Preview Newsletter
AM ACC Clips Report - September 3, 2018
-
(ACC Mentioned) Trump Picks Leaders for Park Service, EPA Chemicals Office
Aug 31, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Rob Hotakainen and Corbin Hiar
The White House said today the president had picked David Vela, the superintendent of Grand Teton National Park, to become the new director of the National Park Service and Alexandra Dapolito Dunn to lead EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Region 1 Head Alex Dunn Named to Lead Chemical Safety Office
Aug 31, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
President Donald Trump will nominate a seasoned environmental lawyer to head what has become one of the most difficult jobs to fill at the Environmental Protection Agency. -
(ACC Mentioned) Trump Taps EPA Region 1 Chief to Lead Toxics Office
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
President Donald Trump has formally announced his intent to nominate EPA Region 1 chief Alexandra Dunn as the head of the agency's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), tapping the former state and industry representative to lead the office that is overseeing implementation of the revised toxics law. -
(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Companies Blast Trump China Tariff Costs
Sep 1, 2018 | Axios
By Zachary Basu
Hundreds of American businesses have testified in hearings hosted by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, hoping to shed light on the damaging effect tariffs on Chinese goods will have on the average American consumer. -
(ACC Mentioned) Hundreds Of U.S. Companies Blast Trump’s China Tariffs
Sep 1, 2018 | The Inquisitr
By Damir Mujezinovic
Evidently, a protectionist and a trade hardliner, President Donald Trump has angered hundreds of American businesses. -
(ACC Mentioned) Action on Plastics May Be Blessing
Sep 2, 2018 | Altoona Mirror
By William Kibler
Decisions by China and other Asian countries to stop accepting “miscellaneous” plastics for recycling ultimately could be a blessing, a chemistry industry leader said. -
EPA’s Scientific Integrity Draws Internal Watchdog’s Attention
Aug 31, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
The EPA’s scientific integrity and policies for reporting violations could become the subject of an internal watchdog’s investigation as the agency proposes sweeping changes to its approach to science in rulemaking. -
What a New Head of EPA’s TSCA Office Will Face and Need to Do
Aug 31, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
News reports today indicate that the President is nominating Alexandra Dapolito Dunn for Assistant Administrator of EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, which implements the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
NRDC Drops TSCA Suit But Vows 'Heightened Vigilance' On New Chemicals
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Environmentalists have dropped their suit over EPA's draft framework for reviewing new chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) after a top official said it has not been implemented as planned, but the groups are still pledging “heightened vigilance” of administration and industry efforts to scale back oversight of the substances. -
EPA Releases Proposed New Rules for TSCA Asbestos Review
Aug 31, 2018 | GlobeSt.com
By Thomas Rubino
Asbestos is a mineral fiber that occurs naturally in rock and soil. -
Nonprofit Alleges Chemours Facility in North Carolina Is Discharging 'Toxic' Substances in Groundwater
Sep 3, 2018 | Legal Newsline
By Noddy A. Fernandez
A nonprofit organization based in Wilmington, North Carolina alleges a facility in the state is discharging substances without authorization. -
Chemical Shortage Could Disrupt Global Supply Chains
Aug 31, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
A shortage of a widely used chemical could disrupt the global supply chain for disinfectants, inks, household goods, and many other products, according to a multinational chemical and biotechnology company. -
EPA Unveils Final Analysis Of RDX, First IRIS Assessment of Trump Era
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
After months of delays, EPA has published its final Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment of Royal Demolition Explosive (RDX), a munitions chemical present at many military sites, the first such analysis released since the Trump administration took office and launched a review of the agency's premiere hazard assessment program. -
NAS Preparing to Review Arsenic IRIS Planning Documents
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is preparing to review new planning documents for EPA's long-running assessment of the human health risks of exposure to environmental arsenic, an advancement for a key EPA risk analysis program weathering industry and administration efforts to consolidate it with the agency's toxics office. -
How to Find Chemicals You Didn’t Know Were There
Aug 31, 2018 | Bloomberg BNA
By Adam Allington
The discovery of toxic chemicals in public tap water last year shocked North Carolina residents, but the chemicals might have escaped notice were it not for a recent technological breakthrough. -
It’s Rocket Science: EPA Needs Six More Months to Study Perchlorate
Aug 31, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz
The EPA needs another six months to set new limits on a rocket fuel chemical in drinking water after being inundated with new research, according to an Aug. 30 court filing. -
Finland Warns Retailers About High Lead Content in Solders
Aug 31, 2018 | Chemical Watch
Shops and online retailers in Finland are continuing to sell products containing lead to consumers despite a ban being in place since March, the Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency (Tukes) said. -
Norway Finds 'Broad Cocktail' of Environmental Pollutants Around Oslo
Aug 31, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The Norwegian Environment Agency reported "a broad cocktail of pollutants" in an assessment of the terrestrial and urban environment in Norway. -
The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground
Sep 1, 2018 | New York Times
By Bethany McLean
About 20 years ago, an entrepreneur named George Mitchell proved that it was possible to get lots of oil and gas out of parts of the earth long thought to be sucked dry, by injecting liquid at high pressure into a horizontal well below the surface. About 10 years ago, fracking — the common term for this process — began in earnest. -
FERC Looks to Speed up a Dozen Natural Gas Export Approvals
Aug 31, 2018 | Washington Examiner
By John Siciliano
The nation's top energy regulator on Friday moved to expedite approvals for 12 natural gas export terminals, which are a key component of Trump's energy dominance and trade agenda. -
FERC, PHMSA Agree to Speed LNG Processing
Aug 31, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Darius Dixon
FERC announced this afternoon that it had a memorandum of understanding with federal pipeline regulators to help process the stack of more than a dozen applications for liquefied natural gas export terminals. -
(ACC Mentioned) Trump’s War on Worker Safety
Sep 3, 2018 | Politico
By Ian Kullgren
When President Donald Trump came into office pledging to cut regulations “massively,” he made a point of exempting regulations that protected workers’ health. -
Court Orders EPA to Immediately Reinstate Chemical Safety Rule as Industry Objects
Aug 31, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today ordered EPA to immediately reinstate an Obama-era chemical safety rule just two weeks after it first struck down the Trump administration’s delay of the requirements. -
D.C. Circuit Grants Novel Bid To Quickly Implement EPA Facility Safety Rule
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has granted a novel request from environmentalists to quickly strike down the Trump EPA's delay on implementing an Obama-era rule tightening facility safety mandates, taking the rare step of finalizing the court's ruling undoing the delay before EPA exhausts its appeal options. -
A Year After an Environmental Disaster in Texas, Chemical Company Faces a Reckoning
Sep 1, 2018 | Mother Jones
By Dan Spinelli
Hurricane Harvey struck southeast Texas last August with 130 mph winds and dumped more than 50 inches of rain across the region. -
Stars Aligning for EPA Change in Calculating Air Rules Benefits
Aug 31, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
The Trump EPA wants to blunt the agency’s counting of pollution rule benefits—and changes at the EPA and the nation’s highest court could brew the perfect storm for doing so. -
Suit On EPA Drill Permit Could Set 'Negative' NEPA Precedent, Industry Says
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Lara Beaven
As the Trump administration moves to roll back and streamline agency requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), environmentalists are pursuing litigation against EPA that industry groups say could set a “negative precedent” expanding those requirements by barring EPA from using another agency's analysis. -
California Lawmakers Pass Bill Codifying Federal HFC Limits
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
California lawmakers have approved a bill to codify recently overturned federal rules limiting high global warming potential hydrofluorcarbon (HFC) refrigerants, after major appliance manufacturers and labor groups dropped their opposition based on recent talks with state regulators about how they will implement the measure, sources say. -
States Seek To Preserve Flexibility In EPA's Plan For Program Reviews
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
State regulators are raising fears that the Trump administration's plan for streamlining regions' reviews of state environment programs could limit existing flexibilities and undermine EPA's role as a strong arbiter of disputes over cross-state air pollution, though a senior EPA official is vowing a flexible approach.
Congressional Hearings - There are no hearings to report at this time.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
-
(ACC Mentioned) Trump Picks Leaders for Park Service, EPA Chemicals Office
Aug 31, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Rob Hotakainen and Corbin Hiar
The White House said today the president had picked David Vela, the superintendent of Grand Teton National Park, to become the new director of the National Park Service and Alexandra Dapolito Dunn to lead EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.
Vela's appointment came as no surprise. E&E News first reported last month that Vela had been interviewed for the job and had emerged as the president's top choice (Greenwire, July 3). He is a 28-year veteran with NPS.
Vela said last month that he was "deeply humbled by the rumors and speculation" that he would get the job and that he would be "honored to serve."
The Senate has not voted on the Park Service director's position since 2009, when Jonathan Jarvis won confirmation as President Obama's NPS chief.
Dunn has worked as a lawyer at the American Chemistry Council and as head of state environmental regulatory groups. She is currently EPA's regional administrator for the Northeast (Greenwire, Nov. 16, 2017).
Citing her experience in that role, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said she would use her "wealth of knowledge to help EPA faithfully implement the Toxic Substances Control Act and ensure chemicals in the marketplace are safe."
This is the Trump administration's second attempt to fill the post of the chemical safety chief. The previous nominee, former University of Cincinnati toxicologist Michael Dourson, withdrew from consideration after several Republicans raised concerns about consulting work he'd previously done for chemical companies (Greenwire, Jan. 23).
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060095573
-
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Region 1 Head Alex Dunn Named to Lead Chemical Safety Office
Aug 31, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
President Donald Trump will nominate a seasoned environmental lawyer to head what has become one of the most difficult jobs to fill at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, currently the administrator of EPA’s Region 1 office in Boston, will be named assistant administrator of the EPA for Toxic Substances, the White House announced Aug. 31.
Before her appointment to the EPA’s New England region, which covers Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, Dunn served nearly four years as executive director and general counsel of the Environmental Council of the States, an organization of state regulators. She also headed the Association of Clean Water Administrators and served as general counsel for the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, organizations that represent publicly owned water and wastewater utilities.
Tasked With TSCATrump’s last choice to run the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, toxicologist Michael Dourson, dropped out of the confirmation process after North Carolina’s Republican senators refused to vote for him because of his work with the chemical industry. North Carolina communities are dealing with water contamination in the Cape Fear River as a result of discharges from a Chemours Co. manufacturing plant.
The administration struggled to find a replacement for Dourson.
The chemicals office is tasked with implementing the Toxic Substances Control Act, the nation’s toxic chemicals law that was significantly updated in 2016. The agency is re-evaluating the health and environmental risks of 10 old chemicals in a more rigorous assessment that is part of the updated law.
The EPA has repeatedly missed its deadlines under the law for approving new chemicals before coming to market.
Dunn worked as counsel on Superfund, clean air, and environmental justice issues for the American Chemistry Council before her stint at the National Association of Clean Water Agencies.
If confirmed, Dunn also will oversee the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, which approves pesticides for sale. The agency is under fire for registering new uses for dicamba, an herbicide that has been tied to millions of acres of damage on soybeans and other crops.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-region-1-head-alex-dunn-named-to-lead-chemical-safety-office?context=search&query=American%20Chemistry%20Council&startDate&endDate&limit=10&order=PostedDate&offset
-
(ACC Mentioned) Trump Taps EPA Region 1 Chief to Lead Toxics Office
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
President Donald Trump has formally announced his intent to nominate EPA Region 1 chief Alexandra Dunn as the head of the agency's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), tapping the former state and industry representative to lead the office that is overseeing implementation of the revised toxics law.
The White House said the president intends to nominate Dunn, along with a host of other officials, in an Aug. 31 announcement.
“She will use her experience and wealth of knowledge to help EPA faithfully implement the Toxic Substances Control Act [TSCA] and ensure chemicals in the marketplace are safe,” acting EPA chief Andrew Wheeler said in an Aug. 31 statement.
The move, which was first reported by the Washington Post, is a departure from Trump's first nominee for OCSPP. Michael Dourson, a former EPA toxicologist who runs a non-profit risk assessment consulting group, removed his name from consideration last December after both of North Carolina's Republican senators and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) indicated they would not support his nomination.
While EPA's implementation of the revised TSCA has been embroiled in controversy and litigation, Dunn appears likely to win Senate confirmation given support she is already receiving from former Obama administration officials, as well as industry representatives and state officials of both parties.
“She is an excellent choice for this position,” Scott Fulton, who served as EPA's general counsel in the Obama administration, said in a statement distributed by EPA.
“She is a deeply experienced environmental leader and attorney who understands the complexity of regulatory and policy decisions, including those of the office she has been asked to lead,” he said, adding that she is “respected across the environmental community by businesses; federal, state, and local officials; and nongovernmental organizations.”
Dunn has a long career in environmental policy; prior to joining the Trump EPA in late 2017, she served in a variety of positions in state and industry trade associations.
Before being tapped to lead Region 1, Dunn was the executive director and general counsel of the Environmental Council of the States, the group that represents state environmental commissioners.
She has also led the Association of Clean Water Administrators, which represents state water regulators, and worked for the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, which represents wastewater and stormwater utilities, as well as the American Chemistry Council, which represents the chemical industry.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/trump-taps-epa-region-1-chief-lead-toxics-office
-
(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Companies Blast Trump China Tariff Costs
Sep 1, 2018 | Axios
By Zachary Basu
Hundreds of American businesses have testified in hearings hosted by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, hoping to shed light on the damaging effect tariffs on Chinese goods will have on the average American consumer.
The big picture: From "cradles to coffins," the 25% tariffs proposed by the Trump administration on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods will raise prices on a wide range of everyday items. And, many industry representatives argued, they will do little to curb China's unfair trade practices.
The backdrop: The hearings were similar to those hosted by the USTR when it was considering tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, which Trump ultimately chose to implement. But this latest round would affect a far greater cross section of consumer goods.
23% of the U.S. imports that would be subject to this round of tariffs are consumer goods, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Among the hardest-hit would be furniture ($11 billion), chair seats ($10 billion), computers ($8 billion), lamps and lighting parts ($7 billion), and cooking appliances ($3.8 billion).
What they're saying: The six days of hearings consisted mainly of representatives from a range of industries attempting to explain the logic-defying nature of the proposed tariffs, while committee members questioned them on their ability to source products from countries besides China, per World Trade Online.
American Chemistry Council: "Supply chains are not plug-and-play — they cannot easily be reconfigured to meet the whims of U.S. trade policy. Forcing companies to reconfigure their supply chains would threaten the viability of their businesses."
American Bridal Prom Industry Association: “China's dominance as an apparel maker means it will be virtually impossible to avoid importing Chinese made goods entirely...If a 25 percent or greater tariff were to be imposed in the future, the supplier, importer and direct consumer would likely share the higher cost, as retailers would try to pass along most or all the price increase.”
Graco Children's Products Inc: "We're very concerned that imposing these tariffs will force many families to make very difficult trade-offs between over-extending their budget or ensuring the safety of their children."
Quality Bicycle Products Inc.: "If you want to see the latest in bicycle technology, you can go to the Smithsonian Museum, the Air and Space Museum, and see a 1903 Wright Brothers bicycle that is in essence what is being produced in China today. The same technology. There aren’t any semiconductor chips in a bicycle imported from China.”
The bottom line: Per the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Trump administration has attempted to assure Americans that it will resolve trade frictions with China without excessive collateral damage, but it lacks a coherent strategy for those assurances to be of any real comfort.
https://www.axios.com/companies-consumer-costs-china-trump-tariffs-6c183b02-2bfe-48c0-93b0-fc3c19938a86.html
-
(ACC Mentioned) Hundreds Of U.S. Companies Blast Trump’s China Tariffs
Sep 1, 2018 | The Inquisitr
By Damir Mujezinovic
Evidently, a protectionist and a trade hardliner, President Donald Trump has angered hundreds of American businesses. Reports of Trump wanting to ramp up the escalating trade war with China by imposing additional tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports, prompted reaction from U.S. businesses.
Hundreds of American companies have testified in hearings hosted by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Axiosreports.
The 25 percent tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods will not curb China’s unfair trade practices, they will only hurt the American consumer by raising prices on a wide variety of everyday items, industry representatives and businesses argued.
The American Chemistry Council argued that “supply chains are not plug-and-play,” criticizing Trump for reconfiguring U.S. trade policy on a whim.
The American Bridal Prom Industry Association criticized the tariffs from its own perspective, explaining that Chinese dominance as an apparel maker means that “it will be virtually impossible to avoid importing Chinese made goods entirely,” which, in turn, means that Trump’s tariffs on China will only increase costs for American companies, and therefore American consumers.
Quality Bicycle Products Inc slammed Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods, in a statement which perhaps best illustrates the bizarre, and, as Axios put it, “logic-defying” nature of Trump tariffs.
Graco Children’s Products Inc also expressed concern, claiming that Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports will force American families to make “difficult trade-offs,” in an effort to balance between protecting their children, and staying within their household budgets.
As Axios noted, the hearings were eerily similar to previous hearings hosted by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative when the Trump administration threatened to impose tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods. Those hearings were held to no avail since the administration ultimately decided to impose the tariffs.
It is not only American businesses that are dissatisfied with Donald Trump’s protectionist stances.
Just yesterday, NAFTA negotiations between Canada and the U.S. fell through, in part thanks to Trump’s off-the-record comments and uncompromising attitude. This prompted some Canadian officials to react.
“We have here, a president who in his public utterances is completely disconnected from the truth,” Canada’s former ambassador for trade negotiations, remarked to NPR.
Canada is not the only U.S. ally Trump has distanced himself from. On July 24, Trump proposed via Twitter that both the U.S. and the EU drop all tariffs.
“Hope they do it, we are ready – but they won’t!,” Trump wrote.
But, the EU did just that. A few weeks later, the president’s bluff was called. As CNBC reported, the European Union offered to eliminate all tariffs, but the POTUS rejected the offer.
https://www.inquisitr.com/5053487/hundreds-of-u-s-companies-blast-trumps-china-tariffs/
-
(ACC Mentioned) Action on Plastics May Be Blessing
Sep 2, 2018 | Altoona Mirror
By William Kibler
Decisions by China and other Asian countries to stop accepting “miscellaneous” plastics for recycling ultimately could be a blessing, a chemistry industry leader said.
Earlier this year the Asian nations stopped importing U.S. plastic for recycling, which created a backlog of No. 3-7 plastics and decisions to effectively put those materials into landfills.
The Intermunicipal Relations Committee in Blair County is among those that have stopped taking those materials, and it recently led IRC Executive Director John Frederick to condemn the U.S. plastics industry for having failed to create a domestic infrastructure that could handle them.
“They dropped the ball,” Frederick said.
In response, an industry spokesman conceded recently that the current situation is untenable.
“Clearly, China has thrown a wrench into the works,” said Keith Christman, managing director of plastics markets for the American Chemistry Council.
Nevertheless, China’s action could ultimately be a blessing, Christman said.
“It’s a short-term disruption, but it’s also an opportunity,” Christman said. “I think the China action will spur innovation.”
The domestic recycling of miscellaneous plastics may be nowhere close to where it needs to be now, but it has been growing, according to Christman.
The recycling of “non-bottle rigid” plastics increased more than four-fold in the decade before 2016, reaching 1.5 billion pounds, according to Christman.
Plastic film recycling doubled in a little more than a decade after 2005, reaching 1.3 billion pounds, he said.
“There has been dramatic growth,” he stated.
The goal is to recover 100 percent of plastic packaging by 2040, Christman said.
“(But) there’s a lot of work to be done,” he said.
Cooperation vital
It will take participation by consumers, government and industry; the creation of new technologies; and the creation of additional markets, he said.
His organization is working with communities and groups like the Recycling Partnership, which has donated recycling carts to 29 million households, he said.
It has a memorandum of understanding with the Environmental Protection Agency on the recycling of polyethylene film, the material comprising grocery bags, so shoppers can bring them back to 20,000 stores, he said.
The goal is to double the amount of film recycled yet again, he said.
The material can be made into plastic decking, he said.
Investments are being made by packaging firms, in partnership with major brands, according to Allyson Wilson, spokeswoman for the Chemistry Council.
Promising technologies include conversion of manufactured plastics back to their constituent materials, allowing for the re-creation of the original products, according to Christman.
A company called Agilyx does that with polystyrene, he said.
Another promising technology involves recycling mixed plastics into the equivalent of crude oil, which can be converted into new plastic products or fuel, according to Christman.
Yet another involves development of compatibilizers, chemicals that enable otherwise incompatible materials to be processed together, Christman said.
That could be especially useful eventually for handling the increasing amount of “multi-layer”packaging, which can include a layer of polyethylene and a layer of nylon, as described by Wilson.
Proper sorting key
Generally speaking, for now, recycling streams require good quality material sorted well so that high-quality products can result, according to Christman.
Breakthroughs are needed so the processes make economic sense, Christman said.
Consumer confusion has been a hindrance, according to Joanne Shafer, deputy executive director and recycling coordinator for the Centre County Recycling & Refuse Authority.
Among its causes is the incompatibility of materials that seem compatible.
Rigid kitty litter buckets and flexible milk jugs are both No. 2 HDPE, but the buckets are injection molded, while the jugs are blow molded, resulting in differences in the length of the polymer chains, which in turn results in differences in the melt index, making them incompatible for recycling together, Shafer said.
Similarly, No. 3 PVC looks like No. 1 PET, but if PVC is mixed with PET and the PET is remanufactured for carpeting, the PVC creates black streaks that can’t be dyed properly, Shafer said.
Yet there are instances where seemingly incompatible materials are OK together, she said.
It’s not a problem to recycle paperclips with office paper because the metal is skimmed out during remanufacturing, Shafer said.
And yet it’s problematic to leave plastic report covers in with that same office paper because the “plastic gums up the works,” Shafer said.
Despite its problems with Nos. 3-7, the plastics industry has done well with No. 1 and 2 bottles, according to Frederick.
Early on, the industry focused on where it could do the most good quickly, Wilson said. No. 1 PET was an initial success because it was a “no-brainer,” easy to convert to polyester for carpet, fleece and yoga pants, Wilson said. “It was a highly valued resin,”she said.
The markets for other resins have been slower to develop, Wilson said.
Despite slow progress on recycling the miscellaneous plastics, the industry has made nice advances in a recycling-related matter — “source reduction,” or cutting back on the quantity of material used in packaging, Wilson said.
Centre still takes miscellaneous plastics
Unlike the IRC, the Centre County Recycling & Refuse Authority is still taking miscellaneous plastics — in six dropoff locations, according to Joanne Shafer, the agency’s deputy director and recycling coordinator.
The Centre County authority has enough leverage to get those miscellaneous plastics recycled, but it can no longer earn revenue on them, and it is only taking them now as a community service and “labor of love,” Shafer said.
The authority has added a few restrictions. Those include no longer accepting plastic containers for flower sets, she said.
China is blocking miscellaneous plastic in the hopes of creating its own domestic market and because of rampant contamination of shipments from the West has inspired recycling officials here to take a sterner tone with sloppy thinking by those who believe in the cause.
People need to keep in mind that the materials they recycle become feedstock for manufacturing, Shafer said.
“If what you send to manufacturers is contaminated, it’s a wasted effort,” Shafer said. “You have to make new products out of what you recycle or recycling won’t fulfill its promise.”
Wishcycing hurts
“Wishcycling” — putting materials into bins that one feels ought to be recycled, and figuring that someone will pull it out if it’s not — is unacceptable, Shafer said.
An example in her experience was the placement of a wading pool at one of the Centre dropoff sites, she said.
It may have been well-meaning, but “it’s hurting rather than helping,” she said. “We would consider that illegal dumping.”
“When it doubt, throw it out,” her authority states in the final line of its latest handout regarding “miscellaneous plastics.”
The authority accepts those plastics at the following locations: the authority’s main site, 253 Transfer Road, Bellefonte; between the Patton Township Fire Station at 2598 Green Tech Drive and the ClearWater Conservancy; at Burger King, 901 E. Bishop St., Bellefonte; at Hamilton Square Shopping Center, 244 W. Hamilton Ave., State College; at Snappy’s Convenience Store, 2892 Earlystown Road, Centre Hall; and at the Rush Township Building, 150 Richard St., Philipsburg.
Those locations can serve Blair County residents. But no one should take an 80-mile round trip to recycle a few pounds of plastic, she and Frederick said.
If a bin is full where you go, take your stuff to another designated location, Shafer advised.
One unexpected consequence of the IRC no longer accepting miscellaneous plastics at its Buckhorn composting facility is the presence of more junk along nearby roads, said Bob Chirdon, who lives on Wopsononock Mountain and periodically collects such waste with his wife.
Before the China shutoff, Chirdon recycled his miscellaneous plastics at the Buckhorn.
He’s disappointed that he can no longer take them there.
“Something needs to be done,” he said. “We have an obligation to take care of our planet.”
http://www.altoonamirror.com/news/local-news/2018/09/action-on-plastics-may-be-blessing/
-
EPA’s Scientific Integrity Draws Internal Watchdog’s Attention
Aug 31, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
The EPA’s scientific integrity and policies for reporting violations could become the subject of an internal watchdog’s investigation as the agency proposes sweeping changes to its approach to science in rulemaking.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Inspector General announced Aug. 31 it would start reviewing the process employees and contractors use to report violations of scientific integrity, focusing on barriers for whistleblowers and employees’ concerns.
Under the agency’s policy, employees at all levels must ensure the EPA’s scientific work is free from political interference and personal motivations.
The inspector general’s “preliminary research” into the policy’s implementation doesn’t necessarily mean an investigation.
Limits on StudiesThe agency has recently proposed changes to how it addresses scientific research by limiting the types of studies that qualify for agency consideration during the rulemaking process. If finalized, the proposed rule (RIN:2080-AA14) could change how the EPA justifies its regulations and sets enforceable standards for pollutants.
The proposed rule, and the agency’s scientific integrity policy, are meant to promote transparency in the EPA’s interactions with the public.
Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in Silver Spring, Md., has been a critic of the policy for years.
“Since we see the policy as useless, not sure how an [inspector general’s] preliminary review could hurt,” Ruch told Bloomberg Environment in an email. Ruch’s organization represents EPA employees as well as other federal, state, and local government employees focusing on the environment.
EPA employees are required to follow the agency’s scientific integrity policy for a wide range of activities, including communicating information about the agency’s scientific activities, using scientific information to make agency policy or management decisions.
The project was “self-initiated,” meaning it was not suggested by people outside the inspector general’s office, Kentia Elbaum, a spokeswoman for the inspector general, told Bloomberg Environment.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epas-scientific-integrity-draws-internal-watchdogs-attention-1?context=landing&limit=30&tab=news
-
What a New Head of EPA’s TSCA Office Will Face and Need to Do
Aug 31, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
News reports today indicate that the President is nominating Alexandra Dapolito Dunn for Assistant Administrator of EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, which implements the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
Here is our first take on what she will be facing and need to do, if confirmed:
The major reforms Congress made to TSCA in 2016 passed with strong bipartisan support because they struck a careful balance among competing interests. Since that time, however, every aspect of the law’s implementation by the Trump Administration has gone badly off the rails, skewed heavily in the chemical industry’s favor at the expense of the public’s health.
In EDF’s view, any credible nominee for the OCSPP Assistant Administrator needs to understand and acknowledge this stark imbalance and take steps to address it. The AA should be able and willing to facilitate a fundamental shift in TSCA implementation back to a course that comports with the law, reflects strong science, and is protective of public and worker health, including that of vulnerable subpopulations.
If she is confirmed, Ms. Dunn will have her work cut out for her, given the forces arrayed within and outside the agency that have led to the current imbalance. That is a challenge that will need to be faced head-on.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2018/08/31/what-a-new-head-of-epas-tsca-office-will-face-and-need-to-do/
-
NRDC Drops TSCA Suit But Vows 'Heightened Vigilance' On New Chemicals
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Environmentalists have dropped their suit over EPA's draft framework for reviewing new chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) after a top official said it has not been implemented as planned, but the groups are still pledging “heightened vigilance” of administration and industry efforts to scale back oversight of the substances.
In an Aug. 29 blog, attorneys with Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Safer Chemicals Healthy Families (SCHF) warn that they plan to closely scrutinize a process EPA appears to have adopted to replace the draft framework.
“The persistence of the chemical industry and the Trump administration in trying to dismantle the new protections under TSCA requires heightened vigilance,” they write.
“We’re now withdrawing our case because, despite the statements of agency officials last December, EPA has not in fact gone ahead with the Framework and seems unlikely to do so,” they write. “As a result, the [new chemicals] program has dodged a bullet that would have had destructive consequences for public health.”
`“While EPA’s announced decision to back off of the Framework is good news, it does not ensure that EPA is following the law’s requirements, or that the public is being protected from the introduction of new chemicals of concern into the marketplace.”
Their comments came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit agreed to their request to dismiss their suit against EPA's draft framework for reviewing new chemicals.
In an Aug. 29 order, the court granted NRDC's request to voluntarily dismiss its suit, NRDC v. EPA, with each party bearing its own costs.
The draft framework at issue -- which EPA said it would implement even before it was final -- was intended to speed EPA reviews of new chemicals as the agency struggled with a backlog of substances seeking approval.
But NRDC sued over the framework last January, arguing that it inappropriately narrows the scope of new chemical reviews to only the intended uses of a new chemical. The group charged it was unlawful because it allowed the agency to proceed directly from premanufacture notices (PMNs) to issuing significant new use rules (SNURs) -- without taking the interim step of issuing an enforcement order -- to address any unreasonable risks the new chemical's uses might pose if unaddressed.
While EPA responded in part by challenging NRDC's standing to sue over a non-final guidance document, industry and other attorneys have long said the challenge nevertheless dissuaded the agency from following the novel process spelled out in the draft framework.
“The goal is not to get a decision on the merits but to signal to EPA not to issue one-step SNURs and that is what has occurred at EPA,” Herb Estreicher, a partner with the law firm Keller and Heckman, said earlier this year.
In an Aug. 27 brief, NRDC asked the court to drop the case, citing a declaration from a top EPA toxics official who said that the agency has not implemented the draft framework.
The request appears to mark a strategic decision for the groups, allowing them to withdraw the suit before any adverse procedural decision, while nevertheless succeeding in forcing the agency to admit that the draft framework has not been used to approve any chemicals despite officials' indications that it would be.
New Approach
While the agency has been struggling to develop a process for how it will review new chemicals, it recently signaled that it may have adopted a new process to replace the draft framework.
According to several sources, EPA's July 30 approval of a new chemical that took a narrow view of the substance's “reasonably foreseen uses” that the agency is required to consider may provide a sign of how the agency may proceed, though industry groups are urging the agency to document its plans.
The agency may have applied its new approach in its approval of a chemical polymer, known as Oxirane, 2-methyl-, polymer with oxirane, bis[2-[(1-oxo-2-propen-1-yl)amino]propyl] ether, for use as a deodorizer in products, including cat litter and fabric sprays, though the product may pose human health and environmental hazards.
But environmentalists warn in their blog that such new approaches are inadequate and are pledging close oversight.
NRDC's Daniel Rosenberg and SCHF counsel Bob Sussman write in their Aug. 29 blog that while they may have dropped their suit over the framework, they plan to continue watching how the agency implements the program.
They said they are “not celebrating” the abandonment of the framework because “the chemical industry still has the PMN program in its sights, and the Trump administration hasn’t given up on finding ways to cut corners on the review and regulation of new chemicals. There are troubling signs that EPA is now employing new, hard-to-track strategies for allowing new chemicals raising health or environmental concerns to slip through the section 5 safety net.
There are troubling indications that EPA is still trying to achieve the goal of the Framework -- to curtail the use of [enforcement] orders -- by other means. Even more disturbing, recent reports suggest that EPA’s career staff are being instructed orally on how to implement the new program, to avoid putting any instructions in writing.”
Rosenberg and Sussman also point to EPA's July 30 “eyebrow-raising” finding that the new polymer officials approved is not likely to present an unreasonable risk.
They argue that among other issues, the public documentation regarding the substance's PMN decisionmaking “failed to identify any 'reasonably foreseen' uses of the polymer. This marks a departure from previous determinations (which identify reasonably foreseen uses in almost all cases) and suggests that EPA may be setting a higher -- and illegal -- bar for classifying future uses as reasonably foreseen.”
They argue that their concerns are supported by a footnote in EPA's decision document discussing how EPA defines a PMN's conditions of use and foreseeable uses. They interpret the footnote as indicating “EPA now seeks to redefine 'reasonably foreseen' as 'highly likely' (a standard that would be impossible to meet given the inherent uncertainty in predicting how a chemical will be used in the future). A definition of reasonably foreseen as 'highly likely' is inconsistent with the letter and intent of the revised TSCA and would be vulnerable to legal challenge.”
Further, they argue that the PMN “polymer is part of two chemical classes known by EPA to have serious adverse health effects and EPA’s determination recognized its potential to cause 'mutagenicity, developmental/reproductive toxicity, neurotoxicity, and carcinogenicity.' In its determination, EPA assumed that the polymer would only be present in consumer products at levels of 2 [percent] or below but provided no assurance that the PMN submitter or other companies would not increase its concentration to higher levels and placed no limit on the types of products in which the chemical might be used.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/nrdc-drops-tsca-suit-vows-heightened-vigilance-new-chemicals
-
EPA Releases Proposed New Rules for TSCA Asbestos Review
Aug 31, 2018 | GlobeSt.com
By Thomas Rubino
What is Asbestos?
Asbestos is a mineral fiber that occurs naturally in rock and soil. It is a strong and fireproof silicate-mineral fiber that can become brittle (‘friable’) with age and, as a result, pollutes air and water. Extremely fine particles can become airborne and pose a threat to human health and safety. Serious illnesses such as ‘asbestosis’ and mesothelioma are examples of the types of illnesses caused by this known carcinogen. Asbestos is found in many building materials, such as acoustic ceiling tiles, insulation, patching compounds, roofing shingles, texture paints, glues, mastics, and vinyl flooring.
How Can People Become Exposed?
When asbestos containing building materials (ACM) become friable by disturbance or damage, asbestos fibers can be released in the air which can then be inhaled by construction workers or building occupants. The majority of exposure during occurs in buildings where renovations or demolition activities disturb ACM. Because of this, and the fact that certain asbestos products are still being manufactured to this day, an Asbestos Survey is commonly required prior to any building renovation or demolition. Performing an asbestos survey ensures that if asbestos is present it will not be released into the environment, where it can be cause for concern. An asbestos survey is essential measure for any commercial real estate transactions or financing.
What is the Significant New Use Rule (SNUR)?
In June 2018, the EPA proposed the Significant New Use Rule (SNUR) for asbestos as defined under the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act. The new rule would require importers and manufactures to receive EPA approval before starting or resuming importing, processing, or starting and resuming manufacturing asbestos. The intended purpose of the SNUR is to provide the EPA with a review process to evaluate the intended use of asbestos, which would intern give them the ability to limit or prohibit the use.
Currently, new uses of asbestos are banned as part of a greater effort to phase out asbestos. This new rule would change that. It is worth noting that all currently banned uses of asbestos would remain banned. Nearly 60 countries have completely banned the use of all asbestos, however the US isn’t one of them.
Although the EPA claims that the SNUR will be strengthening asbestos regulations, many critics believe this rule could increase the amount of building materials that contain asbestos being installed in buildings in the future. The EPA also released new framework on how it evaluates chemical risk. Not included in the evaluation process are the potential effects of exposure to chemicals in the air, ground or water. Legacy uses, associated disposals, and legacy disposals will also be excluded. That means the federal government will no longer study exposure to asbestos from, insulation, fireproofing and flooring already in people’s homes, cars, workplace, and schools. Asbestos will be one of the first 10 chemicals evaluated.
What Could This Mean For Building Owners?
As new building materials containing asbestos could be introduced, the cost of asbestos management services may increase. More asbestos means more abatement and more abatement means higher abatement and oversight costs. Building owners should be particularly aware of the materials that are being brought in for new construction. Construction Risk Management is recommended during construction projects to oversee what materials (and what they’re made of) are being installed in their building(s). Vigilant management and inspection of new building materials may prove to be the key to avoiding an increase in asbestos management, abatement, and monitoring costs.
https://www.globest.com/2018/08/31/epa-releases-proposed-new-rules-for-tsca-asbestos-review/?slreturn=20180803070058
-
Sep 3, 2018 | Legal Newsline
By Noddy A. Fernandez
A nonprofit organization based in Wilmington, North Carolina alleges a facility in the state is discharging substances without authorization.
Cape Fear River Watch filed a complaint on Aug. 29 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina Southern Division against Chemours Co. FC LLC over alleged violation of the Clean Water Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act.
According to the complaint, the plaintiff alleges the defendant's Fayetteville Works Facility, which is located southeast of Fayetteville, North Carolina, has contaminated air, water and groundwater for almost four decades. It alleges the facility has released "hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances" in the groundwater of Fayetteville and the Cape Fear River, the suit states.
The plaintiff claims the alleged widespread pollution has caused to affect the drinking water supply for more than 250,000 residents in North Carolina.
The plaintiff holds Chemours Co. FC LLC responsible because the defendant allegedly failed to maintain the integrity of its storm water and wastewater systems so that the company achieves compliance with the conditions of its National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit.
The plaintiff requests a trial by jury and seeks preliminary and permanent injunctive relief, award reasonable fees, costs, and expenses, including attorneys’ fees and such further and additional relief as the court may deem just and proper. It is represented by Geoffrey R. Gisler and Jean Zhuang of Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina Southern Division case number 7:18-cv-00159-D
https://legalnewsline.com/stories/511552973-nonprofit-alleges-chemours-facility-in-north-carolina-is-discharging-toxic-substances-in-groundwater
-
Chemical Shortage Could Disrupt Global Supply Chains
Aug 31, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
A shortage of a widely used chemical could disrupt the global supply chain for disinfectants, inks, household goods, and many other products, according to a multinational chemical and biotechnology company.
A global shortage exists of a chemical used to make an important preservative called 1,2-benzisothiazol-3(2H)-one, or BIT, Stephanie Lee, communications manager for a division of Lonza, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, told Bloomberg Environment Aug. 31. The shortage is affecting all BIT manufacturers, she said.
The shortage apparently stems from trouble sourcing from China an essential ingredient used to make BIT.
The preservative helps prevent microbial and bacterial growth and is found in hundreds of products, including air fresheners, floor polishes, carpet cleaners, dish soaps, laundry detergents, disinfectants, and pesticides.
The Dow Chemical Co., Lonza’s Arch Chemicals Inc., and Thor GMBH are among the U.S. manufacturers that make or use BIT, according to the agency’s Pesticide Product Label System.
Lonza and Thor also have registered it under the European Union’s REACH chemical regulation law.
Products that use or previously used BIT include Procter & Gamble Co.’s Downy Fabric Softener and several Mr. Clean products, ink cartridges made by Brother International Corp., and Seventh Generation’s dishwasher gel.
If BIT supplies remain scarce, then manufacturers may have to find substitute preservatives, retest their products to check the performance of new formulations, and seek regulatory approval for label changes to disinfectants and pesticides, Steven Bennett, a senior vice president at the Household & Commercial Products Association, told Bloomberg Environment Aug. 31.
Business ImplicationsThe association has alerted its members and the Environmental Protection Agency about the potential short- or long-term BIT shortage, according to Bennett.
“With any substitution or reformulation, the manufacturer will ensure that the efficacy of the product is up to both their and the EPA’s standards. In some cases, additional testing may be required to meet agency requirements,” he said.
The association also told the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs about the shortage, so it would realize that it could face a flood of company requests to approve new labels for disinfectants and pesticides, Bennett said.
Companies that participate in the EPA’s voluntary Safer Choice labeling program, which recognizes detergents, surface cleaners, pet care, and other products made with ingredients that meet strict, protective environmental and health criteria, also could be affected, he said.
BIT is one of the few preservatives approved for use in products that can carry the EPA’s Safer Choice label, he said.
If Safer Choice products are reformulated, they too would have to be retested to ensure the new formulation meets the program’s criteria.
Chinese SuppliersAn Aug. 29 Household & Commercial Products Association email to members alerted them that the BIT shortage apparently stemmed from disruption of a chemical used to make the preservative.
“As we understand the situation, a precursor chemical, ο-nitrochlorobenzene, essential to the manufacture of BIT products, is sourced almost exclusively from China, Stephen Caldeira, president and chief executive officer of the association, said in the email.
“As part of a random facility inspection process, the Chinese government has recently shut down key production facilities of this precursor for an extended and unknown period,” Caldeira wrote.
The disruption isn’t directly related to the tariff issue that many product manufacturers are facing, but it is a trade-related challenge, he said.
The association plans to contact the Department of Commerce and the State Department to ask that they “respectfully encourage the Chinese government to be expeditious in bringing this matter to a quick resolution,” the association told Bloomberg Environment.https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/chemical-shortage-could-disrupt-global-supply-chains-1?context=landing&limit=30&tab=news
-
EPA Unveils Final Analysis Of RDX, First IRIS Assessment of Trump Era
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
After months of delays, EPA has published its final Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment of Royal Demolition Explosive (RDX), a munitions chemical present at many military sites, the first such analysis released since the Trump administration took office and launched a review of the agency's premiere hazard assessment program.
EPA announced Aug. 30 that it has finalized the IRIS assessment of the human health risks of exposure to hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine, also known as RDX, updating IRIS' original assessment of the chemical published in 1993. The final report concludes a process that took more than five years.
The final assessment adopted risk values slightly less stringent than what the agency had last adopted in 1993. The values generally track with the current values as well as those EPA proposed, though the agency did not appear to respond to advice from its science advisers to strengthen its non-cancer values to account for additional neurotoxic effects that the draft had not addressed.
As such, the agency rejected early concerns from the Department of Defense (DOD) which had sought to weakenthe toxicity levels.
RDX is a convulsant that causes neurological impairment and shows suggested evidence of liver and lung cancer.
EPA's completion of the assessment will now provide risk values that regulators can use to set clean up standards at a host of military sites. The chemical is of concern because it is an explosive used in more than 4,000 military applications such as munitions, and the chemical and its derivatives "have been detected in groundwater samples collected at various US military sites," military researchers have said.
According to an EPA fact sheet, RDX is commonly found at hand grenade ranges, antitank rocket ranges, bombing ranges, munitions testing sites, explosives washout lagoons, and open burn/open detonation sites.
DOD has labeled RDX an emerging contaminant -- a chemical it is monitoring because its potential future regulation could result in new worker protection and cleanup standards, among other impacts. RDX is also on EPA's drinking water Contaminant Candidate List -- the list of unregulated contaminants that may require a future drinking water regulation.
And EPA has also listed RDX in its list of substances it plans to screen for potential endocrine disrupting effects, despite objections from military officials.
The final assessment's release comes as something of a surprise, given acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler's direction to IRIS program leaders to review the program overall and its agenda of chemicals, with a specific eye to each chemical's regulatory need.
“We need to know what the end result of the product will be, and what the regulatory process” is ... “for all the IRIS assessments,” Wheeler said, adding that the 2016 reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) “is supposed to be the state of the art on risk assessments and I want to make sure that we understand how IRIS fits into that.”
But Wheeler said there was no time frame for the requested review, and just last week, the IRIS program postponed at the last minute a scheduled webinar on the early planning document for its pending assessment of napthalene, further raising concern about IRIS' status.
Risk Values
The IRIS assessment set a reference dose (RfD), or the greatest amount of the chemical that EPA estimates could be consumed daily without adverse noncancer effect, of 4 x 10^-3 milligrams per kilogram bodyweight per day (mg/kg-day). The final RfD is nearly the same as what EPA proposed in its draft report last year of 3x10^-3 mg/kg-day, which maintained the 1993 standard.
This conclusion is a little surprising, given that EPA's Science Advisory Board recommended some changes to how EPA approached modeling of the risk and the use of uncertainty factors expected to make the RfD somewhat stricter. SAB agreed with the study of convulsions in rats exposed to RDX that EPA proposed for using in its RfD calculations, but sought changes to address the limited data on neurotoxic affects other than convulsions.
During the SAB panel's peer review meeting in December 2016, one of the panelists, Alan Stern, chief of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's Bureau for Risk Analysis, estimated a new RfD based on the panel's proposed changes of 2x10^-3 mg/kg-day, an estimate slightly stricter than EPA's proposal.
But SAB also raised concern that RDX poses other neurological risks not sufficiently discussed in the assessment and for which there is little data to perform dose-response analyses.
The final IRIS assessment also classifies RDX as showing “suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential,” matching its draft conclusion. SAB supported the characterization though some stakeholders argued that the classification should be weakened, and others sought to strengthen it.
SAB also recommended some changes to how EPA calculates the cancer potency estimate. The final report includes a slightly stricter oral slope factor (OSF) of 0.08 per mg/kg-day -- compared to the draft OSF of 0.04 per mg/kg-day.
SAB's report states that it “agrees with the agency's rationale for a quantitative cancer dose-response analysis for RDX and the use of the linear low-dose extrapolation approach, since the mode of action for cancer is unknown. However, the SAB finds that the calculations of the [points of departure] and oral slope factor were not clearly described, and questions whether these are scientifically supported.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-unveils-final-analysis-rdx-first-iris-assessment-trump-era
-
NAS Preparing to Review Arsenic IRIS Planning Documents
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is preparing to review new planning documents for EPA's long-running assessment of the human health risks of exposure to environmental arsenic, an advancement for a key EPA risk analysis program weathering industry and administration efforts to consolidate it with the agency's toxics office.
NAS announced Aug. 31 that it has appointed a new committee “to conduct a study to evaluate the protocol and associated documents” for the EPA Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program's long ongoing assessment of arsenic. “The committee will evaluate the revised scope of the assessment and determine whether the proposed methods are appropriate to synthesize the scientific evidence and develop conclusions,” NAS' task states.
NAS asks for public comment on the 10 members before finalizing the committee, with a 20-day deadline. The provisional committee's chairman is Aaron Barchowsky, a professor in the University of Pittsburgh's environmental and occupational health department. He served on a previous NAS committee assessing earlier draft documents related to the arsenic assessment.
The new committee's website has yet to indicate a first meeting date or to provide any additional documentation.
The announcement came one day after EPA released its final assessment of Royal Demolition Explosive (RDX), a munitions chemical present at many military sites, and the first IRIS assessment to be finalized since the Trump administration took office.
Both the RDX assessment and the NAS review are somewhat surprising given acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler's direction to IRIS program leaders last month to review the program overall and its agenda of chemicals, with a specific eye to each chemical's regulatory need.
“We need to know what the end result of the product will be, and what the regulatory process [is] . . . for all the IRIS assessments,” Wheeler said, adding that the 2016 reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) “is supposed to be the state of the art on risk assessments and I want to make sure that we understand how IRIS fits into that.”
But back in June, before Wheeler's elevation to acting administrator, IRIS' staff leadership told members of EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB) that they intended to release by Sept. 30 new protocol documents for their ongoing assessments of arsenic and hexavalent chromium (Cr6).
The documents represent IRIS staff's efforts to adapt the ongoing assessment to a new systematic review approach -- as recommended by NAS in a critical 2011 review of a draft IRIS assessment of formaldehyde -- being advanced by IRIS' new staff leaders, Tina Bahadori and Kris Thayer. The IRIS program started its re-analysis of arsenic more than a decade ago, but its conservative draft cancer risk estimate led to criticism within the agency, and among other federal agencies, states, industry and Republicans, stalling its completion for years.
Earlier drafts of the assessment have been through two peer review panels -- one by NAS and one by SAB -- in that time, but the assessment will now be reformulated using systematic review, an approach adopted from medical research that seeks to provide a structured and documented process for transparent literature review and evaluation of the body of information.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/nas-preparing-review-arsenic-iris-planning-documents
-
How to Find Chemicals You Didn’t Know Were There
Aug 31, 2018 | Bloomberg BNA
By Adam Allington
The discovery of toxic chemicals in public tap water last year shocked North Carolina residents, but the chemicals might have escaped notice were it not for a recent technological breakthrough.
New methods of “non-targeted analysis” enable the rapid characterization of thousands of previously unknown compounds, such as the discovery of a group of chemicals—known as GenX—released from a Chemours Co. plant into the Cape Fear River.
Recent technical improvements in high resolution mass spectrometry—a main component of non-targeted analysis—have given researchers the ability to detect previously unknown compounds in water, blood, food, or other environmental media, often at parts per billion or parts per trillion concentrations.
A mass spectrometer is a device that is able to weigh molecules and report other information on a compound’s chemical structure.
“It’s really opened up this whole world of unknown chemicals we might have missed before,” according to Susan Richardson, an analytical chemist at the University of South Carolina who focuses on drinking water.
The technology represents a potential game-changer for public health regulators, Richardson told Bloomberg Environment.
“If we didn’t have these new capabilities, I am sure that the state EPA would not have found GenX, without a doubt,” she said.
Booming Diagnostics SectorTraditional public health tools, including targeted analytical chemistry, can be extremely time-consuming and rely on knowing in advance what chemical is being sought. Non-target analyses, in comparison, can also detect compounds that researchers hadn’t known were present.
A new high-resolution mass spectrometer can cost upwards of half a million dollars. And while prices aren’t necessarily decreasing, companies such as Thermo-Fisher Scientific Inc., Shimadzu Corp., and Agilent Technologies Inc. are seeing growing demand for the next generation of those devices.
“We’re seeing a lot of interest from applied markets, like environmental cleanups, food testing, even homeland security,” said Jennifer Gushue, a manager at Agilent Technologies, based in Santa Clara, Calif. “Historically, a lot of work doing food testing had been done in a targeted way, but increasingly institutions want to know, ‘What else is in my sample?’”
Gushue told Bloomberg Environment recent improvements have made instrumentation and software better able to digest the enormous amount of data generated by high-resolution screenings, making non-targeted analysis more useful to a variety of agencies.
Environmental Protection Agency researchers are using the approach to study communities in New Hampshire and New Jerseyto determine exposures to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a broad group of about 3,500 compounds.
The chemicals—used in consumer and industrial nonstick products and firefighting foam—are linked to reproductive and developmental effects, liver and kidney harms, and immunological effects as well as cancer, according to the EPA.
Protecting Public HealthThe number of chemicals detected in surface water is increasing. These range from well-known pollutants and pesticides to pharmaceuticals that evade sewage treatment systems.
One of the major criticisms from environmental watchdogs of the EPA’s hazard assessments is that they rely on the classical targeted approach to look for chemicals already suspected of being present.
“But there are good reasons for that,” said Detlef Knappe, a professor of civil, construction, and environmental engineering at North Carolina State University. “For compliance purposes, we need these well-defined methodologies to be certain we are measuring the right compound at a certain concentration.”
Knappe was part of the team that detected the presence of GenX in the Cape Fear River. He told Bloomberg Environment that nothing is intrinsically wrong with targeted screenings, “but when it comes to the question of, ‘Is my water safe,’ that is something you can’t fully answer with a targeted approach.”
The Southern Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit Aug. 29 against Chemours in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. The suit alleges that Chemours and its parent company, DuPont, knowingly polluted North Carolina’s environment with PFAS compounds in violation of the Clean Water Act and Toxic Substances Control Act.
“Chemours is reviewing the complaint and strongly disagrees with allegations that we are in violation of the laws cited,” Alvenia Scarborough, a company spokeswoman, said in a statement. “Chemours intends to defend itself vigorously against the claim.”
New Approach, New ChallengesWhile increased use of non-targeted screenings can help researchers determine the possible presence of a pollutant, it still takes considerable time and effort to make a positive identification and determine if it poses a threat to human health.
Even getting access to pure samples to calibrate the instrument, and then double- and triple-checking the data, can take months or years.
“It’s a lot of work,” Richardson said. “As you can imagine, oftentimes companies aren’t willing to just hand over these samples.”
These new analytical possibilities also pose new regulatory and legal issues: If, for example, a sample of corn tested for the presence of mycotoxin—a common grain toxin—also detects an illegal pesticide, can authorities take enforcement actions for the latter?
But in the short term, Richardson says non-targeted analysis’ biggest impact has been on moving chemical testing issues into mainstream scientific discussion.
EPA scientists are piloting a multi-phase project to evaluate the ability of non-targeted laboratory methods to consistently and correctly identify unknown chemicals.
The EPA’s Non-Targeted Analysis Collaborative Trial was formed in late 2015 and includes nearly 30 academic, government, and industry groups.
https://www.bna.com/find-chemicals-didnt-n73014482162/
-
It’s Rocket Science: EPA Needs Six More Months to Study Perchlorate
Aug 31, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz
The EPA needs another six months to set new limits on a rocket fuel chemical in drinking water after being inundated with new research, according to an Aug. 30 court filing.
The Environmental Protection Agency has received so much feedback from independent scientists tasked with peer reviewing its models of how the chemical, perchlorate, affects the thyroid, that the agency doesn’t think it can meet an Oct. 31 deadline to adopt regulations.
The agency agreed in 2016 to introduce new binding limits on perchlorate in drinking water this year in response to a lawsuit from the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The chemical is a component of rocket fuel and fireworks that also was used to control static electricity in food packaging. It can cause thyroid problems when consumed and it’s been found in drinking water supplies across the country.
The NRDC has been pushing the EPA to regulate perchlorate in water for years, and said in a blog post that the agency has known it needed to place limits on the chemical since at least 2011.
A 2005 EPA survey of drinking water systems found perchlorate in the water of around 160 different utilities that serve 11 million people in 26 different states and two territories.
NRDC attorneys didn’t respond to emails seeking comment, but the EPA’s brief asking for an extension on its deadline notes that the environmental group doesn’t consent to this extension.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/its-rocket-science-epa-needs-six-more-months-to-study-perchlorate?context=landing&limit=30&tab=news
-
Finland Warns Retailers About High Lead Content in Solders
Aug 31, 2018 | Chemical Watch
Shops and online retailers in Finland are continuing to sell products containing lead to consumers despite a ban being in place since March, the Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency (Tukes) said.
Many shops, it said, are selling solders and soldering racks containing more than 10% lead.
Lead and its compounds are restricted under a 2017 amendment of REACH Annex XVII, which automatically prohibits the placing on the market for the general public any substances classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic or reprotoxic (CMR).
Lead’s new classification as reprotoxic came into force on 1 March – it is banned above concentration limits of 0.03% or 0.3%, depending on the particle size.
Tukes has urged retailers to check labels and safety data sheets for the chemical composition of soldering irons. Lead-acid chemical products should not be sold to consumers. Substitutes, such as tin-silver alloys or various copper alloys, are available, Tukes said.
The agency also warned against the sale of lead-based soldering lenses for hobby activities. It is monitoring compliance with chemicals legislation and notifies companies of any breach.
Lead-containing chemicals intended for professionals should be packaged and labelled as a dangerous chemical, in Finnish and in Swedish, Tukes said.
Additionally, the use of lead is restricted to disposable electrical and electronic equipment under the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS). According to this, items placed on the market before 1 July 2006 may be repaired with lead solder.
In March, the European Commission published amendments to RoHS, including ones for lead in solders.
Lead is also forbidden for use in items that children may put into their mouths. But last year, inspectors from the Swedish chemicals agency, Kemi, uncovered lead in electrical toys, as well as in the soldering of several low-price electrical and electronic products.
https://chemicalwatch.com/70004/finland-warns-retailers-about-high-lead-content-in-solders
-
Norway Finds 'Broad Cocktail' of Environmental Pollutants Around Oslo
Aug 31, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The Norwegian Environment Agency reported "a broad cocktail of pollutants" in an assessment of the terrestrial and urban environment in Norway.
The report is for the fifth year of an ongoing state programme to provide regulatory information at both the national and international level. The programme goals are to:report concentrations of selected environmental pollutants at several trophic levels of a terrestrial food web;compare concentrations of the pollutants across samples and species;evaluate potential trophic magnification with a food chain approach; andidentify how land-living species are exposed to a variety of pollutants.
Scientists at the Norwegian Institutes for Air, Nature and Water Research measured levels for a wide range of contaminants in air, soil and biological samples collected in 2017.
They found high concentrations of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) in earthworms. They concluded that the potential risk for worm eating species, such as the fieldfare - a species of bird - should be further investigated.
They also found high levels of biocides in the livers of red foxes and concluded that the animals might be at risk as a consequence.
https://chemicalwatch.com/70001/norway-finds-broad-cocktail-of-environmental-pollutants-around-oslo
-
The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground
Sep 1, 2018 | New York Times
By Bethany McLean
About 20 years ago, an entrepreneur named George Mitchell proved that it was possible to get lots of oil and gas out of parts of the earth long thought to be sucked dry, by injecting liquid at high pressure into a horizontal well below the surface. About 10 years ago, fracking — the common term for this process — began in earnest.
In that short amount of time, fracking in America has turned the energy world upside down. A decade and a half ago, Congress was hand-wringing about impending shortages of oil and natural gas. By the end of 2015, President Barack Obama lifted the ban against oil exports. Today, America is the world’s largest producer of natural gas and is an oil powerhouse, ready to eclipse both Saudi Arabia and Russia.
This has led to muscular claims about American energy wealth. Erik Norland, executive director of CME Group, a derivatives marketplace, calls fracking “one of the top five things reshaping geopolitics.”
This radical change has resulted in widespread concern about the impact of fracking on the environment, about earthquakes and water contamination. But another, less well-known controversy may prove to be more important.
Some of fracking’s biggest skeptics are on Wall Street. They argue that the industry’s financial foundation is unstable: Frackers haven’t proven that they can make money. “The industry has a very bad history of money going into it and never coming out,” says the hedge fund manager Jim Chanos, who founded one of the world’s largest short-selling hedge funds. The 60 biggest exploration and production firms are not generating enough cash from their operations to cover their operating and capital expenses. In aggregate, from mid-2012 to mid-2017, they had negative free cash flow of $9 billion per quarter.
These companies have survived because, despite the skeptics, plenty of people on Wall Street are willing to keep feeding them capital and taking their fees. From 2001 to 2012, Chesapeake Energy, a pioneering fracking firm, sold $16.4 billion of stock and $15.5 billion of debt, and paid Wall Street more than $1.1 billion in fees, according to Thomson Reuters Deals Intelligence. That’s what was public. In less obvious ways, Chesapeake raised at least another $30 billion by selling assets and doing Enron-esque deals in which the company got what were, in effect, loans repaid with future sales of natural gas.
But Chesapeake bled cash. From 2002 to the end of 2012, Chesapeake never managed to report positive free cash flow, before asset sales.
In early 2015, another famous hedge fund manager, David Einhorn, went public with his skepticism at an investment conference. He had looked at the financial statements of 16 publicly traded exploration and production companies and found that from 2006 to 2014, they had spent $80 billion more than they received from selling oil.
A key reason for the terrible financial results is that fracked oil wells show a steep decline rate: The amount of oil they produce in the second year is drastically smaller than the amount produced in the first year. According to an economist at the Kansas City Federal Reserve, production in the average well in the Bakken — a key area for fracking shale in North Dakota — declines 69 percent in its first year and more than 85 percent in its first three years. A conventional well might decline by 10 percent a year. For fracking operations to keep growing, they need huge investments each year to offset the decline from the previous years’ wells.
Because the industry has such a voracious need for capital, and capital costs money, fracking could not have taken off so dramatically were it not for record low interest rates after the 2008 financial crisis. In other words, the Federal Reserve is responsible for the fracking boom.
Amir Azar, a fellow at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy, calculated that the industry’s net debt in 2015 was $200 billion, a 300 percent increase from 2005. But interest expense increased at half the rate debt did because interest rates kept falling. Dr. Azar recently called the post-2008 era of super-low interest rates the “real catalyst of the shale revolution.”
Fracking is such a fragile industry that it is not hard to make it go bust. Saudi Arabia almost succeeded in doing so in 2014, when oil ministers from OPEC decided that they would not cut production in order to prop up falling oil prices. This was seen as an attempt by the Saudis to kill off shale, by cutting prices below the point where American frackers could afford to produce a barrel. By mid-2016, American oil production had declined by nearly a million barrels a day and some 150 oil and gas companies filed for bankruptcy.
The death of Aubrey McClendon, the former chief executive of Chesapeake, in the spring of 2016 seemed to mark the end of the industry. On March 2, Mr. McClendon died instantly when his car slammed into a concrete bridge on Midwest Boulevard in Oklahoma City. He was speeding, wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and didn’t appear to make any effort to avoid the collision. A day earlier, a federal grand jury had indicted McClendon for violating antitrust laws. (His death was ruled an accident, and prosecutors have since withdrawn the charges, which he denied.)
Mr. McClendon was once listed at No. 134 on the Forbes list of 400 richest Americans, with an estimated net worth of over $3 billion. But because he borrowed so much money and secured business loans with personal guarantees, lawyers were wrangling over claims against his estate two years after his death, including the $465 million loan made by multiple Wall Street firms. Vulture funds descended, buying the debt for less than 50 cents on the dollar, one person who was involved told me.
It wasn’t the end, though. Fracking has been more resilient than anyone, including its proponents, would have dreamed. In its most recent forecast, the Energy Information Administration predicted that United States crude oil production would average almost 10.6 million barrels a day in 2018 and reach 12.1 million barrels a day by 2023.
A big reason for fracking’s resurgence is an area of West Texas and Southeast New Mexico known as the Permian Basin. It wasn’t a secret that there was oil in the Permian, which had its first boom almost a century ago. But oil men thought it was mostly tapped out — until entrepreneurs began to frack there around 2010. Scott Sheffield, the former chief executive of Pioneer Natural Resources, has said that the Permian could hold 75 billion barrels of oil, second only to the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia.
Believers say that technology will dramatically reduce costs of fracking wells, reshaping the financial firmament so that companies can make money, even with low oil prices. According to a 2016 paper by the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, not only are rigs in the Bakken region drilling more wells, but each well is producing more. Extraction from new wells in the area in their first month of production has roughly tripled since 2008. The break-even cost, the estimate of what it costs to get a barrel of oil out of the ground, has plunged.
The best-run companies, which often focus on the Permian, are now making some money. “Their rates of return are still below levels that will sustain the industry in the long run,” says Brian Horey, who runs Aurelian Management, but “they are trending in the right direction.”
And yet only five of the top 20 fracking companies managed to generate more cash than they spent in the first quarter of 2018. If companies were forced to live within the cash flow they produce, American oil would not be a factor in the rest of the world, an investor told me.
It wasn’t just the rediscovery of the Permian that helped restart the oil boom after plunging prices almost killed it. The most important factor is the one that started the boom in the first place. “It came back because Wall Street was there,” Mr. Chanos told me. In 2017, American frackers raised $60 billion in debt, up almost 30 percent since 2016, according to Dealogic.
Interest rates have remained low, helping debt-laden companies afford their borrowing costs. And pension funds, which need high yields to make payouts to retirees, have turned to hedge funds that invest in high-yield debt, like that of energy firms. They are also investing with private equity firms which, in turn, have shoveled money into shale companies.
Private equity funds dedicated to natural resources raised nearly $70 billion of capital in 2015, according to SailingStone Capital Partners, an energy-focused investment firm, and over $100 billion in 2016. Today, 35 percent of all horizontal drilling (the industry’s preferred terminology) is done by privately backed companies.
Private equity titans have made fortunes, but not necessarily because the companies they fund have produced profits. Private equity firms have generated some of their returns by selling one company to another, or taking a company they’ve funded public.
For a long time, the public markets have been valuing fracking companies not based on a multiple of profits, the standard way of valuing a company, but rather according to a multiple of the acreage a company owns. As long as companies are able to sell stock to the public or sell themselves to companies that are already public, everyone in the chain, from the private equity funders to the executives, can continue making money.
It’s all a bit reminiscent of the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, when internet companies were valued on the number of eyeballs they attracted, not on the profits they were likely to make. As long as investors were willing to believe that profits were coming, it all worked — until it didn’t.
These days, the rhetoric of “energy independence,” meaning an America that no longer depends on anyone else for its oil, not even Saudi Arabia or OPEC, is in perfect harmony with “Make America Great Again.” But rhetoric doesn’t produce profits, and most things that are economically unsustainable, from money-losing dot-coms to subprime mortgages, eventually come to a bitter end.
Bethany McLean, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is the author of “Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It’s Changing the World,” from which this essay is adapted.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/opinion/the-next-financial-crisis-lurks-underground.html
-
FERC Looks to Speed up a Dozen Natural Gas Export Approvals
Aug 31, 2018 | Washington Examiner
By John Siciliano
The nation's top energy regulator on Friday moved to expedite approvals for 12 natural gas export terminals, which are a key component of Trump's energy dominance and trade agenda.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission took steps to speed up the environmental review process for a dozen liquefied natural gas export terminal applications pending at the agency.
"These efforts have helped to ensure that FERC will be equipped to process applications in a timely and expedient manner without compromising its statutory obligation to ensure safety and environmental protection," the agency said.
Natural gas exports are the cornerstone of President Trump's "energy dominance" and trade agenda, which calls for creating new markets for America's energy products abroad. The nation recently became a net exporter of natural gas, meaning it exports more natural gas than it imports, thanks to the shale energy boom.
“There is widespread acknowledgment that the United States is poised to play an important role in serving worldwide LNG demand, and its ability to serve that demand quickly will serve the nation’s national security and economic interests," said FERC chairman Kevin McIntyre. "Because sufficient LNG export capacity is a necessary gateway to the global gas markets, the FERC’s efficient processing of LNG facility applications will put the U.S. in a more competitive position.”
There are currently only two LNG export terminals operating in the country, with the first East Coast facility opening last month just north of Washington in Calvert County, Md. Lawmakers have been leaning on FERC and the Department of Energy to find ways to speed up the review process.
Cutting the "red tape" in the LNG export process is the European Union's main request of Trump in a trade deal that calls on Europe to increase its LNG imports. The European Union agreed to increase its imports of the fuel in exchange for normalizing trade relations with the United States.
FERC approves the LNG permits and then sends them to Perry to determine if the exports are in the U.S. national interest, which can sometimes limit exports to European countries. The EU wants Trump to fix this process to allow natural gas to flow to Europe with ease.
“As FERC is the lead siting agency for LNG projects, our responsibility over LNG applications is to assess the environmental effects, safety, and engineering of LNG facilities in a timely manner in accordance with our statutory obligations," McIntyre explained. "Our recent streamlining efforts will provide all LNG stakeholders additional regulatory certainty and help minimize undue administrative burdens.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/ferc-looks-to-speed-up-a-dozen-natural-gas-export-approvals
-
FERC, PHMSA Agree to Speed LNG Processing
Aug 31, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Darius Dixon
FERC announced this afternoon that it had a memorandum of understanding with federal pipeline regulators to help process the stack of more than a dozen applications for liquefied natural gas export terminals.
The four-page agreement aims to better coordinate project siting and safety reviews since FERC decides whether the facilities are built while the Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration sets standards for their design.
FERC announced the effort to craft the MOU at its July monthly meeting amid industry concerns about FERC's ability to process so many LNG export terminals. This summer, McIntyre said FERC had hired third-party contractors for the first time to help with inspections.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
-
(ACC Mentioned) Trump’s War on Worker Safety
Sep 3, 2018 | Politico
By Ian Kullgren
When President Donald Trump came into office pledging to cut regulations “massively,” he made a point of exempting regulations that protected workers’ health.
But almost two years in, the Trump administration has done the opposite, rolling back worker safety protections affecting underground mine safety inspections, offshore oil rigs and line speeds in meat processing plants, among others.
Trump's deregulatory moves on worker safety are at odds with his public stance as a champion of working class Americans, but consistent with his naming two management-side attorneys bent on rolling back economic protections for workers to the National Labor Relations Board, which regulates labor unions, and with his nominations of two reliably pro-management jurists to a now-Republican-majority Supreme Court that recently dealt a heavy financial blow to public-employee unions.
One of those Supreme Court nominees, Brett Kavanaugh, will on Tuesday begin Senate confirmation hearings, where Judiciary Committee Democrats will almost certainly quiz him about dissenting opinions in which he denied undocumented workers had the right to bargain collectively and that San Diego's Sea World bore responsibility for a deadly attack on one of its employees by a killer whale.
“When you look at core worker protections and union rights, the administration and the president have been totally anti-worker,” said Peg Seminario, director of occupational safety and health for the AFL-CIO.
To Trump, rules that protect workers — even rules that protect worker safety — are often a hindrance to boosting employment, especially in traditional industries like manufacturing and coal mining.
Deputy White House press secretary Lindsay Walters said in a written statement that the administration “is committed to protecting health and safety on the job while respecting the right of Americans to make their own decisions. Too often in the past, agencies issued regulations that constricted the freedom of American workers and small business owners to work in the best way.”
At an August campaign rally in Charleston, W.Va., the president said, “We are back. The coal industry is back.” Whether coal mining jobs are on the rebound is a matter of some dispute. But there’s no question that the Trump administration has taken steps to roll back mining safety regulations.
Trump’s mine safety chief, David Zatezalo, is a former coal executive who as recently as 2011 was cited by the agency he now leads for a pattern of safety violations. When Zatezalo was president and CEO at Rhino Resources, a West Virginia miner was killed when a portion of a rock wall collapsed. The accident occurred after Rhino already had been cited for one worker safety violation, and before it received a second.
Zatzelo, at his confirmation hearing, told senators that “the management of that particular group and that particular site was not doing what they should have been doing.”
Under the Obama administration, inspections had to occur before workers began their shifts — to scale away, for instance, loose pieces of rock that might fall on them. But in April, the Zatezalo-led Mine Safety and Health Administration said it would allow inspections to begin while miners were already at work. The change was first proposed two months before Zatezalo was confirmed.
“These additional amendments provide mine operators additional flexibility in managing their safety and health programs and reduces regulatory burdens without reducing the protections afforded miners,” MSHA wrote in the final rule.
In a written statement, a DOL spokeswoman said miners still will be notified of hazards that aren’t corrected promptly (a protection that was in the Obama rule). "MSHA believes that the additional required communication and notification," she said, "will encourage prompt corrective action and help prevent fatalities and other accidents.”
At the Interior Department, administration officials are seeking to roll back regulations on offshore oil rigs — former President Barack Obama’s response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout that killed 11 workers and flooded the Gulf of Mexico with millions of barrels of oil. A proposed rule would rescind the requirement that only government-approved third parties may inspect blowout preventers that seal a well in the event of a pressure surge.
The revisions would also allow rig operators to test equipment less frequently, to prevent “wear and tear.” All told, the changes would save industry more than $900 million over 10 years.
But environmental advocates and southern lawmakers of both parties worry the changes could lead to another deadly spill.
“History itself has demonstrated that the industry can’t be trusted to self-regulate,” said Shanna Devine, a worker health and safety advocate for Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. “That resulted in the same regulation the Trump administration is now trying to roll back.”
At the Agriculture Department, officials are weighing whether to raise line speeds at meat-packing plants, a change that worker advocates say would increase repetitive motion injuries and accidents. According to government data, the injury rates in meatpacking are already higher than in U.S. industries as a whole.
USDA in February proposed lifting line speed requirements in hog processing plants — part of an effort to streamline food safety inspections at the plants, which currently may process no more than 1,100 hogs per hour. Agriculture department officials wrote in the proposal that they seek to remove “unnecessary regulatory obstacles” and cut food safety inspection staff, saving taxpayers $8.7 million. The change would also would free up line inspectors to inspect other areas of the plant, they wrote.
But “common sense would tell you [that] you cannot increase line speeds at a fast, repetitive motion and not expect injuries to go up,” said Mark Lauritsen, director of meat packing and food processing for the United Food and Commercial Workers.
Increased speeds could lead to shoulder, neck, back and wrist injuries, Lauritsen said. In addition, increased line speeds could cause workers to take shortcuts in an environment that’s already dangerous.
“It’s hot, it’s humid, it’s slick, it’s bloody,” he said.
Dan Kovich, director of science and technology for the National Pork Producers Council, the industry’s chief advocacy group, says the proposal will increase line speeds in a way that will be invisible to the naked eye. He noted that the program to raise line speeds began as a pilot program under former President Bill Clinton.
As for the effect on workers, “that’s really outside our area of expertise,” Kovich said.
The Trump administration denied a similar poultry industry petition for unlimited line speed increases this year, but said it would consider applications to raise line speeds from 140 to 175 birds per minute at certain plants.
Poultry workers already face higher injury rates than manufacturing workers overall, worker advocates note. At a plant in Maryland in 2014, government researchers found that more than one-third of workers suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome. Many more don’t report dangerous conditions due to fear of retaliation, according to the Government Accountability Office, making it hard for the government to accurately assess the scope of the problem.
Officials at USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said they worked with the worker safety arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in developing the updated inspection proposals. In addition, they said, plants seeking increases must agree to monitor injuries.
But USDA food safety officials acknowledge that safety wasn’t a top priority. “We don’t regulate worker safety,” acting administrator Paul Kiecker said. “What we regulate at FSIS is the food safety. That’s not to say we are not interested in employee safety. We are definitely interested in that.”
The National Chicken Council, the main advocacy group for the poultry industry, noted that injury rates among workers have fallen over the past two decades.
At the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Trump officials are seeking to loosen reporting requirements for injury and illness data from large companies. A rule proposed in July in would relieve companies with 250 workers or more from a previous obligation to submit detailed injury and illness data, which OSHA had intended to publish online.
“Companies will have an easier time hiding injuries and illnesses,” said Debbie Berkowitz, a former Obama OSHA official and director of worker safety and health for the National Employment Law Project. “This is on top of the fact that OSHA’s presence in the workplace is declining.”
A NELP study released in June found that OSHA enforcement fell from 2017 to 2018, after Trump took office.
Under the proposal, companies still must submit summaries of the data to OSHA for review. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says the proposal should go further, arguing that proprietary information — such as hours and number of workers — could be of value to competitors.
“It leaves a big, glaring weakness exposed,” said Marc Freedman, the Chamber’s vice president of employment policy.
The Labor Department spokeswoman said the proposal “would protect both the safety and the privacy of America’s workers.”
“Injury and illness data must still be reported and posted in individual establishments and will continue to be used for enforcement purposes,” she said in a written statement. “The proposed rule would protect workers’ personally identifiable information and sensitive medical information from Freedom of Information Act inquiries. The proposal would not change the existing requirements for the electronic submission of summaries of work-related injuries and illnesses each year.”
Since Trump took office, OSHA also scrubbed a running list of worker deaths from its home page.
A notable exception to the administration’s resistance to worker-safety regulation was its decision to defend in court an Obama-era rule regulating crystalline silica— a mineral dust long known to cause deadly lung ailments. After some initial delays, the rule took effect for most employers in June.
That action was more in tune with Trump's earlier rhetoric. "We need regulations for safety and environment and things,” President-elect Trump assured workers at an Indianapolis air-conditioner plant in December 2016. “We want to protect our workers,” President Trump repeated one year later in a speech touting the cancellation or delay of 1,500 regulatory actions.
At EPA, Trump officials are working on new rules to limit asbestos exposure as part of a congressionally mandated update to the Toxic Substances Control Act in 2016. On its face, it would seem to be strengthening safety.
But advocates worry that the rules, intended by Congress to limit asbestos, could open the door to new products containing the toxin.
EPA’s significant new use rule, proposed in June, lists 14 uses of asbestos that would trigger scrutiny by EPA. All were used at one time but have been halted by industry voluntarily, said Betsy Southerland, former director of the EPA’s science and technology office.
But the rule doesn’t require every new use of asbestos to be approved by the EPA, though advocates believe Congress gave the agency authority to do so. That means a company conceivably could develop at new use for asbestos and not have to notify the agency, said Southerland, who resigned in 2017.
“You never know what industry is going to come up with,” Southerland said. “They could want to use it to create new chemicals in the future.”
In addition, the EPA’s proposal for evaluating asbestos risks doesn’t consider so-called legacy hazards — for example, particles of asbestos insulation or asbestos tiles that could be inhaled by workers when removed. That means workers could be more highly exposed than the general public if and when the EPA approves new uses.
“What the Trump EPA has done is essentially cooked the books to undervalue the risks posed by asbestos,” said Scott Faber, a top lobbyist for the Environmental Working Group, which has opposed a variety of Trump policies. “You don’t need to be a toxicologist to understand that you can’t determine whether a chemical is safe or not if you don’t understand the whole picture.”
EPA spokeswoman Molly Block noted that the proposal was subject to multiple rounds of public comments.
“Based on that input, the agency is confident that the uses identified in the SNUR constitute the universe of uses that could come back onto the market if someone wanted to reintroduce the use,” Block said in a statement. “Thus the proposed [significant new use rule] is a good complement to the risk evaluation.”
Advocates suspect industry influence may have played a role. Nancy Beck, a deputy assistant administrator the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, previously served as the senior director for regulatory science policy for the American Chemistry Council, a trade group representing the chemical industry. Block noted that Beck, who declined to be interviewed, worked in the EPA under President George W. Bush and in the White House Office of Management and Budget under Bush and Obama.
“The amount of time and energy they put into rolling back this vital worker health and safety protections could have easily been put into implementing existing protections and enacting new rules that are needed,” said Devine, the Public Citizen advocate. “This Labor Day, it’s clear where the administration’s interests lie.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/03/trumps-worker-safety-regulations-protections-unions-806008
-
Court Orders EPA to Immediately Reinstate Chemical Safety Rule as Industry Objects
Aug 31, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today ordered EPA to immediately reinstate an Obama-era chemical safety rule just two weeks after it first struck down the Trump administration’s delay of the requirements.
The unusual order cut short the typical period for any appeal, and industry groups that supported the Trump administration’s delay complained this afternoon that the court had wrongly silenced them.
Courts typically give the losing side at least 45 days to decide whether to appeal before formally issuing an order, known in legal terms as “issuing the mandate.” Environmental and labor groups on Aug. 24 asked the court to more quickly order EPA to reinstate the rule, arguing that giving EPA that full time would mean the rule might not be reinstated until October, further adding to a delay that the court said was unlawful.
The two-judge panel granted that request today in a one-page order that did not explain the decision.
Industry groups that supported delaying the rule — including the American Petroleum Institute, the American Chemistry Council and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers — quickly filed an emergency motion asking the court to reverse its order to EPA. The groups said they were preparing to file a response on Sept. 4, but that the court's Friday order meant they had no "notice or an opportunity to respond."
“The Court should accordingly rescind the Order and recall its mandate to give Industry Intervenors the opportunity to exercise their right to respond,” they wrote.
WHAT’S NEXT: The court must decide whether to recall its order to EPA.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard/2018/08/court-orders-epa-to-immediately-reinstate-chemical-safety-rule-as-industry-objects-1855900
-
D.C. Circuit Grants Novel Bid To Quickly Implement EPA Facility Safety Rule
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has granted a novel request from environmentalists to quickly strike down the Trump EPA's delay on implementing an Obama-era rule tightening facility safety mandates, taking the rare step of finalizing the court's ruling undoing the delay before EPA exhausts its appeal options.
In a pair of Aug. 31 filings a two-judge panel of the court grants the request and issues the mandate in the case, Air Alliance Houston, et al., v. EPA and Andrew Wheeler, a procedural step to finalize its decision.
Environmentalists and community groups in an Aug. 24 filing urged the court to expedite issuance of the mandate after securing a victory in the case challenging the Trump EPA's delay on implementing the Obama-era revisions that tightened the agency's risk management program (RMP) facility accident prevention policy. The groups claimed continued delay in implementing the revised RMP poses risks to millions, and that EPA is unlikely to prevail in any future appeal. The deadline for EPA appealing was slated for around Oct. 8.
Following the court's order, a coalition of industry groups that intervened in the case filed a motion Aug. 31 asking it to rescind the decision and recall the mandate. The coalition argues that the court's decision violates a provision in the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure that sets a 10-day period for responding to petitioners' Aug 24 filing. The groups say the court never gave them notice of the decision to grant the mandate request, violating the 10-day period rule.
The coalition had planned to file a response on Sept. 4 to the initial motion for expedited issuance of the mandate, but the court's decision to grant the request preempted that move, it argues in the motion. The coalition includes the American Chemistry Council, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others.
Shortly after the coalition submitted its filing to the court, EPA separately filed Aug. 31 to tell the court it concurs with the industry groups' arguments. The agency says it also planned to file by Sept. 4 its response that would argue why critics of the delay rule lacked “the required good cause to expedite the issuance of the mandate.”
Several states that intervened in the case on EPA's behalf also filed an Aug. 31 emergency motion asking the court to reconsider its decision, making the same 10-day argument as the industry coalition's filing. The states are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Environmentalists' request for swift issuance of the mandate followed the court's Aug. 17 ruling that vacated a rule issued by former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt that had delayed until March 19, 2019, implementation of the Obama-era RMP changes. Pruitt said he needed the extra time to determine whether to undo the revisions.
Critics challenged the delay rule as unlawful, saying it was procedurally flawed. A two-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit agreed, vacating the delay rule but not immediately issuing its mandate in the case. Judge Brett Kavanaugh and two other judges heard oral argument in the case, but Kavanaugh did not participate in the ruling while his nomination to be the next Supreme Court justice is pending in the Senate.
Following the ruling, the environmentalist and community group petitioners urged the court to take the rare step of expediting the mandate in order to force implementation of the Obama-era RMP revisions that the groups say will help to prevent accidents and improve safety.
“Petitioners submit that there is no basis for any further delay of the Chemical Disaster Rule’s effectiveness and that because such delay causes and threatens severe and irreparable harm to Petitioners and their members or residents, expedited issuance of the mandate is warranted,” the groups said in their Aug. 24 request.
The groups noted that the two-judge panel of the court already granted the petitioners' request for expedited hearing of their lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's delay of the January 2017 rule that updated the agency's RMP program with new requirements, and they contended the arrival of hurricane season makes implementation of the Obama-era rule all the more necessary.
The groups also said that EPA lacked an adequate basis to prevail on a petition for rehearing, noting that the judge's ruling found that the Trump administration's delay rule was unlawful.
“If any such petition is filed before the deadline, Petitioners respectfully submit that it would not provide any valid basis to delay issuance of the mandate, as there are no grounds for the Court to grant panel or en banc rehearing,” petitioners said. “In a well-reasoned decision based on the agency record, the Court held that EPA violated the plain language of the Clean Air Act and that EPA’s action was also arbitrary and capricious,” the groups added.
In arguing that the start of hurricane season makes the Obama-era rule more necessary, the groups noted that EPA's Office of Inspector General is investigating whether the agency's emergency response provisions are adequate after releases occurred last summer as a result of flooding from Hurricane Harvey. “Time is of the essence because hurricane season has begun in the Gulf, so the threat is even greater now for communities near the highly concentrated oil refineries and chemical facilities in that region,” petitioners said.
“Hurricane Harvey showed that communities that regularly face hurricanes and other natural disasters have a particularly strong need for the Chemical Disaster Rule to be in effect without further delay,” they added.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/dc-circuit-grants-novel-bid-quickly-implement-epa-facility-safety-rule
-
A Year After an Environmental Disaster in Texas, Chemical Company Faces a Reckoning
Sep 1, 2018 | Mother Jones
By Dan Spinelli
Hurricane Harvey struck southeast Texas last August with 130 mph winds and dumped more than 50 inches of rain across the region. In the aftermath of the second-costliest storm in recent American history, a Category 4 nightmare that left at least 88 Texans dead and forced thousands to flee into shelters, government agencies have finally begun reckoning with Harvey’s environmental cost. The storm contributed to the release of more than 8 million pounds of air pollution and more than 150 million gallons of wastewater.
Arguably no city was hit harder by the environmental devastation during the storm than Crosby, a 2.26-square-mile satellite of Houston with fewer than 3,000 residents. Chemicals left in refrigeration trailers at a plant owned by the multinational chemical manufacturer Arkema Inc. in the northeast part of town caught fire on August 31 and September 1, sending toxic clouds of smoke billowing into the air. More than 200 neighbors evacuated their homes, and 21 first responders sought medical treatment for the nausea, vomiting, and dizziness they experienced after exposure to the chemicals.
Along with hundreds of residents, those first responders have sued Arkema in a pair of class-action lawsuits for negligence, charging that the company did not properly safeguard its chemicals or inform the community of the “unreasonably dangerous condition” created by their release. Harris and Liberty counties have separately sued the company. Arkema has fiercely denied any wrongdoing, but now, a year after the disaster, its leaders may have more to worry about than fronting a huge payday for disgruntled residents.
On August 3, a Harris County grand jury indicted the company’s chief executive, Richard Rowe, and the Crosby plant’s manager, Leslie Comardelle, for “recklessly” releasing chemicals into the air and putting residents and emergency workers at risk. “Companies don’t make decisions, people do,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement. “Responsibility for pursuing profit over the health of innocent people rests with the leadership of Arkema.”
“These criminal charges are astonishing,” Arkema responded in a statement. “At the end of its eight-month investigation, the Chemical Safety Board noted that Hurricane Harvey was the most significant rainfall event in U.S. history, an Act of God that never before has been seen in this country.”
The series of fires at Arkema’s plant were far from the only environmental disasters to hit southeast Texas in Harvey’s wake. Matt Tresaugue, who studies air quality issues at the Environmental Defense Fund, says Arkema barely even cracked his top-10 list. More serious, he argued, was the cumulative impact of several lesser-known incidents across the region. But fairly or not, Arkema remains, for many people, the most public example of executive malfeasance in the face of environmental calamity during Harvey. Companies like Valero and Chevron, among many others, were sued over their actions during the hurricane, but only Arkema’s executives face possible criminal penalties.A year after the disaster, Arkema’s leaders may have more to worry about than fronting a huge payday for disgruntled residents.
Arkema was certainly not the only entity at fault during the storm, but in its lack of preparedness and defiant defense of its actions, the company struck residents—and Harris County prosecutors—as eager to prioritize its profits over safety. The firm’s history did not help. The year before Harvey, Arkema was slapped with a nearly $92,000 fine after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration found 10 violations at the Crosby plant related to its handling of hazardous materials. Previous incidents, including the release of sulfuric acid in 1994 that left a five-year-old girl with severe burns, led one Crosby resident to tell the Houston Chronicle she had “a bitter taste in [her] mouth about Arkema.” Perhaps most troubling, Arkema has twice before faced civil penalties for improperly storing organic peroxides, the same chemicals that caught fire during Harvey. In 2006, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality cited the Crosby plant for releasing 3,200 pounds of pollutants because a “pallet of organic peroxide was stored inappropriately” and burned up. The state imposed a $20,300 penalty five years later, after finding that Arkema was not maintaining the proper temperature in the devices it used to decompose dangerous gases.
Arkema’s passionate defense of its behavior has led its representatives to quibble over relatively minor concerns. Janet Smith, a company spokeswoman, responded to a request for comment from Mother Jones by first criticizing other media companies, such as the New York Times and CNN, for using the term “explosion” to describe what happened last August at the Crosby plant. “The flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey led to a series of short-lived fires at our Crosby plant, but there was no explosion,” she wrote in an email. “We have repeatedly pointed this out to news media covering the incident, but the inaccurate coverage persists.”
Even as residents have begun the process of returning home and paying off storm-related debts, many neighbors still do not know the long-term health effects of exposure to the toxic cloud, because federal investigators could not figure them out, according to a lengthy US Chemical Safety Board report published in May.
The models Environmental Protection Agency staffers used to track how local air and water quality were being affected by the Arkema fires “did not reflect the nature of actual dispersions that occurred,” the CSB found. Combined with “other practical difficulties,” the EPA was unable to draw any firm conclusions about the health threats brought about by Arkema’s plant.
In its public statements soon after the disaster, the EPA was also not clear about the risks posed to residents who were soon forced to evacuate. After testing water samples near the Crosby plant, the EPA announced that the results “were less than the screening levels that would warrant further investigation.” The agency’s inspector general’s office said on August 2 it would investigate how the EPA responded to accidents during Harvey.
The Trump administration played a role, too. Under President Barack Obama, the EPA proposed a series of rules designed to strengthen industry’s reporting requirements to mitigate future chemical disasters. Known as the Chemical Disaster Rule, the proposal was opposed by companies like Arkemaand indefinitely delayed once President Donald Trump’s first EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, took office. Pruitt defended his reasoning after the Arkema fires by claiming that terrorists could have exploited the information chemical companies would have been forced to give up under the rule. “What you’ve got to do is strike the balance,” he said, “so that you’re not informing terrorists and helping them have data that they shouldn’t have.”
For now, at least, that rule has been restored. On August 17, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned the EPA’s decision to delay the rule. Calling the agency’s actions “arbitrary and capricious,” the court ordered the EPA to let the rule remain until the agency amends its requirements by standard regulatory action. That ruling may only prove temporary given the Trump administration’s commitment to rolling back dozens of Obama-era environmental regulations.
Whether the Chemical Safety Board even exists the next time another environmental disaster occurs is an open question. Embattled former chair Rafael Moure-Eraso was the target of a series of congressional probes into his workplace conduct during a five-year tenure that ended in 2015. Since taking office, Trump has tried to eliminate the agency twice in the White House’s budget proposals, but Congress has restored full funding both times. The resulting uncertainty has impeded “the CSB’s ability to attract, hire and retain staff,” according to a report from the EPA inspector general’s office in June.
Stopping the next Arkema disaster will require more stringent oversight from federal regulators and a willingness by industry leaders to pony up the cash for frequent safety evaluations and up-to-date equipment. With industry-friendly leaders at the helm of the EPA and a CSB clinging to life, those reforms do not appear likely anytime soon.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/09/a-year-after-an-environmental-disaster-in-texas-chemical-company-faces-a-reckoning/
-
Stars Aligning for EPA Change in Calculating Air Rules Benefits
Aug 31, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
The Trump EPA wants to blunt the agency’s counting of pollution rule benefits—and changes at the EPA and the nation’s highest court could brew the perfect storm for doing so.
Long on industry’s wish list, the shift would limit or potentially eliminate the EPA’s consideration of “co-benefits,” the environmental and health improvements attributable to cuts in pollutants that aren’t directly regulated.
Supporters of such a change are positioned to make it happen: Andrew Wheeler is acting head of the EPA, Bill Wehrum serves as the agency’s air chief, and Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, where challenges to the plan could end up.
Kavanaugh has questioned in prior rulings the practice of measuring co-benefits.
Limiting consideration of health and environmental benefits would influence many of the EPA’s air and climate programs, supporters and critics say. The agency justified several major rules during the Obama administration, including separate power-sector regulations controlling mercury air toxics and carbon dioxide emissions, in large part by citing the benefits that cutting fine particulate matter would have on human health.
But if the EPA attempts to get rid of co-benefit considerations altogether, it likely will end up in court, where judges require the agency to count co-benefits, Nathan Richardson, associate professor of law at the University of South Carolina, told Bloomberg Environment.
And for any change to stick, it would have to be upheld by the court or codified by Congress. Otherwise, a future administration could simply reverse course.
The EPA “can’t bind itself in the future,” Richardson added. “You can always revise a rulemaking.”
Multiple FrontsEfforts to target co-benefits are playing out on multiple fronts.
The agency adjusted its consideration of particulate matter co-benefits in its Aug. 21 proposal (RIN:2060-AT67) to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which set first-time carbon controls on existing power plants.
In June, the EPA initiated a separate rulemaking (RIN:2010-AA12) to broadly alter its cost-benefit calculations and is reconsidering its power plant Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (RIN:2060-AP52, RIN:2060-AR31). Industry representatives argued that rule had been justified using the monetized benefits of reducing particulate matter, not the targeted pollutants.
Coal mining giant Murray Energy Corp., a former lobbying client of Wheeler’s, wants the EPA to reconsider its use of co-benefits as part of its MATS rule review, Cody Nett, assistant general counsel and director of media and investor relations for Murray Energy, told Bloomberg Environment in an email.
Including particulate matter co-benefits was double-counting and “an inappropriate end-run” around existing federal air quality standards for that pollutant, Nett added.
Drawing the LineIt is unclear whether the EPA will attempt to scrap co-benefits altogether or simply restrict how they are calculated.
The agency could take either approach or tailor how co-benefits are used on a case-by-case basis, Andrew Grossman, a partner at law firm Baker & Hostetler LLP in Washington, told Bloomberg Environment.
He cited the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Michigan v. EPA as a turning point, portending greater court scrutiny of the agency’s approach. The Michigan ruling required the agency to account for power plants’ compliance costs when determining whether it was necessary to regulate mercury from the sector. The EPA in 2016 released a supplemental determination accounting for those costs.
Kavanaugh sat on the D.C. Circuit panel that heard the Michigan case. His 2014 dissent sharply criticized the Obama EPA for dismissing cost and inflating benefits in its determination to regulate. He identified the co-benefits issue as a “key battleground” to emerge in any future challenges to the MATS rule.
“Even if the statute doesn’t have specifications, the agency can’t adopt an approach that is entirely one-sided, unrestrained, and unreasonable that goes to the ends of the earth to identify benefits,” Grossman added. “There has to be some reasoning and rationale.”
‘The Most Commonsense Thing’The EPA could decide to broadly apply the new approach for calculating particulate matter co-benefits in its proposal to replace the Clean Power Plan.
Under that approach, the EPA would include only the monetized benefits of particulate matter reductions that would be achieved by current federal air quality standards. Traditionally, the EPA has considered co-benefits of eliminatingparticulate matter entirely.
The EPA’s new method ignores real-world benefits to human health from reductions that go beyond the federal limits, Joseph Goffman, former senior counsel in the EPA’s air office during the Obama administration, told Bloomberg Environment.
Science shows that even when particulate matter concentrations are lower than federal limits, people experience negative health impacts, according to Goffman, now executive director at Harvard University’s Environmental and Energy Law Program. Thus, the EPA should be giving all those expected impacts an economic meaning, he said.
Supporters of the Trump EPA effort said it doesn’t make sense to calculate co-benefits beyond what would be achieved by the federal limits.
“It’s the most commonsense thing you’ve ever heard of,” Grossman said. He added that if environmentalists say it isn’t sufficient to look just at the federal limits, they should direct their attention to strengthening the federal standards for particulate matter.
Fundamental ScienceBut bucking the science on particulate matter’s health impacts could carry a legal risk, Michael Livermore, professor of law at the University of Virginia, told Bloomberg Environment.
The courts are inclined to defer to the EPA on scientific decisions. “If there’s a legitimate scientific disagreement, then the agency is at the height of its ability to make a judgment,” Livermore said.
That discretion has limits, though. The court could be skeptical if the EPA moves too far outside the scientific mainstream, Livermore said.
“Courts like deferring to agencies, but if they think the agency is untrustworthy on fundamental science, that is a huge problem for the agency,” he said. The EPA might have some discretion to adjust its co-benefit treatment, “but they might also threaten their ability to get deference in general by risking their scientific credibility.”
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/stars-aligning-for-epa-change-in-calculating-air-rules-benefits?context=landing&limit=30&tab=news
-
Suit On EPA Drill Permit Could Set 'Negative' NEPA Precedent, Industry Says
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Lara Beaven
As the Trump administration moves to roll back and streamline agency requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), environmentalists are pursuing litigation against EPA that industry groups say could set a “negative precedent” expanding those requirements by barring EPA from using another agency's analysis.
In recently filed briefs, EPA and industry groups are defending the agency's reliance on an Interior Department environmental impacts analysis to renew a Clean Water Act (CWA) general permit for offshore oil and gas drilling discharges in the Gulf of Mexico as being fully compliant with NEPA regulations.
Environmentalists' claims in Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), et al. v. EPA “misunderstand applicable law, ignore important facts in the administrative record, and improperly seek to have the Court substitute its judgment for EPA’s,” EPA says in a recent filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) add in a proposed amicusbrief that a ruling against EPA in this case, “where the United States Environmental Protection Agency has properly applied NEPA regulations to adopt another agency’s environmental impact statement (EIS), would create negative precedent” and increase the regulatory burdens of NEPA.
The Chamber and NAM say CBD is “seek[ing] to disrupt well-established NEPA practices and offshore oil and gas production in the Gulf to the detriment of national economic and energy security.”
Their warnings come as administration officials are moving to streamline NEPA reviews charging they delay energy and other infrastructure projects. President Trump has issued several orders seeking to speed the process and the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) recently issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) that that seeks a broad overhaul of its NEPA implementing regulations.
Among other things, the ANPR asks whether the current rules should be revised to make the NEPA process “more efficient by better facilitating agency use of environmental studies, analysis, and decisions conducted in earlier Federal, State, tribal or local environmental reviews or authorization decisions, and if so, how?”
Former EPA officials are lending weight to the industry litigation arguments, even as they urge the Trump administration to maintain current NEPA rules.
In comments filed earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Network (EPN) and Save EPA, both of which represent former EPA staff who are critical of the Trump EPA's environmental rollbacks, note that CEQ's current NEPA rules already “[stress] the need to avoid duplication, to utilize other relevant studies and documents by combining documents, adopting by reference, and the like. Of course, it is essential to review independently whether the information is still relevant and accurate for this purpose."
But they urge administration officials to maintain the current provisions. “We see no reason to alter this language, they say. And they add that current regulatory language on tiering “enables agencies to address certain issues in one NEPA document that would not be repeated in subsequent documents. It enables federal agencies to address actions that are covered by an earlier study, such as those prepared for a particular policy, plan or program off of which a subsequent project is proposed.”
Inadequate Analysis
CBD earlier this year asked the 5th Circuit to review EPA's general permit governing discharges from drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico, charging the agency failed to adequately analyze the environmental impacts from the discharges.
In the group's opening brief, they allege EPA violated NEPA by permitting oil and gas facilities to discharge their waste fluids into the Gulf of Mexico “without analyzing alternatives to authorizing such discharges, or the impacts of such discharges on the marine environment.”
CBD also claims EPA failed to examine relevant data or provide a rational basis for its determination that the discharges will not degrade the marine environment, failing to analyze the quantity or composition of wastes to be discharged and ignoring available information regarding hydraulic fracturing and other well stimulation techniques.
Additionally, the environmentalists say EPA violated the CWA by failing to establish adequate monitoring of the discharges in the permit.
In the draft permit, “EPA proposed increased monitoring requirements for fracking and acidizing waste fluids because of the significant information gaps regarding the impacts of such discharges on the marine environment,” CBD says. “But, following complaints from industry, EPA declined to include these monitoring requirements in the final permit or explain its change in position.”
CBD asks the 5th Circuit to remand the general permit to EPA Region 6 for further proceedings, saying the agency's “failures render several permit terms effectively unenforceable and place the Gulf environment at further risk of toxic discharges, contrary to the clear requirements of the CWA.”
But EPA in its reply brief says its 2017 reissuance of the general permit complies with NEPA, represents a reasonable exercise of the agency's authority under the CWA, and should be upheld.
EPA complied with NEPA by participating in the preparation of and then adopting an EIS issued by the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), something that NEPA regulations expressly allow, provided EPA perform its own independent review, which the agency says it did.
EPA says it complied with the CWA by applying ocean discharge criteria to determine that the permit would not unreasonably degrade the marine environment.
“EPA was not obligated to precisely quantify each pollutant to be discharged, as Petitioners’ contend; in any case, EPA carefully considered the types and quantities of pollutants discharged during offshore oil and gas extraction,” the agency's brief says.
“Additionally, while EPA acknowledged certain data gaps regarding fracking and acidizing fluids, EPA’s data on whole effluent toxicity, among other sources, provided a sufficient basis for EPA to make a reasonable judgment under the criteria,” the agency says, adding that the permit's requirement for whole effluent toxicity monitoring for produced water was reasonable.
'Lawful' And 'Appropriate'
In their proposed amicus brief, the Chamber and NAM warn that the suit could “disrupt” long-standing NEPA practices, adding that the petitioners fault EPA for applying CEQ's NEPA rules to adopt BOEM's final EIS (FEIS) for planned oil and gas sales.
But “EPA’s adoption of the FEIS, which is consistent with its past practice, is not only lawful, but especially appropriate given applicable regulatory requirements and presidential mandates to eliminate redundant and excessive analyses from the NEPA process,” the groups say.
The Chamber and NAM urge the 5th Circuit to reject CBD's claims, which the groups say rely on “hyper-technical arguments,” implicitly question the CEQ regulations, and implicate “hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure and revenue and millions of American jobs.”
NEPA regulations effectively required EPA to adopt BOEM's FEIS, and the agency's adoption of the analysis is consistent with EPA's past practice, the groups say. The court “should afford EPA proper deference and reject Petitioners’ flyspecking arguments.”
Additionally, the groups argue that upholding EPA's adoption of the BOEM FEIS “would be a positive step in addressing the problems of the modern NEPA process,” which has been substantially slowed by “dilatory litigation” despite NEPA regulations requiring agencies to provide concise analyses and reduce delays and numerous presidential administrations directing federal agencies to implement NEPA requirements more efficiently.
The American Petroleum Institute (API), which is an intervenor in the case, uses its brief to argue CBD lacks standing -- a position contrary to EPA, which explicitly says in its reply brief that CBD has standing. API also says the petitioner's claims fail on the merits, but that if the court finds in favor of CBD, the remedy should only be remand and not vacatur.
While CBD's explicit request for remand rather than vacatur “should suffice to resolve the matter, out of an abundance of caution, we show that vacatur would not be appropriate in this case in any event,” API says, noting that courts often vacate permits in these types of cases.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/suit-epa-drill-permit-could-set-negative-nepa-precedent-industry-says
-
California Lawmakers Pass Bill Codifying Federal HFC Limits
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
California lawmakers have approved a bill to codify recently overturned federal rules limiting high global warming potential hydrofluorcarbon (HFC) refrigerants, after major appliance manufacturers and labor groups dropped their opposition based on recent talks with state regulators about how they will implement the measure, sources say.
The Senate gave final approval to the measure Aug. 30, after it was recently amended to appease industry concerns. Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is expected to sign the bill, SB 1013, authored by Sen. Ricardo Lara (D).
“California is demonstrating, once again, commendable leadership in the fight against climate change,” David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says in an Aug. 30 press release. “This bill will curb super-polluting HFCs in some of the largest refrigerating systems, and it fills a gap left by an adverse federal court decision that blocked EPA rules to phase down HFCs -- a decision now on appeal to the Supreme Court.”
The “California Cooling Act” would codify into state law EPA's 2015 regulations to phase out HFCs, known as the Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) Rules 20 and 21. The bill primarily responds to a 2017 U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruling in Mexichem Fluor, et al. v. EPA, et al. that essentially vacated the rules.
NRDC and some chemical firms have urged the Supreme Court to reverse that ruling, though EPA recently reversed its prior stance on its Clean Air Act authority and urged the justices to reject the appeal.
In addition to codifying those rules in state law, SB 1013 also would authorize the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to adopt regulations more stringent than the SNAP rules and set up new economic incentive programs to accelerate reductions of the potent greenhouse gases.
CARB in March adopted some portions of the SNAP rules as state regulations, but is taking more time to consider adopting the additional federal requirements. The state rules codify parts of the EPA rules for end uses whose compliance dates have passed or are coming up shortly. These include supermarket and convenience store refrigeration systems, refrigerated food processing and dispensing equipment, vending machines, and foams used in construction, furniture, and take-out containers.
CARB officials will consider adopting the remainder of the SNAP 20 and 21 provisions in a second rulemaking potentially later this year for other end uses, including household refrigerators, blown foams, vehicle air conditioning, cold storage warehouses, and chillers for specific applications. These compliance dates start in 2021.
To address opposition by certain companies to potential CARB bans on foam-blowing products and chemicals, Lara amended SB 1013 on Aug. 20 to state that if EPA “approves a previously prohibited [HFC] blend for foam blowing pursuant to the” SNAP program, CARB “shall expeditiously initiate a rulemaking pursuant to this section or other existing legal authority to conform its regulations with that federal action.”
In addition, major air conditioner manufacturing companies such as Carrier Corp. recently removed their longstanding opposition to the bill following private talks with CARB officials.
“While concerns about regulatory uncertainty persist, Carrier has been assured that this bill does not increase CARB’s regulatory authority and that our proposal during the legislative discussions on SB 1013 for refrigeration
reclamation, service only refrigerants, and prohibition timelines on chillers and unitary products will be thoroughly vetted with ALL stakeholders and our science-based proposal will be carefully analyzed for inclusion in the final regulatory package,” Carrier's parent company states in an Aug. 21 letter to Lara.
Sheet metal labor unions also recently removed their opposition, which was based on worker safety concerns and CARB's authority, according to a source.
“We have removed our opposition and plan to work with CARB on implementation,” the source says. “Their actions are constrained by the parameters of Title 24 building code regulations which follow the Uniform Mechanical Codes. We are now more comfortable that they cannot adopt any timelines that are out of sync with the consensus based code bodies.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/california-lawmakers-pass-bill-codifying-federal-hfc-limits
-
States Seek To Preserve Flexibility In EPA's Plan For Program Reviews
Aug 31, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
State regulators are raising fears that the Trump administration's plan for streamlining regions' reviews of state environment programs could limit existing flexibilities and undermine EPA's role as a strong arbiter of disputes over cross-state air pollution, though a senior EPA official is vowing a flexible approach.
Connecticut environment department chief Rob Klee told the Environmental Council of the States' fall meeting here Aug. 29 that EPA needs to ensure its pending policy for reviewing the adequacy of state programs preserves existing state-federal relationships that states believe are good examples of “cooperative federalism” -- a term that generally refers the balance in environmental regulation between EPA and states.
“My question is about certainty, consistency, and a little bit, uniformity, and which makes me most concerned is uniformity,” Klee said. He added that Connecticut regulators worked well with EPA regional officials during the Obama administration and that those positive relationships have continued under Trump.
“I'm concerned about headquarters mandating new procedures and processes when ours aren't broken,” he said, questioning senior EPA officials. “Is uniformity not exactly what we're going for?”
In response, EPA Region 8 Administrator Doug Benevento strongly backed state flexibility. His region covers the states of Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.
“States' role is direct implementation” of federal environmental law, he said. “Our job is to make sure they're meeting the minimum federal requirements laid out in the regulations. . . . But how you go about meeting that standard -- we need to show great deference and rely on states to do it.”
But Klee and Patrick McDonnell, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, also noted that a policy focusing on minimum requirements may not be sufficient in cases where states are affected by air pollution from outside their borders, so EPA must retain a strong role in addressing issues such as ozone transport.
McDonnell called EPA's role as a “fair broker” in ozone transport issues “incredibly important."
And Klee also backed EPA's important role “in cross boundary issues,” and added that “meeting federal minimums might not always work when dealing with” multi-state challenges.
The push to preserve flexibilities in state and regional working relationships and for a strong federal broker on inter-agency disagreements came the day after Acting Deputy EPA Administrator Henry Darwin briefed ECOS in closed session on the Trump administration's draft plan that will govern a host of federal-state interactions, ranging from retrospective reviews of state programs to oversight of permitting and enforcement decisions.
Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is currently reviewing the policy that he is expected to a release in a memo to EPA staff in a matter of weeks. The plan follows months of negotiations between states and EPA, and is an outgrowth of the “cooperative federalism” that ECOS and the Trump administration have strongly backed.
The discussion on state flexibility came the next day during a joint state and state-EPA panel on the “Evolving State-Federal Relationship,” chaired by Becky Keogh, director of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
Keogh was elected ECOS president during the group's fall meeting and will lead ECOS' ongoing talks with the Trump administration on advancing cooperative federalism.
EPA Review Policy
After briefing ECOS, Darwin told Inside EPA that the policy will outline principles to guide EPA regional officials' work with states in several areas, such as conducting retrospective reviews of state environmental programs and reviewing specific permitting and enforcement actions where necessary. It will also guide other state-EPA interactions.
The policy calls for defining an appropriate level of deference for state decision-making, clearly communicating with states prior to reviews, clarifying the standard of review as defined in a specific statute or policy, and defining a process for elevating disputes from staff to supervisors to ensure prompt resolution of disagreements.
The policy responds to states' calls for EPA to craft a policy under which officials generally audit state programs rather than reviewing individual decisions. It also stems from ongoing talks on ECOS' 2017 paper “Cooperative Federalism 2.0: A Deeper Look into a Rebooted EPA-State Relationship,” which outlines principles for redefining state and federal roles for overseeing pollution control requirements.
Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who resigned in July following a series of ethics scandals, touted cooperative federalism and bolstering states' role in environmental policy decisionmaking.
But some of the Trump administration's deregulatory efforts have drawn attacks from critics for appearing to contradict its cooperative federalism push. For example, EPA is seeking to undo California's unique Clean Air Act waiver authority to set stricter vehicle greenhouse gas standards than the federal government. Several states -- which are allowed to adopt EPA-approved California standards -- have said undoing the waiver would weaken the decisionmaking power of states.
Ensuring the agency's pending review policy preserves existing flexibilities in regions and states relationships has been a top priority for ECOS, which represents many state environmental agencies.
ECOS Executive Director Sam Sankar told Inside EPA in July that states generally appreciate EPA's plan to streamline agency reviews of state programs but that any policy should be sufficiently flexible to not alter cooperation in places where existing state and regional working relationships are strong.
While it is unclear how state officials responded to Darwin's closed-door briefing on the planned policy, Klee's remarks suggest the concern about retaining flexibilities persists.
But several state regulators also said that recent discussions with EPA on advancing their shared goal of “cooperative federalism” has bolstered communication, which will help address future challenges.
Martha Rudolph, director of environmental programs at Colorado's Department of Public Health and Environment, told the ECOS meeting that state and federal regulators are doing a better job of measuring environmental outcomes, a better means of assessing progress on protecting public health than merely counting inspections.
John Linc Stine, commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MCPA), said that making time for face-to-face meetings with EPA Region 5 Administrator Cathy Stepp recently advanced a permit decision that had been held up by differences between state and regional staff. Region 5 covers the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota,
Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Crafting procedures for elevating disputes from staff to management will be a key facet of EPA's review policy.
Alan Matheson, executive director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, said that the overarching principles of EPA's policy for streamlined reviews and improvements in cooperative federalism can endure and even when elections lead to administration changes and different specific policy priorities.
Darwin and the Trump administration's “talking about a set of responsibilities and agreeing on roles and communication lines, etc. are things that can endure even as policy priorities change,” Matheson said.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/states-seek-preserve-flexibility-epas-plan-program-reviews
Congressional Hearings - There are no hearings to report at this time.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
Add recipients
Suggested