Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 20/07/18
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If Brett Kavanaugh Becomes a Supreme Court Justice, He'll Finish What Scott Pruitt Started
Jul 20, 2018 | USA Today
By Tom Carper
Scott Pruitt is out as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, but if Judge Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court, Pruitt’s dangerous, anti-environment agenda will continue to wreak havoc — this time with the weight of our nation’s highest court behind it. -
Is BPA Making Us Fat, Anxious And Sick? A New Effort To Find The Answer May Be Falling Apart.
Jul 20, 2018 | Huff Post
By Lindsey Konkel
For years, government regulators and academic researchers have been at an impasse over the safety of bisphenol A, or BPA, a chemical used to make some plastics. -
The Next BPA? Why Businesses Must Get Ahead of Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals
Jul 20, 2018 | GreenBiz
By Mike Schade
American consumers are growing increasingly concerned about food safety and chemical hazards. -
EPA Worries About Pruitt’s Toxic Desk Reveal Absurd Double Standard
Jul 20, 2018 | New York Post
By Yaron Steinbuch
Former EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s staff planned to take precautions to protect him from the toxic effects of formaldehyde in a fancy new desk – but months later, his top aides blocked the release of a report on the health dangers of the carcinogen, according to Politico. -
As Trump Guts EPA From Within, Watchdog Reports Blasts Agency for Failures Related to Flint Water Crisis
Jul 20, 2018 | Common Dreams
By Julia Conley
A new report lays blame on all levels of government for the water crisis that has gripped Flint, Michigan for more than four years, and which safety advocates say has yet to be fully resolved. -
LNG Projects Ripe for Protesters
Jul 20, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Katherine Blunt
These days, hardly a month passes without a well-publicized protest of a pipeline project. -
Wyoming’s Barrasso Proposes Accelerating Natural Gas Exports to NATO Countries
Jul 20, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By David Bradley
A bill introduced in the Senate Wednesday would give North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries "an escape from Russia's political coercion and manipulation," in part by speeding approvals of U.S. natural gas exports, according to Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY). -
Ethane is About to Crack in Appalachia. Now it Needs a Market
Jul 20, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
"Rich, rich, rich, rich." -
Judge Tosses New York City's Case Against Big Oil
Jul 20, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Anne C. Mulkern
A federal judge yesterday threw out New York City's case seeking to make the largest oil companies pay for climate change damages, the second such case tossed by courts in recent weeks. -
Baltimore Joins Cities Filing Climate Change Lawsuits Against Fossil Fuel Companies
Jul 20, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green
Baltimore on Friday became the latest city to file a lawsuit against oil and gas giants seeking to hold the companies financially responsible for contributing to global climate change. -
Are Oil and Gas Really More Vulnerable to Cyberattacks?
Jul 20, 2018 | RealClearEnergy
By Jude Clemente
The Trump administration has used national security as justification for its plans to make electric grid operators purchase power from up to 80 financially struggling coal and nuclear plants. -
FERC Orders Utilities to Report Hacking Incidents
Jul 20, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is pushing utilities to divulge more cybersecurity incidents, citing concerns that current reporting requirements don't capture the risks posed by hackers. -
Meat Inspectors Detail Harms of Chemical Exposure
Jul 20, 2018 | Politico
By Liz Crampton
Two former USDA food safety inspectors from Utah spoke publicly for the first time about the health problems they suffered while working at a poultry plant owned by a company called Norbest. -
Bottled Water Company Illegally Dumped Arsenic — Prosecutors
Jul 20, 2018 | AP (In E&E Greenwire)
By Brian Melley
The company behind Crystal Geyser bottled water is accused of illegally disposing water tainted with arsenic, according to an indictment by federal prosecutors in California. -
FMCSA Ends Plan to Prioritize Carriers for Added Inspections
Jul 20, 2018 | Transportation Today
By Melina Druga
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) recently ended the plan to enhance its Safety Management System. -
Ewire: Curbelo Takes Optimistic View of House Carbon Tax Vote
Jul 20, 2018 | Inside EPA
The moderate Republican who next week is poised to unveil a major carbon tax bill, the first such legislation from a sitting GOP lawmaker in about a decade, is taking an optimistic view of a July 19 vote in the House in which the vast majority of his party agreed in a non-binding resolution that carbon taxes are “detrimental” to the economy. -
Our Environment is at Stake in Key Nomination Fight
Jul 20, 2018 | The Hill - Opinion
By Raul Garcia
As the largest environmental law organization in America, we want to offer our sincere congratulations on Marie Newmeyr’s nomination to serve as the chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), but we’d ask her to remember who she is supposed to protect – the American people and the environment they depend on, not big corporations. -
Appellate Court Again Lets Kids’ Climate Suit Continue
Jul 20, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals today for the second time rejected the Trump administration’s request to end a sweeping climate change lawsuit brought by children and young adults. -
Court Upholds Obama-Era ‘Exceptional Events’ Rule
Jul 20, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
The D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals today rejected a challenge by environmental groups to a 2016 EPA rule that defined when naturally occurring emissions of ozone, particulate matter and other pollutants will not be counted against an area's air quality measurements.
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If Brett Kavanaugh Becomes a Supreme Court Justice, He'll Finish What Scott Pruitt Started
Jul 20, 2018 | USA Today
By Tom Carper
Scott Pruitt is out as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, but if Judge Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court, Pruitt’s dangerous, anti-environment agenda will continue to wreak havoc — this time with the weight of our nation’s highest court behind it.
Pruitt was hostile to the very agency he led and repeatedly attempted to undo critical protections that his predecessors — both Republicans and Democrats — had put in place. Kavanaugh has successfully struck down protections under the Clean Air Act, opposed efforts to fight climate change and undermined critical protections for clean water. And he’s done so in cases brought to the courts by Scott Pruitt himself.
Put simply, if he’s confirmed to serve on the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh will be able to finish what Pruitt started.
While Justice Anthony Kennedy was no environmental champion, he was a pragmatic conservative who, in critical instances, recognized that conservative ideology was out of step with the values of most Americans when it came to environmental issues.Pruitt's anti-environment agenda
For instance, in 2007, Kennedy provided the decisive fifth vote in Massachusetts v. EPA, which held that the EPA had illegally refused to decide whether to regulate global warming pollution. This landmark decision set the stage for critical regulations aimed at boosting vehicle fuel economy standards, cutting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and reducing methane emissions in the oil and gas sector.
As EPA administrator, Pruitt did his very best to undo all that progress.
Under Pruitt, the EPA started to weaken emissions standards for cars and SUVs. Pruitt began repealing the Clean Power Plan, a historic step to reduce carbon pollution. And he delayed efforts to address dangerous methane emissions.
Just last year, Pruitt’s attempt to delay rules limiting methane emissions from oil and gas drilling was challenged in the D.C. Circuit Court, where Kavanaugh now serves. In that case, Clean Air Council v. Pruitt, Kavanaugh sided with Pruitt and the fossil fuel industry, voting against his colleagues who found Pruitt’s delay illegal.
Despite Pruitt giving lip service to "cooperative federalism" throughout his tenure at EPA, he repeatedly denied states the ability to combat dangerous pollutants, like ozone, that blow into downwind states like Delaware from its western neighbors. In 2012, Kavanaugh rejected a similar "good neighbor" regulation and blocked air pollution restrictions covering nearly half the country, thereby endangering thousands of lives.
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As Oklahoma attorney general, Pruitt signed onto a lawsuit challenging EPA’s mercury regulations. He argued that the evidence before the court “does not support EPA’s finding” that mercury and other known toxins “pose public health hazards,” despite widespread scientific evidence that mercury causes birth defects and other health problems in pregnant and nursing women. In that case, White Stallion Energy Center v. EPA, Kavanaugh attempted to severely limit EPA’s authority to regulate toxic emissions and greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
It’s likely all of these issues will come before the Supreme Court in the coming years. With Kavanaugh on the bench, it’s almost certain that bedrock environmental protections will be rolled back.
The silver lining here, though, is that the American people overwhelmingly rejected Pruitt and his environmental agenda. And Republicans finally started speaking out against Pruitt, in part because of his unprecedented ethical lapses (Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst called him "about as swampy as you get”) and in some cases because of his deference to the oil and gas industry over other energy interests.
While we’ve not been able to topple all of the Trump administration’s unqualified or ill-prepared nominees, we have had notable success taking down nominees due to their extreme environmental views. Kavanaugh positions are deal breakers
Last year, my Democratic colleagues and I — aided by several Republican senators — defeatedPresident Donald Trump’s pick to lead EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. The nominee, Michael Dourson, had spent his career promoting less protective chemical safety standards at the behest of industry. And Trump's nominee to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Kathleen Hartnett White, withdrew earlier this year after we exposed her disdain for basic facts and science and her contempt for those who embraced that clear evidence.
Dourson and Hartnett White were ultimately rejected because they had a handful of environmental positions that proved to be deal breakers for Republican senators. Sadly, Kavanaugh’s record on the environment is a compilation of those same extreme positions. Add in his other deeply troubling stances on health care protections, LGBTQ rights and presidential power, to name a few, and Democrats are very much in the game.
The numbers at this early stage may seem like they’re against us, but in truth, Kavanaugh’s environmental positions stand in stark contrast to what the overwhelming majority of Americans want and what the laws of our land require. When the American people — and the senators who represent them — learn more about Kavanaugh’s record and fully understand what’s at stake, then we have a fighting chance. And it’s a chance we intend to take.
Tom Carper is a U.S. Senator of Delaware and a ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Follow him on Twitter: @SenatorCarper
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/07/20/bad-news-kavanaugh-next-scott-pruitt-column/788908002/
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Is BPA Making Us Fat, Anxious And Sick? A New Effort To Find The Answer May Be Falling Apart.
Jul 20, 2018 | Huff Post
By Lindsey Konkel
For years, government regulators and academic researchers have been at an impasse over the safety of bisphenol A, or BPA, a chemical used to make some plastics. Academic researchers have repeatedly found that BPA and other hormone-disrupting chemicals, which can contaminate foods and drinks, may contribute to problems such as early puberty, obesity, diabetes, developmental delays and even cancer.
Yet the Food and Drug Administration, the agency tasked with protecting public health by ensuring the safety of the nation’s food, insists these chemicals are safe at the levels getting into most Americans’ bodies.
Now, the first round of results are out from a six-year study meant to clear up confusion over BPA’s potential health harms, and they appear at least partially to support academic researchers’ long-standing concerns that exposure to even small amounts of the chemical can cause adverse changes within the body. But the FDA has so far remained resolute in its stance that BPA is safe for consumers, leading some experts to accuse the agency of ignoring the best available science.
The outcomes of the project, called Consortium Linking Academic and Regulatory Insights on BPA Toxicity, or CLARITY-BPA for short, could have major consequences for the way the FDA assesses the safety of BPA and many other chemicals used in food packaging and processing.
“If this study shows that what we’ve been doing to regulate chemicals for decades is the wrong thing, then we are in a bad place with tens of thousands of other chemicals,” said Laura Vandenberg, an environmental health scientist from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, who was not involved in CLARITY-BPA.Concerning New Research
At her laboratory at North Carolina State University, Heather Patisaul studies how exposures to hormone-mimicking chemicals such as BPA can shape brain development. She uses rats and mice for her experiments, but there are a lot of similarities in the way that rodent pups and human babies form within the womb, she said.
During the earliest stages of life, for instance, estrogen ― a sex hormone ― causes certain parts of the fetal brain to wire differently in males and females. Over the past decade, Patisaul has shown several times that BPA changes the way the fetal brain uses estrogen. In utero exposure can lead to earlier puberty for females, altered development of the sex-specific parts of the brain, and an increase in anxiety-related behaviors later in life for both males and females.
Patisaul’s findings are concerning because she detected these changes after feeding her rodents really small amounts of BPA ― levels she says are comparable to the low levels of the chemical found in the average American’s body.If this study shows that what we’ve been doing to regulate chemicals for decades is the wrong thing, then we are in a bad place with tens of thousands of other chemicals.Laura Vandenberg, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
“That we’ve seen this effect over and over again is pretty convincing evidence that the brain is a particularly sensitive target for BPA and other endocrine disruptors,” Patisaul said. “Regulatory testing does not traditionally look for neural effects before or even after chemicals come to market, so we are likely missing many kinds of potential chemical threats to the developing brain.”
She and other academic researchers are doing cutting-edge research that’s changing the way scientists and the public think about toxic substances and the harm that exposure to them might cause. Much of this research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s medical research agency.
Patisaul called that research “the fuel of bioscience progress.” NIH-funded scientists explore the basic biology of development and other complex processes needed to understand toxicology, pharmacology and all other fields of medicine, she added.A Growing Divide
Despite the quality of cutting-edge academic research like this, the FDA ignores most of these academic studies when assessing the toxicity of potentially dangerous chemicals in food and food packaging.
The reason for that is academics don’t follow federal regulatory guidelines for toxicity testing.
That’s because regulators and academic scientists have a different approach to science that’s necessitated by the kinds of questions each group is trying to answer. Academic science is free-ranging and inquisitive, incentivizing innovation and nontraditional approaches to problem-solving. Regulatory scientists, on the other hand, aren’t necessarily trying to make new discoveries and primarily want to evaluate the safety and efficacy of those advancing technologies.
“Academics go where the data takes them, whereas regulatory science is more prescribed,” said Maricel Maffini, an independent chemical safety consultant in Washington, D.C. KATE SHEPPARD/HUFFPOSTPatisaul shows scans of rat brains her lab studied as part of CLARITY-BPA.
The regulatory guidelines that the FDA uses to assess the safety of food additives and other chemicals were devised in the 1970s. At that time, the FDA was on the leading edge of the science, according to Maffini. “Today, those guidelines have fallen behind the scientific knowledge,” she said.
The agency hasn’t updated or changed the safety tests included in its regulatory guidelines in more than 40 years. Maffini, Patisaul and others say the tests that form the foundation of the regulatory guidelines may no longer be sufficient to protect human health. They were designed at a time before scientists had uncovered the ability of certain chemicals to tinker with our hormones.
So-called regulatory guideline studies look for extremely obvious changes — did exposure to a certain chemical cause a test animal to spontaneously grow a huge tumor on its liver? Did the rat’s nervous system get so messed up it now can’t stand up when you flip it over on its back? The chemicals used in food packaging aren’t so overtly toxic, especially not at the trace levels most people ingest. But just because these chemicals aren’t severely maiming or killing us upon ingestion doesn’t necessarily mean that they are safe, Vandenberg explained.
Take brain development, for instance. Patisaul said the regulatory guideline studies don’t do a very good job of picking up on many neurological deficits that could result from such a toxic exposure. That’s because the tests they prescribe look only at brain weight.
Looking for changes in the brain weight of rodents allows scientists to detect serious brain abnormalities such as brain tumors or degenerative diseases that eat holes in the brain. These are good tests for detecting tumors and death, Patisaul said, but they aren’t sensitive enough to pick up on more subtle neurological deficits ― things like autism-like or ADHD-like behaviors. It’s not possible to tell whether the behavior of an animal has changed by simply putting the brain on a scale.Just because these chemicals aren’t severely maiming or killing us upon ingestion doesn’t necessarily mean that they are safe.
It may come as little surprise that the FDA would be slow to act on new science. After all, government agencies are set up to resist hastily made changes. In theory, this makes them less susceptible to undue influence from politicians, industry and special interest groups. But in this case, academic researchers say adherence to outmoded guidelines means regulators almost always favor industry studies over independent science.
In 2008, for example, the FDA found that BPA posed no risk to human health at the low doses found in food packaging. They relied on two industry-funded studies that found no effect, while discounting more than 100 peer-reviewed academic studies that found evidence of harm, according to a survey in Science magazine. Later, in a 2014 risk assessment, the FDA declared that BPA posed no risk to the developing brain based on a single industry-funded study that found no effect while ignoring 35 other federally funded studies investigating the effects of BPA on neurodevelopment.
It’s a concrete example of how myopic the regulatory process can be, said Patisaul, whose own research showing how BPA may be altering brain development, was excluded from the decision-making process.
“If you exclude 99 percent of the data, that’s arguably poor decision-making,” she said.Seeking ClarityThis New WorldThe current capitalist system is broken. Get updates on our progress toward building a fairer world.
Enter CLARITY-BPA, a $30 million federal research program started in 2012.
CLARITY-BPA was designed to be a two-armed study: One would test the effects of BPA using the traditional guidelines to look for overt changes in things like body weight, and the other would test more subtle endpoints chosen by academic scientists. Both sides agreed to a standardized set of scientific protocols and to share a set of tissues from the same rodents. This would help to create identical conditions between the two prongs of the study and minimize the potential for bias.
The National Toxicology Program, an interagency program of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, would serve as an impartial referee and at the end would release a final report interpreting the results of the two study arms.
The purpose of CLARITY-BPA is to “study the full range of potential health effects from exposure to BPA and to provide data that can be used for regulatory decisions,” according to the National Toxicology Program.
The program was designed to show “whether current safety assessment studies on endocrine-active substances are health protective or whether they need to be modified in some way,” said John Bucher, a National Toxicology Program senior scientist.
Patisaul was one of 14 scientists chosen from colleges and universities across the country to participate. Many had been frustrated at seeing their research discounted by regulators and were eager to participate in the regulatory process through science. Patisaul hoped doing so could help level the playing field between regulators and the academic research community.
“I think we were all pretty enthusiastic about the partnership at the outset, but the success of the project really hinges on whether the FDA acts like an honest broker,” she said.Breakdown In Communication
But so far, FDA actions to this point have some in the CLARITY-BPA program worried the agency intends to undercut the collaboration.
In February, the FDA released a statement on the preliminary results of its arm of the study that read: “Our initial review supports our determination that currently authorized uses of BPA continue to be safe for consumers.”
Many groups, including the Endocrine Society, an international medical organization of more than 18,000 clinical endocrinologists and hormone researchers, admonished the FDA’s statement as “premature.”
The FDA’s findings had not yet gone through a rigorous review process, and several of the scientists from the academic CLARITY-BPA arm had yet to publish the findings of their research.
The FDA did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the timing of the press release.I think we were all pretty enthusiastic about the partnership at the outset, but the success of the project really hinges on whether the FDA acts like an honest broker.Heather Patisaul, North Carolina State University
“Let’s put it this way: It’s not a situation that was optimal,” said Bucher of the National Toxicology Program, emphasizing that CLARITY-BPA “is very much a study in progress.”
According to the FDA’s statement, the agency “continues to conclude that BPA is safe for the currently authorized uses in food containers and packaging,” and the new research “builds upon the already extensive data collected in the FDA’s 2014 assessment of the safety of BPA” ― the same assessment that overlooked reams of data generated by the academics.
Reassuring headlines followed, including “Plastic Additive BPA Not Much Of A Threat, Government Study Finds,” and “Your Plastic Water Bottle May Be Safe After All.”
But that’s not exactly what the agency’s data showed.
Rats that were fed doses of BPA reflective of the low levels of the chemical found in most Americans’ bodies were slightly more likely to develop mammary tumors, kidney cysts and changes to the cells of the prostate and vagina than rats that received no BPA exposure. The exposed females were also slightly fatter. The findings were detailed in a draft report, made available before a public comments period in April.KATE SHEPPARD/HUFFPOSTPatisaul highlights portions of rat brains that appear to have been influenced by exposure to BPA.
The Endocrine Society urged caution. “We have significant concerns with the conclusions of the interim Research Report and we strongly urge the FDA and other stakeholders to avoid drawing conclusions regarding the safety of BPA based only on the results presented in the Core Study,” it wrote in a statement.
Independent researchers say the FDA’s preliminary findings are concerning.
“The effects do overlap with findings from the academic literature,” said Vandenberg. “These are things that shouldn’t be overlooked.”
CLARITY-BPA investigator Ana Soto agreed. Soto, a cancer researcher at Tufts University in Boston, has studied the effects of hormonally active substances on breast tissue and mammary gland development for more than 30 years.
According to Soto, the FDA’s research showing a significant increase in certain types of mammary tumors in rats given low doses of BPA is “totally consistent” with changes in mammary gland development she has observed in her own studies on BPA over the years.
“Cancer doesn’t appear by miracle. There are subtle yet measurable changes in mammary gland development that precede cancer,” she said.
Soto and others expressed concern over the draft report’s interpretation of data concerning mammary tumors and other worrisome effects in public comments submitted to the National Toxicology Program. Academics, professional organizations and even a foreign health agency criticized the report for appearing to cast doubt on the importance of what the FDA scientists found ― which was an increase in mammary tumors in rats exposed to small amounts of BPA.
One way the report did this, Soto said, was by making inappropriate comparisons between the number of mammary tumors in the rats in the lowest BPA-dose group for the CLARITY-BPA study and rats in the non-BPA-exposed group of a previous, unrelated experiment that was performed about a decade earlier. Unlike the non-BPA-exposed rats in the CLARITY-BPA study, the non-BPA-exposed rats in the previous experiment had developed a lot of mammary tumors.
A comparison with an old control group is against common scientific practice, according to Soto. A control group should be raised simultaneously and under the same living conditions as the test group, treated identically to the test animals in every other way.
The regulator’s strategy of using old controls “makes the CLARITY-BPA findings look less likely to be real, because the historical controls were also full of tumors,” Soto said. That is, until you consider that the non-BPA exposed animals in the earlier experiment were housed in polycarbonate cages, a component of which is BPA. It’s possible those rats, too, could inadvertently have been exposed to small amounts of the chemical, Soto said, a detail not included in the draft report.
The FDA countered that such comparisons are not out of the ordinary.
“Historical control data are used in these studies, and other studies conducted for regulatory purposes, as one part of the evidence considered,” said FDA spokeswoman Marianna Naum.Looking Ahead
A panel of experts appointed by the National Toxicology Program is now reviewing the FDA’s data to assess its scientific soundness. In August, the academic researchers plan to publicly release the results from their arm of the study. Then the National Toxicology Program will integrate the two sets of data — a process that could take up to eight months — and present its findings and final recommendations to the FDA.
Ultimately, it’s up to the FDA to decide what to do with those recommendations. They could choose to bring more sensitive tests for toxicity into the regulatory fold. Or they could do nothing at all.
Experts say the latter is likely, especially while industry continues to tout the chemical’s long safety record, and the BPA market, which topped $15 billion in 2015, remains strong.
Maffini said the FDA has seldom revoked the approved use of a food additive unless the industry has already abandoned that approved use ― for example, the FDA banned BPA in sippy cups and baby bottles in 2012, years after manufacturers had stopped using it in those products. The only time the FDA has revoked the use of a food chemical over safety concerns on its own was in 2015, when the agency banned trans fats after new studies overwhelmingly showed that a diet rich in trans fats could lead to heart disease and death.
Despite the odds, Patisaul sees an opportunity for a larger public discussion about what level of health protections citizens want when it comes to food and other consumer products ahead of the final report.
“If we are comfortable weeding out only the most egregious examples of toxicity, then our current system works fine,” she said. “But if we want to take a more precautionary approach to public health, then we need to change the way we’ve been doing things.”
This article was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an independent, non-profit news organization.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bpa-fda-health-study_us_5b4e2e6ce4b0b15aba894217
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The Next BPA? Why Businesses Must Get Ahead of Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals
Jul 20, 2018 | GreenBiz
By Mike Schade
American consumers are growing increasingly concerned about food safety and chemical hazards. Over the past 10 years, the market has shifted away from products containing bisphenol A (BPA) — previously found in baby bottles, sippy cups and food packaging — following widespread consumer demand for safer products. But BPA is not the only chemical of concern in the food supply that should be on the radar of sustainability professionals.
Meet the new BPA: phthalates and PFAS.
Over the past year, a tidal wave of media and public attention has been paid to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) chemicals, and how they have contaminated the drinking water of millions of Americans coast to coast. But most major grocery, big box and restaurant chains may not realize that PFAS and another class of toxic chemicals called phthalates are hiding in the food and food packaging they serve to their customers every day, posing a hidden business liability to retailers and brands. Phthalates and PFAS are used in food processing, packaging and preparation. In fact, they’re found in America’s favorite brands of food products, despite that they pose notable hidden financial, legal, regulatory and reputational liabilities to businesses.
Most major grocery, big box and restaurant chains may not realize that PFAS and phthalates are hiding in the food and food packaging they serve to customers every day.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration lacks the mandate, budget and political will to modernize our broken chemical safety system to address these chemicals. That’s why the business community must lead once again, just like it did on BPA.
The opportunity to lead
Grocery stores have the market power and responsibility to meet rising consumer demand for safer food, especially in the absence of leadership by our federal government. We encourage these companies to develop proactive strategies to address the hidden hazards posed by phthalates and PFAS.
Over the last five years, Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families has led the Mind the Store campaign to assist and encourage major retailers in improving the chemical safety of the products and packaging they buy and sell. Last year, our second annual "Retailer Report Card" graded 30 companies on their safer chemical policies and practices, including major grocery chains such as Kroger, Albertsons, Ahold Delhaize, Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. This fall, we plan to release an expanded report card, which will evaluate an even greater number of companies, including additional grocery stores.
Along with our partners at the Environmental Health Strategy Center and Toxic-Free Future, last month, we sent letters to over 75 of the nation’s top grocery and restaurant chains, urging them to take action on phthalates and PFAS. Let’s briefly examine the case for action.Phthalates in the food supply — a major source of exposure
Eating food is the major way that most people are exposed to these hormone-disrupting chemicals, which many studies link to harm to reproductive health and brain development.
Daily exposure to phthalates poses an unacceptable cumulative health risk to women of childbearing age and young children, according to federal and academic scientists. Phthalates are industrial chemicals widely used to soften plastic (especially vinyl or PVC) and rubber, and in adhesives, inks, sealants, coatings and fragrance. Research shows that phthalates migrate into foods from every point along the supply chain: at the farm level, in processing plants, from food packaging and during food preparation.
Last year, The New York Times broke the story that processed macaroni and cheese was laden with phthalates, which led to a wave of media coverage, posing reputational liabilities to Kraft and other manufacturers. A recent study found that dining out was associated with the highest phthalate exposure among Americans, suggesting that materials used in food preparation in restaurants are an additional source of these chemicals.
Here’s the good news: Safer alternatives to phthalates are widely available, effective and affordable. Surely if companies can get them out of vinyl flooring and toys, they can get them out of food contact materials.PFAS, the highly fluorinated chemicals in food contact materials
PFAS includes some of the most long-lived chemicals known to science. They don’t readily break down in the environment, may build up in our bodies and are highly mobile, enabling them to contaminate drinking water.
These highly fluorinated chemicals were commercialized without adequate data or safety assurance. Yet research links PFAS exposure to reproductive and developmental toxicity, harm to the liver and kidney and hormone disruption. The use of PFAS poses a long-term hazard and will continue to release problematic persistent chemicals into the air and drinking water for decades and centuries to come.
Research links PFAS exposure to reproductive and developmental toxicity, harm to the liver and kidney and hormone disruption.
PFAS are widely used to impart resistance to grease, stains and water in food serviceware and packaging, textiles and other materials. A 2017 study found that 33 percent of fast food packaging tested still contained PFAS, where they can make their way into our food. Like phthalates, safer alternatives are available.
Solutions are within reach
Corporate leaders and states are paving the way. For example, Nestlé has eliminated phthalates from its manufacturing plants and packaging. The European grocery chain Coop has demonstrated that PFAS chemicals can be removed from microwave popcorn.
This year, Washington state passed a new law (PDF) to phase out PFAS in food packaging made of paper and paperboard by 2022. Other states undoubtedly will follow, underscoring the importance for companies to get ahead of the regulatory curve now.Policy recommendations for grocery and restaurant chains
Grocery, big box, restaurant and fast food chains can be part of the solution in protecting the health of their customers from phthalates and PFAS in our food supply. We recommend that companies take the following actions for all of the food-related products they sell.
PFAS:Adopt a policy to reduce and eliminate the use of PFAS in food packaging, food serviceware (such as plates, parchment paper and muffin cups) and in supply chainsWork with suppliers to eliminate PFAS from food packaging, food serviceware and upstream supply chain sources Agree to meet the new Washington state ban on PFAS use in food packaging in every state in the U.S. Effective safer alternatives rapidly are being commercialized.
Phthalates:Require suppliers to meet the 2011 European standard that bans the use of most phthalates in food contact materials made of plastics or rubber. This includes disposable gloves, conveyor belts, flexible tubing and hoses, milking equipment and seals and gaskets.American consumers should not suffer a lower standard of health protection than Europeans.Require suppliers to certify that phthalates are not added to printing inks, adhesives, coatings or seals used in any of food packaging. Nestlé and others have shown that safer alternatives are available for all these uses.Ensure that phthalates are not used in plastic or rubber materials located inside any facility that you own or franchise where food is exposed to the open air. Such items may include rubber or vinyl floor mats, boots and other footwear, waterproof clothing, water hoses, wall coverings and roller shades.
By taking these steps, companies can demonstrate they are proactively taking action to get out in front of these dangers.Looking ahead
At a time when the federal government is asleep at the wheel when it comes to protecting consumers from toxic chemicals in food and consumer products, it is more imperative than ever that major retailers and brands leverage their power and influence to drive harmful chemicals out of commerce and instead promote sustainable green chemistry solutions.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/next-bpa-why-businesses-must-get-ahead-hormone-disrupting-chemicals
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EPA Worries About Pruitt’s Toxic Desk Reveal Absurd Double Standard
Jul 20, 2018 | New York Post
By Yaron Steinbuch
Former EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s staff planned to take precautions to protect him from the toxic effects of formaldehyde in a fancy new desk – but months later, his top aides blocked the release of a report on the health dangers of the carcinogen, according to Politico.
Pruitt was wrapping up a more than $9,500 redecoration of his office when a top official noticed a California warning on a desk the administrator wanted to order saying it contained the chemical.
“Sorry to bother you with this but we need some help. The desk the Administrator wants for his office from Amazon has a California Proposition 65 warning,” acting deputy chief of staff Reginald Allen emailed Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, acting head of EPA’s toxic chemicals office, the news outlet reported.
“What I am asking is can someone in your area tell us whether it is OK to get this desk for the Administrator related to the warning?” Allen wrote April 7.
The emails were released to the group American Oversight under the Freedom of Information Act and shared with Politico.
In her response, Cleland-Hamnett explained that the desk was likely made of compressed wood in which formaldehyde is frequently used as a glue.
Although an EPA regulation limiting formaldehyde emissions from such items had been put on hold by Team Trump, California regulates the chemical, meaning emissions from the ornate desk were “likely to be fine,” Cleland-Hamnett wrote.
But she suggested letting the furniture piece air out for a few days before being placed in the administrator’s office. Administrative staff apparently made plans to have the desk assembled at a warehouse and left there for a week, according to the report.SEE ALSO
Scott Pruitt quits as EPA chief amid ethics controversies
It’s unclear whether Pruitt ended up ordering the desk as part of the renovation — which included artwork from the Smithsonian and framed photographs of Pruitt and President Trump — but his aides took steps to protect him from exposure to the chemical, documents showed.
A few months later, top EPA officials took steps to block a health report produced by another division at the agency that found the levels of formaldehyde that many Americans breathe every day are tied to leukemia and nose and throat cancer, among other ailments.
American Oversight chief Austin Evers said the emails fit into the pattern of behavior that led to the downfall of Pruitt, the perk-seeking, climate-change skeptic who recently resigned amid an avalanche of ethical controversies over his personal and professional behavior
“You can add ‘EPA chemical safety science’ to the list of taxpayer-funded benefits that Scott Pruitt kept for himself. The irony would be comical if this wasn’t so dangerous,” Evers said in a statement.
“Months before Scott Pruitt blocked the EPA’s report on the dangers of formaldehyde to public health, he got the benefit of EPA’s safety experts looking out for his own health,” he added.
Formaldehyde-based compounds are commonly used in industrial strength adhesives and can be found in composite wood products.
https://nypost.com/2018/07/20/epa-worries-about-pruitts-toxic-desk-reveal-absurd-double-standard/
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Jul 20, 2018 | Common Dreams
By Julia Conley
A new report lays blame on all levels of government for the water crisis that has gripped Flint, Michigan for more than four years, and which safety advocates say has yet to be fully resolved.
As the Trump administration urges budget cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the agency's inspector general found that the EPA responded far too slowly to a regional office's concerns about Flint's water after tests showed high levels of lead in April 2015. The discovery came a year after the city began using the Flint River as a drinking water source, switching from Detroit's water system to save money.
The EPA did not immediately publicize the findings, urging Michigan officials to address the problem and failing to oversee the response.
"While oversight authority is vital, its absence can contribute to a catastrophic situation," EPA Inspector General Arthur A. Elkins said in a statement. "This report urges the EPA to strengthen its oversight of state drinking water programs now so that the agency can act quickly in times of emergency."
Michigan was also found to have responded far to slowly to the Flint crisis, which began due to high levels of lead in the city's river. State officials did not acknowledge the toxicity of the water, waiting until September 2016 to shift the city's drinking water source back to Detroit, after researchers at Virginia Tech compared some water samples from the river to "toxic waste."
Local officials were also blamed by the inspector general for ignoring residents' concerns over the unusual taste, color, and smell of the drinking water.
"People have realized they've been lied to, and EPA knew about this, and the state knew about this," Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards, who tested the water in 2016, told the Washington Post at the time. "What you really have as it spun out of control is a total loss of trust in government, which failed [residents] miserably. They don't believe a word that anyone tells them."
The inspector general's report comes as the Trump administration is pushing for cuts to the EPA's budget, including its drinking water oversight programs, and calling to shift more of that responsibility to the states.
In response to the inspector general's report, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) highlighted the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) recent finding that more than half of U.S. schools either didn't test their water for lead in 2015, or didn't know whether the water had been tested.
"The responsibility of protecting America's children from further exposure to this brain-damaging neurotoxin ultimately falls on President Trump and his EPA," said EWG President Ken Cook. "Public health crises like the tragedy in Flint are almost certainly unfolding in other communities throughout the nation. Unless the agency ensures that regular testing occurs and strengthens outdated lead regulations, children in hundreds of communities could be exposed to lead at home, and in schools and day care facilities."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/20/trump-guts-epa-within-watchdog-reports-blasts-agency-failures-related-flint-water
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LNG Projects Ripe for Protesters
Jul 20, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Katherine Blunt
These days, hardly a month passes without a well-publicized protest of a pipeline project. Once among the quietest of energy infrastructure projects, they’ve become bullseyes for climate change activists working to block the transportation of oil and natural gas as part of a broader effort to curtail fossil fuel production.
Now, it appears export terminals for liquefied natural gas are emerging as targets of that very same movement during a critical time for an emerging industry. Houston’s Cheniere Energy pioneered U.S. LNG exports through its Lousiana facility in 2015, and a host of other export terminals are under construction along the Gulf Coast.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman Kevin McIntyre announced on Thursday that his agency would collaborate with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to speed up the review of LNG project applications, which have faced delays in recent months. Environmentalists were quick to sound their alarm.
“Fracked gas export terminals deserve more scrutiny, not less,” Kelly Martin, director of the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Dirty Fuels” campaign, said in a statement. “The only people who will benefit from more gas exports are fossil fuel industry CEOs.”
The budding opposition comes amid a surge in U.S. natural gas production that has already made the nation a major player in the global LNG market. Demand is growing quickly in China and other Asian countries working to shift from coal to to cleaner-burning natural gas to meet emissions reductions targets under the United Nations climate accord.
That heightened interest in addressing global warming has fueled an uprising in the U.S. among environmentalists who have learned to leverage social media and targeted protests to rally opposition to specific energy projects. Such efforts have made the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines household names, and now, it appears the movement is expanding.
Already, there have been reports of scattered protests outside LNG facilities along the U.S. coast. Protesters in Washington have for months been staging demonstrations near a terminal under construction at the Port of Tacoma.
In Oregon, a group of citizens along has initiated a campaign against the proposed Jordan Cove LNG Terminal in the Coos Bay.
Closer to home, the Brownsville Herald reported last month that a group of activists gathered outside of NextDecade LNG’s headquarters in The Woodlands to protest an export facility proposed for construction at the Port of Brownsville.
RELATED: Canada agrees to buy Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain lineRELATEDGlobal LNG trade rises alongside U.S. productionSenate to consider bill boosting U.S. LNG exports to Europe, taking aim at Russian gasPanama Canal opens way for more LNG tankers with US exports rising
These tactics have become all too familiar to pipeline companies. Faced with unprecedented scruntiny, industry giants are doubling down on efforts to win public support and prevent legal challenges that could force costly delays or even project abandonment, such as Kinder Morgan’s decision in May to sell its Trans Mountain project to the Canadian government for $3.5 billion.
To mitigate the risk of opposition, pipeline companies have begun meeting with local officials and landowners earlier in the building process and mapping routes to meant to avoid political or regulatory hurdles.
LNG companies will likely face similar challenges as new terminals get underway. They’ll have to be proactive in explaining the need for their projects and respond to concerns about climate change and damage to natural resources.
Perhaps they’ll borrow from the pipeline sector’s new playbook.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/LNG-projects-ripe-for-protesters-13090019.php
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Wyoming’s Barrasso Proposes Accelerating Natural Gas Exports to NATO Countries
Jul 20, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By David Bradley
A bill introduced in the Senate Wednesday would give North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries "an escape from Russia's political coercion and manipulation," in part by speeding approvals of U.S. natural gas exports, according to Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY).
The Energy Security Cooperation with Allied Partners in Europe Act (ESCAPE Act) would enhance the energy security of NATO members by providing them with American energy, and would mandate sanctions on the Nord Stream II natural gas pipeline and other Russian energy export pipelines.
The bill was prompted in part by the potential for Germany to increase imports of Russian natural gas through the proposed Nord Stream II pipeline, Barrasso said. Russia is already the largest gas provider in Europe, and Nord Stream II would only increase its influence, he said.
"When one country allows another aggressive, opportunistic country like Russia to have that kind of influence over its energy security, it’s asking for trouble," Barrasso said. "Germany seems to be betting that increasing its economic ties to the Kremlin will have no effect on the political manipulations that Russia wants to play on Europe. It’s a sucker’s bet."
In addition to requiring the Secretary of Energy to speed up approvals of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to NATO allies and other countries, the ESCAPE Act would authorize mandatory U.S. sanctions on the development of Russian energy pipelines, direct U.S. representatives at NATO to work to achieve energy security for allies in Europe and Eurasia, and call for a comprehensive strategy to increase U.S. energy exports "to these countries that are being held hostage by Russia."
During a recent meeting with NATO officials, President Trump said Germany "is totally controlled by Russia because they will be getting from 60-70% of their energy from Russia," and called the Russian pipeline "a very bad thing for NATO." Nord Stream II, he said, would make "Germany a captive of Russia."
Trump later appeared to backtrack from those comments, claiming that the United States would compete against the proposed pipeline with LNG exports.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and annexed Crimea, the United States and its allies sanctioned some Russian energy companies and executives. The sanctions, coupled with burgeoning U.S. gas supplies, have opened the door to more LNG imports to the continent.
Last March, Germany granted authorization for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would have 1.94 Tcf (55 bcm) of transport capacity, and run 1,222 kilometers (759 miles) under the Baltic Sea. The pipeline would connect the Russian port of Ust-Luga, near St. Petersburg, to Greifswald in northeast Germany. Nord Stream is expected to enter service in 2019.
Several Eastern European countries, including Poland, are opposed to the pipeline, and the Trump administration has promised to work with the continent to help diversify its energy supply.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/115130-wyomings-barrasso-proposes-accelerating-natural-gas-exports-to-nato-countries
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Ethane is About to Crack in Appalachia. Now it Needs a Market
Jul 20, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
Part four in a series. Read parts one, two and three.
"Rich, rich, rich, rich."
That's energy analyst Taylor Robinson describing the economic potential of the vast amount of "wet" natural gas in the shale rocks of Appalachia's Ohio River region. He isn't stumbling over his words. He's making a point.
The point has been recognized since the hydraulic fracturing revolution began a decade ago in the Marcellus Shale formation lying thousands of feet down in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. It has been repeated as the deeper Utica Shale layers were drilled.E&E SERIES
The United States has been in the throes of a shale boom and bust for over a decade. How's it going?
The rocks are loaded with natural gas liquids — ethane, propane and other chemical cousins that are mingled in the more common methane heating gas. These more complex hydrocarbons are raw materials for a host of chemical and plastic products that are seeding dreams of a manufacturing renaissance in economically downcast Appalachia that would have been unimaginable 10 years ago.
Like parents of prodigies amazed at their children's unexpected gifts, many in the three-state region have been counting blessings in advance. The Mid-Atlantic Technology, Research & Innovation Center (MATRIC) in South Charleston, W.Va., has published an estimate that a full exploitation of Marcellus and Utica resources could in time create 25,000 jobs in chemical and plastics manufacturing.
"Ethane is to the chemical industry what flour is to bakers," said Steven Hedrick, MATRIC's chief executive, at an energy conference last month. "Allow yourself to be inspired by what is about to happen in Appalachia."
"The shale gas is very wet and rich and very low-cost," says Robinson, president of PLG Consulting, whose research work includes the Appalachian gas resources. In some parts of the region, the natural gas contains up to 65 percent ethane and other gas liquids, and 40 percent is common, Robinson said, creating a fertile building block for plastic products.
Without doubt, the region owns a hydrocarbon windfall opened up by fracking and horizontal drilling advances. "The Marcellus shale resource alone represents the second largest natural gas field in the world," the IHS Markit consulting firm concluded in a report this spring.
But today, just a small part of the region's potential ethane production moves by pipeline to Philadelphia, Canada and the Gulf Coast because there's little else to do with it. "There's a lot of trapped ethane in that region that needs a home," Robinson said.
Now the first home is under construction by Shell Chemicals along the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pa., 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. Shell's steam cracking plant will break ethane apart and reconstitute it as ethylene gas. Three production units will then link ethylene molecules to create polyethylene plastic pellets, a ubiquitous component of packaging and housewares products. Through the same process, propane winds up as polypropylene fibers and resins, turned into carpets and high-performance plastics.
Shell's plant is set to open in late 2021 or early 2022. It will generate an estimated $9 million to $12 million in income taxes and more than $3 million in local taxes a year, according to an analysis commissioned by Shell. When running, it will have a payroll of 600 workers and provide work for two to three times that number in its supply chain, Shell says.
Ohio hopes the next cracker is on its turf. In March, Gov. John Kasich (R) announced a stepped-up investment commitment by Thailand's PTT Global Chemical and South Korea-based Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd. for a proposed cracking plant in Belmont County, in the heart of Utica's "wet" shale gas area. Kasich said he is hoping for a go decision by the end of this year on a project that could be worth up to $10 billion.
"You've got PTT that seems to be pretty far down the road. It just hasn't made the commitment," Robinson said.
Now the question is, what happens next?
The amount of ethane that could be raised from the Marcellus Shale would justify construction of four more "world-scale" crackers in addition to the Shell plant, IHS Markit calculates.
But production of Appalachian ethane's derivative products would likely swamp what the U.S. economy can absorb, according to IHS Markit and other analysts.
So an ethane breakout along the Ohio River sets up the potential for a showdown duel between that region and the heart of the U.S. petrochemical industry along the U.S. Gulf Coast. "You're going to have a very competitive feedstock in that region," said Robinson about the Appalachian resources, "until you have too many crackers."
Two-thirds of the increased U.S. natural gas production since 2012 has come from the Appalachia shale region, noted Warren Wilczewski, the U.S. Energy Information Administration's expert on the region's gas resource.
Gas liquids production from Pennsylvania alone, which was negligible in 2005, had jumped to an average of 50,000 barrels a day in 2011-15, and IHS sees the total climbing to nearly 200,000 barrels daily in 2021-25. For the combined East Coast and Midwest regions, ethane production is forecast to hit an average of nearly 800,000 barrels a day in 2021-25.
If that happens, one-quarter of that total would have to be exported, if foreign buyers can be found, in order to balance U.S. supply and demand, the consulting firm says.
"Over the next six to seven year period, we're going to add 50 percent of the polyethylene capacity of North America," Wilczewski said in an interview. The U.S. market is expected to grow with the economy, only 2 to 3 percent per year. The rest has to go abroad.
"Always, dictating ethane production is how much can actually be marketed," Wilczewski added. "Ethane does not get produced if there is no market.
"If they can't find an outlet, it would be disastrous," the EIA analyst said.Fuel wars
[+] Claudine Hellmuth/E&E News
Cheap Marcellus and Utica natural gas has already transformed the electric power sector east of the Mississippi River, fueling a surge in electric power production from natural gas-fired turbines that has punished the once-dominant coal-based power sector.
IHS Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin reminded a congressional committee last month that just a decade ago, coal supplied 52 percent of the fuel for U.S. electricity production, compared with just 17 percent for natural gas. Production from shale wells drove gas prices down by nearly 80 percent, and by 2016, gas had supplanted coal in power plants.
The Pennsylvania-Ohio-West Virginia bid to build a new petrochemical complex around cheap Appalachian natural gas liquids opens a new front in the energy war between the states that has flared in this decade.
President Trump's pledge of support to the coal industry has led to an Energy Department plan to subsidize financially pinched coal and nuclear power plants, which DOE deems to be more secure than gas-fired generation dependent on gas's long pipeline supply networks.
Success for Appalachia means taking business away from the extraordinary complex of gas and petrochemical facilities on the U.S. Gulf Coast. For their part, leaders of the Gulf Coast petrocomplex are not showing any anxiety (Energywire, May 14).
Appalachia's potential has been assessed in the IHS Markit report, "Prospects to Enhance Pennsylvania's Opportunities in Petrochemical Manufacturing." The firm estimates that about $6 billion was invested between 2010 and 2016 in gas processing, pipeline projects, and storage of Marcellus and Utica gas. Natural gas processing capacity in the three states, only able to handle 1 billion cubic feet of gas daily in 2010, has soared to 12.5 billion cubic feet daily, EIA says.
But despite these investments, Appalachia will be hard-pressed to catch up with Texas and the rest of the U.S. Gulf Coast's petrochemical expanse, which includes huge, invaluable natural storage chambers for wet gas centered in the Mont Belvieu area east of Houston, Wilczewski said. Appalachia's first comparable ethane storage facility is still on the drawing board.
"There isn't a petrochemical company in the world that isn't salivating at the capacity Gulf Coast producers have. I don't know how to overstate the advantage that provides those producers. I don't think it's possible to build anything like that anywhere on Earth," Wilczewski said. But Appalachia has other advantages, he adds.
One is the cheaper cost of its ethane compared to other U.S. locations, the IHS Markit analysts said. They put ethylene costs from Appalachia 23 percent lower than on the Gulf Coast.
And the largest part of the U.S. plastic product manufacturing industry is in Appalachia's backyard, Robinson said. Around 70 percent of the manufacturing plants that use ethane polymers in their manufacturing are within 700 miles of Pittsburgh, IHS Markit said. Delivery times for polyethylene within the region can be a week or less, but up to three weeks by rail from the Gulf Coast, the firm said.
These and other plus factors mean the current value of the cash flow from an Appalachian cracker is four times higher than a new Gulf Coast project, IHS Markit assessed.Air-quality concerns
A big if: Will regulators in the three-state Appalachian region approve a big petrochemical infrastructure build-out at anything close to a Gulf Coast timetable? Will the three states' residents give a Texas-style welcome to the development?
The IHS Markit analysts told Pennsylvania's officials to step on it if they want to create a viable petrochemical industry. The state should "take aggressive action to address potential developmental and infrastructure constraints proactively," they said.
James Fabisiak, a toxicologist and associate professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of Pittsburgh, is a critic of the Shell project because of air quality concerns. The projected emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs)— a potent smog precursor — from a single cracker would push levels in the Pittsburgh area back to what they were in 1999, undoing two decades of struggle to improve air quality, he contends.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection granted the Shell project an air quality permit in 2015 based on the controls the plant would install.
But that's just the first plant, Fabisiak said. "When we first started to consider what the impact of the Shell cracker would be, we were looking at one particular facility. All of the infrastructure for oil and gas — wells, pipelines, compressor stations — they all release VOCs," he asserted. "Each time we look at this again, there are increased [proposed] facilities that have to be worked into the equation." The debate is only beginning, he said.
The DEP is currently reviewing Shell's plan for 97 miles of pipeline connections to deliver ethane to the cracker from both Ohio and Pennsylvania wells. The department notified Shell on June 1 of "significant technical deficiencies" in the company's pipeline plan, calling for more information on impacts on public water supplies and wetlands and other issues.
"I think they have to be flexible around the regulatory side," Robinson said, referring to the three states' governments. "They haven't built units like these in this area. They build them every day of the week in Texas."
Lawrence "Skip" Teel, an executive of Westlake Chemical, the largest U.S. producer of low-density polyethylene, offered a word of caution on that point at last month's EIA conference. When he first met with an executive of one of the biggest Marcellus and Utica shale well drilling companies some years ago, the wildcatter told him to keep the initials "TAFT" in mind. Teel said he could tell polite company what three of the initials stand for: "This ain't Texas."
Next: Appalachia's China connection.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/07/20/stories/1060089781
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Judge Tosses New York City's Case Against Big Oil
Jul 20, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Anne C. Mulkern
A federal judge yesterday threw out New York City's case seeking to make the largest oil companies pay for climate change damages, the second such case tossed by courts in recent weeks.
Judge John Keenan in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said that "climate change is a fact of life," and one not contested by the oil companies. But it's not an issue for the courts to solve, he said, and "must be addressed by the two other branches of government."
It's also a global issue, and cities around the world "will be forced to grapple with the harmful impacts of climate change in the coming decades," wrote Keenan, a Reagan appointee. "However, the immense and complicated problem of global warming requires a comprehensive solution that weighs the global benefits of fossil fuel use with the gravity of the impending harms."
The decision echoed the points made by Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, a Clinton appointee. Last month, Alsup granted the request from the same five oil companies to toss cases brought by San Francisco and Oakland, Calif. (Climatewire, June 26).
The cases are part of a trend of cities and counties suing oil companies, seeking financial compensation for sea-level rise damages and other climate impacts. The bulk of the suits are in California; there are also three in Colorado and one in Washington state.
New York City will appeal the decision, said Seth Stein, spokesman for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
"The Mayor believes big polluters must be held accountable for their contributions to climate change and the damage it will cause New York City," Stein said in a statement. He added that the city will "keep fighting for New Yorkers who will bear the brunt of climate change."
Keenan's decision cited a Supreme Court case that could resurface as conservatives eye potential changes under a more conservative Supreme Court. In the 2011 decision in American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, known as AEP, the high court said that corporations cannot be sued for greenhouse gas emissions because EPA regulates those through the Clean Air Act. That power came through the decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which held that EPA has the power to police greenhouse gas emissions.
With a new justice headed for the court, some conservatives and libertarians see Massachusettsas a case they would like to see reversed. But that would undermine the AEP case, which oil companies cite as part of their defense in the multiple cities' climate suits, legal experts have said (Climatewire, July 19).
Keenan in his decision said that when dealing with harms related to greenhouse gas emissions, AEP displaces, or legally knocks out, the ability to sue for nuisances under federal law. New York City in its case said that the production and sale of fossil fuels creates a public nuisance. Therefore, it contended, the case wasn't displaced by the AEP decision dealing with emissions. Keenan, however, rejected that argument.
As the oil companies noted, Keenan said, New York City's "alleged injuries arise ... only because third-party users of fossil fuels — located in all 50 states and around the world — emit greenhouse gases."
"Thus, because the Clean Air Act has spoken 'directly to the question' of domestic greenhouse gas emissions, the City's claims are displaced," Keenan said, citing in part a previous court case.Impact on pending cases
Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity, said the dismissal doesn't mean the other city lawsuits against oil companies are doomed.
"The decision in this case does not impact climate liability lawsuits that have been filed in numerous cities around the country," Wiles said. "The vast majority of cases have been filed in state court, which we believe is the most appropriate venue for the cases."
In California, Imperial Beach, San Mateo, Marin County, Richmond, Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz County have sued more than two dozen fossil fuel companies and trade associations. Federal Judge Vince Chhabria — located in the same courthouse as Alsup — earlier this year ruled that those cases belonged in state court, where they started. The oil interests appealed that decision. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will decide where the cases land.
Alsup in February ruled that the San Francisco and Oakland cases belonged in federal court. If those cities appeal Alsup's decision keeping the cases in federal court, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could look at the conflicting decisions of Alsup and Chhabria on where the cases belong, Michael Burger, executive director of Columbia Law School's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, has said.
"The central question of these lawsuits is not how to stop global warming, but whether oil and gas producers should be forced to pay even a cent for the massive damage caused by its products," Wiles said. "These cases are about who pays for sea walls in coastal communities like New York City: taxpayers or polluters? Traditional public nuisance claims such as these are best suited for state courts, where they have been resolved for over a century."
National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons praised the decision in the New York City case. NAM has supported oil companies in the cases.
"From the moment this baseless lawsuit was filed, manufacturers have argued that the courtroom was not the proper venue to address this global challenge," Timmons said in a statement. "Judge Keenan made that clear in his decision today. Now that San Francisco, Oakland and New York City have had their cases dismissed, the other municipalities should withdraw their complaints to save taxpayer resources and focus on meaningful solutions."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/07/20/stories/1060089837
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Baltimore Joins Cities Filing Climate Change Lawsuits Against Fossil Fuel Companies
Jul 20, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green
Baltimore on Friday became the latest city to file a lawsuit against oil and gas giants seeking to hold the companies financially responsible for contributing to global climate change.
The city filed a suit challenging BP, Exxon, Shell Oil and 23 other oil and gas giants that do business in the city, accusing the companies of knowingly emitting harmful carbon dioxide pollution.
The lawsuit, which seeks damages and legal penalties from the companies, cites eight alleged offenses including failure to warn the public and public nuisance.
"The city seeks to ensure that the parties who have profited from externalizing the responsibility for sea level rise, extreme precipitation events, heatwaves, other results of the changing hydrologic regime caused by increasing temperatures, and associated consequences of those physical and environmental changes, bear the costs of those impacts on the city," the lawsuit reads.
Friday's suit is the latest in a string of similar cases –– many of which have been promptly thrown out by courts –– that cities across the U.S. have filed challenging fossil fuel companies for knowingly contributing and profiting off of a product that directly contributes to climate change.
The suit follows on the heels of a case dismissed by a federal judge in New York on Thursday evening.
U.S. District Judge John Keenan tossed out the suit against Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips, ruling that Congress and the executive branch, not courts, must tackle the issue of climate change.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/398064-baltimore-latest-city-to-file-lawsuit-against-fossil-fuel-company
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Are Oil and Gas Really More Vulnerable to Cyberattacks?
Jul 20, 2018 | RealClearEnergy
By Jude Clemente
The Trump administration has used national security as justification for its plans to make electric grid operators purchase power from up to 80 financially struggling coal and nuclear plants. Part of the rationale being used by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is that, as we turn to more natural gas, the expanding pipeline network needed is “a major point of vulnerability” in protecting our national security. Yet, the administration’s allegations that gas pipelines are increasingly susceptible to cyberattack are not based on evidence and have not been substantiated.
Today, the U.S. has over 300,000 miles of gas transmission lines that continually bring fuel to power plants, industrial centers, and help heat our homes. To protect this critical energy infrastructure, the oil and gas industry has been holding cybersecurity conferences since 2006 for a very simple reason: Cybersecurity is essential to daily business operations, an invaluably important good reputation, and thus growing “the bottom line.”
In fact, gas pipeline operators govern cybersecurity as “enterprise risk,” the highest designation, with oversight from Boards of Directors and Senior Executives. These companies align their cybersecurity with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and other information security and industrial control systems (ICS) security standards. Importantly, cybersecurity programs are based on the market-leading solutions and shared practices that are always evolving.
Over 50 oil and natural gas companies utilize the Oil and Natural Gas Information Sharing and Analysis Center, including our largest gas pipeline operators. These companies share cyber-threat indicators and intelligence amongst themselves and with the federal government. This is how DOE, national security and law enforcement agencies, and the private sector work in unison to ensure that our pipelines remain safe.
Gas pipeline companies manage cybersecurity to protect the use of automated controls, or ICS, for pipelines. These systems are not just unique to pipelines but are deployed widely across the entire energy industry, including at coal and nuclear plants. Overall, the gas supply system is highly resilient because the production, gathering, processing, transmission, distribution, and storage is flexible and elastic, reinforced by multiple fail-safes, redundancies, and back-ups. Physically, because gas pipelines are predominantly underground, the system is very protected. It is no wonder then that Homeland Security has not confirmed or validated any cyber intrusion that has penetrated a pipeline ICS and led to a physical impact.
As in all other industries, cyberattacks are a constant threat for oil and gas companies. They are indeed targeted by hackers working for foreign governments or terror groups or organized crime. But the reality is that the U.S. oil and gas industry is not overly vulnerable to such attacks, any more so than a coal or nuclear plant. If anything, a nuclear power plant is a more likely target for sabotage because the potential impact would be catastrophic. Moreover, the nuclear supply chain is hardly risk free: “Trump Administration Investigating Uranium Imports Under National Security Concerns.” In contrast, the U.S. produces more natural gas than it uses, another illustration of how the administration's rationale misses the mark.
Jude Clemente is the Editor at RealClear Energy.
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2018/07/20/are_oil_and_gas_really_more_vulnerable_to_cyberattacks.html
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FERC Orders Utilities to Report Hacking Incidents
Jul 20, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is pushing utilities to divulge more cybersecurity incidents, citing concerns that current reporting requirements don't capture the risks posed by hackers.
FERC commissioners ordered grid overseers at the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) to lower the bar for a "reportable cyber incident," while adding a requirement for utilities to share news of any intrusions with the Department of Homeland Security.
"Cyber threats to the bulk power system are ever changing, and they are a matter that commands constant vigilance," FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre said in a statement accompanying the final rule yesterday. "Industry must be alert to developing and emerging threats, and a modified standard will improve awareness of existing and future cyber security threats."
FERC pointed out that U.S. grid operators failed to report a single cyber event in either 2015 or 2016. The independent agency first moved to toughen up hacking reporting requirements last December, saying "the current reporting threshold may understate the true scope of cyber-related threats facing the Bulk-Power System" (E&E News PM, Dec. 21, 2017).
The electric power industry has bristled at the prospect of opening up about cyberthreats. The Edison Electric Institute, which represents major investor-owned utilities, told FERC earlier this year that large power companies can face millions of potentially malicious network events each day. The vast majority of automated scans and baited "phishing" email attacks bounce off harmlessly but could still blur the line for what constitutes a reportable event, EEI warned.
FERC countered in its rule yesterday that its proposal "was not intended to be prescriptive or overly broad," calling on NERC to tailor the scope of new reporting requirements to produce better information "without imposing an undue burden on responsible entities."
Under current rules, large utilities only need to report a cyber incident that "has compromised or disrupted" one or more "reliability tasks," a category that includes everything from delivering electricity to operating markets and forecasting transmission needs. Utilities are also expected to report hacking events to the Department of Energy's new cyber-focused Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response, though only if the incident actually cut out power or at least carried the "potential" to affect grid reliability.
NERC will have until early 2019 to draft new reporting rules that account for "attempts" to break through grid security perimeters or associated control systems — not just successful attacks. Utilities will have to report such cases through a NERC-run portal, the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC), as well as through DHS's Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT). Regulators tasked NERC with preparing an anonymized public summary of cyber incidents each year.
Patrick Miller, managing partner at Archer Energy Solutions, said yesterday's ruling from FERC indicated that "they don't have confidence in the E-ISAC."
"It's like, 'Clearly, you need some help,'" he said.
Miller said the decision to funnel reports through both the E-ISAC and the government's ICS-CERT could foster "some much-needed competition" between the two groups, resulting in faster, better security information for grid operators.
"The competition between the two organizations will provide higher value from both," he said.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/07/20/stories/1060089829
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Meat Inspectors Detail Harms of Chemical Exposure
Jul 20, 2018 | Politico
By Liz Crampton
MEAT INSPECTORS DETAIL HARMS OF CHEMICAL EXPOSURE: Two former USDA food safety inspectors from Utah spoke publicly for the first time about the health problems they suffered while working at a poultry plant owned by a company called Norbest. In an investigation by The Intercept, Jessica Robertson and Tina McClellan said they believe exposure to chemicals, including peracetic acid — an antimicrobial wash used to eliminate pathogens — caused them and other inspectors headaches, nausea, respiratory problems, bloody noses and in some cases, lung damage.
Both Robertson and McClellan, who had worked for USDA for many years, began to file complaints known as Form 4791s about the hazardous conditions at the slaughter facility. While some changes were implemented, including providing supervisors with a “detection meter” to assess air quality, they didn’t resolve the problems. Then, last November, the department notified Robertson that she would be reassigned to another plant about 500 miles from her home. She ultimately resigned. McClellan was similarly reassigned and decided to leave.
Advocating for those who can't speak out: The two whistleblowers said they felt compelled to speak out for their own sake, but also to defend others. They said many workers at the plant are undocumented immigrants, whose legal status makes them vulnerable.
A widespread problem? Spraying poultry with antimicrobials has been widely adopted in U.S. slaughter plants as an inexpensive way to control bacteria. The practice is banned by the European Union, which has caused a rift in trade relations.
Over the last five years, complaints about chemical exposure at other plants have emerged, according to The Intercept’s report. But neither USDA nor FDA focus on workers’ health or safety when reviewing chemicals used in meat and poultry facilities, and OSHA hasn’t set a permissible exposure limit for peracetic acid.
HAPPY FRIDAY, JULY 20! Welcome to Morning Ag, where your host just learned about the concept of “ghost kitchens” — restaurants that don’t serve walk-up customers but rather are geared toward delivery-only services that cater to Uber Eats and other such apps. The business model is apparently spreading across the U.S., U.K. and now Canada. Send news and tips to lcrampton@politico.com or @liz_crampton. Follow the whole team: @Morning_Ag.
Catch all the highlights from Tuesday's Pro Summit. Video clips, event content and more are now available from a full day of incisive policy conversations. View Summit Highlights.
View the latest POLITICO/AARP poll to better understand Arizona voters over 50, a voting bloc poised to shape the midterm election outcome. Get up to speed on priority issues for Hispanic voters age 50+, who will help determine whether Arizona turns blue or stays red.
What role will Hispanic voters over 50 play in Arizona this fall? Read POLITICO Magazine's new series "The Deciders" which focuses on this powerful voting bloc that could be the determining factor in turning Arizona blue.
NAVARRO DISCOUNTS TRADE WAR'S NEGATIVE IMPACT: White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on Thursday downplayed the economic impact of the tit-for-tat tariff war between the U.S. and China as a mere “rounding error” compared with either country's economic output.
“My point is that it’s much less disruptive than these headlines would suggest, and it’s much more constructive as we see the adjustments made in terms of where investment is going to go and where we’re going to build,” he said during an interview on CNBC.
Playing chess: Navarro said the administration is looking at the broader “chess board” in terms of its trade strategy. There's another move already in the works — the administration is preparing to impose tariffs on another $200 billion worth of Chinese imports — and Wilbur Ross' Commerce Department is studying whether imported automobiles and parts threaten U.S. national security and warrant trade restrictions under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 — the same law that was used to impose duties on most nations' steel and aluminum exports to the U.S., which led allies like Canada, Mexico and the European Union to hit back, with plenty of that early pain being spread across agriculture.
As President Donald Trump tries to realign America's trade relationships and force China's hand in areas like protection of intellectual property, many farmers are trying to navigate uncertain conditions and prepare for what could be a long haul — and some, like in the pork industry, have been getting hit by retaliatory tariffs since the spring, when Trump's trade moves first began to prompt retaliation.
Not having it: Sen. Joni Ernst did not let Navarro's comments go without a response: “Mr. Navarro, America’s farmers are caught in the crosshairs of this game of ‘chess,'" the Iowa Republican said in a statement. "Offhand comments like the ones that Mr. Navarro made ... disregard the people whose livelihoods depend on global trade. In Iowa alone, more than 456,000 jobs are supported by trade, and these new tariffs are threatening $977 million in state exports. That is no ‘rounding error.’"
The auto tariffs retaliation scenario: On Thursday, at a Commerce Department hearing on the administration's auto tariff investigation, EU Ambassador to the U.S. David O’Sullivan said the retaliation that potential new U.S. duties on imported autos would provoke would probably hit far more American goods than have been subject to retaliation over the steel and aluminum duties.
“Import restrictions resulting from the present investigation could result in countermeasures on a significantly higher volume of U.S. exports, which we estimate at $294 billion, around a fifth of total U.S. exports in 2017,” O’Sullivan said.
In that kind of a retaliatory scenario, ag taking more body blows is essentially a foregone conclusion. Our Pro Trade colleagues have more here on Navarro's comments, and more here on Commerce's trade hearing.
** A message from the Alliance for Fair Sugar Policy: American small businesses and manufacturing workers deserve a fair sugar policy that works for everyone in the supply chain – from farm to retail shelf. Thank you to those in Congress who have supported the widespread, bipartisan effort to modernize the U.S. sugar program. Learn about our efforts at FairSugarPolicy.org. **
INTERIOR PROPOSES ENDANGERED SPECIES UPDATE: The Interior Department announced it wants to revamp the Endangered Species Act to clarify the decades-old law — and environmental and farming groups broke into opposing camps over the proposed changes.
One proposal would adjust how the Interior and Commerce departments decide to add or remove plants and animals from lists of federally protected species and designate critical habitat.
Another would rescind a blanket Fish and Wildlife Service rule that automatically provided endangered species protections to wildlife listed only as threatened.
A third would simplify the consultation process other agencies are required to go through with FWS or NOAA Fisheries to ensure their actions would not jeopardize protected species. A 60-day public comment period will start once the proposed rule changes are published in the Federal Register.
Read more from Pro’s Ben Lefebvre here.
Environmental groups sound the alarm: As soon as the potential revamp was announced, environmental groups fired back, arguing the changes would make it easier for industry, including companies in the oil and gas sector, to operate in protected areas.
“These proposals would slam a wrecking ball into the most crucial protections for our most endangered wildlife,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.
Ranchers optimistic: Ranchers have long complained that stringent enforcement of the Endangered Species Act has caused unnecessary headaches when grazing cattle on public lands. The Public Lands Council and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said in a joint statement that they are “pleased to see the administration taking such a serious and measured approach to modernizing the regulatory side” of the law, and that the proposed rules “could consequently provide tremendous relief to ranchers, once finalized.”
MEAT, DAIRY RANK AS WORLD’S TOP POLLUTERS: The world’s biggest meat and dairy producers could generate more greenhouse gas emissions than oil giants Exxon, Shell and BP, according to a blockbuster report from nonprofit GRAIN and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. If those five companies — JBS, Fonterra, Dairy Farmers of America, Tyson Foods and Cargill — continue to grow at projected rates, they’ll account for 81 percent of global emissions by 2050.
The report came to its conclusion by factoring in contributions from all parts of the supply chain: emissions from processing plants, transportation, electricity generation, production of feed, and from the livestock themselves.
Missing info: “Unlike their counterparts in the energy sector, the big meat and dairy companies have thus far escaped public scrutiny of their contribution to climate change,” the report states. That’s partly because there’s a dearth of information about how much in carbon emissions the companies are responsible for.
Researchers found public data from 35 of the world’s main beef, pork, poultry and dairy companies to be lacking in many ways: Most either underreport emissions or don’t report them at all, and only four provide thorough and credible estimates, the report said.
Emissions targets: Production and consumption of meat should be reduced in order “to avert climate catastrophe,” the report argues. Fourteen of the 35 companies profiled have declared reduction targets, but only six have targets that include supply chain emissions, which make up nearly the entirety of total emissions.
CORRECTION: The July 19 edition of Morning Agriculture misreported the name of the environmental advocacy group that intends to actively oppose the nomination of Scott Hutchins to be USDA undersecretary for research, education and economics. Food & Water Watch will oppose Hutchins' nomination.
ROW CROPS:
— Officials investigating salmonella outbreak: The CDC said Thursday that 90 people in 26 states have been infected with Salmonella Reading after consuming turkey in an outbreak that may be widespread. Ill people reportedconsuming a range of turkey products and brands purchased from multiple locations, the CDC said. The first case was identified in November and the most recent one was identified on June 29 of this year. At total of 40 people have been hospitalized and no deaths have been reported.
— FDA proposes restructuring: The FDA is planning to consolidate some operations and create interdisciplinary food and drug policy offices, Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Thursday in an email to staff. The plan creates two new entities — the Office of Clinical Policy and Programs and the Office of Food Policy and Response — that would take over some duties now handled by a pair of offices dealing with medical products and tobacco and food and veterinary medicine. Read more from Pro’s Sarah Owermohle.
— Brady: Trump seeking NAFTA deal with Mexico first: House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said today that the Trump administration is pursuing a NAFTA deal with only Mexico right now. Brady told reporters that it’s up to Canada to decide if it’ll come to the table to form trilateral discussions. More from Pro Trade’s Adam Behsudi here.
— Schumer stalling on Kavanaugh meeting: Senate Democrats are snubbing Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, another salvo in the deepening cold war between President Donald Trump and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, reports POLITICO’s Lorraine Woellert. The politically strategic slight has frustrated the White House, which has been reaching out to schedule meetings but has found itself rebuffed at every turn.
— Dicamba drift damage returns for another season: Drift from the pesticide dicamba has damaged 1.1 million acres of agriculture crops, trees and other plants so far this year, a University of Missouri report estimates. This comes as the EPA and some states have introduced restrictions on the widely used pesticide after it damaged an estimated 3.6 million acres of soybean crops last year.
— NFU lays out farm bill gaps: The National Farmers Union breaks down major differences between the House and Senate farm bill, and compares the two measures to its “ideal farm bill.” That's here.
— The history of hospital food: Jello-O, yogurt and watery broth: Why can hospital food be so unappetizing? Eater dives into the big business of those meals here.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-agriculture/2018/07/20/navarro-discounts-trade-wars-negative-impact-285969
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Bottled Water Company Illegally Dumped Arsenic — Prosecutors
Jul 20, 2018 | AP (In E&E Greenwire)
By Brian Melley
The company behind Crystal Geyser bottled water is accused of illegally disposing water tainted with arsenic, according to an indictment by federal prosecutors in California.
CG Roxane LLC and two other companies did not disclose toxic material they shipped to a treatment facility that was not permitted to treat toxic waste, according to the suit.
The companies are not accused of selling water with arsenic.
"Our nation's environmental laws are specifically designed to ensure that hazardous wastes are properly handled from beginning to end," U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said. "The alleged behavior of the three companies charged in this indictment undermines that important objective and jeopardizes the safety of our community."
CG Roxane did not comment.
Naturally occuring arsenic was filtered from pumped well water and discharged in a holding pond. The company stopped the practice after the state of California discovered the toxins and paid to have the pond pumped and disposed of, prosecutors said.
The company did not declare that the water contained arsenic and shipped it to a site not approved for handling hazardous waste, according to the indictment.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/07/20/stories/1060089851
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FMCSA Ends Plan to Prioritize Carriers for Added Inspections
Jul 20, 2018 | Transportation Today
By Melina Druga
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) recently ended the plan to enhance its Safety Management System.
Annually, there are approximately 100,000 fatal and injury crashes involving large trucks and buses in the United States, according to a Consensus Study Report. FMSCA is tasked with reducing crashes, injuries, fatalities involving large trucks and buses, using information collected during roadside inspections that assess motor carriers’ compliance with federal safety regulations.
The recent FMCSA decision ends the administration’s plan to segment the Hazardous Materials Compliance Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (HM BASIC) into cargo tank and noncargo tank carriers and releasing motor carrier percentile rankings to the public. Other proposed changes now discarded included changing thresholds to better reflect correlation to crash risk, reclassifying violations for operating while Out of Service, and increasing the maximum vehicle miles traveled to more accurately reflect the operations of high-utilization carriers.
The National Academy of Sciences is required under the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act to report on any proposed changes. The academy’s report did not find that the changes would be a better predictor of carrier safety.
“Because tank carriers usually have lower HM BASIC scores than general freight carriers, this change, if it had been implemented, would have severely and negatively impacted tank carriers’ scores and subjected them to more frequent inspections and compliance reviews,” National Tank Truck Carriers said in a statement. “We are pleased that FMCSA chose to follow safety science and not to split the HM BASIC into cargo-tank and general freight categories.”
https://transportationtodaynews.com/news/10098-fmcsa-ends-plan-prioritize-carriers-added-inspections/
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Ewire: Curbelo Takes Optimistic View of House Carbon Tax Vote
Jul 20, 2018 | Inside EPA
The moderate Republican who next week is poised to unveil a major carbon tax bill, the first such legislation from a sitting GOP lawmaker in about a decade, is taking an optimistic view of a July 19 vote in the House in which the vast majority of his party agreed in a non-binding resolution that carbon taxes are “detrimental” to the economy.
Citing the fact that the resolution previously passed with unanimous GOP backing, Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) told Axios that, “We went from zero to seven. That's how you measure progress in this institution. There were many more who thought about it long and hard.”
Curbelo's tally covers the six Republicans, including himself, who voted against the non-binding resolution by House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), as well as one GOP lawmaker who voted “present.”
He added: “Had they had a time to review my proposal -- timing didn’t work out -- you would have gotten more no votes. With a resolution that had consistently received unanimous support to the result today, it is not insignificant.”
Some carbon tax backers question whether the vote was really bad timing, or whether it was deliberately held just days before Curbelo's July 23 rollout of his bill imposing a $24-per-ton tax on carbon emissions while replacing the federal gas tax.
A pair of recent academic and think tank analyses of Curbelo's bill find that it would both significantly cut greenhouse gases -- putting the country on the path toward hitting the Obama administration's 2025 Paris GHG target -- while it would have only a “modest” effect on the economy and would hold low-income households harmless.
Those economic findings -- including that the measure might reduce the overall economy by between 0.1 and 0.2 percent of gross domestic product -- could serve as a rebuttal to the claims in the Scalise resolution.
However, several conservative and anti-tax groups are undeterred, with Axios also reporting that several such groups plan to hold a competing July 23 event underscoring their opposition to a carbon tax.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-curbelo-takes-optimistic-view-house-carbon-tax-vote
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Our Environment is at Stake in Key Nomination Fight
Jul 20, 2018 | The Hill - Opinion
By Raul Garcia
As the largest environmental law organization in America, we want to offer our sincere congratulations on Marie Newmeyr’s nomination to serve as the chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), but we’d ask her to remember who she is supposed to protect – the American people and the environment they depend on, not big corporations.
From an organization of attorneys to a nominee who’s also an attorney, we hope that Ms. Newmeyr’s nomination will serve as an opportunity for an open, honest and adult discussion of how we can safeguard bedrock environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and protect clean air, clean water and public lands for our families. Make no mistake: we are living in a time when the environment needs someone to stick up for it. Time and time again, Republican lawmakers and now, this administration, have tried to gut NEPA policies with an eye toward silencing public input on important projects affecting the life of communities throughout the country.
While the president has chosen to ignore the facts, science, and respect for our most vulnerable communities, we hope that Ms. Newmeyr will curb those actions and advise him about his responsibility to protect all peoples, appreciate science in the process of a well-informed decision and, most importantly, lead a government that answers to its people and not to corporate interests.
Her nomination, therefore, comes at a crossroads for community and environmental protection in America. As head of CEQ, she would play a crucial role in ensuring that all Americans maintain the legal right, through NEPA, to advocate to develop, improve or stop federal project proposals that will have lasting effects on local public health and environmental safety. Ms. Neumayr could choose to stand up for everyday Americans and give them a voice in federal decisions, or choose to side with the wealthy corporate polluters who see this administration as a vehicle to stifle dissent against their anti-environmental agendas that put communities at risk. The effects of her choice will be felt for decades to come.
If, for example, federal projects like roads, incinerators or oil pipelines could be rushed through without hearing from local communities first or sufficiently studying their impacts, the effects on public health could be devastating. Toddlers could drink dirty water. Families could live next to unsafe pipelines at risk of leaking or exploding at any moment. Children in grade school could inhale dangerous, dirty air as they walk to class. Small businesses could be displaced, hampering local economies. Without NEPA, these long-lasting and harmful health effects might never receive the consideration they deserve. It’s the job of CEQ – and especially the head of CEQ – to ensure that NEPA protections remain in force and local communities are able to provide input.
We welcome the opportunity to talk with Ms. Newmeyr about pressing environmental issues such as these. Her potential new role as chair of CEQ means that she will be the one to address environmental concerns like intrusive, dangerous gas pipelines running through our communities and excessively polluting power plants that spew toxics into communities of color and low income. We want to serve as her partner as we all work together to protect the land we live on, the air we breathe and the water we drink. If those are her priorities, we’re willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and work with her to see them accomplished.
We believe that respect for democracy and the rule of law should supersede our suspicions about the leanings of a nominee. We are willing to have a serious conversation about important issues.
We will not, however, turn a blind eye to attempts to silence people and erode Americans’ rights to protect the health and safety of their communities. We stand with people and against polluting corporate interests and we sincerely hope that Ms. Newmeyr will stand with us.
Raul Garcia Senior Legislative Counsel for Earthjustice.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/397967-our-environment-is-at-stake-in-key-nomination-fight
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Appellate Court Again Lets Kids’ Climate Suit Continue
Jul 20, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals today for the second time rejected the Trump administration’s request to end a sweeping climate change lawsuit brought by children and young adults.
Nothing about the case has changed since March, when the 9th Circuit first rejected the government’s request to end the lawsuit, which is playing out in federal court in Oregon.
“It remains the case that the issues that the government raises in its petition are better addressed through the ordinary course of litigation,” wrote Judges Sidney Thomas, Marsha Berzon and Michelle Friedland, all appointees Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
The government can still challenge "any specific discovery order that it believes would be unduly burdensome or would threaten the separation of powers," the judges wrote. But “preemptively seeking a broad protective order barring all discovery does not exhaust the government’s avenues of relief.”
The Trump administration earlier this week separately appealed the 9th Circuit’s March ruling to the Supreme Court in a final attempt to end the lawsuit immediately. That petition is pending and unlikely to be resolved for months.
WHAT’S NEXT: The district court in Oregon has set a bench trial to begin on Oct. 29, although that date may get pushed back.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Court Upholds Obama-Era ‘Exceptional Events’ Rule
Jul 20, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
The D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals today rejected a challenge by environmental groups to a 2016 EPA rule that defined when naturally occurring emissions of ozone, particulate matter and other pollutants will not be counted against an area's air quality measurements.
The green groups said EPA's “exceptional events” rule could allow the agency to ignore some pollution from power plants and other sources by conflating human-caused pollution with natural emissions. It was an argument the court found unpersuasive.
"But such an outcome wouldn’t be possible under the statutory and regulatory safeguards in place,” wrote Judges Thomas Griffith, a George W. Bush appointee; Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee; and Harry T. Edwards, a Carter appointee.
"Although we recognize the possibility raised, but not demonstrated, by the environmental groups that extreme and unforeseen applications of the rule might have problematic results, the 2016 Rule still passes muster" under the Chevron doctrine granting deference to agency decisions about ambiguous statutes, the judges wrote.
If EPA applies the rule in a way environmentalists feel is unlawful, they can challenge that specific instance at that time, the court added.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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