Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 8/20/2018
-
Pipeline Safety in the Great Lakes: Incident Prevention and Response Efforts at the Straits of Mackinac
Aug 20, 2018 | Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee
Location: Dennos Museum Center, Traverse City, Mich. / 10:00 AM -
Full Committee Hearing: Energy Efficiency of Blockchain and Similar Technologies
Aug 21, 2018 | Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
Location: 366 Dirksen / 10:00 AM -
Hearing on Cyber Threats to Infrastructure
Aug 21, 2018 | Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism
Location: 226 Dirksen / 2:30 PM -
Hearing on Homeland Security and FEMA Nominees
Aug 20, 2018 | Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
Location: 342 Dirksen / 10:00 AM -
Hearing on Science, NASA Nominees
Aug 23, 2018 | Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee
Location: 253 Russell / 10:15 AM -
(ACC Mentioned) CEOs Try Again to Temper Trump Tariffs as U.S.-China Talks Open
Aug 20, 2018 | Bloomberg
By Mark Niquette
As China prepares to send officials to the U.S. to restart talks on ending an escalating trade war, American companies and trade groups are returning to a Washington hearing room, most to argue against more tariffs from Donald Trump. -
(ACC Mentioned) Economists Say Trump's Tariffs Are Unfavorable for U.S. Growth
Aug 20, 2018 | Bloomberg
By Jeff Kearns
Business economists are sounding some sour notes about Trump administration policies, from trade to immigration to the budget, while expecting the short-term boost to growth from Republican tax cuts to lessen over time. -
(ACC Mentioned) Big Money and Chinese Interference in US Elections
Aug 20, 2018 | Liberty Nation
By Joe Schaeffer
Australian senator Sam Dastyari resigned in disgrace in December 2017 due to a scandal involving his accepting money from Chinese-government-linked companies and then supporting pro-Chinese positions in office. -
As Trump Dismantles Clean Air Rules, an Industry Lawyer Delivers for Ex-Clients
Aug 19, 2018 | New York Times
By Eric Lipton
As a corporate lawyer, William L. Wehrum worked for the better part of a decade to weaken air pollution rules by fighting the Environmental Protection Agency in court on behalf of chemical manufacturers, refineries, oil drillers and coal-burning power plants. -
Industry Backs EPA's Plan for Narrow Asbestos Analysis, Sparking Clash
Aug 20, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
The power industry is supporting EPA's narrow approach for assessing the health risks of exposure to asbestos, especially its decision to preclude legacy uses, setting up a clash with critics who say the agency should broadly assess all risks... -
EPA Drops Plan to Weigh First Responders' Asbestos Risk, Citing Legacy Use
Aug 20, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA has dropped an early plan to consider risks of asbestos exposures to firefighters and other first responders due to its policy of excluding legacy uses from consideration for possible regulation under the revised toxics law, a move that is drawing protest... -
EDF Submits Extensive Comments Critical of EPA OPPT’s TSCA Systematic Review Document (UPDATED)
Aug 17, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Ryan O'Connell and Jennifer McPartland
Last night, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) submitted critical comments on EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics’ (OPPT) “systematic review” document that OPPT is using to evaluate chemicals’ risks under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
Tri-State Calls EPA to Withdraw Proposal that Limits Agency’s Use of Science in Decision-Making Process
Aug 17, 2018 | NBC 4 New York
By Jennifer Vazquez
New York, New Jersey and Connecticut join over a dozen other states and Washington, D.C. in calling on the federal Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw a proposal to limit the use of scientific evidence and information when making decisions. -
(ACC Mentioned) ‘Chilling Effect’ of Three Lost Words Center of EPA Chemicals Shift
Aug 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Three missing words...Three words that the Environmental Protection Agency omitted from a final chemical oversight rule could represent the agency’s policy choice or could be a drafting error. -
(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Agency Struggling with Organohalogen Flame Retardants in Consumer Products
Aug 17, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Cheryl Hogue
From laptop computers to babies’ high chairs, hundreds of everyday household goods contain chemicals intentionally added to prevent or slow the items from igniting. -
Monsanto Wins Round In Pipe Worker’s Cancer Claims
Aug 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
Monsanto won dismissal of common law tort claims alleging that exposure to its products containing PCBs caused a pipeline worker’s cancer. -
The Other Monsanto Chemical That Bayer Investors Should Watch (Corrected)
Aug 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Lydia Mulvany
Some Bayer AG investors were surprised to learn about the thousands of farmers lining up before U.S. courts to argue that Roundup—the blockbuster weedkiller the German company recently acquired when it bought Monsanto Co.—had given them cancer. -
Before You Flush Your Contact Lenses, You Might Want to Know This
Aug 19, 2018 | New York Times
By Veronique Greenwood
If you throw out your contact lenses every day or so, you’re not alone — more than 45 million people in the United States wear contacts, and many of them use disposable versions of the little plastic hemispheres. -
Insight: US-China Trade War Raises Concern LNG Exports May Feel the Chill
Aug 20, 2018 | Platts
By Eric Yep
The ongoing US-China trade war has raised concerns about a key driver of LNG shipping demand – the trade flow between the US and China – but it is also expected to further the commoditization of LNG as it creates more trading opportunities and the need for shipping optionality. -
Treasury Inks Deal with Panama over Energy Exports
Aug 17, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Benjamin Hulac
The Treasury Department announced today it reached an energy export agreement with Panama, one of several countries in the Western Hemisphere where the department is helping build facilities for the oil and gas industry. -
Trump EPA Poised to Give States Authority over CO2
Aug 20, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Zack Colman and Niina Heikkinen
EPA is set to replace its signature climate rule with a proposal that gives states broad authority in determining how to cut carbon emissions from power plants. -
Dominion Cleared to Resume More Work on Atlantic Coast Pipeline
Aug 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Adams-Heard
Dominion Energy can resume more work on its Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline after regulators approved the company’s interim plans to proceed with the project while federal agencies respond to a court decision vacating key permits. -
Keystone XL Caps a Decade of Waiting with Renewed Uncertainty
Aug 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Adams-Heard
It’s two steps forward, one step back for TransCanada Corp’s contentious Keystone XL oil pipeline, as a federal court ruling threatens to delay an already decade-old proposal. -
Minn. Tribes, Greens Open Appeals Process for Enbridge Line 3
Aug 20, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
Environmental groups and Native American tribes have asked a Minnesota court to overturn a regulatory decision on Enbridge Inc.'s Line 3, the first in what is likely to be an extended series of appeals about the cross-border oil pipeline. -
Washington Governor Says Zinke Would 'Sell His Grandchildren for the Oil Industry'
Aug 17, 2018 | The Hil - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) slammed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday, saying he is in the pocket of the oil and gas industry and would “sell his grandchildren for the oil industry.” -
Clean Energy on Arizona Ballot if Measure Survives Lawsuit
Aug 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brenna Goth
An Arizona measure that would require utilities to produce more electricity from renewable resources will make the November ballot—if it can survive a lawsuit challenging its signatures. -
(ACC Mentioned) Trump's EPA Is Trying to Block a Rule That Protects Communities from Toxic Waste but the Courts Are Fighting Back
Aug 18, 2018 | Newsweek
By Nicole Goodkind
A Federal judge Friday called the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to delay implementation of an Obama-era rule meant to mitigate the risks of toxic waste disasters “arbitrary and capricious” and ordered the agency to immediately enact the policy change. -
(ACC Mentioned) Court Throws out Trump Administration Delay of Chemical Disaster Rules
Aug 17, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Matt Dempsey and Kevin Diaz
In a major setback to the Trump administration's efforts to roll back Obama-era environmental policies, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the Environmental Protection Agency can no longer delay a new set of regulations designed to prevent chemical disasters. -
(ACC Mentioned) Appeals Court Strikes Down Trump Admin’s Delay of Chemical Safety Rule
Aug 17, 2018 | Houston Public Media
By Travis Bubenik
A federal appeals court said an Obama-era chemical safety rule that has been delayed by the Trump Administration for more than a year must go into effect. -
EPA’s 20-Month Delay of Chemical Plant Rule Illegal, Judges Say (Corrected) (1)
Aug 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
The Trump administration’s 20-month delay of an Obama-era chemical facility safety rule violated the Clean Air Act, a federal appellate court ruled Aug. 17, in a significant rebuke to the EPA’s deregulatory power. -
'Documented' Cyberattacks Shape Updates to Nuclear Guidance
Aug 20, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission drew on "documented cybersecurity attacks" and other real-world lessons to update 8-year-old guidance on complying with its cybersecurity rules, according to a draft document published last week. -
(ACC Mentioned) America’s Public Works Projects Need Cutting-Edge Construction Materials, Say Rounds, Comstock
Aug 20, 2018 | Ripon Advance
A newly introduced bipartisan, bicameral bill from U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and U.S. Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA) aims to spur the development of new and advanced construction materials to improve America’s transportation and water infrastructure systems. -
EPA Backs Texas Haze Plan in Draft Rule
Aug 17, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
The Trump administration is proposing to stick with an emissions trading program to cut haze-forming pollution from coal-fired power plants in Texas, under a draft rule signed today by EPA Region 6 Administrator Anne Idsal in accordance with a previously set deadline. -
EPA Proposes Easing Implementation of Clay Products Air Rule
Aug 17, 2018 | Inside EPA
EPA is proposing to ease implementation of its national emissions standards for hazardous air pollutants (NESHAP) air toxics rule for the clay products manufacturing sector, floating several technical changes including limited use of emissions averaging and provisions... -
7 Democrats Who Might Use Climate to Run for President
Aug 20, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Kelsey Brugger
Some Democrats considering a run for the White House in 2020 are seeing historic wildfires in their home state of California. Another has tried to pass a carbon tax, and still another has poured a personal fortune into environmental issues. -
Trump Science Pick Faces Questions About Climate, Spending
Aug 20, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Christa Marshall
The Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee this week will hear from Kelvin Droegemeier, President Trump's choice to lead the White House science office. -
The Trump Administration Keeps Losing Environmental Court Cases
Aug 18, 2018 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin
It turns out that unraveling Barack Obama’s environmental agenda is harder than it looks. -
Climate Has a Role in Wildfires? No. Wait, Yes.
Aug 17, 2018 | New York Times
By Henry Fountain
With his comments this week on California’s recent spate of vicious wildfires, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke waded into a longstanding debate over how forests are managed. -
University of Michigan Sets Ambitious Goal to Pull Carbon From Air
Aug 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Bobby Magill
Imagine a company selling flexible concrete made from carbon dioxide sucked directly from the air that could help highways withstand earthquakes and help solve climate change.
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
-
Aug 20, 2018 | Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee
U.S. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) will convene a field hearing titled, “Pipeline Safety in the Great Lakes: Incident Prevention and Response Efforts at the Straits of Mackinac,” on Monday, August 20th, at 10:00 a.m. in Traverse City, Michigan. The hearing will focus on federal oil spill prevention efforts, preparedness and response capability in the event of an oil pipeline break in the Straits of Mackinac. Line 5, the 65-year-old pipeline crossing the Straits of Mackinac, has been the subject of multiple safety concerns, including damage from anchor strikes.
Peters is a member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and serves as Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety and Security. The Commerce Committee has jurisdiction over the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the federal agency tasked with overseeing pipeline safety throughout our nation’s extensive pipeline system, including the Great Lakes. It also has jurisdiction over the U.S. Coast Guard, which plays a leading role in overseeing the federal and state response to oil spills, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides scientific support for oil spill prevention, response and restoration.
Witnesses:
Witnesses:
Panel I:
The Honorable Howard “Skip” Elliott, Administrator, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration Rear
Admiral Joanna Nunan, Ninth District Commander, United States Coast Guard
Mr. Scott Lundgren, Emergency Response Division Chief, Office of Response and Restoration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Panel II:
Mr. David Bryson, Senior VP Operations, Liquid Pipelines, Enbridge Inc.
Mr. Michael Shriberg, Executive Director, National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes Regional Center
Mr. David Murk, Manager of Pipelines, Midstream and Industry Operations, American Petroleum Institute
Mr. Chris Hennessy, Business Development Representative, Michigan Laborers-Employers Cooperation and Education Trust (LECET)
Mr. Larry Bell, Founder and Owner, Bells Brewery
* Witness list and panels are subject to change.
-
Full Committee Hearing: Energy Efficiency of Blockchain and Similar Technologies
Aug 21, 2018 | Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
The purpose of the hearing is to consider the energy efficiency of blockchain and similar technologies and the cybersecurity possibilities of such technologies for energy industry applications. In particular, should we expect electricity prices to increase from rising electricity demand in blockchain applications? In addition, how can we evaluate whether blockchain and similar approaches will soon improve the cybersecurity of computing systems used to supply our energy?
Opening Remarks
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Chairman, Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Sen. Maria Cantwell, Ranking Member, Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Witness Panel1
Mr. Paul Skare, Chief Cyber Security and Technical Group Manager, Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Mr. Thomas Golden, Program Manager, Technology Innovation, Electric Power Research Institute
Ms. Claire Henly, Managing Director, Energy Web Foundation
Dr. Arvind Narayanan, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, Princeton University
Dr. Robert Kahn, President and CEO, Corporation for National Research Initiatives
-
Hearing on Cyber Threats to Infrastructure
Aug 21, 2018 | Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism
WITNESSES
Panel I
The Honorable James Lankford, United States Senator, State of Oklahoma
The Honorable Richard Blumementhal, United States Senator, State of Connecticut
Panel II
Mr. Sujit Raman, Associate Deputy Attorney General, United States Department of Justice, Washington , DC
Mr. Michael J. Moss, Deputy Director, Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC),
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Ellicott City, MDMr. Robert Kolasky, Director, National Risk Management Center, National Protection and Programs Directorate,
United States Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC
Panel IIIMr. Thomas A. Fanning, Chairman, President and CEO, Southern Company,
Co-Chair, Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council,
Atlanta, GADr. James A. Lewis, Ph.D.Senior Vice PresidentCenter for Strategic and International StudiesWashington , DC -
Hearing on Homeland Security and FEMA Nominees
Aug 20, 2018 | Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
Witnesses
William N. Bryan, to be Under Secretary for Science and Technology, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Peter T. Gaynor, to be Deputy Administrator Federal Emergency Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland Security,Mr. Gaynor will be introduced by Senator Jack Reed
-
Hearing on Science, NASA Nominees
Aug 23, 2018 | Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee
Witnesses:
Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier, of Oklahoma, to be the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy
Mr. James “Jim” Morhard, of Virginia, to be Deputy Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Mr. Joel Szabat, of Maryland, to be Assistant Secretary for Aviation and Internal International Affairs at the Department of Transportation
*Witness list subject to change.
-
(ACC Mentioned) CEOs Try Again to Temper Trump Tariffs as U.S.-China Talks Open
Aug 20, 2018 | Bloomberg
By Mark Niquette
As China prepares to send officials to the U.S. to restart talks on ending an escalating trade war, American companies and trade groups are returning to a Washington hearing room, most to argue against more tariffs from Donald Trump.
Almost 360 individuals are scheduled to testify over six days of hearings starting Monday on the latest round of proposed actions against Chinese imports, which would place tariffs of as much as 25 percent on $200 billion in goods, according to the Office of U.S. Trade Representative.
At the same time, China plans to send Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen to the U.S. this week to meet with David Malpass, undersecretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department, for the first major trade negotiations in more than two months.
It’s the third round of hearings on tariffs proposed by the administration. While there’s broad agreement that action is needed to address allegations of Chinese theft of intellectual property and other unfair trade practices, most companies and trade groups have been telling the administration that tariffs aren’t the answer.
Third Trip
Some officials are making their third trip to the nation’s capital to ask that their products be spared from duties, but with Trump threatening to hit virtually all Chinese imports, they’re not overly optimistic about goods being removed from the list.
“It doesn’t give me a whole lot of confidence going into the third round,” said Ed Brzytwa, director of international trade for the American Chemistry Council, which has tried unsuccessfully on behalf of its member companies to have certain products removed. “We have to make our best effort and explain why including these products on the list is not a great idea.”
Almost 200 individuals testified during the previous two rounds of hearings on duties covering $34 billion of goods imposed on July 6 and another $16 billion in products due to take effect Aug. 23. While some companies want tariffs added to products from competitors, most have asked to have imports spared because comparable items are not made in the U.S. or the higher costs and promised retaliation by China would cause economic harm.
Tariff Damage
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in its written comments ahead of this week’s hearings that tariffs won’t effectively address concerns about China’s trade behavior, but the number of objections to the duties “speaks volumes about the damage that additional tariffs will do.”
Some goods, such as shipping containers used by freight companies, were removed when Schneider National Carriers Inc. and other firms testified they are almost exclusively made in China. But most products have remained despite the pleas from companies and trade groups.
The list of $200 billion in targeted items ranges from polymers and raw materials used to manufacture products in the U.S. to finished goods like handbags and bicycles. The chemistry council, whose members include DowDupont Inc., said plastics and chemicals account for 25 percent of the more than 6,000 products targeted, and the value of those imports in 2017 was $16.4 billion.
Supply Chains
Duties for the latest round were initially proposed at 10 percent, but Trump directed USTR to consider raising them to 25 percent in response to Chinese retaliation. The tariffs could go into effect after a comment period ends Sept. 6.
SEMI, which represents semiconductor companies and others in the manufacturing supply chain, is also testifying for the third time. It plans to emphasize the cost and time it would take to change suppliers -- as long as 18 months in some cases, which is a generation in the industry, said Jay Chittooran, a public policy manager for the group.
While there’s concern about how much flexibility the administration will have to add and remove products, it’s critical to try, Chittooran said.
“You don’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket,” he said. “If we don’t at least weigh in, we’re definitely not going to get anything taken off.”
Joseph Cohen, chief executive officer of New Jersey-based Snow Joe LLC, successfully argued in May to have electric and cordless snow blowers removed from the tariffs list that became active July 6, and log splitters were also spared from the duties taking effect Aug. 23 after its input.
Power Washers
But Cohen was unable to have garden tillers removed, and the $200 billion list includes the company’s power washers for consumer use -- its largest category, he said. Cohen said he is already in talks with retailers about increasing prices if the tariffs stand, and has put the launch of four new product lines on hold.
Still, Cohen said he is encouraged by the prospect of China and U.S. talking again.
“That’s better than where we were the last three weeks,” he said. “Heck, I’m happy to buy them all lunch, let them all sit down together and come up with something that makes sense.”
-
(ACC Mentioned) Economists Say Trump's Tariffs Are Unfavorable for U.S. Growth
Aug 20, 2018 | Bloomberg
By Jeff Kearns
Business economists are sounding some sour notes about Trump administration policies, from trade to immigration to the budget, while expecting the short-term boost to growth from Republican tax cuts to lessen over time.
The National Association for Business Economics survey showed 91 percent of respondents said current tariffs and threats of more to come were having “unfavorable consequential impacts” on the U.S. economy, according to a report released Monday. About two-thirds saw negative effects if the U.S. withdraws from the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada.
In the wake of large tax cuts enacted in late 2017, the share of those saying fiscal policy is too stimulative rose to 71 percent from 52 percent in February, according to the responses of 251 members collected from July 19 to Aug. 2. And 81 percent said the federal deficit’s share of gross domestic product should be reduced.
“In general, the panel expects the federal deficit, as a percentage of the economy, to grow in the longer term, with eight out of 10 panelists indicating that fiscal policy should help shrink the deficit as a share of the economy,” said survey chair Jim Diffley, an economist at IHS Markit Ltd.Upbeat Tweets
The cautious views are at odds with the President Donald Trump’s upbeat assessment in tweets last week saying the U.S. economy is “better than ever.” Trump has also touted low rates of youth unemployment and, recently, falling joblessness among African-American and Hispanic workers.
While survey respondents continued to see deregulation and tax cuts giving a boost to growth in the short term, they also saw the effects diminishing over time as government debt continues to rise.
Almost two-thirds said the U.S. corporate tax system following the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was an improvement over the previous regime in terms of equity and efficiency, while 25 percent viewed it as “somewhat worse” or “far worse” than before.
Changes to personal income taxes fared worse, with only 31 percent considering the new system better in terms of equity and efficiency and about 54 percent judging it “somewhat worse” or “far worse.”
Some 37 percent said the tax cuts would boost 2018 U.S. GDP growth by a quarter to half percentage point, while 24 percent saw gains of a half point to three quarters of a point, the survey showed.Fed On Point
Forecasters were more upbeat on the Federal Reserve, with 76 percent saying monetary policy is on the right track, the most in the semiannual survey in more than 11 years, according to NABE. Nineteen percent of respondents in the current survey said policy is “too stimulative,” while four percent said the central bank’s stance is “too restrictive.”
“Most panelists believe the Federal Reserve’s current inflation target of 2 percent should be maintained. Of the remaining panelists, more favor raising the target than lowering it,” said NABE Vice President Kevin Swift, chief economist for the American Chemistry Council.
Other findings included:
· 60 percent said economic policy should do more to mitigate climate change
· 74 percent said economic policy should do more to alleviate income inequality
· 63 percent saw less than a 25 percent chance of a meaningful infrastructure package in 2019
· 45 percent said the Trump administration’s deregulation drive has positively affected the economy so far, while 35 percent saw it as a near-term plus that turns negative in the long run
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-20/economists-say-trump-s-tariffs-are-unfavorable-for-u-s-growth
-
(ACC Mentioned) Big Money and Chinese Interference in US Elections
Aug 20, 2018 | Liberty Nation
By Joe Schaeffer
National Security Adviser John Bolton made waves Aug. 19 with his statement that there is “sufficient national security concern about Chinese meddling, Iranian meddling, and North Korean meddling” in U.S. elections.
The remarks came one day after President Trump tweeted similar warnings about China:
Bolton declined to give specifics on his charges and Trump did not amplify his comments but Breitbart.com revealed a rather flimsy effort by the Chinese government to get involved in the midterm elections by releasing an anti-tariff animation video featuring a talking almond.
The video, aimed at California farmers, says “Midwestern farmers are not happy with the [Trump administration financial] relief, wanting trade instead. At least they have aid, unlike me,” Breitbart reports.
While a communist talking almond surely poses no threat to our democracy, the video showcases one of the chief goals that the Chinese government would hope to achieve by meddling in our elections: “free trade” policies by the U.S. government in regards to China and an end to Trump’s protectionist policies.
HOW CHINA OPERATES
But while Russia is rather ludicrously being accused of running deceptive online campaigns that fooled American voters into supporting Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, actual Chinese election meddling, based on past and recent evidence, will involve money to influence – or purchase – our politicians and elected officials and infiltration of U.S. institutions of influence.
Australian senator Sam Dastyari resigned in disgrace in December 2017 due to a scandal involving his accepting money from Chinese-government-linked companies and then supporting pro-Chinese positions in office.
Australia allowed foreign donations to politicians at the time of Dastyari’s actions.
Ah, lucky we don’t allow that here in the U.S., you may say. Think again.
While it is true that foreigners cannot directly donate to our politicians, the era of global capitalism and the 210 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling have enabled corporate trade associations “to spend as much as they want directly advocating for or against candidates for office ‘so long as that is not [their] primary activity,’ the IRS says,” The Intercept’s Lee Fang reports.
“This in turn made such organizations an ideal conduit for foreign money to influence U.S. races,” Fang states.
INSIDE THE LOBBY
Fang details how Wanhua Chemical, a “$10 billion chemical company controlled by the Chinese government,” has become a member of the American Chemistry Council, a powerful lobbying organization that spent a staggering $308,731 in a failed attempt to help House Majority Leader Eric Cantor stave off defeat in his primary battle with upstart Dave Brat in 2014.
Cantor, of course, was an enthusiastic supporter of free trade, as is the American Chemistry Council, which, like China, just happens to think U.S. tariffs are a horrible thing.
Fang notes that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which famously earmarked $50 million to destroy the Tea Party movement in 2013, and the American Petroleum Institute, which staunchly advocates for free trade, also have foreign members as part of their trade associations.
COMPROMISED POLS
And then, of course, there is powerful Democrat senator Diane Feinstein, who had a Chinese spy on her personal staff for 20 years while her husband was doing lucrative business with China.
Feinstein was an enthusiastic supporter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and has encouraged free trade with China throughout her Senate tenure.
The Intercept also ran a series of articles detailing how a company owned by Chinese nationals was able to donate $1.3 million to Jeb Bush’s Right to Rise USA Super PAC in 2015 when the former Florida governor was attempting to become the third member of his family to become president of the United States.
Bush, of course, is a rabid proponent of free trade.
Perhaps the reason we hear so much in our corporate-controlled 24-hour-news-cycle media about alleged Russian meddling in U.S. elections and so little about Chinese efforts is that Russian influence supposedly whipped up naïve American voters into supporting the “wrong” candidate.
Chinese dark money funding to support America’s champions of unfettered global trade, no matter how much that trade hurts U.S. workers, will never be shown in the same light because it is helping what the corporate media consider to be all the right people.
If you doubt this, ask yourself a simple question:
How much media attention has the Trump-Russia probe gotten today, and how much have you heard about Dianne Feinstein’s spy?
https://www.libertynation.com/big-money-chinese-interference-us-elections/
-
As Trump Dismantles Clean Air Rules, an Industry Lawyer Delivers for Ex-Clients
Aug 19, 2018 | New York Times
By Eric Lipton
As a corporate lawyer, William L. Wehrum worked for the better part of a decade to weaken air pollution rules by fighting the Environmental Protection Agency in court on behalf of chemical manufacturers, refineries, oil drillers and coal-burning power plants.
Now, Mr. Wehrum is about to deliver one of the biggest victories yet for his industry clients — this time from inside the Trump administration as the government’s top air pollution official.
On Tuesday, President Trump is expected to propose a vast rollback of regulations on emissions from coal plants, including many owned by members of a coal-burning trade association that had retained Mr. Wehrum and his firm as recently as last year to push for the changes.
The proposal strikes at the heart of climate-change regulations adopted by the Obama administration to force change among polluting industries, and follows the relaxation of separate rules governing when power plants must upgrade air pollution equipment. Mr. Wehrum, who has led the E.P.A.’s clean air office since November, also helped deliver the changes in several of those rules.
The rollbacks are part of the administration’s effort to bring regulatory relief to the coal industry, and other major sources of air pollution. But to proponents of a tougher stance on industries that contribute to global warming, Mr. Wehrum is regarded as the single biggest threat inside the E.P.A., with Tuesday’s expected announcement to weaken what is known as the Clean Power Plan the most recent evidence of his handiwork.
“They basically found the most aggressive and knowledgeable fox and said, ‘Here are the keys to the henhouse,’” said Bruce Buckheit, an air pollution expert who worked for the Justice Department’s Environmental Enforcement Section and as director of the E.P.A.’s air enforcement office under Democratic and Republican presidents.
Mr. Wehrum has been able to push his deregulatory agenda without running into ethics troubles because of a quirk in federal ethics rules. The rules limit the activities of officials who join the government from industry — but they are less restrictive for lawyers than for officials who had worked as registered lobbyists.
The end result is that the ethics rules generally allow Mr. Wehrum to help oversee the drafting of policies that broadly benefit the industries or clients he represented in recent years.
“It is a failing in the rule,” said Norman Eisen, a former Obama administration lawyer who wrote the White House ethics code that creates the division between how ex-lawyers and ex-lobbyists are treated. “One is subject to the tougher lobbying restriction, and the other skates through.”E
In an interview, Mr. Wehrum said he was following the rules carefully, and even some critics say he generally seems to be obeying the letter of the law. “I am scrupulously complying with my ethical obligations,” he said, adding that he signed Mr. Trump’s so-called ethics pledge in November, committing himself to honor all such rules.
Jeffrey R. Holmstead, the lawyer for the electric utility industry who has known Mr. Wehrum for over two decades and who served as his boss at the E.P.A. during the Bush administration, said environmentalists misunderstood Mr. Wehrum and falsely attempted to paint him as a villain.
“What he really does care about is good regulatory policy,” Mr. Holmstead said. “And that means making sure the programs are as efficient and effective as possible so collectively we are not paying more than we need to for the environmental protection that we have and that we need.”
Mr. Wehrum’s client list over the last decade is a testament to his clout — and a road map to the potential conflicts as a government official.
Mr. Wehrum has represented major industrial companies like Koch Industries, the diversified conglomerate that sells everything from petrochemicals to asphalt, and Diageo, one of the world’s largest makers of spirits, including Smirnoff vodka and Baileys Irish Cream. His clients have included the industry’s largest trade associations: the American Petroleum Institute, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, the Brick Industry Association and the Utility Air Regulatory Group, whose membership list features coal-burning electric utilities.
Mr. Wehrum’s trip through the revolving door is hardly extraordinary in the Trump administration, where dozens of former lobbyists and industry lawyers now help oversee the same industries they once represented, including Andrew Wheeler, the acting agency administrator.
But in few cases have the actions pushed by these just-departed industry executives seemed to offer such rapid and far-reaching benefits to ex-clients, and Mr. Wehrum has taken the steps even as he continues at times to meet privately with them despite federal ethics rules intended to limit such interactions.
The overlap between Mr. Wehrum’s work for the industry and his efforts since he arrived at the E.P.A. is perhaps best illustrated by a 13-page petrochemical industry memo that was shared with the E.P.A. air pollution office a week before Mr. Wehrum was confirmed by the Senate.
The memo, which detailed a series of “regulatory changes that would be most beneficial to the refining and petrochemical sector,” almost reads like a playbook for the 10 months since Mr. Wehrum arrived at the E.P.A. At least three of the major changes on the industry wish list have become or are in the process of becoming official agency policy with the help of Mr. Wehrum and his office.
The primary author of the memo, written in October, was an industry consultant named Kenneth Weiss, but the document formed the basis of a presentation Mr. Wehrum gave on behalf of his industry clients late last year, an email sent to the E.P.A. said. The memo listed Mr. Wehrum’s name at the top, in his capacity as outside counsel to the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers association, a group whose executive committee includes corporate officers from Valero Energy, Marathon Petroleum and Chevron.
The agency has also agreed to no longer “second guess” — the exact words used in the industry memo and in the E.P.A. policy change that followed shortly after Mr. Wehrum arrived — air pollution projections by power plants and refineries. The move provoked intense protests among Mr. Wehrum’s colleagues at the E.P.A. as it potentially undermines pending enforcement cases, including one prominent case involving DTE Energy of Michigan, a longtime client of Mr. Wehrum’s former law firm, Hunton Andrews Kurth.
A second priority on Mr. Wehrum’s industry presentation called for a revision of the E.P.A.’s “project aggregation” policy, which could allow companies to perhaps avoid expensive upgrades to pollution control equipment by not forcing them to consider hazardous air emissions from other nearby factories they own. Such a revision is now underway, Mr. Wehrum announced in April.
A third priority was taken care of by the E.P.A.’s March announcementrevising the “project netting” system the agency uses to evaluate anticipated increases in air pollution that might result from renovations and expansions of factories and power plants. Mr. Wehrum, as an E.P.A. official, called the revision “a common-sense interpretation” of the rules. He did not mention that this was the same change he had advocated as a petrochemical industry lawyer in the memo sent late last year.
While pushing the various rollbacks, Mr. Wehrum has at times continued to interact with former clients, despite an ethics rule that prohibits former industry lawyers and lobbyists from meeting with former clients in private settings to discuss government-related matters for two years.
For example, less than a month after he joined the E.P.A., Mr. Wehrum was back at the Pennsylvania Avenue offices of his old law firm to give a presentation to his former client, the Utility Air Regulatory Group, whose membership list features the nation’s largest coal-burning electric utilities, like American Electric Power and the Southern Company.
The topic was an overview of efforts at the E.P.A. to roll back some of the rules Mr. Wehrum and his former law firm had helped this group fight, including the Clean Power Plan, the email records show.
“Exceeds the E.P.A.’s statutory authority and would be repealed,” Mr. Wehrum said of the Clean Power Plan, according to a summary of the presentation, which was among records obtained through a Freedom of Information request.
John Konkus, an E.P.A. spokesman, said Mr. Wehrum’s presence at this event was allowed, despite the ethics ban, because “while it included some former clients,” others who attended “were not former clients.”
In the interview, Mr. Wehrum acknowledged that the line between right and wrong was not always clear. For example, he said he had repeatedly sought a definition of what represents a “particular matter involving specific parties,” which he would be banned from participating in as a result of the ethics pledge.
Citing this lack of clarity, Mr. Wehrum since he was confirmed last year has taken the unusual step for a Senate-confirmed political appointee of declining to sign a “recusal letter” that details individual clients and matters he has to stay away from — making it harder to identify when he faces a potential conflict.
“I have gotten three different interpretations, and what I don’t want to do is sign a recusal letter and then have the rules change again,” he said.
Mr. Wehrum, an intense and cerebral lawyer as well as a rail-thin marathon runner — he has run the Boston Marathon in a time of 3 hours 28 minutes — knows E.P.A. air pollution rules well. Raised in Memphis, he moved to Delaware in the late 1980s soon after graduating from college and took a job as an engineer at a chemical plant, eventually attending night school to get a law degree.
It was while working at the chemical plant — including studying a hydrogen peroxide fire at the plant — that he learned about the burden of responding to the E.P.A.’s complicated regulatory demands.
“I was the guy who had to figure out if we needed permits, and would go get permits for the plant,” Mr. Wehrum said. “That sort of drives a lot of how I think about this.”
He later moved to Washington and began helping to defend electric utilities and other manufacturers facing E.P.A. regulatory actions. In 2001, when a law partner was named by President George W. Bush to take over the same E.P.A. air-pollution policy office, Mr. Wehrum went with him: He served as a senior lawyer and later acting head of air pollution policy before returning to private practice toward the end of the Bush administration.
Several changes Mr. Wehrum has helped engineer since returning to the E.P.A. relate to a program known as New Source Review, a provision that since 2000 has forced more $7 billion worth of upgrades at 112 refineries in the United States — and another $116 million in civil penalties, according to petrochemical industry tally. New Source Review has also helped force tens of billions of dollars in air-pollution upgrades over the last two decades at more than 100 coal-burning power plants in the United States, which is why environmentalists credit the program for major reductions in smog nationwide.
But Mr. Wehrum — like his former clients — considers the program “unnecessarily complicated and confusing,” as Mr. Wehrum testified to the House in May.
Asked if it was wrong for Mr. Wehrum to be pushing an agenda that would clearly benefit his former clients — chipping away at the so-called N.S.R. rule — an E.P.A. spokesman, said in a statement, “N.S.R. reform is part of the Trump administration’s regulatory certainty agenda and predates Mr. Wehrum’s service in the Trump E.P.A.”
One change was so helpful to the petrochemical industry — making it less likely that its members will be ordered to make major upgrades to manufacturing plants during renovations — that several of the industries top executives were invited to the E.P.A. headquarters in March to celebrate.
Those present included executives from Marathon and Valero, two oil and gas and refinery companies that were key members of the petrochemical trade association Mr. Wehrum used to represent. Mr. Wehrum had helped write the new policy. But he has decided, at times, to skip ceremonies like this, in a nod to the ethics rules.
“You can write the memo,” joked Mr. Wehrum’s chief counsel, David Harlow, who is another former Hunton lawyer, according to people present at the staff meeting where the matter was discussed. “But you can’t go to the signing ceremony.”
Environmentalists and former E.P.A. officials say they remain concerned that many of the changes Mr. Wehrum is helping to deliver will hurt the public, including the repeal in January of a 23-year-old E.P.A. policyknown as “once in, always in.” That policy stipulates that once a major polluting entity, such as a factory or power plant, emits enough pollution to subject it to regulations under the Clean Air Act, it must forever remain subject to those rules — even if a company can show that it has lowered its pollution rates.
“This reckless decision allows factories to switch off their pollution control systems to save a few dollars, even if that means dumping more toxic air pollution on their neighbors and putting their health at risk,” said Eric Schaeffer who spent 12 years at the E.P.A., including a stint as the head of enforcement until he left early in the Bush administration.
Mr. Wehrum considers the predictions scare mongering. He said the policy adjustments that he and others at the E.P.A. were making could help improve the environment, as companies would be less hesitant to make upgrades to air-pollution equipment.
Like the marathon runner he is, Mr. Wehrum shows no sign of slowing down.
“More than anything, I just want to get stuff done,” he said.
Coral Davenport contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/19/us/politics/epa-coal-emissions-standards-william-wehrum.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
-
Industry Backs EPA's Plan for Narrow Asbestos Analysis, Sparking Clash
Aug 20, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
The power industry is supporting EPA's narrow approach for assessing the health risks of exposure to asbestos, especially its decision to preclude legacy uses, setting up a clash with critics who say the agency should broadly assess all risks as part of an effort to ban the mineral.
In recent comments to EPA, the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group (USWAG), which represents more than 130 electric utilities and power producers, backs EPA's plan under the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to analyze risks stemming from a limited number of asbestos uses rather than all uses as Democratic state attorneys general, some current and former agency staff, public health professionals, and environmentalists favor.
“TSCA does not require EPA to consider all conditions of use of chemical substances undergoing risk evaluations and, in fact, such an approach would not only be unnecessary but would frustrate the very legislative intent behind the recent TSCA amendments,” USWAG's Aug. 3 comments state.
“The statute establishes aggressive deadlines for chemical prioritization and risk evaluation which require EPA to focus its resources on those conditions of use that present the greatest relative potential risk to human health and the environment. USWAG therefore supports EPA’s general approach to selecting relevant exposure pathways in the Asbestos Problem Formulation.”
USWAG and other groups were commenting on EPA's proposed problem formulation documents -- plans for how it intends to evaluate risks -- of the first 10 existing chemicals, which includes asbestos.
Existing chemicals are those that were on the market when the original TSCA took effect in 1976, and were largely grandfathered from regulation. EPA is taking comments on those documents through Aug. 16, and many stakeholders are expressing concerns with EPA's plans to exclude legacy uses of asbestos, as well as uses that fall within the jurisdiction of other agency regulatory programs, and other agencies' rules, from the scope of the assessment.
Some, like Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D) and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D), are suggesting they will sue over the narrow approach.
But USWAG, whose members say they have to deal with legacy practices stemming from their use of a host of products containing asbestos, say they favor EPA's decision to preclude review of legacy uses, as well as other uses that are regulated by other programs.
"USWAG has a significant interest in ... EPA’s TSCA risk evaluation for asbestos since legacy asbestos-containing products may be present in connection with electric and gas utility operations, including for example as part of building structures and in certain pipeline operations," the group says
Specifically, USWAG agrees with EPA’s “continued determination to exclude from the scope of this risk evaluation legacy uses of asbestos, including 'pre-existing materials currently in place within buildings … and also within pre-existing nonbuilding equipment,' including, for example (and of particular relevance to USWAG members), asbestos pipeline wrap."
The group also “agrees with EPA that other federal environmental programs 'adequately assess and effectively manage the risks for the covered exposure pathways.'”
“In light of this fact, prudence requires that EPA use its resources efficiently, avoiding duplicative regulation. EPA’s plan to 'focus its analytical efforts on exposures that are likely to present the greatest concern and consequently merit a risk evaluation under TSCA by excluding, on a case-by-case basis, certain exposure pathways that fall under the jurisdiction of other EPA-administered statutes' is therefore sound.”
Brake Linings
By contrast, Honeywell International Inc. is urging EPA to take a series of steps in its analysis that would likely downplay any risks from exposure to dust stemming from brake linings manufactured from asbestos, such as accounting for new science that reportedly shows relatively limited risks from exposure.
The company faces potential liability on this issue due to its past acquisition of The Bendix Corporation, “which manufactured automotive brake linings for many years using chrysotile asbestos as a raw ingredient in the manufacturing process,” according to July 26 comments from its counsel, Ellen Tenenbaum of McDermott, Will & Emery.
Honeywell notes that brake linings will be included in EPA's pending risk evaluation because they are associated with exposure in EPA's problem formulation document.
But it argues that “EPA's consideration of potential risk associated with aftermarket automotive brake linings should take into account the most current scientific data regarding the differences between raw chrysotile asbestos and fibers present in brake dust from brake linings manufactured using chrysotile as a component, as well as studies over a forty year period that consistently demonstrated that brake dust does not increase risk of disease.”
Honeywell also describes its alarm that EPA's problem formulation document suggests that EPA will not consider animal toxicology data in the pending risk evaluation, as the conglomerate “is funding certain animal inhalation studies, which will provide the best and most specific mechanistic information on the biological impact of brake dust, for consideration in the full context of the human epidemiology and other pertinent studies.”
Honeywell points to a table in the problem formulation document, which it says “indicates that 'animal and mechanistic data are excluded during the full text screening phase and systematic review process,' and that 'only inhalation exposures in humans will be evaluated in the risk evaluation of asbestos.'”
Honeywell argues that excluding animal and mechanistic data is “inconsistent with EPA's own” 2005 Guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment and that “EPA should consider highly relevant animal inhalation studies related to brake dust, chrysotile and commercial amphibole exposures.” The conglomerate explains that it is funding an “on-going 90-day subchronic animal inhalation study with lifetime recovery that addresses the biological impacts of brake dust, as well as crocidolite, amosite and chrysotile asbestos.”
Honeywell argues the study “is highly pertinent to EPA's risk assessment for asbestos, addressing each of the more commonly used minerals included in the definition of 'asbestos,' as well as brake dust, which implicates one of the potential asbestos exposures EPA has identified.”
Honeywell points to a recent publication from its studies, adding that it expects more to follow. It describes the ongoing study as unique because it uses materials that are not pre-ground and its design is overseen by a panel of independent advisers, among them Annie Jarabek, a long-time senior scientist in EPA's research office.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/industry-backs-epas-plan-narrow-asbestos-analysis-sparking-clash
-
EPA Drops Plan to Weigh First Responders' Asbestos Risk, Citing Legacy Use
Aug 20, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA has dropped an early plan to consider risks of asbestos exposures to firefighters and other first responders due to its policy of excluding legacy uses from consideration for possible regulation under the revised toxics law, a move that is drawing protest from a group representing the workers and highlights the controversy around the policy decision.
In an Aug. 13 comment letter, the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) protests EPA's decision to remove legacy uses from consideration in its evaluation of the risks of exposure to asbestos -- a decision which prompted the agency to drop firefighters from its list of susceptible populations considered in the evaluation as well.
“In order to protect our members, it is essential for the EPA to understand our exposures and fully evaluate the risk asbestos has on fire fighters,” IAFF writes. “We ask that fire fighters be included as a susceptible subpopulation, and that the EPA reconsider evaluating legacy asbestos as a current use.”
The group's call for EPA to weigh risks stemming from legacy uses underscores broad concerns with former Administrator Scott Pruitt's decision -- spelled out in a rule issued in 2017 -- to generally preclude legacy uses of existing chemicals when assessing risks for possible regulation under the revised Toxics Substances Control Act (TSCA).
The so-called risk evaluation rule also precludes uses that are regulated by other EPA programs as well as uses that are regulated by other agencies, such as OSHA.
But the rule is facing a court challenge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, where states, environmentalists and others argue in Safer Chemicals Healthy Families et al. v. U.S. EPA et al., that the agency must consider all uses for possible regulation.
EPA and its industry supporters say the agency has discretion to determine which uses to consider.
However, the concern from firefighters may pose a political problem for the agency as officials are unlikely to want to be seen as limiting protections for first responders and other emergency personnel.
“Fire fighters face a greater risk of asbestos exposure than the general population because asbestos becomes airborne when disturbed or damaged by fire,” IAFF's comments on EPA's asbestos problem formulation document states.
“Fire fighters enter burning buildings, extinguish fires, and open walls and ceilings to check for fire extension; all three tasks expose fire fighters to asbestos fibers. These activities are daily occurrences, and while asbestos is legacy, these are technically new uses and new exposures.”
IAFF represents more than 310,000 professional fire fighters and paramedics across North America. The group is urging EPA to reconsider its decisions to exclude legacy uses of asbestos -- those uses of the mineral once active but no longer -- and its apparent decision to remove firefighters from consideration as a susceptible population to asbestos exposure.
The group also asks EPA to “create a requirement for inspection of commercial building or industrial facilities to identify where asbestos may be present. By providing fire fighters the knowledge of what buildings have asbestos and which do not, we can greatly improve our planning and prevention of asbestos exposure...”
Scoping Document
The group is concerned by a change in EPA's planning documents for its ongoing evaluation of asbestos' risks. The first of those, a scoping document required by statute, identifies firefighters as among the potentially susceptible groups exposed to asbestos.
But between the scoping document's release last year and EPA's June release of its problem formulation document, firefighters were removed.
“While we were pleased to see fire fighters addressed as a vulnerable population in the Scope of the Risk Evaluation for Asbestos document, stating, 'fire fighters may also be exposed to asbestos remaining in building materials, particularly during the overhaul phase, during or after a fire,' we were disappointed this language was removed from the Problem Formulation document,” IAFF states. “By removing the evaluation of legacy asbestos, the EPA is forsaking a unique opportunity to evaluate a population that has high asbestos exposure...”
EPA's June 2017 scoping document identifies “[t]he population most likely to have high exposure to asbestos are workers who come into contact with asbestos while on the job,” and considers firefighters one of several other “groups who may experience greater exposures.”
But in the May 2018 problem formulation document, intended to refine the scoping document as EPA continues its risk evaluation, EPA removes firefighters from this list. Instead, the document identifies only workers as a population most likely to have high asbestos exposure.
“In the Scope document, fire fighters were also included as a potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation,” EPA acknowledges. “However, fire fighters will be exposed to materials that are predominately legacy uses, which will not be evaluated in the risk evaluation.”
IAFF responds that “to the fire fighter population, asbestos exposure is not a legacy issue. Fire fighters are currently exposed to asbestos as a routine part of their occupation and will continue to be unless all asbestos is remediated.”
Congress' 2016 revisions to TSCA are the driving force behind the evaluation, as well as those of nine other existing chemicals. Existing chemicals are those that were on the market when the original TSCA was enacted in 1976 and largely grandfathered from regulation. The Trump EPA's implementing rules for performing the risk evaluations indicated that in general, legacy uses of chemicals would generally not be included in risk evaluations. The ongoing first 10 evaluations generally maintain this principle.
Among the many changes to TSCA, Congress requires EPA to identify potentially susceptible subpopulations most affected -- either through high exposure to the chemical in question by activity or life stage, or because they are innately susceptible, such as individuals with certain diseases or genetic makeups -- and to consider these in the evaluations.
IAFF points to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's study of a cohort of some 30,000 firefighters who worked in Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco between 1950 and 2009, which “was the first study ever to identify an excess of mesothelioma in U.S. fire fighters. The multi-year study identified that the population of fire fighters in the study had a rate of mesothelioma two times greater than the rate in the U.S. population as a whole. Also, the findings show that malignant mesothelioma is largely attributable to asbestos exposure, with sparse evidence of other causes.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-drops-plan-weigh-first-responders-asbestos-risk-citing-legacy-use
-
EDF Submits Extensive Comments Critical of EPA OPPT’s TSCA Systematic Review Document (UPDATED)
Aug 17, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Ryan O'Connell and Jennifer McPartland
Last night, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) submitted critical comments on EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics’ (OPPT) “systematic review” document that OPPT is using to evaluate chemicals’ risks under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
Systematic review, a hallmark of the clinical sciences, employs structured approaches to identifying, evaluating, and integrating evidence in a manner that promotes scientific rigor, consistency, transparency, objectivity, and reduction of bias.
Unfortunately, OPPT’s systematic review document deviates dramatically from the best practices in systematic review—practices developed over decades based on empirical evidence and experience in application. OPPT’s approach also significantly diverges from recent recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences (see here and here).
The method that OPPT uses to judge individual study quality – a numerical scoring strategy – is arbitrary and vague. It is also rejected by all leading systematic review frameworks. OPPT’s scoring strategy is likely to lead EPA to exclude studies in a manner inconsistent with TSCA’s requirements to use the best available science and weight of the scientific evidence.
Through this document, OPPT has introduced yet another way to dismiss important research that extends even beyond its proposed Censored Science rule.
Among EDF’s concerns detailed in our comments are the following:
· OPPT’s document is not consistent with TSCA requirements:
o OPPT’s scoring approach will result in a failure of EPA to use the best available science.
o EPA cannot exclude any reasonably available information from consideration in chemical risk evaluations.
· OPPT’s document does not constitute systematic review as established by leading experts and scientific institutions:
o EPA has failed to develop individual protocols for the first 10 chemicals undergoing risk evaluation.
o EPA has failed to describe its approach to data integration for the first 10 chemicals.
· OPPT should not use a scoring methodology to evaluate individual studies.
· OPPT’s approach to weighting study criteria is inconsistent with best practices in systematic review, and is unscientific and flatly arbitrary.
· OPPT’s study evaluation criteria must be substantially revised:
o OPPT should not conflate issues of reporting with study quality.
o OPPT should not discount or exclude studies for which underlying data are not publicly available.
· OPPT must consider financial conflict of interest in the evaluation of individual studies and in the evaluation of the body of evidence.
Ultimately, OPPT has developed a severely flawed “systematic review” framework. EDF urges OPPT to substantially revise its document, and subject a revised version to peer review by systematic review experts.
See our comments for more details.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2018/08/17/edf-comments-epa-tsca-systematic-review-document/
-
Aug 17, 2018 | NBC 4 New York
By Jennifer Vazquez
New York, New Jersey and Connecticut join over a dozen other states and Washington, D.C. in calling on the federal Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw a proposal to limit the use of scientific evidence and information when making decisions.
The EPA issued a proposed rule earlier in the year which, if adopted, would bar the agency from considering relevant scientific studies – even when they have been validated by peer review – if the underlying information is not publicly available.
In the multi-state letter to Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, Attorney General Grewal describes the proposed rule as “ill-conceived” and “rushed” — noting that the agency failed to consult its own Science Advisory Board.
NBC 4 New York could not immediately reach Wheeler for comment.
The Friday letter reads in part that EPA’s proposed rule “would violate the very federal laws EPA is required to uphold.”
The letter further cites a number of key environmental laws, such as the federal Toxic Substances Control Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and Clean Air Act, as examples of laws requiring EPA to rely on the “best available science,” “sound and objective scientific practices” as well as the “latest scientific knowledge.”
Additionally, the letter further states that, EPA’s refusal to do so simply because the underlying information is not publicly available violates those laws.
The proposed rule blocks EPA from relying on long-standing, peer-reviewed, and important research on environmental and public health priorities, the letter explains, adding that the proposed rule would block the EPA from considering the results of groundbreaking studies, because such research involves confidential personal and medical histories or propriety information.
“The scientific community has made clear that such a limitation is not in accordance with best practices,” the letter reads. “This anti-science approach has stalled in Congress and been rejected by the courts; it has no place at EPA.”
The EPA did not immiately respond to request for comment.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/New-Jersey-Calls-EPA-to-Withdraw-Proposal-that-Limits-Agencys-Use-of-Science-491116931.html
-
(ACC Mentioned) ‘Chilling Effect’ of Three Lost Words Center of EPA Chemicals Shift
Aug 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Three missing words.
Three words that the Environmental Protection Agency omitted from a final chemical oversight rule could represent the agency’s policy choice or could be a drafting error.
Either way, their absence means fines or even jail time for anyone who gave the EPA “inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading information” about chemicals. Now the EPA is asking a federal court to delete that provision while it focuses on defending the broader chemical safety rule.
The words—"by a manufacturer"—appeared in the penalties provision of the EPA’s January 2017 proposal describing procedures to decide whether or not a chemical poses an unreasonable risk of injuring people or the environment. But they were dropped in the final version (RIN:2070-AK20), which means anyone—even advocacy groups and individuals commenting on chemical decisions—and not just manufacturers could be penalized for leaving out information about those risks.
Threatening all parties with penalties—instead of only manufacturers that should have detailed knowledge about the chemicals they make—would have a “chilling effect” on public participation, Eve Gartner, an Earthjustice attorney representing environmental, health, and labor groups opposing the EPA’s final rule, told Bloomberg Enviroment.
“EPA only learned of the potential concerns over the implications of these provisions upon receiving petitioners’ opening brief in April 2018,” the agency told the court in an Aug. 6 motion asking to have that part of the rule vacated and sent back to the agency.
No Clear Reason
The EPA declined to comment on why it broadened the potentially liable parties or whether the missing words were an accident. The American Chemistry Council, one of many trade associations supporting the EPA in the case, declined to comment, although its brief is to be submitted to the court by Sept. 19.
Gartner and Robert Sussman, a former EPA attorney representing Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, which is challenging the EPA’s rule, declined to speculate on the agency’s rationale.
“We don’t know what happened,” Sussman said.
Many attorneys and non-attorney staff review all final rules multiple times before they are published, he said. Someone could have convinced staff that everyone should be precluded from providing the EPA inaccurate information, he said.
Or, it could have been a slip. Despite the numerous agency personnel that review every rule, “they aren’t infallible; mistakes happen,” Sussman said.
Two Other Provisions
The EPA’s Aug. 6 motion also asked the court to send back to the agency two specific parts of the rule that deal with standards manufacturers have to meet when they submit information.
The two standards put manufacturers, rather than the EPA, in the driver’s seat when deciding what information they would submit to the agency, according to Sussman.
Manufacturers should provide the EPA all the information they have and let the agency decide what to use, said Gartner and Sussman.
The EPA’s motion to have those provisions sent back to be fixed doesn’t solve the problem, they added. The EPA didn’t say how it would revise the information standards or by when, Gartner and Sussman said.
The environmental, health, and labor groups are deciding how to respond to the agency’s motion in a brief they will file Sept. 17.The case is Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families v. EPA, 9th Cir., No. 17-72260, 8/6/18.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/chilling-effect-of-three-lost-words-center-of-epa-chemicals-shift
-
Aug 17, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Cheryl Hogue
From laptop computers to babies’ high chairs, hundreds of everyday household goods contain chemicals intentionally added to prevent or slow the items from igniting. These compounds can end up in a home’s dust and ingested by children and adults. Federal biomonitoring data show that most U.S. residents have measurable quantities of flame retardant metabolites in their blood. This finding raises red flags because many commonly used flame retardants are linked to health concerns including endocrine disruption, reproductive problems, cancer, and harmful developmental effects.
To protect consumers, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is struggling with potentially banning an entire class of these substances: organohalogen flame retardants. CPSC, a federal agency with less than 600 employees, has never before considered regulating an entire category of chemicals. Meanwhile, flame retardant manufacturers and electronics makers are dead set against a ban affecting the dozens of organohalogens used in consumer products.
Now, CPSC is turning to the National Academies of Science (NAS). The agency wants help determining whether and how to implement a scientifically sound ban on products containing organohalogen flame retardants, a group of chemicals that includes brominated or chlorinated phosphate esters.
The gears of CPSC regulation started rolling last September after a 3-2 vote by the agency’s commissioners, who are appointed by the president to seven-year terms to direct the agency’s actions. That vote granted a petition seeking a CPSC ban of four types of household goods containing organohalogen flame retardants. Those consumer items are children’s products, except car seats; residential furniture; mattresses and mattress pads; and casings that surround electronics such as home computers.
The petition targets only organohalogens that are simply added to the material, not chemically bound within a product’s polymer structure. These so-called additive flame retardants can migrate from the products they are used in. This leads to human exposure, say the petitioners, who include the American Academy of Pediatrics and advocates for the environment, consumers, industrial workers, firefighters, and those with learning disabilities.
Organohalogen flame retardants are inherently toxic due to their physical, chemical, and biological properties, the petitioners say. At a CPSC hearing on the petition last year, Linda Birnbaum, the director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program agreed. “Every chemical tested in this class has adverse effects,” she said.
The petitioners argue that the chemicals’ toxicity means regulators should address them in one fell swoop. “It is imperative that CPSC’s regulation cover all organohalogen flame retardants as a class,” they say.
Selecting only some of these chemicals for regulation, they contend, won’t prevent manufacturers from switching to other organohalogen flame retardants with similar health effects. This practice happened in the past, they point out.
For example, concerns rose more than a decade ago about decabromodiphenyl ether because it persists in the environment and is linked to cancer and brain function impairment. The substance was widely used in the housing of televisions and personal computers. After negotiations with the U.S. EPA, makers of this flame retardant phased out sales of the substance at the end of 2013.
In its place, chemical makers substituted a structurally similar compound, decabromodiphenyl ethane.
These ether and ethane flame retardants have similar physical and chemical properties and could pose similar health concerns (Xenobiotica, 2017, DOI: 10.1080/00498254.2016.1250180).
As CPSC focuses on a possible ban of all organohalogen flame retardants, the agency is establishing what’s called a Chronic Hazard Advisory Panel to conduct a detailed review of scientific data on organohalogen toxicity and exposure. This group of outside scientific experts will report to the agency about the risks to consumers’ health and safety from organohalogen flame retardants in four kinds of items specified in the petition.
Meanwhile, CPSC is asking the NAS flame retardants committee to help the agency determine whether it is possible to characterize organohalogen flame retardants clearly enough to address them as a group—or what information the agency would need to do so. “We don’t know whether it’s is possible to consider these as a class,” CPSC Assistant General Counsel Patricia M. Pollitzer told the panel. “It is a new question for us.”
The agency is also seeking advice from the NAS panel on whether it should—or could—break organohalogen flame retardant into subclasses for possible regulation, said George Borlase, head of the CPSC’s Office of Hazard Identification & Reduction.
Manufacturers are arguing against CPSC regulating organohalogen flame retardants as a class. Due to their varying physiochemical properties and toxicity profiles, these chemicals can’t appropriately be lumped together for regulation, said Kimberly W. White, a senior director at the chemical industry group American Chemistry Council. She spoke to the NAS committee on behalf of the council’s North American Flame Retardant Alliance.
The hazard and risk of each organohalogen needs to be assessed individually, White argued. These compounds are not all interchangeable among applications, she added. Chris Cleet of the Information Technology Industry Council, an association that includes makers of computers, phones, and printers, backed White’s arguments against a ban of the compounds as a class.
The outcome of the work by the NAS committee and the Chronic Hazard Advisory Panel will have broad repercussions, Eve C. Gartner, director of the toxics program at the environmental group Earthjustice, one of the petitioners, tells C&EN. For instance, the two scientific reports are likely to influence EPA’s ongoing assessments of several types of flame retardant chemicals under the federal law governing commercial chemicals, she says. In that effort, EPA is determining if these chemicals are safe for their specific uses or whether they need regulation to protect human health.
CPSC’s and NAS’s work could also have regulatory ramifications for a subset of organohalogen compounds making headlines this year—per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), Gartner predicts. PFAS chemicals are commonly used as surfactants, grease repellents, and wetting agents. These substances, which include perfluorooctanoic acid and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, are increasingly being detected at levels of health concern in public drinking water supplies across the U.S. and world.
The NAS panel is expected to finalize its advice on organohalogen flame retardants to CPSC in the first half of 2019, says Ellen K. Mantus, NAS staff officer for the project.
https://cen.acs.org/safety/consumer-safety/US-agency-struggling-organohalogen-flame/96/web/2018/08
-
Monsanto Wins Round In Pipe Worker’s Cancer Claims
Aug 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
Monsanto won dismissal of common law tort claims alleging that exposure to its products containing PCBs caused a pipeline worker’s cancer.
The Mississippi Products Liability Act subsumes common law claims against a product manufacturer, the Southern District of Mississippi said.
Gary Jackson worked for a gas pipeline company, servicing compressor stations that used Monsanto-manufactured PCB-based lubricant.
According to Jackson, Texas Eastern began to “phase out” PCB-based lubricants in 1972, and in so doing, dumped hundreds of PCB-containing drums into landfills near compressor stations.
Jackson filed claims of negligence, strict liability, products liability, breach of warranty, negligent misrepresentation, and civil conspiracy.
The claims fail because the MPLA provides the exclusive remedy for a plaintiff suing a product manufacturer, designer, or seller for damages caused by the product, the court said.
The court, however, granted Jackson 14 days to amend his complaint.
Judge David Bramlette issued the ruling.
Shannon Law Firm, PLLC represents Jackson. Watkins & Eager, PLLC represents Monsanto.
The case is Jackson v. Monsanto Co., 2018 BL 293904, S.D. Miss., No. 18-CV-13, 8/16/18.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/monsanto-wins-round-in-pipe-workers-cancer-claims
-
The Other Monsanto Chemical That Bayer Investors Should Watch (Corrected)
Aug 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Lydia Mulvany
Some Bayer AG investors were surprised to learn about the thousands of farmers lining up before U.S. courts to argue that Roundup—the blockbuster weedkiller the German company recently acquired when it bought Monsanto Co.—had given them cancer. But Roundup is hardly the only chemical in Monsanto’s portfolio carrying legal risks.
There are also lawsuits aplenty for dicamba, its next best-selling herbicide, which U.S. farmers are spraying on about 50 million acres of soybean and cotton crops this summer to combat weeds that have become resistant to Roundup.
Dicamba has a tendency to vaporize after being sprayed and drift onto neighboring fields, harming crops and other plants that aren’t genetically modified to withstand its effects. More than 1 million soybean acres are claimed to have been damaged this year as of mid-July, and last summer, that number was more than 3 million.
Monsanto and other crop-chemicals companies have come up with formulations that they said will stay put when applied correctly. St. Louis-based Monsanto pins the crop damage on incorrect application by farmers, and that will go away with more training. The company has received only a third of the complaints about off-target movement that it did last year, while acres have more than doubled, said Scott Partridge, vice president at Monsanto. Moreover, 12 states last year saw record soybean yields.
“Growers are exercising a choice, and they have chosen to purchase and plant and harvest the highest yielding, most profitable soybeans that are out there,” Partridge said by phone. The technology “has a historic rate of adoption, and it’s one that’s desperately needed by soybean and cotton growers” to boost productivity.
Class ActionsBut some agricultural researchers and farmers said there’s still a problem, and dicamba continues to be a magnet for class actions. These could cover thousands of plaintiffs, according to Tiffany Dowell Lashmet, an agricultural law specialist at Texas A&M University. Meanwhile, rival seed companies are piling on the pressure: Beck’s Hybrids, the fourth-largest U.S. soybean seed retailer, last month wrote to the EPA asking it to place new restrictions on the application of dicamba.
One lawsuit seeks to get dicamba taken off the market altogether. Oral arguments are scheduled for Aug. 29 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Seattle over whether the Environmental Protection Agency broke the law in granting the herbicide a two-year registration, which expires in November.
Farmers using dicamba were supposed to avoid drift damage by following instructions written on an “unprecedented” and “byzantine” 16,000-word label, said George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety, one of four nonprofits bringing the lawsuit. The EPA also may have violated the Endangered Species Act, according to Kimbrell.
“After more than seven years of exhaustive scientific review and evaluation, EPA approved XtendiMax with VaporGrip Technology for in-crop use,” Bayer AG said in a statement. “Dicamba-based herbicides have a 50-year history of safe use, when applied according to label directions, and we are confident the government’s exhaustive assessment will prevail.”
‘Recurrent Theme’Such lawsuits are a “recurrent theme” whenever the company brings new technology to the marketplace. The EPA didn’t respond to a request for comment on the complaint, Monsanto’s Partridge said.
Bayer has lost more than 13 billion euros ($15 billion) in market value in the week ended Aug. 17 as news of Roundup-related lawsuits mount. On Aug. 10, a San Francisco jury awarded $289 million to a groundskeeper who said Roundup, a four-decade old herbicide based on a chemical called glyphosate, gave him cancer. Monsanto points to more than 800 studies indicating that glyphosate is not carcinogenic. Its parent company plans to appeal the verdict.
Bayer also failed to block the state of California from listing Roundup as a known carcinogen.
Dicamba is being sold to farmers for use in conjunction with the company’s Xtend GMO soybeans and cotton. For Bayer, which completed its $66 billion acquisition of Monsanto in June and hasn’t yet integrated the companies, the loss of Xtend would mean a hit of as much as $400 million to future earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Jonas Oxgaard said in an August research note.
Oxgaard also said in nearly all states that only followed the EPA’s regulations this year, drift complaints were higher. The EPA has to “balance farmers’ needs to manage glyphosate-resistant weeds with other farmers’ need to not have their crops destroyed,” he said.
“The likeliest outcome this year is for the EPA to give a one-year temporary registration, and impose even more stringent requirements,” Oxgaard said. “The likeliest outcome after that is for the registration to be revoked.”
If that happens, it would “derail Monsanto’s plans to roll out dicamba-tolerant seeds throughout the world—the next step in herbicide tolerance—and destroy a lot of value for new products Monsanto is launching over the next couple of years,” said Chris Perrella, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
—With assistance from Tiffany Stecker (Bloomberg Environment) and Naomi Kresge (Bloomberg)
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/the-other-monsantochemical-that-bayer-investors-should-watch-corrected
-
Before You Flush Your Contact Lenses, You Might Want to Know This
Aug 19, 2018 | New York Times
By Veronique Greenwood
If you throw out your contact lenses every day or so, you’re not alone — more than 45 million people in the United States wear contacts, and many of them use disposable versions of the little plastic hemispheres.
But if they are not tossed out correctly, contact lenses may have a dark side.
Research presented Sunday at the American Chemical Society’s meetingin Boston showed that 20 percent of more than 400 contact wearers who were randomly recruited in an online survey flushed used contacts down the toilet or washed them down the sink, rather than putting them in the garbage.
When the lenses make their way to a wastewater treatment facility, they do not biodegrade easily, the researchers report, and they may fragment and make their way into surface water. There, they can cause environmental damage and may add to the growing problem of microplastic pollution. A 2015 study found that there were 93,000 to 236,000 metric tons of microplastic swirling in the ocean.
Filters keep some nonbiological waste out of wastewater treatment plants, said Rolf Halden, the director of the Center for Environmental Health Engineering at Arizona State University, and Charles Rolsky, a graduate student and the study’s lead author. (Dr. Halden uses contact lenses; Mr. Rolsky wears glasses.) But contacts are so flexible that they can fold up and make their way through. The researchers interviewed workers at such facilities, who confirmed that they had spotted lenses in the waste.
Next, the team submerged contacts in chambers where bacteria are used to break down biological waste at a treatment plant. They found that even after seven days of exposure, the lenses appeared intact, though lab analysis detected small changes in the material.
“These are medical devices — you would not expect them to be super-biodegradable,” Dr. Halden said. “Good for the contact lens wearer during use, not so good when the things get out into the environment.”
Then, going through about nine pounds of treated waste, Mr. Rolsky and a colleague found two fragments of contact lens, implying that while microorganisms might not make much of a mark, physical processing might break them into pieces.
Tiny bits of plastic from many sources have been spotted in the oceans and other bodies of water, where they may be ingested by fish, corals and other animals. The fragments can carry high loads of pollutants absorbed from their surroundings, so the organisms get a dose of these substances as well.
After processing, treated waste is often spread on fields. If fragments of contacts are in the mixture, they or the substances they’ve picked up may be washed by rain into surface water, the researchers conjecture. They estimate that billions of contact lenses — weighing at least 22 metric tons — may be flushed in the United States every year.
Contact lens packages don’t currently tell users how to dispose of them, said Dr. Halden, who suggested that companies should add labels recommending that contacts be put in the garbage rather than washed down the drain. He pointed out that some manufacturers have already begun recycling programs to reclaim the plastic from lenses. While contact lenses are far from the largest source of microplastic pollution in water, they appear to be a readily avoidable one.
Mr. Rolsky said the findings had given him an additional incentive to stick with his preference for wearing glasses. “This just gives me a reason,” he said with a laugh, “to solidify that for the rest of time.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/19/science/contact-lenses-pollution.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience
-
Insight: US-China Trade War Raises Concern LNG Exports May Feel the Chill
Aug 20, 2018 | Platts
By Eric Yep
The ongoing US-China trade war has raised concerns about a key driver of LNG shipping demand – the trade flow between the US and China – but it is also expected to further the commoditization of LNG as it creates more trading opportunities and the need for shipping optionality.
China in early August threatened to impose a 25% tariff on US LNG imports, in retaliation for another round of US tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese products. LNG market participants have indicated that China’s proposed tariffs on US LNG, and the subsequent readjustment of trade flows, is probably the biggest disruption the industry has faced since Japan’s Fukushima earthquake in 2011, and bigger than the trade embargo on Qatar in 2017.
The biggest market tapped by US LNG so far has been China, where government anti-pollution policies are pushing end-users to switch from coal to gas. Average LNG shipping distances have increased the most for LNG originating from the US in the past five years, to 9,268 nautical miles/voyage in 2018, from 3,771 nautical miles/voyage in 2014, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics.
Beijing did not give an implementation date for the tariff, but the uncertainty left Chinese buyers scrambling for substitutes and approaching independent trading houses and oil majors for options to divert their US spot cargoes, and swap them for non-US LNG ones.
If implemented, the tariff will take between one and two months to kick-in, which leaves a narrow window for buyers, sellers and traders to readjust their business accordingly.
The market now calls for a greater role to be played by intermediaries like LNG traders, and for shipping optionality to absorb the impact of trade flow disruptions. This would support the growth of both the spot LNG and shipping markets, and they are interlinked. Historical trade flows also suggest that disruptions can actually increase ton mile demand, as substitutes are imported over longer distances, such as Asian demand pulling in gas supplies from the northern hemisphere.
Demand factors like China’s coal-to-gas switching, peak winter and natural disasters have previously pushed S&P Global Platts JKM prices high enough for Asia to attract LNG from as far as Statoil’s Hammerfest LNG terminal in Norway and Russia’s Yamal LNG project in the Arctic. “This year Chinese spot buying has been on average just under five cargoes/month – however, in January that was the equivalent of 23 cargoes,” said S&P Global Platts Analytics, highlighting the scale of China’s winter demand.
Shipping demand risks
The US-China trade war has raised some concerns about a contraction in shipping demand as Chinese buyers realign their purchases of spot US LNG cargoes, and replace them with LNG from the Middle East, Nigeria, Southeast Asia or Australia, which are closer to Chinese ports. The risks were exacerbated by US commitments to make it easier for European countries to buy American LNG by reducing trade barriers, in recent announcements from Washington. US-Europe shipping distances are shorter and the NATO alliance has a vested interest in reducing Russia’s grip on Europe’s gas supply.
But the fact that China will remain a growing demand center will have knock-on effects on LNG pricing, including LNG shipping rates, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics.
“While China is trying to manage its procurement in the light of potential US tariffs, the fact remains that if they start buying spot volumes, prices will move. While we don’t expressly forecast shipping rates, our current expectations for LNG demand in Northeast Asia suggests shipping rates in the Pacific to reach $82,000/day [this winter],” according to S&P Global Platts Analytics.
LNG vessel spot rates started 2018 at a high of $85,000/d, then eased to a year-low of $45,000/d in May 2018. By June 2018 rates had risen to $95,000/d in Europe again on summer demand, nearly 2.5 times more than the previous year, before slipping to $75,000/d in July-August. This compares to LNG vessel spot rates of over $120,000/d in 2012-2013 when ship supply had tightened.
Trade war impact
The real concern is the long-term impact of the trade war on Chinese LNG investments in US projects, and the competitiveness of US LNG in the context of new LNG projects in other countries. US-based LNG exporter Cheniere Energy said the tariff may affect talks with Chinese buyers about future contracts, but its existing long-term contract with PetroChina will not be impacted.
“The early contracts of PetroChina are heavily weighted towards the winter. We’re hopeful that the US and China can come to some resolution quickly,” Cheniere CEO Jack Fusco said in August during an investor earnings call, noting that in the long-run Chinese tariffs may slow down discussions with other Chinese investors. “From a high level, our business is a very long-term one, and it is well understood that China needs US LNG,” he added.
Separately, S&P Global Platts reported that another deal for state-run Sinopec to invest in the $43 billion Alaska LNG Project, appears to be on schedule for commercial agreements to be signed by the end of 2018, as officials expect the trade dispute to be resolved by the time the project is operational in 2024. Under the proposed deal, Sinopec would purchase 75% of Alaska LNG’s planned 20 million mt/year of production, and Alaska Gasline Development Corp will hold 25% of output, or 5 million mt/year, for other potential purchasers, primarily in Asia.
But market participants have their doubts. “Long-term market consequences are likely to be felt on new supply developments as it would restrict the target market for developers of new US LNG projects trying to find new long-term contracts,” consultancy Wood Mackenzie said. However, it added that plenty of appetite exists from other buyers in Asia and Europe for second wave US LNG projects.
This was evidenced by Cheniere Energy signing a new sales and purchase agreement in August with Taiwan’s incumbent LNG buyer CPC Corp for 2 million mt of LNG/year over 25 years from 2021. The SPA is expected to support Cheniere Energy’s export expansion plans in the US Gulf Coast.
http://blogs.platts.com/2018/08/20/insight-us-china-trade-war-lng/
-
Treasury Inks Deal with Panama over Energy Exports
Aug 17, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Benjamin Hulac
The Treasury Department announced today it reached an energy export agreement with Panama, one of several countries in the Western Hemisphere where the department is helping build facilities for the oil and gas industry.
David Malpass, head of Treasury's international affairs division, will sign the agreement with Panamanian officials at the presidential palace in Panama City, according to the department.
"This framework will expand energy security and spur economic growth for both nations," Malpass said in a statement. "It is a great step forward for the U.S. and Panama."
Under President Trump, federal agencies such as the Department of Energy and the Overseas Private Investment Corp. have worked to support the export of American oil and natural gas, but the involvement of Treasury in boosting exports is unusual.
The department did not immediately respond to a set of questions.
Malpass was scheduled today to take part in a ribbon-cutting event to open a new power plant and liquefied natural gas terminal in Colón on Panama's northern coast.
The projects, together known as AES Colón, appear to be the first announced under a Treasury initiative called America Crece. AES Corp., a U.S. company, will run the properties, together worth more than $1 billion, the firm said.
Mitchell Silk, an administration official Malpass brought to Treasury to oversee its new energy and infrastructure office, said the initiative could be worth $100 billion in outside investment (Climatewire, June 6).
"The inauguration of AES Colón is a significant step toward diversifying the energy mix in Central America and the Caribbean, introducing cleaner alternatives in Panama and beyond," Andrés Gluski, AES president and chief executive officer, said in a statement.
Treasury officials have said the U.S. government is in talks with Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Chile to develop energy facilities within their borders.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/08/17/stories/1060094655
-
Trump EPA Poised to Give States Authority over CO2
Aug 20, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Zack Colman and Niina Heikkinen
EPA is set to replace its signature climate rule with a proposal that gives states broad authority in determining how to cut carbon emissions from power plants.
Multiple sources who said they've reviewed outlines of the agency's proposed rule to replace the Clean Power Plan said EPA would require states to submit plans for regulating the plants three years after the rule is finalized. That's expected to occur next year. EPA would then have one year to determine whether those state blueprints are adequate.
The agency would seek to cut carbon dioxide emissions primarily by improving coal plant efficiency, those sources said. This approach, often referred to as "inside the fence line," has been favored by opponents of the Clean Power Plan.
Generators would have a number of options for addressing efficiency. The plan would also allow states to make many of those upgrades without triggering New Source Review, a round of permitting that requires power plants to add pollution control technology when renovations to existing facilities could result in a significant uptick of emissions.
Initial details of the proposal's focus on state control were first reported by Politico last week. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would be significantly weakened under the new plan by EPA. Other harmful pollutants, like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, would also be released at higher rates compared with the Clean Power Plan.
Environmentalists and industry sources acknowledged that those regulatory changes could allow certain coal plants to continue operating longer than they would have under a stricter rule.
"If a coal plant makes an efficiency improvement, yeah, it will make a coal plant more competitive in a wholesale market, so it could increase the life of a plant," said Michelle Bloodworth, president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.
Industry sources said the proposal would regulate power plants on a individual level, rather than across the entire electrical grid, as proposed by EPA under former President Obama. That would give utilities and states more flexibility in achieving emissions reductions, rather than trying to cut CO2 to meet a set goal, as prescribed by the agency under Obama.
"It will allow States to make discretionary decisions in all kinds of specific circumstances," GOP energy lobbyist Mike McKenna said in an email. "Decisions will be made on a facility basis. It is much, much closer to the statute than the CPP. And much closer to how States usually regulate facilities."
The proposal's focus on state control closely tracks with recommendations former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt made for replacing the Clean Power Plan in April 2014, when he was Oklahoma's attorney general. In a brief document, Pruitt recommends that states determine how to cut emissions, with EPA providing general guidelines.
"EPA designs a procedure and emissions guidelines, and States determine the legally enforceable emission standard that is as stringent as the applicable guideline — unless the State determines the circumstances justify imposition of a less stringent emission standard," the document reads.
David Rivkin, Pruitt's former outside counsel in a case against the Clean Power Plan, noted the similarities between the Trump administration's plan and the one Pruitt had drafted four years earlier.
"I didn't see anything in that rule that suggests there is a fundamental difference," Rivkin said.
Pruitt's proposal had focused on how to make efficiency improvements among existing power plants. He and the other 26 attorneys general opposing the rule deemed approaches like shifting power generation to natural gas and renewable energy unconstitutional and not "statutorily permissible," according to Rivkin.
Pruitt had also been opposed to using an emissions reduction model that capped carbon emissions from the state's power sector at a certain level, known as a mass-based approach.
"This approach subsumes resource planning processes traditionally left to the states into mandatory CO2 budgets. Instead [Pruitt's] Plan allows for a unit-by-unit analysis and considers affordable electricity," according to the document.
An architect of Obama's climate rule also saw a connection between state control in EPA's latest proposal and the plan envisioned by Pruitt and other state attorneys general who opposed the Clean Power Plan.
Joseph Goffman, a former EPA official under Obama, described the attorneys general's proposal as a "radical devolution" of power in favor of the states over the federal government.
Pruitt and other critics of the Clean Power Plan said EPA had overstepped its authority under the Clean Air Act. But Goffman contends that development of the Clean Power Plan under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act followed Congress' intention to protect public and environmental health.
"The Clean Power Plan, which in my view properly allocated the respective responsibilities of the federal government and states, was absolutely designed to address those issues that Pruitt's plan claimed to be addressing uniquely," Goffman said.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/08/20/stories/1060094713
-
Dominion Cleared to Resume More Work on Atlantic Coast Pipeline
Aug 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Adams-Heard
Dominion Energy can resume more work on its Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline after regulators approved the company’s interim plans to proceed with the project while federal agencies respond to a court decision vacating key permits.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, in an Aug. 17 filing, approved interim right-of-way and work area stabilization plans for the pipeline. The 600-mile pipeline project is being developed by Dominion, Duke Energy Corp., and Southern Co.
The $6 billion project faced potential delays after an Aug. 6 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Sierra Club v. Interior. The court revoked a permit issued by the National Park Service allowing the pipeline to cross a Virginia parkway.
The case was brought by a coalition of environmental groups, led by the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Environment is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg.
Dominion will still need to receive approval from appropriate agencies before clearing vegetation on federal lands. In addition the FERC approval requires Dominion to continue monitoring right-of-way no less than once a month in locations where trees have been felled, but mainline construction hasn’t started.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/dominion-cleared-to-resume-more-work-on-atlantic-coast-pipeline
-
Keystone XL Caps a Decade of Waiting with Renewed Uncertainty
Aug 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Adams-Heard
It’s two steps forward, one step back for TransCanada Corp’s contentious Keystone XL oil pipeline, as a federal court ruling threatens to delay an already decade-old proposal.
U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris sided with indigenous and environmental groups in an Aug. 15 ruling ordering the State Department to conduct a new environmental review for the pipeline’s revised route. The decision deals a blow to a 1,200-mile project supported by President Donald Trump in his first few days in office. While the Obama administration rejected the pipeline amid fierce environmental opposition, Trump granted the project a permit last year.
“It’s been around for 10 years, but it feels like this is the closest it’s been to a reality,” Matthew Taylor, an analyst at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co., said by telephone.
One-Year Delay
If an environmental review currently underway at the State Department doesn’t live up to what the court deems necessary for a revised route, the Keystone XL pipeline could be delayed at least a year, he said.
TransCanada did not respond to a request for comment.
Though the Aug. 15 decision doesn’t go so far as to vacate the State Department’s so-called “presidential permit,” it called the government’s argument that the permit applies only to the segment of the pipeline that crosses the U.S.-Canada border “unpersuasive.”
Under the revised route, the Keystone XL pipeline would cross different counties and water bodies, run longer and require an additional pump station and power line infrastructure, the court said. Because of those differences, federal defendants “cannot escape their responsibility” to evaluate the alternative route.
Environmental Review
A review is already in the works. A few weeks ago, Keystone XL won a relatively positive preliminary evaluation from the State Department, which found the conduit’s approved route would have no significant environmental impacts. Whether the shortened review lives up to what this court considers sufficient will decide the extent of any further delays, Taylor said.
TransCanada has time to work out legal and regulatory kinks before it starts construction, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Brandon Barnes said. Since the company isn’t planning on starting any work before the second quarter of next year, “we don’t expect the court order will cause additional delays.”
While Keystone, which would help carry 830,000 barrels of crude a day from Alberta’s oil sands to U.S. Gulf Coast refiners, has won major approvals, TransCanada has yet to officially declare that it is building the project.
Still, drillers are increasingly looking to projects like Keystone, Enbridge Inc.’s Line 3 expansion, and Kinder Morgan Inc.’s TransMountain to save the day. Pipeline bottlenecks are currently forcing Canadian oil producers to sell locally at a steep discount to the U.S. benchmark or to pay extra to haul barrels by rail.
So Close
“This is the closest we’ve come,” said Joe Gemino, an analyst at Morningstar Inc. And while TransCanada’s plan to have the pipeline in service in early 2021 is probably “a tad optimistic,” he said he thinks “ultimately the project will go through.”
Aside from Morris’s ruling, Keystone is also facing a case before the Nebraska Supreme Court, which the company expects to be resolved later this year or in early 2019. TransCanada has said it will not begin construction until the second quarter of 2019.
The case is: Indigenous Envtl. Network v. U.S. Dep’t of State, D. Mont., No. 4:17-CV-31, 8/15/18.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/keystone-xl-caps-a-decade-of-waiting-with-renewed-uncertainty
-
Minn. Tribes, Greens Open Appeals Process for Enbridge Line 3
Aug 20, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
Environmental groups and Native American tribes have asked a Minnesota court to overturn a regulatory decision on Enbridge Inc.'s Line 3, the first in what is likely to be an extended series of appeals about the cross-border oil pipeline.
Enbridge wants to replace its existing Line 3 and expand its capacity from 390,000 to 760,000 barrels a day between Alberta's oil sands fields and a crude terminal in Wisconsin. The U.S. section of the pipeline is expected to cost $2.9 billion.
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission approved an environmental impact statement for the line earlier this year and voted to grant a certificate of need and a route permit in June (Energywire, June 29).
Three separate opponents — two environmental groups and a coalition of Native American tribes — asked the Minnesota Court of Appeals to review the environmental impact statement earlier this month. The appeals court agreed to consolidate the cases last week.
The groups argue, among other things, that the EIS doesn't include a required tribal consultation, doesn't consider the worst-case oil spill and doesn't consider the cumulative impact of the pipeline.
"I think there's some very solid arguments there," said Scott Strand, an attorney representing Friends of the Headwaters.
The other environmental group appealing the EIS is Honor the Earth, and the tribes are the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, Red Lake Band of Chippewa and White Earth Band of Ojibwe.
Once the PUC finalizes the route permit and the certificate of need for the pipeline, the parties in the underlying cases can challenge those in the state Court of Appeals.
Opponents may also be able to challenge other permits, such as dredging and filling permits that the Army Corps of Engineers will have to issue for the line, Strand said.
An Enbridge spokesman said in a statement that the company expected the EIS to be challenged, but pointed out that the study was developed over 16 months, involved 5,000 documents and took input from 49 public meetings.
The EIS "is the most extensive, related to a pipeline project, in the history of Minnesota," Enbridge spokesman Ryan Duffy said.
Line 3 is one of three pipelines that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approved in 2016 to help his country's oil sands production reach markets in the U.S.
More than 300 miles of the pipeline's route are in Minnesota. The existing pipeline crosses two American Indian reservations and is more than 50 years old. Enbridge proposed to move the line out of the reservations, but that drew protests from the tribes about potential impacts on hunting and culturally sensitive areas.
The PUC settled on a hybrid route that'll move the line out of the reservations and cross the traditional hunting grounds using a route chosen by tribal leaders.
Read the appeals on the EIS here, here and here.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/08/20/stories/1060094707
-
Washington Governor Says Zinke Would 'Sell His Grandchildren for the Oil Industry'
Aug 17, 2018 | The Hil - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) slammed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday, saying he is in the pocket of the oil and gas industry and would “sell his grandchildren for the oil industry.”
Speaking at an event, Inslee took issue with Zinke’s recent tour of California where the secretary visited neighborhoods struck by recent wildfires and told reporters “this is not a debate about climate change.”
Inslee, whose state has faced similar wildfire threats, said Zinke “would flunk any science test that these kids take," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.
"With climate change you have a hotter, drier climate, Mr. Zinke. You have fires. What is there about this that you cannot comprehend. ... This man works for us. We do not pay him to give us false information. We get enough of that from the President,” Inslee said.
He added that Zinke "would sell his grandchildren for the oil industry. ... We have just seen the beginning of the firestorm."
An Interior spokeswoman called the remarks unprofessional and "sad"
"Bringing up the Secretary's granddaughters in a half-baked interview in order to get a couple headlines is outrageously pathetic and sad," said Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift.
Zinke toured California along with Department of Agriculture head Sonny Perdue last weekend, meeting with fire chiefs and local representatives. During a number of interviews, Zinke pushed the need for greater forest management and likened the environmentalists who opposed logging and other brush clearing measures to “terrorist groups."
In an op-ed for USA Today earlier in the month, Zinke similarly blamed "radical environmentalists" for the fires.
"[W]e are attacked with frivolous litigation from radical environmentalists who would rather see forests and communities burn than see a logger in the woods,” he wrote.
Zinke's message echoes President Trump, who tweeted that California's environment laws were to blame for the state's fire disaster.
"California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amounts of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire from spreading!," Trump tweeted August 6.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/402383-washington-governor-says-zinke-would-sell-his-grandchildren-for-the
-
Clean Energy on Arizona Ballot if Measure Survives Lawsuit
Aug 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brenna Goth
An Arizona measure that would require utilities to produce more electricity from renewable resources will make the November ballot—if it can survive a lawsuit challenging its signatures.
The state’s largest utility, Arizona Public Service Co., is fighting efforts that would make it and others generate half their energy from sources like wind and solar by 2030. It is battling Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona, a campaign backed by billionaire activist Tom Steyer.
A review by state and county recorders showed that the ballot initiative turned in enough valid signatures to go to voters, Secretary of State Michele Reagan said Aug. 16. The group turned in nearly 329,000 valid signatures, based on results of a 5 percent sampling, which is well above the minimum needed to qualify.
On or Off?
But the measure has another hurdle to clear before it can go to voters.
Arizonans for Affordable Electricity argued in a lawsuit filed last month that their review shows more than three-quarters of the signatures filed in support of the measure are invalid—claims not supported by the state and county’s limited review. That group is funded by Pinnacle West Capital Corp., the parent company of Arizona Public Service.
Arizonans for Affordable Electricity is asking a Maricopa County Superior Court judge to keep the proposal off the ballot because of issues such as people signing who aren’t registered to vote in Arizona or signing more than once. The trial in that case starts Aug. 20.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/clean-energy-on-arizona-ballot-if-measure-survives-lawsuit
-
Aug 18, 2018 | Newsweek
By Nicole Goodkind
A Federal judge Friday called the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to delay implementation of an Obama-era rule meant to mitigate the risks of toxic waste disasters “arbitrary and capricious” and ordered the agency to immediately enact the policy change.
The chemical disaster rule, created in response to the 2013 explosion at West Fertilizer in Texas that killed 15 people and destroyed the surrounding area, requires an increase in emergency response to chemical incidents, stringent safety rules and audits of chemical facilities and rigorous investigations and follow-up after any incident. President Obama asked for the changes in the aftermath of deadly the explosion, and after three years of study, the EPA created the changes in January of 2017.
But under President Trump, the EPA argued that they planned to eventually change or revoke the rule and that implementing these new guidelines and then altering them would confuse the industry.
Former EPA head Scott Pruitt eventually delayed implementation of the rule until 2019 after shouldering complaints from industry groups like the American Chemistry Council. “We are seeking additional time to review the program so that we can fully evaluate the public comments raised by multiple petitioners and consider other issues that may benefit from additional public input,” he said at the time.
Twelve states and a number of labor groups like the United Steelworkers union and AFL-CIO have since brought suit against the EPA, claiming that under the Clean Air Act, the rule could only be delayed by three months. On Friday, The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered that the rule go into effect immediately.
“The decision clearly shows that EPA – and by implication OSHA and other federal agencies – can’t just delay a rule protecting the American people on a whim, or to do the bidding of some outside group,” Mike Wright, Director of Health, Safety and the Environment for the United Steelworkers union, told the Confined Space newsletter.
New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood also joined the Steelworkers in suing the EPA. “Again and again, the Trump EPA has tried to push through policies that jeopardize our health and fly in the face of the law – and again and again, we've taken them to court and won,” she wrote in a statement. “We should all agree that protecting workers, first responders, and communities from chemical accidents is a top priority. This decision is a major victory for New Yorkers’ – and Americans’ – health and safety, ensuring that the EPA cannot put special interests first and block common sense protections against toxic chemical accidents.”
The EPA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
https://www.newsweek.com/epa-trump-toxic-waste-environment-texas-environment-1078933
-
(ACC Mentioned) Court Throws out Trump Administration Delay of Chemical Disaster Rules
Aug 17, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Matt Dempsey and Kevin Diaz
In a major setback to the Trump administration's efforts to roll back Obama-era environmental policies, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the Environmental Protection Agency can no longer delay a new set of regulations designed to prevent chemical disasters.
The Chemical Disaster Rule, stemming from industrial accidents like the 2013 West Fertilizer explosion in Texas, requires companies to obtain outside audits and share more information with first responders and emergency planners. It also requires industrial facilities to publish chemical inventories and disclose the root causes of chemical incidents at their facilities.
Texas environmentalists hailed the decision, saying it also would help address concerns raised during Hurricane Harvey, when explosions at the Arkema facility in Crosby exposed first responders to fumes that they say were hazardous to their health.
The EPA delayed implementing the rules, arguing it needed more time to consider the objections of members of industry.
The D.C. Circuit rejected the EPA's arguments, saying that unless it proposes something new or actively changes the rule, it cannot delay the rule's implementation indefinitely.
"EPA cannot have it both ways," the court said. "Either there would be 'substantial compliance and implementation' efforts by regulated parties absent the Delay rule, or the rule has no effect on compliance requirements and does nothing more than maintain the status quo."
Backers of the Obama rules said they would create much-needed protections for first responders, workers and communities that border chemical and industrial plants, such as the Houston Ship Channel.
First responders in the Arkema incident reported that they did not have information about the chemicals they were exposed to.
"One of the most tragic aspects of the Arkema disaster was that the first responders were charging head first into the danger without knowing what was inside the facility," said Bay Scoggin, director of the Texas Public Interest Research Group.
The West Fertilizer tragedy involved an ammonium nitrate explosion at a distribution facility in West, Texas, north of Waco, while emergency personnel were responding to a fire.
Fifteen people were killed and more than 160 were injured. More than 150 buildings were damaged or destroyed. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives concluded in 2016 that the fire had been deliberately set.
"This transparency is something that makes first responders safer, and the communities around those facilities safer," Scoggin said. "Houston is absolutely affected by this, and not only in the context of Hurricane Harvey."
The EPA justified repealing the rule by pointing out that it will save the chemical industry $88 million per year.
But environmental groups said the EPA's posture under President Donald Trump is overlooking the costs of industrial accidents, especially to the communities surrounding major indistrial facilities.
"This decision means that people living near industrial facilities and those who respond to chemical accidents will have the stronger protections they deserve," said Bakeyah Nelson, executive director of Air Alliance Houston. "In Houston, the people who live in the places with the most perils are mostly people of color and low incomes. They want their neighborhoods to be healthy and safe. This is a big win for them."
At issue are rules implemented by former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy designed to help prevent and mitigate chemical accidents. The changes included more protective accident prevention program requirements, emergency response enhancements, and enhanced public transparency and availability of information.
The changes came to be known as the "Chemical Disaster Rule." They were slated to take effect on March 14, 2017, with phased-in compliance over several years.
But one of the first actions taken by the Trump Administration's first EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, was to suspend the rules.
That action came in March, 2017, a month after an industry coalition including the American Chemistry Council, the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Utility Air Regulatory Group asked EPA to reconsider the Chemical Disaster Rule.
The D.C. Circuit's opinion did not include input from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who heard the case but recused himself from the opinion.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/article/DC-Court-throws-out-Trump-administration-delay-of-13164082.php
-
(ACC Mentioned) Appeals Court Strikes Down Trump Admin’s Delay of Chemical Safety Rule
Aug 17, 2018 | Houston Public Media
By Travis Bubenik
A federal appeals court said an Obama-era chemical safety rule that has been delayed by the Trump Administration for more than a year must go into effect.
The “Chemical Disaster Rule,” as it’s been called, was originally proposed after the deadly 2013 fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas.
The rule requires chemical companies to disclose more about risks at their facilities and forces them to share that info with local police and firefighters. But after pushback from the chemical industry, the Environmental Protection Agency stopped the rule from going into effect. The agency has also proposed a new safety rule, which critics say would be weaker.
The administration’s rollback efforts have drawn criticism from first responders, as NPR has reported:
“The entire community is responsible for preparedness. That means the entire community needs to understand the risks to the community,” Timothy Gablehouse, who leads a local emergency planning committee outside Denver, told the EPA panel [at a June hearing.] “The response does not begin at the 911 call.”
He and others cited the deaths of first responders in West, Texas as well as Hurricane Harvey-caused fires at the Arkema chemical plant outside Houston last year. Police and other first responders involved in the Arkema incident said they were exposed to toxic fumes partly because local officials didn’t have enough information about what was stored at the plant, and how to handle an emergency like the one that unfolded during the storm.
The American Chemistry Council, a major trade group, has supported the rollback, calling the Obama-era rule “misguided” and “hastily adopted” during the administration’s last days.
In its decision, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals calls the EPA’s delay of the rule “arbitrary and capricious.”
“The argument was that you can’t delay just because,” said Gordon Sommers, an attorney with Earthjustice, one of the groups that sued the agency for not implementing the rule.
Environmental groups are praising the court’s decision, saying it will protect people who live near chemical plants.
“In Houston, the people who live in the places with the most perils are mostly people of color and low incomes,” said Bakeyah Nelson, head of Air Alliance Houston, another group involved in the case. “They want their neighborhoods to be healthy and safe. This is a big win for them.”
In a statement, the American Chemistry Council expressed concern about the ruling.
“We’re disappointed in today’s ruling not to allow EPA to delay several problematic changes to the Risk Management Plan that could undermine the future success of this important program,” the group said. “We will evaluate the court’s decision and continue to work with the Agency to safeguard chemical facilities and protect communities.”
It’s not yet clear what the court’s decision means for the EPA’s pursuit of a revised chemical disaster rule. When asked about that, a spokesperson said the agency is “reviewing the decision.”
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2018/08/17/300605/appeals-court-strikes-down-trump-admins-delay-of-chemical-safety-rule/
-
EPA’s 20-Month Delay of Chemical Plant Rule Illegal, Judges Say (Corrected) (1)
Aug 17, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
The Trump administration’s 20-month delay of an Obama-era chemical facility safety rule violated the Clean Air Act, a federal appellate court ruled Aug. 17, in a significant rebuke to the EPA’s deregulatory power.
Environmental and community organizations, the United Steelworkers labor union, and 11 states claimed that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act by delaying regulatory changes to high-risk industrial facilities.
The EPA had said its actions were justified in light of security risks that industry organizations objecting to the standard raised. But a panel of federal judges said the agency didn’t provide an adequate basis for the delay.
“Because EPA has not engaged in reasoned decisionmaking, its promulgation of the Delay Rule is arbitrary and capricious,” Judges Judith Rogers and Robert Wilkins from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit wrote.
The EPA said in a statement to Bloomberg Environment Aug. 17 it is reviewing the decision.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh joined them in hearing oral arguments in March, but didn’t participate in issuing the opinion after his July 9 nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Obama Formed Rule After Explosion
After a fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, killed 15 people in 2013, the Obama administration EPA issued a regulation in January 2017 directing high-risk facilities to report more information to the agency, local communities, and first responders. The agency also wanted to require certain safety training, information sharing, compliance audits, investigations of close calls, and emergency response coordination.
The EPA’s new leadership in the Trump administration moved quickly to stop the regulations from taking effect. Former Administrator Scott Pruitt postponed them to February 2019 and had the agency start work on a weaker replacement (RIN:2050-AG95). Companies would save an estimated $88 million from the changes the EPA made to security provisions in the program in the proposed rule.
The EPA said its actions were justified in light of security risks that industry organizations objecting to the standard raised. But environmental and community organizations, the United Steelworkers labor union, and 11 states claimed that the EPA violated the Clean Air Act by delaying regulatory changes to high-risk industrial facilities.
The judges said the EPA’s delay of the rule was flawed from the start. The agency never offered an adequate basis for delaying the rule, the judges wrote.
The agency is required to show why a 20-month delay is necessary and wouldn’t harm the public, the judges said. Instead, the EPA cited industry arguments as reasons to study changing the rule, without attempting to prove that the concerns were valid.
The agency could have addressed companies’ security concerns if it could show they were based on valid risks, while letting the rest of the regulation take effect, Bethany Davis Noll, litigation director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, told Bloomberg Environment Aug. 17.
“Looking at a rule being implemented and figuring out if tweaks are necessary is definitely still something that’s within the range of things agencies should be doing,” Noll said.
The case is Air Alliance Houston v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 17-1155, 7/17/18.
(Updates with comment from EPA and additional details about the decision. An earlier version removed a statement incorrectly attributed to attorney Emma Cheuse on the decision's impact.)
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epas-20-month-delay-of-chemical-plant-rule-illegal-judges-say-corrected-1
-
'Documented' Cyberattacks Shape Updates to Nuclear Guidance
Aug 20, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission drew on "documented cybersecurity attacks" and other real-world lessons to update 8-year-old guidance on complying with its cybersecurity rules, according to a draft document published last week.
The regulatory guide is aimed at giving nuclear power plant operators a sense of what NRC specialists look for during cybersecurity inspections.
The NRC has ramped up its oversight of cybersecurity in recent months, requiring nuclear power companies to demonstrate that they have met all facets of a sweeping 2010 cybersecurity rule.
The guidance document keys in on new cyberthreats and vulnerabilities that either didn't exist or were poorly understood eight years ago.
For instance, the guide urges nuclear power plant operators to periodically scan their networks for "often overlooked devices such as scanners, copiers, and printers" that may be inadvertently connected both to the public internet and to "critical digital assets" (CDAs) that relate to nuclear safety or security.
"Once compromised, the attackers can use these devices as staging points for collecting sensitive information, to set up a persistent presence for later attacks against other CDAs, or to penetrate deeper into the defensive architecture," the NRC states.
The guidance document also recommends that operators merge their cybersecurity and physical protection programs to stay in line with NRC rules. "A cyber attack may be coordinated with a physical attack or may be used to assist a physical attack," the document notes. "As such, a licensee's physical protection program must be designed to protect the facility from physical, cyber, and combined attacks."
Last year, E&E News reported that a group of hackers had targeted the corporate networks of multiple nuclear generating sites across the U.S.
While that cyberespionage campaign isn't thought to have penetrated the closely guarded safety systems at any nuclear power plants, the activity raised alarm bells in the energy sector and the U.S. intelligence community.
The Department of Homeland Security recently led a series of briefings about the cyberthreat from hackers they linked to the Russian government (Energywire, July 31).
NRC spokesman David McIntyre said regulators drew on that case, as well as real cybersecurity events in a range of sectors, to prepare the new document.
The draft revision also pulls from updates to a cybersecurity framework published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, "which incorporates lessons learned from cyber attacks on various federal agencies," he said.
"This guidance spells out a way to meet our requirements that would be acceptable to the NRC staff, for the benefit of any future licensees," he explained in an email. "It reflects lessons learned during the implementation of the cyber road map 'milestones' in NRC regulations and inspections, as well as operational experience."
NRC regulators are meeting with industry representatives today outside Washington to discuss the proposed guidance document and takeaways from recent cybersecurity inspections.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/08/20/stories/1060094703
-
Aug 20, 2018 | Ripon Advance
A newly introduced bipartisan, bicameral bill from U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and U.S. Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA) aims to spur the development of new and advanced construction materials to improve America’s transportation and water infrastructure systems.
“I strongly support investing in material research and the use of new technologies that can be used to improve our critical infrastructure,” Sen. Rounds said.
The Innovative Materials for America’s Growth and Infrastructure Newly Expanded (IMAGINE) Act, S. 3341 / H.R. 6653, would encourage the research and use of innovative materials and associated techniques in the construction and preservation of the domestic transportation and water infrastructure system, among other purposes, according to text of the bill in the congressional record.
U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) joined Sen. Rounds in introducing S. 3341 on Aug. 1. The proposed legislation has been referred to the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for consideration.
“As we continue to work toward a long-term infrastructure plan that enhances public safety, creates jobs and strengthens our economy, our bill will help pave the way for a stronger, safer and more cost-effective infrastructure system,” said Sen. Rounds.
Joining Rep. Comstock in introducing the companion H.R. 6653 on Aug. 3 were U.S. Reps. Elizabeth Esty (D-CT) and David Cicilline (D-RI). The measure has been referred to the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure; Science, Space, and Technology; and the Energy and Commerce Committees.
“Research and innovation are essential to getting better infrastructure outcomes for our tax dollars,” Rep. Comstock said. “The IMAGINE Act supports projects that will lead to cost-savings so our local governments can spend their tax dollars more efficiently and get longer lasting results.”
Among several provisions, the bill would promote the use of advanced infrastructure materials; authorize creation of a task force to scrutinize related standards and methods for assessing the federal government’s materials approval process; and call for research into new materials and building techniques, according to a summary provided by Sen. Rounds’ office.
Additionally, according to the summary, the IMAGINE Act would kickstart federal investment in bridge and water infrastructure projects that use the more modern materials in construction, particularly for projects in coastal and rural areas.
Sen. Whitehouse noted that newer materials have the potential to make the nation’s roads, bridges, water systems, and other infrastructure more resilient and safe. “Using these materials in our public works will pay off big for the communities that rely on them and for the American taxpayer,” he said.
Rep. Etsy agreed and pointed out that the bill also would speed up project deployment and extend the life cycle of infrastructure projects.
“In Connecticut, public sector and private sector groups are rapidly advancing the use of innovative materials and techniques in infrastructure projects,” she said. “It is vital to the success of these projects that we begin to lay the foundation for more sustainable materials and productive techniques that will allow America to rebuild its infrastructure.”
The IMAGINE Act would encourage the development of materials such as high-performance asphalt mixtures and concrete formulations, geo-synthetic materials, advanced alloys and metals, reinforced polymer composites, aggregate materials and advanced polymers, according to the lawmakers’ summary.
Numerous industry stakeholders already support the bill, including the American Chemistry Council, the American Coatings Association, the American Composites Manufacturers Association, the Geosynthetic Materials Association, LafargeHolcim, the National Asphalt Pavement Association, the Owens Corning Plastics Industry Association and the Vinyl Institute, which together sent an Aug. 1 letter to Sen. Rounds, Rep. Comstock and their colleagues.
“Many of the groups signing this letter compete in the marketplace every day,” according to their letter. “But we are united in our commitment to work with you and other leaders in Congress to build a 21st Century infrastructure designed to meet the needs of our 21st Century challenges.”
The stakeholders concluded in the letter that “the tenets of the IMAGINE Act will be important components of a broad strategy to make the most of taxpayer dollars.”
https://riponadvance.com/stories/americas-public-works-projects-need-cutting-edge-construction-materials-say-rounds-comstock/
-
EPA Backs Texas Haze Plan in Draft Rule
Aug 17, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
The Trump administration is proposing to stick with an emissions trading program to cut haze-forming pollution from coal-fired power plants in Texas, under a draft rule signed today by EPA Region 6 Administrator Anne Idsal in accordance with a previously set deadline.
If made final, that approach would replace an Obama-era proposal that would specifically require some of those plants to adopt new pollution controls.
After EPA unveiled the intrastate trading program last October, environmental groups objected that it represented an illegal reversal of the Obama-era proposal. In a news release today, EPA said that it was proposing to "affirm" portions of the October plan, while adding that some aspects could benefit from added public comment "that could inform our decision-making on particulate matter and sulfur dioxide [best available retrofit technology] requirements for Texas."
A Sept. 26 public hearing will be held in Austin.
At Earthjustice, which is representing environmental groups that have long been locked in litigation with EPA over the scope of regional haze requirements for Texas, attorney David Baron said in an email that the proposal represents "a rehash" of last year's plan.
"Instead of cleaning up filthy air in the parks, this proposal will let pollution get worse," Baron said.
EPA's regional haze program, dating back to 1999 in its current form, is supposed to restore natural visibility to 156 national parks and wilderness areas by 2064.
The proposed rule was attached to an EPA status report with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/08/17/stories/1060094661
-
EPA Proposes Easing Implementation of Clay Products Air Rule
Aug 17, 2018 | Inside EPA
EPA is proposing to ease implementation of its national emissions standards for hazardous air pollutants (NESHAP) air toxics rule for the clay products manufacturing sector, floating several technical changes including limited use of emissions averaging and provisions to allow for temperature variability in clay kilns.
The proposed rule, slated for publication in the Aug. 20 Federal Register, is in response to a petition by clay products maker Kohler for reconsideration of the NESHAP, issued by the Obama EPA in 2015.
To ease implementation, the proposal would allow clay kiln operators to adhere to a maximum operating temperature that includes provision for variation in the kiln's temperature under the NESHAP's limitation on toxic dioxins and furans. “This should allow variability of the hourly temperature fluctuations as a 12-hour block average and, additionally, provide variability by having multiple options for calculating the kiln variability into the operating limit,” the agency says. EPA will take comment for 45 days on this and other revisions.
EPA is further requesting comment on a compliance alternative that would account for variability in temperature by setting a minimum operating temperature rather than a maximum.
Also, EPA is proposing to reduce visual emissions reporting requirements somewhat, and to eliminate stack emissions testing requirements for “cooling stacks” used to cool products down after manufacture.
EPA proposes to allow alternative, emissions-averaging limits for mercury and particulate matter from various types of ceramics manufacturing. These alternative limits would be subject to strict conditions, however.
“First, emissions averaging would only be permitted between individual sources at a single existing affected source and would only be permitted between individual sources subject to the Clay Ceramics Manufacturing NESHAP. Further, emissions averaging would not be permitted between two or more different affected sources or between two or more sources in different subcategories. Finally, new sources could not use emissions averaging,” EPA says.
The agency says the rule will not result in additional pollution or costs, and “may result in a cost savings due to the changes in monitoring and testing requirements.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-proposes-easing-implementation-clay-products-air-rule
-
7 Democrats Who Might Use Climate to Run for President
Aug 20, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Kelsey Brugger
Some Democrats considering a run for the White House in 2020 are seeing historic wildfires in their home state of California. Another has tried to pass a carbon tax, and still another has poured a personal fortune into environmental issues.
Welcome to the next presidential race, where climate change stands a chance of being a high-profile issue.
"Everyone is going to run on climate to one extent or another," said RL Miller, political director at Climate Hawks Vote. "It's a question of which ones are fiercest."
It's still unclear who will run, let alone what their policy positions on climate might be. But the potential field of candidates is full of progressives who elevate the environment. That could make the gulf between the political parties bigger than ever on climate. And that's saying something.
Some likely candidates are already making climate policies central to their political identities. Whether that translates into a climate-focused primary season that the Democratic nominee carries into a general election is anybody's guess. But observers say it's possible.
Not everyone is optimistic about the chances of a climate resurgence.
Michael Mann, a climate scientist who advised Hillary Clinton's campaign, warns that candidates could fall into the trap of the "perfect being the enemy of the good." Maybe they'll shoot too high and fail.
Mann and environmentalist Bill McKibben urged the Democratic National Committee to adopt a price on carbon in its party platform in 2016. In the end, it was included. But not without a fight.
Here are some potential Democratic hopefuls who might focus on climate change. The list is not exhaustive.
Jay Inslee
As governor of Washington, Inslee has more power to influence climate policy than members of Congress. He fell short this year of enacting the nation's first state carbon tax, and now he's pushing a similar initiative on the November ballot. He has also worked on a proposed high-speed rail corridor linking Seattle with British Columbia.
Inslee recently said Washington's forests would be "toast" without a broad climate strategy, according to the Daily Chronicle. He doubled down last week on ABC's "This Week:" "Democrats need to make climate change a front-burner issue. It was really interesting, two days ago we had an interesting historical irony. It was reported that this last year was the hottest year probably in the history of our species. The very same day, Donald Trump purported to try to repeal the emissions rules that defeat carbon pollution, that help decrease transportation cost to get better mileage, because of his slavish devotion to climate denial."
Those are tough words.
His positions have given him a nod from Climate Hawks Vote, a group that backs "aggressive, progressive champions of climate justice" — not just any Democrat who considers "climate to be just another issue bubbling below the surface of top priorities."
Inslee had a 92 percent score from the League of Conservation Voters while he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 1995 and 1999 to 2012.
Jeff Merkley
As an Oregon senator, Merkley has quietly been amassing progressive points on his resume. He became known for being the only senator to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the 2016 presidential election, and he said he's "exploring the possibility" of running for president in 2020, according to a New York Times profile published in June.
As a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Merkley has been beating the drum on climate change. During Rex Tillerson's confirmation hearing for secretary of State, Merkley pushed him to clarify his ambiguous position on climate change.
He vocally opposed President Trump's plan to roll back greenhouse gas standards for cars. And Merkley was one of six Democratic senators to call on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to include the social cost of carbon when examining natural gas pipeline projects.
As it is with Inslee, Climate Hawks Vote is backing Merkley.
"I certainly hope that one of them stays viable," said Miller of Climate Hawks Vote. "Can the nation handle two tall white men from the Pacific Northwest who are both good on climate?"
Merkley has a 99 percent lifetime score with LCV.
Kamala Harris
Harris, the freshman senator from California, established herself as a Big Oil aggressor when she served as California's attorney general from 2011 to 2017. She created the Environmental Justice Unit as the district attorney in San Francisco and threw the book at U-Haul, Alameda Publishing Corp., and those owners and operators responsible for the Cosco Busan oil spill. The idea, she said at the time, was to go after crimes that disproportionately affect poor communities.
Harris has urged individuals to reduce their carbon footprint without offering many specifics about national climate policy. Regarding the wildfires raging through California, she recently said, "Let's all agree on that and think about what we can do to reduce the effects of climate change."
Though she lacks national political experience, she has raised $4 million for her colleagues and is possibly laying the groundwork for a 2020 presidential run. Last month, she told MSNBC that she was not ruling it out.
Harris has a 100 percent rating from LCV, and she's considered an environmental champion by many progressives. But she does not have a big climate profile, largely because she sits on the Intelligence, Budget, and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees. Many of her climate-related votes were in opposition to bills seeking to reverse environmental protections (E&E Daily, July 10).
Bernie Sanders
What more needs to be said about Vermont's independent senator?
Sanders sought to distinguish himself in the 2016 race by talking often about climate change in stark terms. He successfully fought, through intermediaries, to include the idea of a carbon price in the Democratic platform, a move that contrasted to Clinton's more modest climate policy.
As a member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sanders called for a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a carbon tax, a clean energy job force and nationwide high-speed rail. He also wanted to slowly rescind fossil fuel subsidies, and he called for the eventual end of nuclear energy.
"As we see more and more drought, as people around the world are unable to grow the food they need to survive, people will migrate for survival. Instability can cause international conflict," Sanders said.
Combating climate change was ranked sixth in a long list of issues on his campaign website. Sanders has a 92 percent lifetime score with LCV.
Tulsi Gabbard
The first Hindu member of Congress, the representative hails from Hawaii, where politicians tend to be bluer than the ocean.
Gabbard sponsored the "Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future Act," an ambitious climate bill that would phase out fossil fuel energy sources by 2035. It also calls for an end to subsidies for drilling, mining and refining companies. And it would establish programs to help fossil fuel workers get jobs in renewable energy industries.
In 1996, she co-founded the Healthy Hawaii Coalition with her father, Mike Gabbard, a Democratic state lawmaker. The group teaches about pollution, the environment and health.
A member of the Progressive Caucus, Gabbard broke with the DNC, which she vice-chaired, so she could endorse Sanders for president.
Gabbard has a 96 percent lifetime score from LCV.
Jerry Brown
Before the term was ever used, the California governor was a climate hawk. That identity has intensified since the Trump administration pledged to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord. He collaborated with other nations to promote achieving the agreement's goals.
A year after Trump promised to withdraw from the agreement, Brown, Inslee and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) (also considered by some to be a climate champion) penned an op-ed touting their states' booming economies.
"In just one year, the alliance has grown into a bipartisan coalition of 17 governors representing 40% of the U.S. population and a $9 trillion economy — larger than that of every country in the world but the U.S. and China," the trio wrote in USA Today.
Next month, Brown is hosting the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco. The summit will bring together leaders from around the world with the theme "Take Climate Ambition to the Next Level."
Brown's black eye could be his controversial $77 billion high-speed rail project that has come in seriously over budget and behind schedule. The line from Los Angeles to San Francisco is now scheduled to open in 2033, four years later than previously planned.
Tom Steyer
Steyer is known for two things: being a climate activist and working to impeach Trump.
Through his organization NextGen America (originally called NextGen Climate), Steyer has raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on progressive issues throughout the country. His focus is on voter registration and turnout.
He has said he won't rule out a presidential run.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/08/20/stories/1060094671
-
Trump Science Pick Faces Questions About Climate, Spending
Aug 20, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Christa Marshall
The Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee this week will hear from Kelvin Droegemeier, President Trump's choice to lead the White House science office.
The president unexpectedly nominated Droegemeier, an Oklahoma extreme-weather expert, this month after more than a year of speculation about the White House's intentions for the Office of Science and Technology Policy. If confirmed as director, Droegemeier could influence administration policy on issues ranging from nuclear power to natural disasters.
Droegemeier is expected to take questions about earlier statements that diverged from the administration's positions on the federal budget and climate change.
In congressional testimony and public statements, for example, he pushed for increased government science spending and praised the 2007 National Academies report "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," which called for creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, a program targeted for elimination by Trump.
"U.S. government investment in basic research is now at a 40-year low as a percentage of GDP. This places the 'miracle machine' in grave danger," wrote Droegemeier and Daniel Reed, a former vice president at Microsoft Corp., in an op-ed in The Des Moines Register last year.
The University of Oklahoma meteorologist also has spoken favorably about climate research, telling a congressional panel five years ago "we are moving toward the day when we will no longer use separate models for weather and climate" (Greenwire, Aug. 1).
To Science magazine last year, he said that Jim Bridenstine, now NASA administrator, probably "regrets the way he said it" in questioning human-driven climate change.
Droegemeier once led a National Science Foundation center focused on predicting extreme storms. He previously was nominated by both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama to serve on the National Science Board, the governing panel of the National Science Foundation.
After his nomination, Droegemeier won praise from members of both political parties who often disagree, including Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), ranking member on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, who said Droegemeier would "work to advance the scientific interests of the United States" if confirmed.
It's unclear if the administration intends to follow the mold of previous OSTP directors and simultaneously give the leader of the office a second title of "assistant to the president." Previous administrations have done that and made the OSTP director one of the senior aides in the White House, rather than more of a siloed adviser.
Obama's OSTP director, John Holdren, participated in international science meetings and helped craft the White House budget and response to a range of scientific issues.
The office is about half the size it was when it hit its peak during the Obama years, and multiple jobs dedicated to climate change were eliminated in 2017 (Greenwire, Aug. 4, 2017).
At the same time, the Trump administration has led several new OSTP initiatives, including a summit on artificial intelligence and a review of nuclear power.
The committee also will hear from two other administration nominees: James Morhard to be deputy administrator of NASA and Joel Szabat to be assistant secretary for aviation and international affairs at the Department of Transportation.
Schedule: The hearing is Thursday, Aug. 23, at 10:15 a.m. in 253 Russell.
Witnesses: Kelvin Droegemeier, James Morhard and Joel Szabat.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/08/20/stories/1060094683
-
The Trump Administration Keeps Losing Environmental Court Cases
Aug 18, 2018 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin
It turns out that unraveling Barack Obama’s environmental agenda is harder than it looks.
Federal judges have ruled against the Trump administration three times in the last three days, arguing that the administration short-circuited the regulatory process in its push to reverse policies on water protections, chemical plant safety operations and the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. In each instance, the courts either reinstated the existing rule or delayed the administration’s proposal from taking effect.
On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency’s move to delay new chemical and safety requirements was “arbitrary and capricious.” The day before, a judge on the U.S. District Court in South Carolina reinstated a rule in 26 states limiting the dredging and filling of streams and waterways on the grounds that the EPA had not solicited sufficient public input. And on Wednesday, a judge on the U.S. District Court of Montana ordered the State Department to conduct a more extensive environmental impact statement of the Keystone XL’s proposed route through Nebraska.
“It’s certainly been a very bad week for EPA’s deregulatory agenda," said Georgetown University law professor Lisa Heinzerling, who served as a senior EPA official under Obama. The recent decisions come on the heels of a major loss for the administration Aug. 9, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered the EPA to ban a widely used pesticide known as chlorpyrifos, linked to developmental problems in children, within 60 days. In March 2017, then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt had rejected a petition by environmental and public health groups to take the pesticide off the market.
The recent rulings all date back to decisions made early in President Trump’s tenure — often at the urging of industry groups who accused Obama officials of federal overreach. In the case of the Risk Management Plan amendment, or Chemical Disaster Rule, which was reinstated Friday, chemical manufacturers and refiners had urged the EPA to suspend a rule aimed at promoting safety at chemical plants.
The rule was crafted in response to the 2013 fertilizer plant explosion in West, Tex., that killed 15 people, including a dozen first responders. It requires companies to better coordinate with emergency responders, share information about chemical threats with local communities and assess whether alternative technologies could prevent injuries in the case of a chemical accident.
In Friday’s decision, judges Judith Rogers and Robert Wilkins stated that the EPA’s argument that industry needed 20 months to determine how to meet the new standards “makes a mockery of the statute.”
In other losses last week, a federal judge in Los Angeles ordered the EPA to restrict stormwater discharges from commercial and industrial sites, and the U.S. Court of International Trade halted imports of all seafood caught with gillnets in Mexico because the practice threatens the critically endangered vaquita porpoise. Noting that Trump officials sought to modify the ban, Judge Gary S. Katzmann wrote that it did not make sense given that “there is a real danger that the vaquita will disappear from the planet.”
“What the courts are saying is we’re going to enforce the laws that Congress wrote, and this administration is breaking those laws, and needs to stop,” said Natural Resources Defense Council’s litigation co-director Michael Wall.
Myron Ebell, who directs the Center for Energy and Environment at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, said in an interview that “there are likely to be setbacks in court” when federal officials undertake major rules changes. He noted that the Supreme Court stayed the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which limited greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants.
Ebell said “several factors” contributed to the recent legal losses, including the fact that “Pruitt was a lot more about advocating and promoting the Trump agenda, rather than being on top of it.”
In other losses over the past week, federal judges in California ordered the EPA to restrict stormwater discharges from industrial operations and overruled a Fish and Wildlife Service policy
D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh was a member of the three-judge panel that heard arguments in the case but withdrew after being nominated for the Supreme Court.
Asked for comment Friday, EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones said agency officials “are reviewing the decision.”
It remains unclear whether the administration will appeal some of these rulings, and if so, whether the Supreme Court would intervene. Heinzerling noted that given the Supreme Court’s more conservative tilt, there is a chance it would rule differently from the lower courts. But she added that several setbacks involve “really plain administrative law,” which is less a matter of ideology than “pretty basic errors.”
“It would be very surprising if the Supreme Court would reverse them all,” she said.
Ebell, for his part, said that his greatest concerns is that these legal battles will drag on for a couple more years.
“One of the things our side has to worry about is that some of these legal disputes might not be resolves until a second Trump term. And we might not get a second Trump term,” he said. “The voters get to decide that.”
Chris Mooney contributed to this report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/08/18/trump-administration-keeps-losing-environmental-court-cases/?utm_term=.3f0f7ae28aac
-
Climate Has a Role in Wildfires? No. Wait, Yes.
Aug 17, 2018 | New York Times
By Henry Fountain
With his comments this week on California’s recent spate of vicious wildfires, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke waded into a longstanding debate over how forests are managed.
Mr. Zinke and his boss, President Trump, also dismissed the impact of global warming on the fires. But the secretary later clarified his comments, responding “of course” when asked if he accepted that climate change was part of the problem.
In radio and television interviews while in California visiting with firefighters, Mr. Zinke acknowledged that fires had been getting worse. But he said what was driving this summer’s severe blazes — including the Mendocino Complex fire north of San Francisco that is now the largest in the state’s history — was “fuel load,” or the presence of dead and dying trees that have not been cleared from forests.
In one interview, with Breitbart Radio, Mr. Zinke blamed “environmental terrorist groups” for the situation, saying their legal efforts had prevented the widespread harvesting of dead timber.
But John Barnwell, director of government affairs with the Society of American Foresters, said there was no single reason this summer’s fires have been so severe.
“I have to respectfully disagree with Secretary Zinke and say that a multitude of factors contribute to the tinderbox conditions in California and across the West,” Mr. Barnwell wrote in an email.
He identified “lack of management of overstocked stands, changing climate and weather patterns, and insect and disease as the primary drivers for these large, catastrophic blazes.”
In his comments, Mr. Zinke said clearing of dead timber should be allowed, and other methods should be used to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires, including small prescribed burns early or late in the fire season.
The issue of timber clearing in Western forests has simmered for decades. Selective thinning of some trees and underbrush — what is called “fuels treatment” — and prescribed burning have been supported by both Republican and Democratic administrations and environmentalists as necessary to improve forest health and reduce fire risk. But many environmental groups argue that aggressive harvesting of dead trees goes too far.EDITORS’ PICKSA Rockefeller Heir, G.O.P. Lawmakers: How a Suspected Russian Agent Tried to Make ContactsLove Filled Their Trip. On Day 369, ISIS Struck.Billionaire Yogi Behind Indian Prime Minister’s Rise
“Fuels treatment is important,” said Lynn Scarlett, a former Interior official in the George W. Bush administration and now a policy director with the Nature Conservancy. “But there’s a difference between fuels treatment and timber harvesting and clear-cutting.”
Mr. Zinke also dismissed the impact of climate change on the fires in an interview Monday with a Sacramento television station. “This has nothing to do with climate change,” he said. “This has to do with active forest management.”
Those comments earned him praise from Mr. Trump at a cabinet meeting Thursday. “Ryan, you’re saying it’s not a global warming thing; it’s a management situation,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Zinke later clarified that he accepted that climate change was a factor. But his earlier comments, and those of the president, drew condemnation from scientists and environmental groups. Philip B. Duffy, executive director of the Woods Hole Research Center, a climate change research group in Massachusetts, said the comments were “clearly and demonstrably incorrect.”
“Scientific research has shown that the enormous increases in fire activity experienced recently in the West are driven to a large extent by climate change,” Dr. Duffy said in a statement. “Simply put, climate warming results in longer fire seasons and larger and more intense fires.”
Ms. Scarlett said Mr. Zinke’s and Mr. Trump’s comments addressed only part of the problem.
“On the one hand it is true that fuels treatment remains an important part of reducing risks,” she said. “On the other hand that’s not the full picture, and climate does make a difference.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/climate/zinke-california-fires.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience
-
University of Michigan Sets Ambitious Goal to Pull Carbon From Air
Aug 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Bobby Magill
Imagine a company selling flexible concrete made from carbon dioxide sucked directly from the air that could help highways withstand earthquakes and help solve climate change.
That is one of the goals of a University of Michigan project taking a market-based approach to climate change. It is setting out to invent and market products such as concrete and fabrics that are stuffed full of human carbon dioxide emissions accumulating in the atmosphere.
The university announced Aug. 8 that its Global CO2 Initiative’s lofty goal is to remove 10 percent of annual carbon emissions by 2030 to help prevent climate change from spiraling out of control.
Climate scientists say it is an ambitious plan, but its feasibility is uncertain. The technology that might accomplish carbon dioxide removal on a scale that will slow global warming remains unproven and untested.
The Global CO2 Initiative is spending $4.5 million to support the invention of products that will be made of carbon captured directly from the air and help launch companies that will market those products, such as flexible concrete that could help buildings more effectively withstand earthquakes, Volker Sick, a University of Michigan mechanical engineering professor and project lead scientist, told Bloomberg Environment.
Carbon dioxide can be captured by using industrial processes to suck it directly from the ambient air or by other methods, including ways to mineralize and solidify it.
Ambitious Goal
The program’s 2030 goal is ambitious, Katharine Mach, a senior research scientist at Stanford University who is unaffiliated with the project, told Bloomberg Environment. Mach is a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report that became the scientific foundation for the Paris climate agreement.
“It’s the exact kind of ambition we need on the climate issue, across the full portfolio of solutions,” Mach said.
The university’s target is comparable to an estimate for energy sector emissions cuts that countries pledged to make as part of the Paris climate agreement, Jessica Jewell, a contributing author of the IPCC report and research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Norway, told Bloomberg Environment.
But the university goal “is to stimulate research and development so it’s difficult to evaluate how realistic it is,” Jewell said.
Investment will determine how realistic it is, Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Bloomberg Environment.
“We’ve waited for so long, we’re now in a place where we need to be looking aggressively, assertively to all manner of approaches to reduce emissions and scale up,” he said.
The goal of the project is to “be the catalyst” for a global carbon removal effort, Sick said.
“We also are realistic enough and honest that this is not something we can do individually,” he said.
Negative Math
Directly removing the carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere from human fossil-fuel use may be an important part of keeping global warming in check. Without carbon dioxide removal, or “negative emissions,” the math that underlies the Paris climate agreement doesn’t add up.
That is because scientists say cutting fossil fuel use and climate pollution to zero won’t likely be enough to keep the Earth from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the primary purpose of the Paris pact. Humanity may have to invent a way to to clean the atmosphere of some of the carbon pollution put there since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
“Given the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere today, it is difficult to avoid 2 degrees without health-damaging pollution aerosols or ‘negative emissions,’” Inez Fung, a climate scientists at the University of California-Berkeley, who is unaffiliated with the Global CO2 Initiative, told Bloomberg Environment. Aerosols are particles suspended in the air that can cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight back to space.
But technology is not yet mature enough to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at large enough scale to lessen the threat of climate change, Fung said.
Creating a Market
The Global CO2 Initiative is setting out to advance that technology by inventing carbon-based products that could be used to launch new companies and create a market for captured carbon, Sick said.
Three companies unaffiliated with the Global CO2 Initiative are already working on commercializing direct-air-capture technology at scale: Climeworks AG, Global Thermostat LLC, and Carbon Engineering Ltd.
“That’s important in the near term to get us to a point where we can do large-scale pure carbon removal,” Matt Lucas, associate director of the Oakland, Calif.-based Center for Carbon Removal, which is unaffiliated with the project, told Bloomberg Environment.
Creating a market for carbon-based products now allows the industry to build “more carbon-capture projects that will reduce the cost of that technology so that so that when I do gigaton-scale carbon removal, it’ll be cheaper and more politically palatable,” he said.
The project will release a free “toolkit” that will establish a common way for companies and researchers to evaluate the climate impacts of the products they produce using carbon dioxide captured directly from the air.
A Divisive Issue
Carbon dioxide removal as a solution to climate change is a divisive issue among climate scientists.
For example, the European Academies Science Advisory Council concluded in February that the Paris pact’s reliance on “hypothetical” technologies makes its negative emissions scenarios “overly optimistic.” Relying on carbon removal technology is a moral hazard because it suggests that cutting carbon emissions is less urgent than it really is, the council said.
But carbon removal plays a critical role in solving climate change, Mach said.
“It can involve everything from increasing carbon stored on the landscape, through to engineered approaches that capture CO2 from the atmosphere and store it underground in geologic formations,” Mach said. “Carbon removal is one way to grapple with hard to decarbonize energy services, such as air travel or long-distance shipping.”
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/university-of-michigan-sets-ambitious-goal-to-pull-carbon-from-air
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
Add recipients
Suggested