Reuters
By Valerie Volcovici
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reducing the extent of it assessment of health risks associated with commonly used chemicals, according to documents seen by Reuters and first reported by the New York Times, the latest example of the agency easing its oversight of the chemicals industry. -
(ACC Mentioned) Oh, COME ON! EPA Eliminates Chemical Safety Checks
Jun 9, 2018 | Care2.com
By Kevin Matthews
In 2016, Congress passed legislation requiring the EPA to conduct research on potentially dangerous chemicals. Now the EPA has taken upon itself to set much laxer guidelines than lawmakers initially intended on the kind of research it is willing to do on chemicals. -
(ACC Mentioned) Catering to Chemical Industry Demands, EPA Threatens Nation's Air and Water With 'Shameful' Curbing of Toxic Safety Rules
Jun 11, 2018 | Common Dream
By Jessica Corbett
"Scott Pruitt isn't just the most corrupt EPA Administrator in history. His actions threaten the lives—and quality of life—for millions of Americans." -
Incoming IARC Boss Gets Hearing Request From US Republicans
Jun 11, 2018 | Chemical Watch
US Republicans have welcomed the incoming director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (Iarc) with a request for testimony -
NGO Urges Commission To Consider EU Non-Toxic Strategy Priorities
Jun 11, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) has proposed priority actions it wants the European Commission to consider in its strategy for a non-toxic environment. -
Pennsvylania Court Won’t Rehear Fracking Trespass Case
Jun 8, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Leslie A. Pappas
The Pennsylvania Superior Court won’t rehear a trespass case involving a natural gas driller’s dispute with property owners near wells it operates in Susquehanna County, the court said June 8. -
Expert Sees More Cracker Announcements Coming Soon
Jun 8, 2018 | Pittsburgh Business Times
By Paul J. Gough
A chemical industry expert believes Shell Chemical's plant under construction in Beaver County could be joined by announcements about three others in the tri-state region over the next year or so. -
Rising Oil Prices Good For More Than Oil Companies
Jun 8, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Katherine Blunt
Houstonians know well that higher crude oil prices benefit the city’s energy giants, boosting profit margins and, ultimately, paychecks. -
(ACC Mentioned) House, Senate Lawmakers To Mull Plant Safety Law
Jun 11, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Corbin Hiar
Lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol this week will gather testimony on a decade-old chemical plant safety law that is set to expire in December. -
Companies Double Down on Protections as Hurricane Season Starts
Jun 11, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
Energy companies want to make sure their critical facilities can survive a repeat of Hurricane Harvey, which dumped more than 50 inches of rain and caused about $125 billion in damage, as hurricane season begins again. -
Loss of Investigators Slows Key Federal Chemical Safety Agency
Jun 11, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Matt Dempsey
The federal agency that frequently investigates chemical disasters in Houston and elsewhere is struggling to function amid an exodus of investigators and management’s push toward more lenient treatment of industry, interviews and documents show. -
EPA to Review How It Adds up the Economic Pros and Cons of Environmental Rules
Jun 7, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni and Chris Mooney
Under President Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency has sought to change the way its researchers review science. Now the agency is taking aim at the way it does economics. -
EPA Seeking Public Input on Improving Its Cost-Benefit Analysis
Jun 11, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
In a possible precursor to setting a nationwide policy, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it wants public input into whether and how it should reconsider the cost-benefit analysis for its regulatory decisions. -
Judges Uphold EPA 'Regional Consistency' Regs
Jun 8, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Amanda Reilly
A panel of federal judges today upheld a rule that critics argued excused EPA from consistently applying air pollution regulations across the country. -
House Rescinds Environment Funds but Spares EPA
Jun 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
The House has approved a Trump administration proposal to rescind $15 billion in previously approved but unspent funds, including $1 billion from various energy and environmental programs -- though the final measure dropped initial administration plans to rescind $10 million from EPA grant funds. -
Pennsylvania Issues New Permits to Cut Methane Emissions
Jun 8, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Leslie A. Pappas
Pennsylvania aims to curb methane emissions and other pollutants by reducing emissions from hydraulic fracturing operations under new natural gas permits that go into effect in August.
Congressional Hearings
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
-
Hearing On Chemical Terrorism Standards
Jun 12, 2018 | Homeland Security and Government Affairs
-
Jun 12, 2018 | Energy and Natural Resources
-
Hearing On Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Program
Jun 14, 2018 | Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment
-
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Hiring 40 New Chemicals Staff Members to Help Implement Law
Jun 11, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The Environmental Protection Agency is hiring 40 new staff members to help it carry out the heavy workload required by an amended chemicals law that the agency administers.
The agency’s chemicals office—called the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT)—"is actively recruiting and hiring new staff to support implementation of amended TSCA,” according to an EPA spokesperson.
“Our goal is to reach a staffing level of 340 later this year,” the EPA said in a June 7 email. OPPT has 300 employees, the agency said. New staff will assess new and existing chemicals, among other tasks.
Preparing for the WorkloadThe EPA provided its hiring plans to Bloomberg Environment in response to questions about the agency’s preparations for the heavy workload it will face later this year and through 2019 as it continues to implement the Toxic Substances Control Act amendments of 2016.
Among other mandates, those amendments require the EPA to:Issue in early 2019 a list of chemicals active in commerce,Select 40 chemicals it will screen in 2019 to decide whether they are high or low priorities for risk evaluation,Propose a rule by June 22, 2019, to reduce exposures to five toxic chemicals that also persist in the environment and build up in the food chain,Complete by late 2019 risk evaluations of 10 chemicals, andDevelop plans in early 2020 to assess the risks of 20 “high priority” chemicals that it must identify next year.Broad Impacts on Chemical Sector
Chemical manufacturers and companies that purchase chemicals to make goods they sell will be greatly affected by the agency’s work, Martha E. Marrapese, a partner with the Washington office of Wiley Rein LLP, recently told Bloomberg Environment.
Firms will have to respond to EPA’s initial chemical evaluations and other decisions very quickly, she said.
Michael P. Walls, vice president of regulatory and technical affairs at the American Chemistry Council, could not immediately be reached June 8 for comment about OPPT’s hiring plans.
However, recently he told Bloomberg Environment, “We at ACC are fully committed to full implementation of the 2016 amendments.”
The EPA must have the resources, including staff and expertise, that it needs to implement the law, Walls said during a recent discussion on the EPA’s and chemical industries’ 2019 TSCA-implementation workload.
The chemistry council represents small and large chemical manufacturers including 3M, Merck & Co., PPG Industries, Inc., Quaker Chemical Corp., and W. R. Grace & Co.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-hiring-40-new-chemicals-staff-members-to-help-implement-law
-
(ACC Mentioned) G7 Plastics Charter Details Some Specific Goals
Jun 10, 2018 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
Ocean litter, recycling and more environmentally sustainable uses of plastics in general get significant attention in the Ocean Plastics Charter adopted June 9 by five of the G7 member nations.
The non-binding charter, signed by Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the European Union, suggests those governments want to see significant improvements in how plastic is used and how plastic waste is managed.
It includes a commitment to recycle and reuse at least 55 percent of plastics packaging by 2030, and recover all plastics by 2040, and as expected, calls for “significantly reducing” unnecessary uses of single-use plastics.
The document includes 23 specific points in five broad categories, and also suggests stronger government roles in supporting markets for recycled plastics, including increasing recycled content by at least 50 percent in plastic products by 2030.
“Plastics are one of the most revolutionary inventions of the past century and play an important role in our economy and daily lives,” the charter said. “However, the current approach to producing, using, managing and disposing of plastics poses a significant threat to the environment, to livelihoods and potentially to human health.”
The agreement was not signed by two G7 members, Japan and the United States. It’s not clear why.
Many of the specific commitments spelled out in the document are more than a decade away, but if implemented could mark a sharp change in plastics use and the role of government in the industry.
The document, for example, calls for research to assess current plastics consumption by sector and look for areas to eliminate unnecessary uses, and strengthen labeling standards “to enable consumers to make sustainable decisions on plastics, including packaging.”
It also calls for accelerating international action and investments around marine waste, and encourages government procurement to “reduce waste and support secondary plastics markets and alternatives to plastic.”
It also said it was important to consider the environmental impact of any alternatives to plastics.
The Canadian plastics and chemical industries issued a joint statement June 10 that they supported the oceans and waterways focus of the charter and said there’s growing recognition of the need for cooperation between the plastics industry, governments, brand owners and other businesses, NGOs and citizens to restore the health of oceans.
The Canadian Plastics Industry Association and the Chemical Industry Association of Canada noted that on June 4 they committed to 100 percent of plastics packaging being recyclable or recoverable by 2030 and 100 percent of plastics packaging being reused, recycled, or recovered by 2040.
"Our members have committed to aggressive goals and to doing their part to improve the recycling and recovery of post-use plastics packaging," said Carol Hochu, president and CEO of CPIA. "We are very pleased to see a clear endorsement of the need for collaboration, a lifecycle approach to stewardship and incentives for innovation in the Charter."
The American Chemistry Council did not comment after the meeting but in a statement ahead of the G7 it said it had been working with G7 negotiators to ensure that the charter would leverage the group’s existing work.
ACC also noted the commitment by Canadian and U.S. plastics associations to recycle or recover 100 percent of plastic packaging by 2040.
“We are working together to advance the technologies and create the new business models, partnerships and cooperation needed to deliver on those goals,” ACC said.
Greenpeace issued a more critical statement after the charter was announced, saying that while a common blueprint is good news, voluntary charters are not enough.
“It’s time for the world’s largest economies to recognize that we cannot simply recycle our way out of this problem while we keep churning out so much throwaway plastic in the first place,” Greenpeace said. “Governments must move beyond voluntary agreements to legislate binding reduction targets and bans on single-use plastics, invest in new and reuse delivery models for products, and hold corporations accountable for the problem they have created.”
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20180610/NEWS/180619999/g7-plastics-charter-details-some-specific-goals
-
Jun 8, 2018 | Open Secrets
By Nihal Krishan
Congressional primaries next week in Maine, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina and Virginia feature half a dozen open seats and a few toss up districts which will be closely watched by both parties. Remember that in districts where one party has a stronghold, primaries with an open seat essentially function as general elections because the individual who wins the primary for his or her party is highly likely to go on to win the general in November.
Maine
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/06/primary-preview-june-12/
-
(ACC Mentioned) GOP Donor Involved in Science Adviser's Appointment
Jun 8, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
Michael Honeycutt, a top staffer at Texas' environmental agency, waged an unusual campaign two years ago to secure a seat on a key EPA advisory panel.
He fell short in his bid to join the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee when then-EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy named another candidate.
But it was a different story last year after a major Republican campaign donor forwarded his name for a post on the Science Advisory Board to an aide of current EPA chief Scott Pruitt, according to recently released emails.
"Good morning, Ryan, Here is the list of recommendations for the Science Advisory Panel [sic]," Dallas businessman Doug Deason wrote in a message last August to Ryan Jackson, Pruitt's chief of staff.
Deason, who has contributed tens of thousands of dollars in recent years to President Trump and other Republican officeholders, forwarded the recommendations on behalf of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank.
A printout of the email shows an attachment labeled "Dr. Michael Honeycutt — bio and testimonies.pdf." The message doesn't list the other candidates recommended by the foundation.
Three months later, Pruitt named Honeycutt to lead the Science Advisory Board (SAB), created to provide expertise to EPA on a variety of topics.
Honeycutt is the longtime director of toxicology at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).
In an email exchange with E&E News this afternoon, Honeycutt said he didn't ask Deason and the foundation for help in gaining a seat on the SAB and was unaware that he had gotten their recommendation. In the exchange, Honeycutt said he had been nominated to the board by TCEQ Chairman Bryan Shaw and didn't ask anyone else to voice support for his candidacy.
Asked in an email today what role the involvement by Deason and the Texas foundation played in Honeycutt's appointment, an EPA spokesman called him "a well-qualified and respected toxicologist," adding he "has been nominated by multiple people and considered for EPA science advisory committees for the last several years."
That involvement was first reported today by Politico, based on emails obtained by the Sierra Club through a Freedom of Information Act request.
During the Obama administration, Honeycutt was a prominent critic of EPA's 2015 decision to tighten its ground-level ozone standard from 75 parts per billion to 70 ppb. McCarthy made the change, saying it was needed to protect the public in light of growing research into its health effects. Honeycutt spearheaded a Texas workshop that strongly challenged the scientific rationale for the change.
He chaired his first public SAB meeting last week. In a brief scrum with reporters, Honeycutt said he did not regret his role in putting the workshop together and reiterated his belief that cutting the ozone standard to 70 ppb "won't gain you much in terms of health effects."
He also said he wasn't concerned about being seen as an instrument of anyone's agenda. Pruitt placed him on the board as part of a new policy that bars current EPA grant recipients from serving on EPA advisory panels.
That policy — now the target of three lawsuits — led some members to step down while Pruitt declined to reappoint others who traditionally would have been named to a second term. He then filled some of the resulting vacancies with people tied to the oil industry and other business sectors regulated by EPA.
In pursuing a seat on the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) two years ago, Honeycutt acknowledged seeking endorsements from more than a hundred people (Greenwire, Aug. 26, 2016).
While many of those who followed through with emails and letters of support were members of academia or worked for state regulatory agencies, they also included representatives of Exxon Mobil Corp., the Texas Oil and Gas Association, and the American Chemistry Council.
The seven-member CASAC advises EPA during statutorily required reviews of the standards for ozone and five other "criteria" pollutants.
McCarthy ultimately chose Donna Kenski, the data analysis chief for the Lake Michigan Air Directors Consortium, over the objections of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a political ally of Pruitt who then led the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
After announcing the membership policy change last fall, Pruitt removed Kenski from the committee.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/06/08/stories/1060083983
-
(ACC Mentioned) Speaking Of The EPA: Chemical Industry Gets Win Under Trump
Jun 8, 2018 | Politico
By Marianne LeVine and Theodoric Meyer
“The Trump administration, after heavy lobbying by the chemical industry, is scaling back the way the federal government determines health and safety risks associated with the most dangerous chemicals on the market, documents from the Environmental Protection Agency show,” The New York Times’ Eric Lipton reports. “Under a law passed by Congress during the final year of the Obama administration, the E.P.A. was required for the first time to evaluate hundreds of potentially toxic chemicals and determine if they should face new restrictions, or even be removed from the market. But as it moves forward reviewing the first batch of 10 chemicals, the E.P.A. has in most cases decided to exclude from its calculations any potential exposure caused by the substances’ presence in the air, the ground or water, according to more than 1,500 pages of documents released last week by the agency.
— “Instead, the agency will focus on possible harm caused by direct contact with a chemical in the workplace or elsewhere. The approach means that the improper disposal of chemicals — leading to the contamination of drinking water, for instance — will often not be a factor in deciding whether to restrict or ban them. The approach is a big victory for the chemical industry, which has repeatedly pressed the E.P.A. to narrow the scope of its risk evaluations. Nancy B. Beck, the Trump administration’s appointee to help oversee the E.P.A.’s toxic chemical unit, previously worked as an executive at the American Chemistry Council, one of the industry’s main lobbying groups.” Full story.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2018/06/08/justice-department-releases-fara-advisory-opinions-247127
-
Jun 11, 2018 | Desmog
By Chris Sellers, Lindsey Dillon, Santa Cruz and Phil Brown
The Environmental Protection Agency made news recently for excluding reporters from a “summit” meeting on chemical contamination in drinking water. Episodes like this are symptoms of a larger problem: an ongoing, broad-scale takeover of the agency by industries it regulates.
We are social scientists with interests in environmental health, environmental justice and inequality and democracy. We recently published a study, conducted under the auspices of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative and based on interviews with 45 current and retired EPA employees, which concludes that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and the Trump administration have steered the agency to the verge of what scholars call “regulatory capture.”
By this we mean that they are aggressively reorganizing the EPA to promote interests of regulated industries, at the expense of its official mission to “protect human health and the environment.”How Close Is Too Close?
The notion of “regulatory capture” has a long record in U.S. social science research. It helps explain the 2008 financial crisis and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In both cases, lax federal oversight and the government’s over-reliance on key industries were widely viewed as contributing to the disasters.
How can you tell whether an agency has been captured? According to Harvard’s David Moss and Daniel Carpenter, it occurs when an agency’s actions are “directed away from the public interest and toward the interest of the regulated industry” by “intent and action of industries and their allies.” In other words, the farmer doesn’t just tolerate foxes lurking around the hen house — he recruits them to guard it.Serving Industry
From the start of his tenure at EPA, Pruitt has championed interests of regulated industries such as petrochemicals and coal mining, while rarely discussing the value of environmental and health protections. “Regulators exist,” he asserts, “to give certainty to those that they regulate,” and should be committed to “enhanc(ing) economic growth.”
In our view, Pruitt’s efforts to undo, delay or otherwise block at least 30 existing rules reorient EPA rule-making “away from the public interest and toward the interest of the regulated industry.” Our interviewees overwhelmingly agreed that these rollbacks undermine their own “pretty strong sense of mission … protecting the health of the environment,” as one current EPA staffer told us.
Many of these targeted rules have well-documented public benefits, which Pruitt’s proposals — assuming they withstand legal challenges — would erode. For example, rejecting a proposed ban on the insecticide chlorpyrifos would leave farm workers and children at risk of developmental delays and autism spectrum disorders. Revoking the Clean Power Plan for coal-fired power plants, and weakening proposed fuel efficiency standards, would sacrifice health benefits associated with cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
A key question is whether regulated industries had an active hand in these initiatives. Here, again, the answer is yes.Nuzzling up to Industry
Pruitt’s EPA is staffed with senior officials who have close industry ties. For example, Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler is a former coal industry lobbyist. Nancy Beck, deputy assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, was formerly an executive at the American Chemistry Council. And Senior Deputy General Counsel Erik Baptist was previously senior counsel at the American Petroleum Institute.
Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show Pruitt has met with representatives of regulated industries 25 times more often than with environmental advocates. His staff carefully shields him from encounters with groups that they consider “unfriendly.”
The former head of EPA’s Office of Policy, Samantha Dravis, who left the agency in April 2018, had 90 scheduled meetingswith energy, manufacturing and other industrial interests between March 2017 and January 2018. During the same period she met with one public interest organization.
Circumstantial evidence suggests that corporate lobbying is directly influencing major policy decisions. For example, just before rejecting the chlorpyrifos ban, Pruitt met with the CEO of Dow Chemical, which manufactures the pesticide.
Overturning Obama’s Clean Power Plan and withdrawing from the Paris climate accord were recommended by coal magnate Robert Murray in his “Action Plan for the Administration.” Emails released under the Freedom of Information Act show detailed correspondence between Pruitt and industry lobbyists about EPA talking points. They also document Pruitt’s many visits with corporate officials as he formulated his attack on the Clean Power Plan.Muting Other Voices
Pruitt and his staff also have sought to sideline potentially countervailing interests and influences, starting with EPA career staff. In one of our interviews, an EPA employee described a meeting between Pruitt, the home-building industry and agency career staff. Pruitt showed up late, led the industry representatives into another room for a group photo, then trooped back into the meeting room to scold his own EPA employees for not listening to them.
Threatened by proposed budget cuts, buyouts, and retribution against disloyal staff and leakers, career EPA employees have been made “afraid … so nobody pushes back, nobody says anything,” according to one of our sources.
As a result, enforcement has fallen dramatically. During Trump’s first 6 months in office, the EPA collected 60 percent less money in civil penalties from polluters than it had under Presidents Obama or George W. Bush in the same period. The agency has also opened fewer civil and criminal cases.
Early in his tenure Pruitt replaced many members of EPA’s Science Advisory Board and Board of Scientific Counselors in a move intended to give representatives from industry and state governments more influence. He also established a new policy that prevents EPA-funded scientists from serving on these boards, but allows industry-funded scientists to serve.
And on April 24, 2018, Pruitt issued a new rule that limits what kind of scientific research the agency can rely on in writing environmental regulation. This step was advocated by the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute.What Can Be Done?
This is not the first time that a strongly anti-regulatory administration has tried to redirect EPA. In our interviews, longtime EPA staffers recalled similar pressure under President Reagan, led by his first administrator, Anne Gorsuch.
Gorsuch also slashed budgets, cut back on enforcement and “treated a lot of people in the agency as the enemy,” in the words of her successor, William Ruckelshaus. She was forced to resign in 1983 amid congressional investigations into EPAmisbehavior, including corruptive favoritism and its cover-up at the Superfund program.
EPA veterans of those years emphasized the importance of Democratic majorities in Congress, which initiated the investigations, and sustained media coverage of EPA’s unfolding scandals. They remembered this phase as an oppressive time, but noted that pro-industry actions by political appointees failed to suffuse the entire bureaucracy. Instead, career staffers resisted by developing subtle, “underground” ways of supporting each other and sharing information internally and with Congress and the media.
Similarly, the media are spotlighting Pruitt’s policy actions and ethical scandals today. EPA staffers who have left the agency are speaking out against Pruitt’s policies. State attorneys general and the court system have also thwarted some of Pruitt’s efforts. And EPA’s Science Advisory Board — including members appointed by Pruitt — recently voted almost unanimouslyto do a full review of the scientific justification for many of Pruitt’s most controversial proposals.
Still, with the Trump administration tilted hard against regulation and Republicans controlling Congress, the greatest challenge to regulatory capture at the EPA will be the 2018 and 2020 elections.
https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/06/10/epa-staff-trump-administration-changing-mission-protecting-human-health-environment-protecting-industry
-
D.C. Circuit Backs EPA Rule Allowing 'Nonacquiescence' to Court Rulings
Jun 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has upheld EPA's rule saying its regions do not have to adhere to adverse appellate rulings from circuit courts outside of a particular region, rejecting an industry coalition's suit over the “nonacquiescence” policy and correcting prior precedent in an earlier similar case.
In its unanimous June 8 ruling in National Environmental Development Association's Clean Air Project (NEDA/CAP) v. EPA, the court finds that the Clean Air Act sets up inevitable clashes between circuit courts of appeals, and EPA's 2016 amended “regional consistency” rule is a reasonable response to this situation.
Both the opinion for the court by Senior Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, and a concurring opinion by Senior Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman, broadly reflect the views of judges expressed at April 2 oral argument, where judges seemed doubtful EPA could adopt a different policy in the face of conflicting circuit court rulings. Chief Judge Merrick Garland was the third member of the three-judge panel hearing the suit.
EPA's rule says that a regional circuit court's ruling need only apply in the states covered by that circuit, and agency regions that do not include states covered by the court do not have to follow the ruling.
The NEDA/CAP coalition of major industry groups had argued that the rule undermines regulatory certainty and risks creating a “wild, wild West” of disparate air policy across EPA's 10 regions. But the agency argued that nothing in the Clean Air Act mandates that it require its regions to all follow one adverse ruling.
Edwards, writing for the court, backs EPA, saying, “The simple point here is that the statute clearly contemplates some splits in the regional circuits. There is nothing in the statute to indicate that EPA is bound to change its rules nationwide each time a regional circuit court issues a decision that is at odds with an EPA rule.”
He adds, “Were this the case, then the first court of appeals to address an issue would determine EPA’s policy nationwide. And that would make no sense because only the D.C. Circuit has jurisdiction to hear and decide cases involving 'nationally applicable regulations' or cases in which the action is 'based on a determination of nationwide scope or effect.'”
The NEDA/CAP suit stems from EPA's response to a 2014 adverse D.C. Circuit ruling in another case known as NEDA/CAP1, where industry successfully challenged a memo that the Obama EPA issued to its regional offices in response to a 2012 6th Circuit ruling on permitting issues in Summit Petroleum v. EPA.
The 6th Circuit in that ruling took a narrower view than the Obama EPA of “aggregating” emissions points for the purposes of determining a “major source” subject to air law permitting requirements.
EPA in its memo allowed regions to disregard the ruling in states outside the 6th Circuit. Industry groups sued, and the D.C. Circuit found that the memo violated EPA's prior policy requiring regional consistency -- but the court never reached industry arguments that the memo also violated the Clean Air Act. EPA in response revised its regional consistency policy in 2016 to expressly allow regional administrators to disregard court rulings outside the applicable circuit, precipitating the current NEDA/CAP case.
Court's Ruling
The court's ruling downplays industry's warning of damaging consequences of regional disparity, noting that EPA can issue nationally-applicable rules that are subject to review by the D.C. Circuit, which issues rulings with national scope on federal rules, and that petitioners can also pursue Supreme Court review.
Further, the court clarifies its precedent from NEDA/CAP1, in which the court found that the nonacquiescence policy was inconsistent with EPA's earlier regulations requiring that the agency strive for national uniformity in its regulatory policies. The court in that case found that if EPA changed its own rule, it could continue with the policy of nonacquiescence.
Although Clean Air Act language on regional consistency is similar to that in EPA's regulation challenged in NEDA/CAP1, Edwards in the new ruling writes that the two are distinct and have different application.
The air law's requirements encouraging uniformity apply to the actions of EPA air officials acting under the delegated authority of the Administrator -- and not to actions EPA must take because of regional appeals court rulings, Edwards states.
Edwards finds the air law clear on this point under step one of the Chevron legal doctrine, which holds that courts should evaluate first whether the law is ambiguous or silent on a subject. If it is, then courts should defer to agencies' reasonable interpretations of the law, or efforts to fill gaps left by the statute in question. But even if the air law were ambiguous on regional consistency, EPA's rule is an acceptable response under Chevron step two, Edwards says.
“Petitioners cannot prevail under the first step of Chevron because the plain meaning of the Act does not support their claims,” Edwards writes. The air law's “uniformity obligations do not address court-created inconsistencies. They instead apply solely to regulations governing delegations of the Administrator’s powers. Obedience to a controlling court decision involves no such delegation.”
While the air law does not instruct EPA on how to deal with circuit conflicts, “In our view, the Amended Regulations reasonably fill the statutory gaps, and, therefore, EPA’s construction of the Act is entitled to deference.”
Echoing concerns voiced by the judges at oral argument, Edwards writes, “Petitioners struggle to articulate what regulatory provisions EPA should have included in place of the Amended Regulations.”
Petitioners “appear to endorse the view that the Amended Regulations should require the agency to petition the Supreme Court for review of adverse judicial decisions, or require EPA’s General Counsel to consult with the regions about how to handle court decisions that are at odds with EPA’s national rules. None of these suggestions would make much of a dent in the inconsistencies inherently generated” by the air law, Edwards writes.
But the court does move to clarify its earlier precedent in NEDA/CAP1. In that case, the court suggested EPA could modify its own regulations to allow for intercircuit nonacquiescence.
Nevertheless, “we recognize that the prior consistency regulations resembled” the statutory language. “To avoid any confusion going forward, we now make it clear that, to the extent NEDA/CAP I can be read to suggest that [the air law] bars EPA from adopting reasonable regulations endorsing intercircuit nonacquiescence -- as EPA did in promulgating the Amended Regulations -- the decision is mistaken.”
Edwards says his opinion has been “circulated to and approved by all of the active members of the court, and thus constitutes the law of the circuit."
Concurring Opinion
In his concurring opinion, Silberman stresses EPA's ability to declare rules as nationwide in scope or effect, and therefore only reviewable in the D.C. Circuit, which issues opinions that are inherently national in scope. In this way, EPA could have avoided “this whole donnybrook,” he suggests.
In its Summit Petroleum decision, EPA could have done so, Silberman says. “There is little question that, although this interpretation was applied first to a single set of facilities in the Summit case, it constituted an interpretation of 'nationwide scope and effect.' Therefore, it seems to me that the EPA Administrator should have so declared, and then any challenge should have been brought to the D.C. Circuit.”
Silberman also criticizes the 5th Circuit's 2016 ruling in Texas v. EPA, where that court held following de novo review that a rule EPA claimed was nationwide in scope or effect was in fact only regionally applicable, and venue was therefore correct in the 5th Circuit.
EPA's determinations of nationwide scope are subject to judicial review under the air law's arbitrary and capricious standard, he writes. But “the Fifth Circuit has concluded that whether or not an issue is of nationwide scope and effect is only a venue question that it could determine de novo, without any deference to EPA. I think that opinion is quite wrong.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/dc-circuit-backs-epa-rule-allowing-nonacquiescence-court-rulings
-
In the Trump Administration, Science Is Unwelcome. So Is Advice.
Jun 11, 2018 | The New York Times
By Coral Davenport
As the president prepares for nuclear talks, he lacks a close adviser with nuclear expertise. It’s one example of a marginalization of science in shaping federal policy.
WASHINGTON — As President Trump prepares to meet Kim Jong-un of North Korea to negotiate denuclearization, a challenge that has bedeviled the world for years, he is doing so without the help of a White House science adviser or senior counselor trained in nuclear physics.
Mr. Trump is the first president since 1941 not to name a science adviser, a position created during World War II to guide the Oval Office on technical matters ranging from nuclear warfare to global pandemics. As a businessman and president, Mr. Trump has proudly been guided by his instincts. Nevertheless, people who have participated in past nuclear negotiations say the absence of such high-level expertise could put him at a tactical disadvantage in one of the weightiest diplomatic matters of his presidency.
“You need to have an empowered senior science adviser at the table,” said R. Nicholas Burns, who led negotiations with India over a civilian nuclear deal during the George W. Bush administration. “You can be sure the other side will have that.”
The lack of traditional scientific advisory leadership in the White House is one example of a significant change in the Trump administration: the marginalization of science in shaping United States policy.
There is no chief scientist at the State Department, where science is central to foreign policy matters such as cybersecurity and global warming. Nor is there a chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture: Mr. Trump last year nominated Sam Clovis, a former talk-show host with no scientific background, to the position, but he withdrew his name and no new nomination has been made.
These and other decisions have consequences for public health and safety and the economy. Both the Interior Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have disbanded climate science advisory committees. The Food and Drug Administration disbanded its Food Advisory Committee, which provided guidance on food safety.
Government-funded scientists said in interviews that they were seeing signs that their work was being suppressed, and that they were leaving their government jobs to work in the private sector, or for other countries.
After Mr. Trump last year withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, the international pact committing nations to tackle global warming, France started a program called “Make Our Planet Great Again” — named in reference to Mr. Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again” — to lure the best American scientists to France. The program has so far provided funding for 24 scientists from the United States and other countries to do their research in France.EDITORS’ PICKSWhat We Learned From the Videos of Stephon Clark Being Killed by PoliceLove City: 24 Hours of Romance, Lust and HeartacheThe Most Powerful Conservative Donors You’ve Never Heard Of
The White House declined to comment on these and other suggestions that the role of science in policymaking has been diminished in the Trump administration. Regarding the coming talks with Mr. Kim, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, Garrett Marquis, emphasized that “the president’s advisers are experts in their fields.”
The larger matter, though, is the president’s lack of a close senior adviser at the White House level, someone who has Mr. Trump’s trust and his ear, said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a time in the post-World War II period where issues as important as nuclear weapons are on the table, and there is no serious scientist there to help the president through the thicket,” he said. “This reverberates throughout policy.”
There are exceptions to the retreat from science. In April, scientists bristled when Jim Bridenstine, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma who is not a scientist, took over the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Mr. Bridenstine had questioned whether human activity is the primary cause of global warming.
But last month Mr. Bridenstine testified before a Senate committee that he had experienced a climate-science conversion. Asked if he believed greenhouse gases are the primary cause of the warming planet, he responded, “Yes.”
His own agency, he said, has found it “extremely likely that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming, and I have no reason to doubt the science.”
Mr. Bridenstine described his views as an “evolution.”
Moments like these are not the norm, however. More than 1,000 members of the National Academy of Sciences signed a statement in Aprilcriticizing the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. “The dismissal of scientific evidence in policy formulation has affected wide areas of the social, biological, environmental and physical sciences,” the statement said.
The most pressing geopolitical need may be in the realm of nuclear diplomacy.
While the State Department declined to characterize the makeup of its preparatory team for the North Korea meeting, set for Tuesday in Singapore, Mr. Trump could of course tap any number of government nuclear physicists to accompany him.
And Mr. Marquis, the National Security Council spokesman, emphasized that many of the president’s advisers “have advanced degrees and have worked on these complex issues in and out of government.”
“The materials that have gone to the president ahead of the negotiation reflect the work of more than a dozen people at the Ph.D. level in relevant fields,” he added, including “at least one” in nuclear engineering.
A State Department spokeswoman referred questions to the National Security Council.
Nevertheless, as Mr. Trump prepares for the talks, he has no close aides on par with those who helped President Barack Obama negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. Mr. Obama’s advisers included Ernest J. Moniz, a nuclear physicist who led the Energy Department and oversaw the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, and John Holdren, a physicist and expert in nuclear arms control who served as the White House science adviser.
“There is going to be the requirement for trade-offs, and that judgment is best made by people with technical expertise who are also very senior politically,” Mr. Moniz said. “That just does not exist in this administration.”
Of course, Mr. Trump was an outspoken critic of Mr. Obama’s Iran deal and withdrew from it last month.
As for Mr. Kim’s advisers, “The North Korean nuclear scientists are very, very competent and I would expect them to advise their government well,” said Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico and an expert on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.Ground Zero: The E.P.A.
In Washington, the administration’s excising of science is particularly evident at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Scott Pruitt, the embattled head of the E.P.A., is the subject of at least 12 government investigations into his first-class travel, costly security detail and management of the agency. At the same time he has won praise from Mr. Trump for his speed at rolling back environmental regulations.
Mr. Pruitt has initiated more than a dozen regulatory rollbacks, including signing a measure declaring his intent to undo or weaken Mr. Obama’s climate change regulations known as the Clean Power Plan.
However, his more enduring legacy may be in diminishing the role of academic, peer-reviewed science at the agency. “It’s not Pruitt’s exorbitant spending, but rather a lot of these less sexy things they’re quietly doing on science that will cause the real long-term damage,” said Gretchen Goldman, the research director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group.
Mr. Pruitt has begun to systematically change how the E.P.A. treats science. In April, he proposed a regulation that would limit the types of scientific research that E.P.A. officials could take into account when crafting new public health policies, a change that could weaken the agency’s ability to protect public health.
The new rules would require that the data from all scientific studies used by the E.P.A. to formulate air and water regulations be publicly available. Mr. Pruitt has touted that as a step toward increasing scientific transparency. “The era of secret science at E.P.A. is coming to an end,” he said in a statement. “The ability to test, authenticate and reproduce scientific findings is vital for the integrity of rule-making process.”
However, the change could sharply limit the research available to the E.P.A., because health studies routinely rely on confidential data from individuals.
Last year, Mr. Pruitt significantly altered two major scientific panels that advise the E.P.A. on writing public health rules, restricting academic researchers from joining the boards while appointing several scientists who work for industries regulated by the E.P.A.
These and other changes “will diminish the characterization of pollution as risky,” said William K. Reilly, who headed the E.P.A. under the first President George Bush. “This tolerance for more exposure to pollution is altogether different from anything we are used to.”
In a statement defending the changes to the committees, Jahan Wilcox, an E.P.A. spokesman, said that the agency “sought a wider range of voices” and “was thrilled with the response of over 700 applicants.” The boards, he said, are not only highly qualified but also “independent and geographically diverse.”
This year, Mr. Pruitt sent a memo to the E.P.A.’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee ordering steps that could effectively diminish the role of scientific evidence in air pollution enforcement. The committee is required by law to prioritize the health effects of pollution, but Mr. Pruitt’s memo orders it to consider potential economic consequences of meeting tighter clean-air rules — for example, the possibility that tougher pollution standards could make air-conditioning more expensive, leading to more deaths from heat.
“This memo flouts the clear evidence of medical science,” said John Walke, an expert in clean-air policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy organization. “Pruitt wants to set a definition of clean air that is medically unsafe.”
The agency, after heavy lobbying by the chemicals industry, is also in the process of scaling back the way the government determines risks associated with dangerous chemicals, The New York Times recently reported.Jettisoning ‘Guidance’ Files
A little-noticed change at the Justice Department could have far-reaching impact on the role of science in federal policy across the government.
This year the Justice Department announced it would no longer use “guidance documents,” which are written by experts at other agencies, to enforce laws. “This change makes a lot of the big, science-based laws unenforceable,” said Dr. Goldman of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
For decades, enforcement of major health and environmental laws — including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and laws governing food safety and exposure to chemicals — has relied heavily on guidance documents written by scientists at the E.P.A., Agriculture Department, Food and Drug Administration and other agencies that supply the specific interpretation of how to carry out the laws. Guidance documents might, for instance, detail how industries should monitor and report their pollution, or how food makers should watch for food-borne illnesses.
A spokesman for the Justice Department said in an email that the new guidance policy would not affect the enforcement of science-based laws. “The Department of Justice continues to aggressively and successfully enforce the nation’s laws, including environmental and health laws,” the spokesman said, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. “Assertions to the contrary are incorrect.”
At the Department of Agriculture, the agency is redefining part of its core mission, the scientific monitoring of food safety, to emphasize promoting exports of American farm products. Last year, the agency’s secretary, Sonny Perdue, created a new under secretary of trade to push exports worldwide. He also moved an office devoted to international food-safety issues from the agency’s Food Safety and Inspection Service to its new Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs office.
Putting the management of food safety under the aegis of trade, rather than science, “undermines the whole history that the U.S. has for science-based standards for food,” said Catherine E. Woteki, a former chief scientist at the agency from 2010 to 2017.
A department spokesman said the decision to move the office, known as Codex, came in response to aggressive trade measures by other countries, and that food safety would not be affected.
The agency “makes decisions based on sound science, data and evidence,” said the spokesman, Tim Murtaugh. “Unfortunately, we have seen other nations use food safety standards as weapons in trade relations, manipulated for protectionist purposes,” he said. “Moving Codex to the mission area where U.S.D.A. coordinates all international activity simply makes sense.”Scientists Resign
The Interior Department secretary, Ryan Zinke, is working to carry out Mr. Trump’s campaign pledge to open public lands to extract oil, gas and coal. At the same time, though, his agency has pulled back from examining the health risks to fossil fuel workers.
In August, the department halted a study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine into links between surface mining and health, specifically the exposure to coal dust in the air and drinking water. “We never got a clear reason why it was canceled,” said Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences.
Her organization reached out to other possible donors to continue funding it, said Dr. McNutt, but was unable to find takers. “If the government didn’t want to know the answers, it was hard to justify funding this,” she said.
Several Interior Department scientists have resigned to protest actions like these that are perceived as undermining research.
Last June, at least two dozen senior career officials at the department were told they would be reassigned to new positions. While it is not unusual for new administrations to make personnel moves, some said the moves appeared intended to undermine the department’s environmental research.
Among them was Joel Clement, a climate change scientist who was reassigned to an office overseeing fees from fossil fuel drilling. He viewed it as an effort to push him to resign. Months later, he did.
“The reassignment letter seemed clearly retaliatory,” he said. “I was a top climate adviser, and they reassigned me to collect money from oil companies — come on.”
Heather Swift, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said, “The president signed an executive order to reorganize the federal government for the future and the secretary has been absolutely out front on that issue.” She said that Mr. Clement and others took their jobs “knowing that they could be called upon to work in different positions at any time.”
Ms. Swift did not respond to other questions about the agency.
In January, the majority of members of the Interior Department’s National Park System Advisory Board, which advises on management of national parks, resigned to protest Trump administration policies. Tony Knowles, the former head of the board, said that Mr. Zinke “appears to have no interest in continuing the agenda of science, the effect of climate change, pursuing the protection of the ecosystem.”
Beyond the Interior Department, government scientists say they are feeling a rising indifference to their work, as well as occasional open hostility, that is triggering a brain drain.
Among the scientists who have chosen to move on is Ben Sanderson of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., whose research focuses on the impact of climate change on society. In the Trump administration, “To talk about climate risk when connected to human activity is now a no-no if you want to get government funding,” Dr. Sanderson said.
Last year, he saw a way out: the French government’s “Make Our Planet Great Again” program. Dr. Sanderson was awarded a $1.8 million, five-year grant to work for Météo-France, the national weather forecaster, at its campus in Toulouse.
“The French program was offering an opportunity to work on climate impacts — the work that’s at the core of my research,” Dr. Sanderson said. That kind of science, he said, “is increasingly difficult to do in the U.S.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/climate/trump-administration-science.html?login=email&auth=login-email
-
(ACC Mentioned) Industry: TSCA New Chemicals Fees Could Hamper Innovation
Jun 11, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Specialty chemicals trade group Socma has warned that the US EPA's proposed fees for the TSCA new chemicals programme will threaten innovation, and it is urging the agency reconsider them.
The trade group's comments came in response to the agency's proposal for how it will administer fees under the recently reformed law. Issued in February, the proposed rule outlines how the agency intends to collect approximately $20.05m a year.
There is broad consensus that the existing fee of $2,500 for submitting a pre-manufacture notice (PMN) is set too low.
But Socma was among industry groups that said the proposal to increase this fee to $16,000 is too high. This, it said, plays down "very real and serious concerns regarding innovation and the competitive standing of the American chemical industry".
The additional costs will make a percentage of new chemical projects "no longer economically justifiable" – an impact that Socma said must be taken into account when judging if the fee level is "reasonably necessary".
Fees should not only correspond to the cost of the agency's work, the group added, but must also "not unreasonably deter companies from introducing new chemicals into the marketplace".
It recommended the EPA set a fee for PMNs based on an inflation-adjusted amount of the current $2,500 fee.Groups echo 'innovation' concerns elsewhere
The US Chamber of Commerce said in comments it was "extremely concerned" with the EPA's estimates that new chemical submissions would drop by 20% as a result of the proposal. "We urge EPA [to] keep new chemical registration fees as low as possible to promote innovation and avoid harming business interests".
The New Chemicals Coalition (NCC) – a group of more than 20 companies with a shared interest in new substance notification issues – also cited innovation when it urged the agency to reconsider its fees for exemption requests.
The EPA has historically charged no fees for new substances submitted under a low volume exemption (LVE), low release and low exposure exemption (LoREX), or test market exemption (TME). Under the current proposal, however, these would each cost $4,700.
"The proposed fees must be reduced, otherwise EPA is essentially penalising new chemical innovators," wrote the NCC. "Recognising the commercial challenges in developing and introducing new chemicals that can compete successfully in the market, the [coalition] believes the fees cannot be set any higher without imposing undue burden on new chemicals innovators."
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) added that the LVE is "an efficient and cost-effective method of determining the viability of a new chemistry in the US". Maintaining the exemption for these submissions "is essential to the innovative character of the domestic chemical industry," it said.
https://chemicalwatch.com/67523/industry-tsca-new-chemicals-fees-could-hamper-innovation
-
EPA's Chemical Evaluation Documents Suggest Key TSCA Rules Are Stalled
Jun 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Despite plans to advance an Obama-era proposal to regulate a paint stripping chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), recently released EPA documents suggest the agency will not -- or at least not soon -- be pursuing other proposed TSCA rules restricting uses of two other substances, a move that is worrying environmentalists.
The agency's recently released problem formulation documents for its planned risk evaluations of the solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) and paint-stripper n-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) indicate that the agency is planning to re-evaluate risks that the Obama administration had already assessed and proposed to regulate.
The June 1 TCE document says in part that the re-evaluation will seek to ensure the earlier assessments are consistent with the Trump administration's framework rule governing how TSCA evaluations are conducted, a measure that is subject to environmentalists' litigation in part because it limits the conditions of use subject to evaluation.
By contrast, the problem formulation document EPA released June 1 for methylene chloride states that the agency will not be re-assessing risks stemming from use of the substance in paint strippers because the agency plans to issue a final rule regulating use of methylene chloride in paint strippers.
“While paint and coating removal falls under the conditions of use for methylene chloride, based on the intention to finalize the rulemaking the scenarios already assessed in the 2014 risk assessment these uses will not be re-evaluated and EPA will rely on the 2014 risk evaluation,” the methylene chloride document states.
While EPA says it is planning to re-evaluate risks of NMP, its problem formulation document for that substance's assessment appears to leave the door open to a rule. “It is important to note that conducting these evaluations does not preclude EPA from finalizing the proposed NMP regulation,” the document says.
EPA did not return a request for comment but environmentalists are concerned that the agency is signaling it will not advance rules the Obama administration had proposed governing TCE and NMP anytime soon.
Melanie Benesh, an attorney with the Environmental Working Group, says the TCE and NMP documents show that EPA “quietly announced it would not move forward with the proposed bans, planning instead to reevaluate those uses, she wrote in a June 7 blog post.
“This means that it could be years before the EPA prohibits these uses. The agency could also scrap the bans altogether, if Administrator Scott Pruitt gets his way,” she added.
Benesh told Inside EPA that also noteworthy is the “significant contrast” between EPA's discussion of the proposed section rules between the TCE and NMP documents, and its methlyene chloride document, which directly states that proposed rule will be finalized.
As directed in the reformed TSCA, the Obama EPA in its final days selected the first 10 existing chemicals that the agency would evaluate using its new authorities. Existing chemicals, those that were on the market when the original TSCA was enacted in 1976, were largely grandfathered by the original law, a situation that eventually led to TSCA reform.
The Obama EPA had already proposed rules limiting some uses of three chemicals -- methylene chloride, NMP and TCE -- among the 10 selected to be the first evaluated under the new TSCA program. TSCA section 6 was a rarely used provision in the original stature that gives EPA power to ban or restrict substances and/or select uses.
Section 6 Rules
But industry groups urged EPA to set the rules aside until the TSCA evaluations of the first 10 chemicals had been completed, and it appears from the problem formulation documents that EPA released June 1 that it intends to do so.
The three section 6 proposals -- a ban on methylene chloride and restrictions on NMP in paint-stripping products; a ban on TCE use as a spot-cleaner in dry cleaning; and a ban on TCE's use as a vapor degreaser -- have been in limbo since the Trump administration took office and moved them to its “long-term action” list.
But intense lobbying from environmentalists, public health advocates and family members of workers killed by methylene chloride exposure led Pruitt to announce May 10 that EPA would ban methylene chloride.
He did not address the other two chemicals -- not even NMP, whose use the Obama administration had proposed to regulate in the same rule as methylene chloride. Nevertheless, Pruitt's announcement prompted stepped-up callsfrom environmentalists for EPA to also advance the Obama administration's proposals to address TCE and NMP.
In addition, the Lowe's hardware chain announced last month that it was voluntarily phasing out paint strippers containing methylene chloride and NMP from its global product selection by the end of the year.
But the problem formulation documents for TCE and NMP suggest the rules will not be advancing anytime soon because the agency plans to re-evaluate some risks.
EPA's problem formulation document for TCE “refines the conditions of use, exposures and hazards presented in the scope of the risk evaluation for [TCE] and presents refined conceptual models and analysis plans that describe how EPA expects to evaluate the risk for [TCE],” the document states.
The next anticipated document EPA will release is its draft assessment. By statute, EPA has three years to complete evaluations of existing chemicals.
The document also provides some background on EPA's previous assessments and regulatory efforts on TCE, noting the research office's 2011 assessment of TCE, the proposed section 6 rules and the toxics office's 2014 assessment underlying those rules. The document does not discuss any path forward for the draft rules. Instead, at various places throughout the document, it indicates those uses of TCE will be re-assessed as part of the new risk evaluation.
For example, describing the analysis plan for evaluating occupational exposures, the core concern of the analysis underlying the draft rules, the document notes that for the rules, EPA developed models to consider inhalation exposure to workers using TCE in spot cleaning, vapor degreasing, and aerosol degreasing.
“Scenarios previously examined in the 2014 publication will be considered in this risk evaluation to ensure previous assessments are in alignment with the Procedures for Chemical Risk Evaluation under the Amended [TSCA]. During risk evaluation, EPA will evaluate the applicability of the models to other conditions of use and adapt and refine these models as necessary for evaluating exposure to TCE in scenarios not covered by the proposed rules.”
And in one of its appendices, EPA provides a chart outlining its conceptual models for industrial and commercial activities with TCE. The chart states, “EPA proposed a rule to ban the use of TCE in aerosol degreasing and will consider the proposed rule when evaluating this scenario” and also “EPA will forward the past assessments for this risk evaluation.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epas-chemical-evaluation-documents-suggest-key-tsca-rules-are-stalled
-
(ACC Mentioned) EPA to Ignore 68 Million Pounds of Chemical Emissions in Limited Risk Assessment
Jun 8, 2018 | EcoWatch
By Olivia Rosane
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will limit the criteria it uses to determine the health risks of 10 dangerous chemicals including asbestos, The New York Times reported Thursday.
A 2016 amendment to the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 required the EPA to evaluate hundreds of hazardous chemicals to decide if they should face more restrictions or be banned entirely. But documents released by the EPA last week suggest the EPA is kowtowing to the chemical lobby in the narrow criteria it is using the asses the safety of the first 10 chemicals, restricting its analysis to the risks posed by direct exposure to a chemical, and not the risks associated with exposure to contaminated air, soil and water.
In the case of asbestos, which kills almost 15,000 U.S. citizens annually, the EPA will only consider risks from new uses of asbestos and not risks from asbestos already present in tiles, adhesives and pipes, Newsweek reported Thursday.
President Donald Trump has dismissed health concerns about asbestos, calling it "100 percent safe, once applied," Newsweek pointed out. In 1997's The Art of the Comeback, he blamed the asbestos scare on the mob. "I believe that the movement against asbestos was led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal. Great pressure was put on politicians, and as usual, the politicians relented," he wrote, according to Newsweek.
EPA spokesperson Jahan Wilcox told The New York Times that the agency felt chemical contamination of the broader environment was already regulated by the Clean Air and Water Acts.
But Democratic Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico, who helped pass the 2016 amendment, countered that the limited risk analysis was not in keeping with the spirit of the law.
"Congress worked hard in bipartisan fashion to reform our nation's broken chemical safety laws, but [Administrator Scott] Pruitt's E.P.A. is failing to put the new law to use as intended," Udall said in a statement.
The Environmental Defense Fund calculated that the EPA's limited analysis would ignore 68 million pounds of emissions yearly.
For example, one of the 10 chemicals is perchloroethylene, a likely carcinogen used as a dry-cleaning solvent and metal degreaser. The analysis will consider harm posed by exposure while cleaning clothes or carpets, but not harm posed by its presence in drinking water in 44 states.
The decision comes after lobbying by the chemical industry urging the EPA to narrow the scope of its risk assessments. Nancy B. Beck, who helps head the EPA's toxic chemical unit under Trump, previously worked as an executive for lobbying-group the American Chemistry Council.
The American Chemistry Council further sent a letter to the EPA in August 2016 focusing on asbestos specifically, urging the EPA to carefully consider its inclusion in the first 10 chemicals studied due to its importance in the chlor-alkali industry. Chemical lobbyists held four asbestos-related meetings with the EPA last year, Newsweek reported.
https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-limited-risk-assessment-2576231762.html
-
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Scales Back Risk Assessments for Common Chemicals: Documents
Jun 8, 2018 | Reuters
By Valerie Volcovici
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reducing the extent of it assessment of health risks associated with commonly used chemicals, according to documents seen by Reuters and first reported by the New York Times, the latest example of the agency easing its oversight of the chemicals industry.
The EPA is required by the 2016 Toxic Substances Control Act to evaluate the human health risks associated with a list commonly used chemicals to determine whether they need to be banned, restricted or regulated.
The agency has decided, however, to limit the scope of its review of 10 of those chemicals - including dry-cleaning solvent perchloroethylene - to risks from direct contact in the workplace, according to the documents, instead of including risk from exposure once they make it to consumers or become present in the air, ground and water after disposal.
EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox told the New York Times that existing laws like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act enable the agency to regulate those chemicals found in air and water, making it unnecessary for the agency to revisit restrictions on them under TSCA.
The EPA did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Former Obama EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said limiting the review of these common chemicals to direct exposure is dangerous and goes against the intention of the TSCA, which was passed with broad bipartisan support.
“To suggest now to limit the review to the product itself is ridiculous,” McCarthy told Reuters. “It is contrary to the law.”
The American Chemistry Council cheered the decision. The EPA has rightly focused its scrutiny “on the conditions of use that present the greatest potential risks,” said ACC spokesman Jon Corley. Last month, Reuters reported that the agency, under pressure from the ACC, had delayed release of a study detailing cancer risks from formaldehyde.
The scaled back risk assessments fit with the EPA’s broader agenda under President Donald Trump to roll back regulations the administration considers unnecessarily burdensome to industry.
Trump twice this week expressed his support for EPA chief Scott Pruitt for his progress reducing red tape, downplaying a slew of controversies around how Pruitt’s office spends taxpayer dollars.
“Scott Pruitt is doing a great job within the walls of the EPA. We’re setting records. Outside he’s being attacked very viciously by the press and I’m not saying that he’s blameless but we’ll see what happens,” Trump said on Friday.
Pruitt is facing multiple government investigations into his spending on travel and security, and has faced increased scrutiny in recent days over reports he used his office to help his wife open a Chick-fil-A franchise, search for a used Trump Hotel mattress, and find special hand lotion.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-epa/epa-scales-back-risk-assessments-for-common-chemicals-documents-idUSKCN1J42NE
-
(ACC Mentioned) Oh, COME ON! EPA Eliminates Chemical Safety Checks
Jun 9, 2018 | Care2.com
By Kevin Matthews
In 2016, Congress passed legislation requiring the EPA to conduct research on potentially dangerous chemicals. Now the EPA has taken upon itself to set much laxer guidelines than lawmakers initially intended on the kind of research it is willing to do on chemicals.
The big change is that the EPA has decided the only kind of research that is warranted is to look at the harm chemicals cause when they come in direct contact with humans (i.e. someone touches or ingests them.) That policy would exclude examinations of how chemicals can hurt people when they inevitably get into water supplies, the air or seep underground. Considering that that’s how most people actually come in contact with toxic chemicals, it’s rendering these safety verifications pretty damn useless.
WHY THE EPA DOESN’T WANT THIS RESEARCH
For officials both inside and outside of the administration, it’s obvious what this narrower scope for chemical research will mean – loosened safety regulations on chemicals. Basically, if there’s not sufficient research to show the health consequences these chemicals can yield when they enter the environment, the EPA will have the excuse to scale back existing regulations as unnecessary.
A few weeks back we learned through an FOIA release that the EPA had deliberately stalled and buried the release of a shocking government study that showed chemicals found in drinking water are damaging in much smaller doses than the legal limits currently set by the EPA. The agency did a favor to chemical companies rather than alerting citizens to this potential health risk.
Evidently, the lesson the EPA took from this debacle is that if the research just simply doesn’t exist in the first place, then it’ll be easier for the agency to make decisions that directly contradict science. So by eliminating the research component where chemicals are tested in water, problem solved!… so long as we’re not considering poisoning unsuspecting Americans to be a problem.
A CHEMICAL INDUSTRY TAKEOVER
Two years ago, Nancy Beck was a senior director at the American Chemistry Council and actively lobbied to water down Congress’s chemical testing. Once the Trump administration took over, they named Beck to be a leader at the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, because who better to keep Americans safe from chemical hazards than a woman who built a career on trying to block chemical regulations?
Last year, Environmental Working Group called Beck “the scariest Trump appointee you’ve never heard of” and it seems like the label is warranted give how she’s chosen to use her position so far. She’s taken a commonsense law and manipulated it to benefit corporations rather than protect consumers.ASBESTOS
One dangerous substance in particular that’s getting a reprieve from the EPA is asbestos. Despite it being banned in 55 countries and contributing to the deaths of thousands of Americans each year, EPA Director Scott Pruitt called asbestos “100 percent safe.”
Although the EPA will need to approve new construction that uses asbestos, it has determined that tests aren’t necessary on existing asbestos sites anymore. What if it’s a health risk? Better off not finding out, I guess!
TAKE ACTION
Congress shouldn’t be pleased with the EPA’s willful misinterpretation of its law. As Senator Tom Udall explains, “Congress worked hard in bipartisan fashion to reform our nation’s broken chemical safety laws, but Pruitt’s EPA is failing to put the new law to use as intended.”
If a bipartisan effort got it done before, surely a bipartisan effort can get it done again. That’s why we’re signing this petition calling on Congress to pass similar law with more explicit research instructions that the EPA will be unable to ignore.
It’s terribly sad that Congress actually has to force the EPA to do its job to protect the American people, but if that’s what it takes, that’s worthwhile legislation.
https://www.care2.com/causes/oh-come-on-epa-eliminates-chemical-safety-checks.html
-
Jun 11, 2018 | Common Dream
By Jessica Corbett
"Scott Pruitt isn't just the most corrupt EPA Administrator in history. His actions threaten the lives—and quality of life—for millions of Americans."
In yet another case of the Trump administration delivering a dangerous blow to public health protections by catering to the chemical industry's demands, the New York Times reports that the Environmental Protection Agency is scaling back how it evaluates the safety risks of potentially toxic substances.
Citing some 1,500 documents recently released by the agency, Times reporter Eric Lipton explains:
Under a law passed by Congress during the final year of the Obama administration, the EPA was required for the first time to evaluate hundreds of potentially toxic chemicals and determine if they should face new restrictions, or even be removed from the market. The chemicals include many in everyday use, such as dry-cleaning solvents, paint strippers, and substances used in health and beauty products like shampoos and cosmetics.
But as it moves forward reviewing the first batch of 10 chemicals, the EPA has in most cases decided to exclude from its calculations any potential exposure caused by the substances' presence in the air, the ground, or water. ...Instead, the agency will focus on possible harm caused by direct contact with a chemical in the workplace or elsewhere. The approach means that the improper disposal of chemicals—leading to the contamination of drinking water, for instance—will often not be a factor in deciding whether to restrict or ban them.
"This decision is shameful, outrageous," tweeted Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund.
"It is ridiculous," Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, who spent nearly four decades at the agency and previously ran the toxic chemical unit, told the Times. "You can't determine if there is an unreasonable risk without doing a comprehensive risk evaluation."
The nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics, which runs the money-in-politics resource Open Secrets, pointed out that Nancy B. Beck—a Trump-appointed top deputy for the toxic chemical unit about whom Lipton produced a damning report last year—was previously an executive at the chemical industry's main trade association.
In addition to limiting how the EPA analyzes substances that could harm public health at the behest of industry lobbyists, the documents reveal that the agency has also narrowed "the definitions of certain chemicals, including asbestos. Some asbestos-like fibers will not be included in the risk assessments, one agency staff member said, nor will the 8.8 million pounds a year of asbestos deposited in hazardous landfills or the 13.1 million pounds discarded in routine dump sites."
In light of Lipton's report, journalists and environmental advocates alike noted that EPA administrator Scott Pruitt's mounting scandals—involving everything from a shady condo rental and a used hotel mattress to Ritz-Carlton moisturizer and Chick-fil-A—are distracting from the industry-friendly deregulatory agenda he is advancing at the agency.
As Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune concluded, in addition to Pruitt's apparent corruption and conflicts of interest, "his actions threaten the lives—and quality of life—for millions of Americans."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/06/08/catering-chemical-industry-demands-epa-threatens-nations-air-and-water-shameful
-
Incoming IARC Boss Gets Hearing Request From US Republicans
Jun 11, 2018 | Chemical Watch
US Republicans have welcomed the incoming director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (Iarc) with a request for testimony
The Iarc governing council elected Elisabete Weiderpass, a Brazilian expert in cancer epidemiology and prevention, on 17 May. She will take office on 1 January 2019, when she succeeds Christopher Wild. He has faced strong criticism during his ten years in office at the WHO's specialised cancer agency.
Four Republican Representatives and members of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, including committee chair Lamar Smith, have written to Dr Weiderpass asking her to give testimony at a hearing in July. This, they say, is needed "to better understand how you will manage the Iarc monograph programme". The other signatories are: vice chair Frank Lucas; Andy Biggs, chair of the environment subcommittee; and Neal Dunn.
Republicans on Capitol Hill have been attacking Iarc's procedures for years. In 2017, Dr Wild declined a similar request to address a hearing, offering instead to answer further questions at a distance, or to meet at Iarc's offices in France. In his letter, he defended the programme, saying that the cancer hazard classifications were the result of scientific deliberations of independent scientists "free from conflicts of interest".
Representatives Smith, Lucas and Dunn subsequently threatened to pull US financial support from the agency.Criticism
The focus of their criticism is the classification as carcinogenic of glyphosate, the primary ingredient of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide.
In their most recent letter, they also describe operation of the programme under Dr Wild as "an affront to scientific integrity" and accuse Dr Weiderpass of having previously aligned herself with "shoddy and politics-driven science".
Nevertheless, the Campaign for Accuracy in Public Health (CAPHR), an industry-funded initiative focused on Iarc, said in a statement on the American Chemistry Council (ACC) website that it was cautiously optimistic that "despite Dr Weiderpass previously expressing confidence for the Iarc process, she will be remain impartial and ensure moving forward, accuracy, transparency and scientific integrity remain at the forefront." CAPHR urged the new director to "recognise the need for vast reform".
Dr Weiderpass currently heads the research department at the Cancer Registry of Norway and the genetic epidemiology group at the Folkhälsan Research Center in Finland. She is also professor of medical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and professor of cancer epidemiology at the Arctic University of Norway. Dr Weiderpass is also a naturalised citizen of Sweden and Finland.
Each Iarc director is elected initially for a five-year term and is eligible for a further five-year term.
https://chemicalwatch.com/67557/incoming-iarc-boss-gets-us-hearing-request-from-republicans
-
NGO Urges Commission To Consider EU Non-Toxic Strategy Priorities
Jun 11, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) has proposed priority actions it wants the European Commission to consider in its strategy for a non-toxic environment.
Under the 7th Environment Action Programme, the Commission is legally committed to release the strategy by the end of this year.
In a recently published paper, HEAL said the strategy must prioritise eliminating people's exposure to toxic chemicals and reducing the linked health impacts by 2030. It should also address – and where possible phase out – chemicals of particular concern.
It called for "coordination and consistency" across various European laws regulating chemicals.
The strategy should identify priority areas for progress at the European level, secure funds for improved research and testing methods, and develop information and awareness raising campaigns across the continent, it said.
HEAL’s proposed priority actions are:
· put vulnerable groups, such as pregnant women, children and the elderly, first;
· reduce daily exposure from sources (taking into account the lifecycle and disposal of chemicals);
· commit to tackling endocrine disrupting chemicals, highly fluorinated compounds and excessive use of pesticides;
· speed up identification of SVHCs;
· make better regulation principles work to put health first;
· address chemical cocktails;
· improve knowledge and communicate it;
· involve the health community for better prevention; and
· implement people's right to know.
In April, Sweden’s chemical agency, Kemi, said the UN target for a non-toxic environment by 2020 will not be achieved "by the measures and instruments already in place".
https://chemicalwatch.com/67561/ngo-urges-commission-to-consider-eu-non-toxic-strategy-priorities
-
Pennsvylania Court Won’t Rehear Fracking Trespass Case
Jun 8, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Leslie A. Pappas
The Pennsylvania Superior Court won’t rehear a trespass case involving a natural gas driller’s dispute with property owners near wells it operates in Susquehanna County, the court said June 8.
The Superior Court’s April 2 decision in Briggs v. Southwestern Energy Production Co. overturned a long-standing, seemingly settled legal principle known as the “rule of capture,” which holds that a driller on one parcel of land may extract oil and gas from underneath adjoining properties as long as the driller doesn’t physically trespass over the property line.
Southwestern Energy Production Co., a subsidiary of Houston-based Southwestern Energy Co., had asked the court April 16 to rehear the case with more judges.
The company will appeal the decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Robert L. Byer of Duane Morris LLP in Pittsburgh, one of the company’s attorneys, told Bloomberg Law in a June 8 email.
The two-judge panel ruled that hydraulic fracturing could create liability when fluids released from the fracking process flow onto adjoining properties, and it remanded the case back to the trial court for further review.
The ruling holds potential for a significant economic impact for companies invested in gas development, because it increases the possibility that energy companies could face new trespass claims in connection with their fracking operations.
The case is Briggs v. Sw. Energy Prod. Co., Pa. Super. Ct., No. 1351 MDA 2017, 6/8/18.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/pennsvylania-court-wont-rehear-fracking-trespass-case
-
Expert Sees More Cracker Announcements Coming Soon
Jun 8, 2018 | Pittsburgh Business Times
By Paul J. Gough
A chemical industry expert believes Shell Chemical's plant under construction in Beaver County could be joined by announcements about three others in the tri-state region over the next year or so.
The ethane crackers, which produce the building blocks of many consumer plastics, are considered key to a large petrochemical industry in Appalachia fueled by the region's natural gas industry and the chemicals, like ethane, that are byproducts. A handful of studies have shown Appalachia's ethane supply could support up to five ethane crackers, but companies beyond Shell have been reluctant to make the $6 billion to $10 billion commitment yet.
Tom Gellrich, principal of Top Line Analytics, believes that's changing. He's optimistic that the two other potential crackers, PTT Global Chemical in Belmont County, Ohio, and another that had been considered by Braskem near Parkersburg, W.Va., will in fact get the final investment decisions in the next year. He's looking beyond that to the next company to step up to the Appalachian cracker plate.
"I don't think the next announcement is more than a year away," Gellrich said.
Gellrich, who has worked in the chemical industry for decades, believes the as-yet-unnamed company is going to be forced to make a move in Appalachia for competitive reasons.
Nor does Gellrich think Shell Chemical is done building crackers after the Potter Township plant is up and operating. He believes Shell will need another to compete in the future, and he has an idea of where, if things are successful in Beaver County, it could be located.
"Why not build another right next to it," Gellrich asked.
A lot of discussion around Thursday's Appalachian Storage Hub Conference at Southpointe centered around the ethane cracker industry, which would likely require massive amounts of storage of ethane and other NGLs to make work. Mountaineer NGL Storage LLC is building a bulk storage facility in caverns that are near the PTT site and could, if built, store ethane for the cracker.
Jerry James, president of Artex Oil and a founding director of the volunteer advocacy group Shale Crescent USA, said there's a strong business case to be made for the petrochemical industry to build here. The case starts with the super productive gas fields of the Marcellus and the Utica and continues with being able to eliminate a lot of cost of transportation to and from the Gulf Coast back up to the customers who use the plastics in the Midwest and East.
Taylor Robinson, president of logistics consulting company PLG Consulting, estimated a 5 percent to 10 percent location advantage for petrochemical companies doing business in Appalachia with a built-out infrastructure.
"This is a commodity," Robinson said. "Five to 10 percent is significant."
James said the location advantage is powerful. Even the prodigious gas fields of the Permian Basin have hundreds of miles to transport to Gulf Coast petrochemical processing plants.
"This is the only place in the world I can think of where you can build on top of the gas supply," James said.
https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/news/2018/06/08/expert-sees-more-cracker-announcements-coming-soon.html
-
Rising Oil Prices Good For More Than Oil Companies
Jun 8, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Katherine Blunt
Houstonians know well that higher crude oil prices benefit the city’s energy giants, boosting profit margins and, ultimately, paychecks.
For those companies, the last few months have looked especially bright as the industry shakes off the lingering effects of the energy bust. Oil prices have risen sharply this year, briefly topping $70 a barrel last month for the first time since 2014.
But what about U.S. petrochemical producers, the companies that quietly manufacture the base materials needed to keep the global economy humming?
Rising oil prices will benefit them too, according to a recent report by the bond rating agency, Moody’s Investors Service. The reason for that, though, is more complex.
Shale drilling in West Texas and elsewhere has unleashed a steady supply of low-cost natural gas that has fueled a resurgence in domestic petrochemicals manufacturing. Chemicals and plastics producers along the U.S. Gulf Coast have capitalized on the so-called shale boom, using gas-derived liquids such as ethane as feedstocks.
The abundance of cheap feedstocks has given them an edge over competitors in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, where ethane is scarce. In those regions, petrochemicals producers often rely on naphtha, a pricier feedstock derived from crude oil.
Ethane is already substantially less expensive than naphtha, and that difference will only become more pronounced as oil prices rise.
For Houston-area chemicals makers including LyondellBasell and Chevron Phillips Chemical Co., that dynamic could provide an even greater cost advantage as they build or expand production facilities here. LyondellBasell, for example, is building a $700 million plant at its La Porte complex to produce polyethlyene, a common plastic derived from ethane.
Companies that produce chlor-alkali products, including Houston’s Westlake Chemical, also stand to benefit from low-cost natural gas. Chlor-alkali products, which include chlorine and caustic soda used in building products, packaging and other products, require large amounts of electricity to produce, so producers in the Gulf Coast region have an advantage over competitors that pay higher energy costs.
Oil prices have fluctuated in recent weeks after Saudi energy minister Khalid Al-Falih said the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries would consider raising output after capping it for more than a year.
But analysts don’t anticipate a severe drop in the market, at least for now. The Energy Department last month raised its forecast for U.S. prices, predicting they’ll average $64 a barrel for the next year.
Moody’s analysts, meanwhile, anticipate that natural gas-derived feedstocks will retain their cost advantage for at least the next decade.
That means the Gulf Coast, which has already attracted some $60 billion in petrochemical investments, might only become more attractive for plastics and chemicals producers.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/Rising-oil-prices-good-for-more-than-oil-companies-12977142.php
-
(ACC Mentioned) House, Senate Lawmakers To Mull Plant Safety Law
Jun 11, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Corbin Hiar
Lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol this week will gather testimony on a decade-old chemical plant safety law that is set to expire in December.
Congress created the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program, or CFATS, in 2007 and overhauled it four years ago.
It requires certain chemical facilities to file security plans with the Department of Homeland Security and categorizes the plants into tiers, depending on the threat the agency determines they pose.
But the exact methods, and the number and identity of the plants, are kept confidential for national security reasons.
Although public health advocates want to keep tabs on chemical companies, DHS tightly controls the info it receives under the law out of fear that terrorist groups like the Islamic State group or al-Qaida could target facilities that contain highly explosive or toxic products.
On Tuesday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is likely to discuss how CFATS balances the public's right to information with its need for security, among other issues.
The panel has assembled a roundtable of federal government, industry and labor experts to offer their perspectives.
Later in the week, House Energy and Commerce's Environment Subcommittee will also review the CFATS program.
"The purpose of this hearing is to check in on the [DHS's] progress implementing the law and [the Government Accountability Office's] recommended changes, as well as take stock of the program's status," said Sarah Matthews, a spokeswoman for the majority.
Schedule: The Senate roundtable is Tuesday, June 12, at 10:30 a.m. in 106 Dirksen.
Witnesses: David Wulf, acting deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security's Infrastructure Protection, National Protection and Programs Directorate; Christopher Currie, director of Government Accountability Office's emergency management, national preparedness and critical infrastructure protection; Randall Eppli, president and CEO of Columbus Chemical Industries Inc.; Andrew O'Hare, vice president of public policy at the Fertilizer Institute; Debra Satkowiak, president of the Institute of Makers of Explosives; Linda Menendez, director of operations at the Austin Powder Co.; William Erny, senior director of the American Chemistry Council; Jesse LeGros, vice president for infrastructure protection at AFGE National Local #918; and Jennifer Gibson, vice president of regulatory affairs at the National Association of Chemical Distributors.
Schedule: The House hearing is Thursday, June 14, at 10 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn.
Witnesses: TBA.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/06/11/stories/1060083989
-
Companies Double Down on Protections as Hurricane Season Starts
Jun 11, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
Energy companies want to make sure their critical facilities can survive a repeat of Hurricane Harvey, which dumped more than 50 inches of rain and caused about $125 billion in damage, as hurricane season begins again.
Forecasters at the Colorado State University Atmospheric Science Department say this year’s hurricane season will be about average, with six hurricanes expected, two of which could be major storms of Category 3 or higher. Researchers define the Atlantic hurricane season as running from June 1 to November 30.
Many companies have toughened their facilities against hurricanes and floods, Jason Miner, a senior global chemicals analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence in Princeton, N.J., said in an email June 7, echoing a similar wave of investments made after hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.
“Senior executives speak about the investments they make there often,” Miner said. “They mostly appear to know the costs of a mistake will be very high.”
Floods at major chemical facilities can not only damage infrastructure, but put workers, communities, and the environment at risk if floodwaters impair plant operations in a way that causes an unplanned release of chemicals to the air, water, or soil.
Damage ControlWhile companies describe emergency planning on the Gulf Coast as a longstanding practice, some are making changes this year.
Having seen the consequences of recent hurricanes, companies are enhancing their protective measures such as increasing the number employees who stay behind to manage a facility during a storm, Jeff Gunnulfsen, director of security and risk management at the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers in Washington, said in a call with reporters May 22.
Larger crews make it possible to respond more effectively to the havoc severe storms can cause, such as flooding and power outages, said Gunnulfsen, whose group represents major refining and chemical companies.
Companies also are turning to advanced technologies such as drones to check flooded sites safely when employees cannot reach the area, he said.
And they’re reinforcing facilities by strengthening concrete berms and raising generators to protect them from flooding where possible, Michael Tadeo, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, which represents oil companies like Chevron Corp. and BP America Inc., said in an email to Bloomberg Environment.
This work comes nine months after the Arkema Inc. specialty chemicals plant in Crosby, Texas, lost power during Harvey leaving it unable to maintain the temperature of the chemicals on site, which caused them to explode.
“We have plans in place for worst-case scenarios, and we drill regularly to coordinate activities with local, state, and federal responders and communicate quickly and effectively,” Melissa Ruiz, a spokeswoman for oil and gas pipeline and terminal operator Kinder Morgan Inc. in Houston, told Bloomberg Environment. “This preparation and advance planning is a part of Kinder Morgan’s culture and not limited to hurricane season.”
Oil company Exxon Mobil Corp. uses a “multi-step hurricane response plan” that involves emergency preparedness, risk assessment, and facility design, Sarah Nordin, a spokeswoman for the Houston-based company, said in a statement to Bloomberg Environment.
“Preparing for weather events is a well-planned activity and a way of doing business for companies operating on the Gulf Coast,” Nordin said.
Slower StormsAll of that and more could be needed if floods on the scale of Hurricane Harvey occur with more frequency.
Hurricane speeds have slowed an average of 10 percent from 1949 to 2016, according to a study published June 7 in the journal Nature. That leaves more time for them to dump rain over communities and sensitive infrastructure.
Industry could be doing more to address this risk, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board said after investigating Arkema’s response to the flooding. The board is a federal agency that issues safety recommendations in response to major industrial accidents.
Arkema was prepared for a hurricane, just not one as serious as Harvey, the board found in a report. But industry guidance is too vague when it comes to flood preparation, the board said.
“Arkema looks forward to receiving such guidance,” company spokeswoman Janet Smith said in a statement when the report was released.
The chemical company has since commissioned a site elevation survey and a hydrological study of flooding, which the board said will help Arkema better understand how rising waters affect its site in the future.
Consider Risk, or Avoid ItOther companies with chemical manufacturing, handling, or storage facilities in areas prone to extreme weather should follow Arkema’s lead, the Chemical Safety Board said.
The board wants companies to evaluate existing risk assessments to determine if they are adequate to prevent flood damage and make conservative assumptions.
Expanding companies also are considering flood risk when selecting sites for important facilities.
Walmart Inc. uses flood data to place major supply links like distribution centers, Ragan Dickens, a spokesman for the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer, told Bloomberg Environment.
Walmart has at least 41 distribution centers that must report information to the Environmental Protection Agency because they store sufficient quantities of chemicals on-site, including one in New Caney, Texas That location closed as Harvey hit, and high waters blocked access to it.
“You plan for what you think is the worst, and then when the storm hangs out several more days and dumps that much more water, it obviously throws some kinks in your plan,” Dickens said.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/companies-double-down-on-protections-as-hurricane-season-starts
-
Loss of Investigators Slows Key Federal Chemical Safety Agency
Jun 11, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Matt Dempsey
The federal agency that frequently investigates chemical disasters in Houston and elsewhere is struggling to function amid an exodus of investigators and management’s push toward more lenient treatment of industry, interviews and documents show.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board is down from 20 investigators to 12. With the recent departure of its chairwoman, its five-member board now only has three members with no indication that the Trump administration, which has recommended eliminating the agency, will replace anyone.
The safety board uncovered the festering problems at BP that led its Texas City refinery to explode, killing 15 and injuring 180 in 2005, and its report led to a reformed corporate safety culture. The board showed how loose regulations and poor communication doomed 15 Texas firefighters at West Fertilizer in 2013, leading to new Texas rules on ammonium nitrate. And when four workers died at DuPont’s La Porte pesticide plant in 2014, only the CSB had the independence and expertise to call out the management failures and botched emergency response.
The CSB is an independent agency that does not fine companies or issue violations. Its mission is to find out how an incident occurred and provide recommendations to the company, government regulators and other stakeholders on how to prevent another.
But now there are fears the board wouldn’t be able to take on the next major disaster, said U.S. Rep. Gene Green, a Democrat whose 29th District includes the Houston Ship Channel.
“I don’t think they could with the staff capacity, the situation they’re in now,” Green said.
In the last year, board chair Vanessa Allen Sutherland resigned, four investigators quit and investigators did not produce reports on multiple incidents, CSB documents show. Employees organized a successful unionization effort in response to low morale and reduced benefits. The agency — among the smallest in the federal government, with a budget of $12 million — is down to just 12 investigators.
It is lumbering ahead under the possibility of elimination by President Donald Trump, a threat that has nudged it closer to the industries it is supposed to scrutinize, some staff members said.
“I hope and pray the administration sees the benefits of the Chemical Safety Board doing this work,” Sutherland said in an interview. “It’s the only one that does it. The staff is very capable and the place will continue to strive.”
In the Houston area, a chemical incident occurs every six weeks, so the board’s investigators are frequently in Houston. But with the reduced number of investigators, not all major incidents in Houston are getting CSB attention.
On April 19, for example, a Valero refinery explosion injured 28 workers. The injured recently sued Valero in Harris County District Court, accusing the company of gross negligence. The CSB did not deploy, although it has did send investigators to the site of the Kuraray plant explosion in Pasadena last month.
Less-detailed investigations?
Former President Barack Obama appointed Sutherland as chair about three years ago in part to restore order to an agency with a host of organizational problems, including a big investigative backlog and complaints that it was overzealous toward industry. But troubles are emerging again as she exits.
“When I started as the chair, I can’t imagine a more difficult situation,” Sutherland said. “I hope my legacy is that we’re not where we were in August 2015.”
Current and former staff members agree the situation did stabilize at first under Sutherland. Congress eased its scrutiny once former chair Rafael Moure-Eraso stepped down. Sutherland repaired relationships with the petrochemical industry and calmed fears that the CSB was using its investigations to give companies a public shaming.
“After she came in, I thought she did a good job engaging her key stakeholders,” said Shakeel Kadri, executive director of the Center for Chemical Process Safety, a global nonprofit corporate group that focuses on safety in the chemical industry.
Staffers say that the agency has taken a turn away from detailed looks at incidents. A memo from six of the agency’s investigators, obtained by the Houston Chronicle, says that the agency wants to avoid analyzing a company’s safety culture and is pushing shorter investigations.
The memo says leadership wants to end the practice of circulating drafts of reports to the company, union officials and experts before they are finished. It also says management wants to outsource the writing of investigative reports.
This would be a shift away from the type of investigation done for the 2005 BP Texas City explosion, said Johnnie Banks, the former supervisory investigator of the CSB team based out of Washington, D.C., who retired in 2017 after working for the agency for most of its existence.
That explosion killed 15 workers and injured 180 others. Most of the victims were working in trailers near where the explosion occurred.
“It spoke to the real core guiding principles of the type of incident investigation that was valued,” Banks said of the BP Texas City report. “It got to the real cause, not just the operator or people doing something wrong but how a corporation’s decisions could have major impact on single facilities.”
The BP report led to multiple changes at the company including a new board member with a focus on safety, an independent panel to examine safety issues at the company and a new incident reporting program.
CSB recommendations also led to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration creating a national emphasis program for oil refineries and an industry-wide effort to move temporary trailers out of hazardous areas at facilities.
Chair wants open mind
But the agency wants to eliminate finding the human factors that cause incidents from reports, according to the memo.
Sutherland rejected the idea that the CSB was backing off from looking at the root causes and human factors in chemical incidents.
“We can’t assume that just because a report doesn’t have safety culture, it means we didn’t look for it,” Sutherland said.
Sutherland she wants investigators to go into their work with an open mind. She said there’s no push to write less aggressive reports.
“The people on the ground would know if we’re doing that,” Sutherland said. “It wouldn’t be a secret if we were burying this or cutting that. We’re not doing this in a bubble.”
The investigators’ list of concerns also states that no new investigators were hired during Sutherland’s time as board chair, despite money being returned to the federal government every year. Experienced investigators left, believing they were being pushed out after their qualifications were questioned.
Sutherland blames the lack of hiring on the chaos under her predecessor. The agency had no official job descriptions for investigators and no one knew where they should fit on the federal employee pay schedule. She says it took her most of her term as chair to resolve such human resources issues. A recently released Environmental Protection Agency Inspector General report said the CSB fixed 17 of those problems since a 2015 report.
Tom Zoeller, a senior adviser to the board, says the agency will be looking to fill those empty investigator roles in the next few months. The current situation will make it hard to fill those jobs, said Sam Mannan, director of the Texas A&M Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center.
“What do you tell potential employees?” Mannan asked. “You’ll have a job for a year? We’ll play it day by day or we don’t know? That’s no way to hire quality investigators.”
Board members leave
More problems lie ahead.
The board is down to three members: Manuel Ehrlich, Rick Engler, and Kristen Kulinowski. Ehrlich’s term ends next year. The terms of Engler and Kulinowski end in 2020, before the next presidential election.
There’s little indication that President Trump would appoint new board members to an agency he has twice targeted for elimination. In its 2019 budget, the administration said the board’s work duplicated that of other agencies such as OSHA. OSHA, however, only looks at compliance with worker safety laws, and doesn’t drill down to the root causes of incidents.
No one at the CSB knows what would happen once all the board members are gone.
“There’s no playbook for shutting an agency down,” Zoeller said. “We’ll be like Arkema where we can see the disaster coming but we’ll have to play it be ear.”
The CSB recently reported on the fires at Arkema’s chemical plant in Crosby during Hurricane Harvey. The plant lost power and its volatile organic peroxides warmed, catching fire and leading to a widespread evacuation. The board cited the company’s lack of preparation as one of the causes of the incident.
Early in the agency’s existence, the board was reduced to two board members, but not for long. Mannan remembers what the agency was like back then. There was a period of waiting for someone to come in and fix its problems.
“That’s the best-case scenario under the Trump administration,” Mannan said. “Who knows? Someone might be appointed to turn out the last light.”
Banks, the retired investigations supervisor, remembers what it was like before the CSB existed. He was working for Chevron at the time, investigating potential safety incidents. Banks remembered wishing there was an agency out there that delved deeper than OSHA into incident investigations.
“People were weary,” Banks said, “of dead bodies being picked out of the rubble at refineries and chemical plants.”
CHEMICAL BREAKDOWN: In November 2014, four workers died at a DuPont plant in La Porte after being exposed to a toxic gas. Responding emergency workers weren't sure what was in the air. The surrounding community wasn't, either. A Houston Chronicle investigation explores where another fatal mistake could have the largest consequences and probes the regulatory failures that put us in jeopardy.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Loss-of-investigators-slows-key-federal-chemical-12978972.php
-
EPA to Review How It Adds up the Economic Pros and Cons of Environmental Rules
Jun 7, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni and Chris Mooney
Under President Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency has sought to change the way its researchers review science. Now the agency is taking aim at the way it does economics.
The EPA took an initial step this week toward changing how it calculates the economic benefits and costs of regulatory decisions, a revision long sought by conservative allies of Trump.
Under many environmental laws, the agency is required to tabulate the economic pros and cons of measures imposed on companies to reduce air and water pollution. For years under President Barack Obama, conservatives complained that agency officials overestimated the health and financial benefits of reducing carbon emissions from power plants.
So on Thursday, the EPA announced it will solicit comments from companies, nonprofits and members of the public about how to do such cost-benefit analyses differently — bringing into the agency a long-running debate over how the government justifies new rules.
“Many have complained that the previous administration inflated the benefits and underestimated the costs of its regulations through questionable cost-benefit analysis,” EPA chief Scott Pruitt said in a statement Thursday. “This action is the next step toward providing clarity and real-world accuracy with respect to the impact of the Agency’s decisions on the economy and the regulated community.”
The nation’s major anti-pollution laws, the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, along with a number of other environmental statutes require the EPA to conduct cost-benefit analyses when writing new rules. But Pruitt’s EPA argues that the laws are inconsistent in describing how such analyses are done and is pushing for what it calls uniformity and transparency.
Environmental groups reacted to the EPA’s announcement with dismay. Ana Unruh Cohen, managing director for government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, suggested such rulemaking could obscure the benefits of anti-pollution rules to the public.
Pruitt’s actions are “founded on a big lie: that federal rules cost more than the benefits,” Cohen said. “In fact, the opposite is true — by a country mile.”
Michael Greenstone, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who served on Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, said the EPA’s notice for the proposal was itself fairly “vapid,” but the news release that accompanied it critically singled out examples of analyses from the Obama administration, suggesting the EPA is heading in a particular direction.
For instance, the agency faulted how the Obama administration took into account co-benefits, those that come from “reduced emissions of a pollutant that is not the actual target pollutant of a regulation.” The proposal cited the Clean Power Plan, which targeted carbon dioxide emissions but justified the regulation based on large benefits from reducing the health impacts of particulate air pollution, which decreases along with CO2 when there is less burning of fossil fuels for energy.
“The way I like to think about it is, if I press a button and something good happens, why would I want to not count half of the good that is produced by pressing that button?” Greenstone said. “There’s no explanation given.”
Greenstone added that Pruitt seems to already have in mind the answer to the question on which the agency is seeking comment. “This appears to be policy-based evidence making. Where you set the policy, and then you go backwards and manufacture the evidence,” he said.
Another common complaint among conservatives, according to Diane Katz, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, is that the EPA compared the domestic costs of reducing carbon emissions against the global benefits of mitigating climate change.
“We’ve seen them use a number of tricks that we find troubling,” Katz said of Obama’s EPA.
Lisa Heinzerling, a law professor at Georgetown University who served in the agency under Obama, noted that the proposal is a regulation that applies just to how the EPA does things. Mostly, the agency has not been regulating, she said, but moving to deregulate.
Heinzerling noted a parallel with Pruitt’s recent proposal to change how the agency uses science in making regulatory decisions. In April, Pruitt movedto limit which studies the EPA can use in writing regulations to only those for which the underlying data is made public, excluding some landmark research that involves confidential personal or medical histories or proprietary information.
“The striking thing about this and the science proposal is, those are the two really major regulatory initiatives of this administration, and they’re both directed at the agency,” she said.
“The only thing they’re regulating is themselves,” she said. “And the reason they’re doing that I think is that in the future, the agency will have to go through rulemaking to undo whatever they do here.”
The announcement earned quick praise from Republicans in Congress, providing Pruitt political cover during a week when he has weathered new revelations about enlisting EPA staff to help him pick up his dry cleaning, purchase a used hotel mattress and try to secure for his wife a Chick-fil-A franchise.
“During the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency exaggerated the benefits of Washington regulations and misjudged how costly they are to the economy,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement Thursday. “Now the Trump administration is taking important steps to make sure the agency can no longer abuse the cost-benefit analysis process.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/06/07/epa-to-review-how-it-adds-up-the-economic-pros-and-cons-of-environmental-rules/&freshcontent=1?noredirect=on
-
EPA Seeking Public Input on Improving Its Cost-Benefit Analysis
Jun 11, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
In a possible precursor to setting a nationwide policy, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it wants public input into whether and how it should reconsider the cost-benefit analysis for its regulatory decisions.
Meanwhile, in a related development, an appellate court panel dismissed a lawsuit filed by the American Petroleum Institute (API) and two other industry groups after EPA issued a directive in response to another court ruling that effectively overturned a nationwide policy pursuant to the Clean Air Act (CAA).
On Thursday, EPA issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) announcing that it would solicit public input as it seeks to improve its cost-benefit analysis.
"Many have complained that the previous administration inflated the benefits and underestimated the costs of its regulations through questionable cost-benefit analysis," EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said. "This action is the next step toward providing clarity and real-world accuracy with respect to the impact of the agency's decisions on the economy and the regulated community."
EPA added that implementation of its cost-benefit analysis "has been inconsistent," and that as a result the agency "has created a risk of uncertainty and confusion for states, local communities and industry. EPA is now considering ways to codify common-sense, best practices for cost-benefit analysis in rulemaking."
Public comments received through the ANPRM will go toward helping EPA develop a proposed rule. The agency will take comments on ANPRM for 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register.
The move by EPA satisfies a provision of an executive order (EO) issued by President Trump in March 2017. Among other things, the EO called for federal agencies, including EPA, to review estimates of the "social cost of carbon." Trump, Pruitt, Republican lawmakers and energy industry allies have been critical of the Obama administration's use of the methodology in crafting regulation.
"During the Obama administration, the EPA exaggerated the benefits of Washington regulations and misjudged how costly they are to the economy," said Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "Now the Trump administration is taking important steps to make sure the agency can no longer abuse the cost-benefit analysis process."
The EPA appeared to back up Barrasso's claim. It said that under the Obama administration, the estimated social cost of carbon was calculated at an average of $36 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. But under Trump, the agency calculated the cost at an average of $5 per ton.
But environmental groups blasted the move. "This ANPRM is nothing more than another effort by Pruitt to change the EPA from an agency that protects human health into one that bends the law to protect polluters," said Sierra Club spokesman Bill Corcoran. "It's shameful."
Last April, Pruitt proposed a rule designed to change how future environmental regulations are promulgated by restricting the agency to using publicly-available scientific research. One year earlier, in a decision that raised the ire of Congress, Pruitt dismissed several members of the EPA's Board of Scientific Counselors, a key scientific advisory panel.
Lawsuit Dismissed
On Friday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected a petition filed by three industry groups -- API, the National Environmental Development Association's Clean Air Project (NEDACAP) and Air Permitting Forum -- shortly after EPA issued amendments to the CAA in August 2016.
The amendments were made in response to two court rulings. In August 2012, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati vacated an EPA determination that a natural gas sweetening plant and sour gas production wells in central Michigan owned by Summit Petroleum Corp. constituted a single and major source of pollution under the CAA -- despite the facilities being spread over 43 square miles.
According to court records, EPA "took exception" to the Sixth Circuit's ruling "because it effectively overturned a nationally applicable EPA policy." EPA then issued, in December 2012, a directive to its 10 regional directors stating that the agency would continue "its longstanding practice of considering interrelatedness in EPA permitting actions in other jurisdictions."
One of the three petitioners then filed suit in DC Circuit Court, arguing that EPA had established "inconsistent permit criteria applicable to different parts of the country." The court ruled in 2014 that EPA's post-Summit directive "could not be squared with EPA's regulations."
But the same court on Friday ruled that the amended regulations EPA issued in August 2016 "reflect permissible and sensible solutions to issues emanating from intercircuit conflicts and agency nonacquiescence."
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/114659-epa-seeking-public-input-on-improving-its-cost-benefit-analysis
-
Judges Uphold EPA 'Regional Consistency' Regs
Jun 8, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Amanda Reilly
A panel of federal judges today upheld a rule that critics argued excused EPA from consistently applying air pollution regulations across the country.
At issue was a rule EPA issued in 2016 allowing its regional offices to act counter to national policies when ordered to do so by federal circuit courts. The three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that it was "permissible and sensible."
Industry's arguments, on the other hand, were "difficult to comprehend" and "illogical," Senior Judge Harry Edwards wrote in the opinion for the court.
"Petitioners' ostensible parade of horribles — a potentially national thicket of inconsistent decisions — is overblown, to say the least," Edwards wrote.
The dispute at issue originated in a court fight over EPA's aggregation of pollution sources for permitting at a Michigan natural gas facility.
In the 2012 case, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the EPA requirement that Summit Petroleum Corp. obtain a permit. A three-judge panel found EPA's decision to aggregate pollution sources at the site was unreasonable.
EPA, though, issued a memo directing regional offices outside of the 6th Circuit — which encompasses Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee — to ignore the court decision. But the D.C. Circuit found in 2014 that the so-called Summit directive violated regulations EPA issued in 1980 to ensure consistency across each of its regional offices.
So, under the Obama administration, EPA updated those "regional consistency" regulations to add an exemption for a federal court decision that arises from local or regional actions.
A coalition of manufacturing companies arrayed under the National Environmental Development Association's Clean Air Project, the American Petroleum Institute and other industry groups challenged the rule. They argued that EPA's updates ran counter to language Congress added to the Clean Air Act in 1977 requiring the agency to make sure the law is applied consistently throughout the country (E&E News PM, April 2).
But Edwards, a Carter appointee, wrote in today's opinion that the Clean Air Act doesn't require EPA to apply a court decision outside of the Supreme Court or the D.C. Circuit in all regions of the country.
"The simple point here is that the statute clearly contemplates some splits in the regional circuits," Edwards wrote. "There is nothing in the statute to indicate that EPA is bound to change its rules nationwide each time a regional circuit court issues a decision that is at odds with an EPA rule."
The industry groups both failed to address what EPA should do when two or more circuit courts come to conflicting opinions and "struggled to articulate" what regulatory solution EPA should have devised in place of the rule, he wrote.
Chief Judge Merrick Garland and Senior Judge Laurence Silberman heard the case with Edwards. Silberman agreed with the ruling but issued a concurring opinion.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/06/08/stories/1060083973
-
House Rescinds Environment Funds but Spares EPA
Jun 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
The House has approved a Trump administration proposal to rescind $15 billion in previously approved but unspent funds, including $1 billion from various energy and environmental programs -- though the final measure dropped initial administration plans to rescind $10 million from EPA grant funds.
The House June 7 voted 210-206 to approve H.R. 3, the bill enacting Trump's revised rescission proposal that would cut over $15 billion in unused federal funds.
The plan marks one of the few times an administration has exercised authority under the 1974 Budget law, which grants the president authority to send Congress requests for permanent changes in already approved budget authority; the requests can be approved by a simple majority-vote, but expire within 45 days.
The administration unveiled its rescission package in a letter to Congress May 8, seeking to roll back billions in “unobligated balances from prior-year appropriations and reductions to budget authority for mandatory programs” that the administration estimated would generate $3 billion in savings.
However, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the provisions of H.R. 3 would only produce savings of $1 billion over the 2018-2028 period.
Facing pushback from the proposals to rescind money from Ebola response and hurricane disaster relief, the White House released a revised proposal on June 5, pulling back $896 million in proposed rescissions.
The revised package withdrew four proposals, including its initial plan to claw back $10 million in prior year balances for “duplicative” competitive water quality research and support grants from the EPA's programs and management account and $107 million in balances appropriated in FY13 for the Emergency Watershed Protection Program that helps local communities recover after natural disasters.
Specifically, H.R. 3 would reverse $356 million in unobligated balances of the Agriculture Department's National Resource Conservation Service's conservation programs and $144 million in unobligated balances of the Environmental Quality Incentive Program, which finances conservation programs for farmers.
Additionally, the House agreed to rescind $37 million in carryover balances from the Agriculture Department's Rural Utility Service's Water and Wastewater program account, that provides funding to low-income communities for clean drinking water and wastewater facilities.
The legislation also would rescind $685 million appropriated in FY09 and FY11 from the Energy Department's Innovative Technology Loan Guarantee Program, that encourages early commercial use of new or significantly improved technologies in energy projects.
The House approved the legislation over the objection of environmentalists, who had urged lawmakers to oppose the bill. In a June 7 letter, groups including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council urged lawmakers to oppose the bill, arguing that rescinding program budgets for such conservation and water programs would harm health and the environment, in addition to cutting programs that have proven to create jobs and protect communities.
“Trimming the amounts in these programs budgets will have a negligible impact on the federal deficit, especially compared to the recently passed trillion-dollar corporate tax cut, but these cuts will have a large impact on people who rely on these programs to protect their health and environment,” the letter says.
“The Administration’s proposal either dismisses the need for these programs, or erroneously states that these funds cannot be used, are allocated to eliminated programs, or are unobligated funds that are in excess of what is needed to carry out each program. In fact, much of those funds are identified for future use and those balances continue to support critical projects nationwide."
Nevertheless, the administration is applauding the bill's passage and urged the Senate to act on it. “President Trump and this Administration are fully committed to protecting taxpayers, and Senate passage of this legislation is critical to reducing wasteful, unnecessary spending and making our Federal Government more efficient, effective, and accountable,” Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in statement.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/house-rescinds-environment-funds-spares-epa
-
Pennsylvania Issues New Permits to Cut Methane Emissions
Jun 8, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Leslie A. Pappas
Pennsylvania aims to curb methane emissions and other pollutants by reducing emissions from hydraulic fracturing operations under new natural gas permits that go into effect in August.
The permits will cover unconventional natural gas wells, and compression, processing, and transmission facilities, Gov. Tom Wolf (D) and Environmental Protection Secretary Patrick McDonnell jointly announced June 7.
The general permits would apply only to new unconventional natural gas wells, which use fracking to unlock gas buried deep inside shale rock formations.
Companies that frack Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale—such as Range Resources Corp., Chesapeake Energy Corp., Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., and EQT Corp.—would have to secure new permits for every new site they drill.
The announcement also says the permitting scheme “will help businesses reduce the waste of a valuable product"—natural gas.
Methane PlusIn addition to methane, the permits set limits for other types of emissions including volatile organic compounds, hazardous air pollutants, and nitrogen oxides.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified methane as the second-most prevalent greenhouse gas emitted in the country.
The decision to go ahead with the permits was made after public hearings generated more than 9,000 comments, the environmental department said.
The permits will go into effect Aug. 8, 2018.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/pennsylvania-issues-new-permits-to-cut-methane-emissions
Congressional Hearings
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
Add recipients
Suggested