Preview Newsletter
PM ACC Clips Report - September 4, 2018
-
Agency Failed to Justify Pruitt's Security Spending — IG
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Kevin Bogardus
EPA did not document why former Administrator Scott Pruitt needed increased security protection even as costs skyrocketed for his personal security detail, the agency's inspector general said today. -
EPA Failed to Properly Justify Pruitt Security Costs, Watchdog Says
Sep 4, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama and Miranda Green
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) didn’t fully justify why it needed to significantly ramp up security efforts for embattled former Administrator Scott Pruitt that lead to millions of dollars in extra costs, the agency’s internal watchdog office said. -
Shouts of 'Sham' at Chaotic Start of Kavanaugh Hearing
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Senate Republicans' efforts to quickly confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court spiraled into chaos immediately as hearings began this morning. -
(ACC Mentioned) Sperm Count Zero
Sep 4, 2018 | GQ Magazine
By Daniel Noah Halpern
Men are doomed. Everybody knows this. We're obviously all doomed, the women too, everybody in general, just a waiting game until one or another of the stupid things our stupid species is up to finally gets us. But as it turns out, no surprise: men first. Second instance of no surprise: We're going to take the women down with us. -
From Fish to Humans, A Microplastic Invasion May Be Taking a Toll
Sep 4, 2018 | Scientific American
By Andrea Thompson
Mark Browne had a suspicion. He hoped the samples of dried blood taken from a blue mussel and placed under a special microscope would tell him if he was correct. As a fuzzy, three-dimensional image of the mussel’s blood cells appeared, there they were, right in the middle—tiny specks of plastic. -
UK Backs Authorisation Route for Dechlorane Plus
Sep 4, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
The UK has said it prefers the REACH authorisation route rather than restriction to regulate the SVHC dechlorane plus in the EU. -
Zinke's Ex-Energy Adviser Takes Post in Offshore Drilling
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Pamela King
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's former energy adviser today joined the staff of an oil and gas firm operating in the Gulf of Mexico. -
Southwestern to Double Down in Appalachia After $1.9B Fayetteville Sale
Sep 4, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Southwestern Energy Co. is going all-in on the Appalachian Basin, announcing on Tuesday that it would exit the play it gave rise to with the $1.9 billion sale of the Fayetteville Shale assets and move some of the proceeds into the liquids-rich Northeast, which has consistently outperformed declining production in Arkansas. -
(ACC Mentioned) Time to Kick It into High Gear
Sep 4, 2018 | Politico - Morning Energy
By Kelsey Tamborrino
Senators made progress in August on some appropriations measures, but the real negotiations on conference bills are expected to pick up now that the House is back in town. -
EPA Ordered to Enforce Obama Chemical Plant Safety Rule
Sep 4, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
A federal court has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to start enforcing a major Obama administration regulation on the safety of chemical plants and similar facilities. -
Health Groups Urge EPA to Retain Mercury Regulations
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
EPA should scrap newly announced plans to revisit its 2012 regulations limiting power plant emissions of mercury and other air toxics, a coalition of public health groups said in a letter released this morning. -
GOP Attorneys General Side with EPA on Ozone Decisions
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is battling one EPA compliance decision for its 2015 ground-level ozone standard, is sallying to the agency's defense on another.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
-
Agency Failed to Justify Pruitt's Security Spending — IG
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Kevin Bogardus
EPA did not document why former Administrator Scott Pruitt needed increased security protection even as costs skyrocketed for his personal security detail, the agency's inspector general said today.
Pruitt, the former EPA chief who resigned in July after being overwhelmed by ethics allegations, was provided with 24/7 protection, a greater security presence compared with his predecessors'. In a report released this morning, the agency's internal watchdog found that EPA had spent millions more on the protective service detail that guards the administrator than it had on previous administrators.
The IG said Pruitt's security detail costs from Feb. 1 through Dec. 31 of last year increased over 110 percent compared with the prior period and without documented justification.
"Failure to properly justify the level of protective services provided to the Administrator has allowed costs to increase from $1.6 million to $3.5 million in just 11 months," said the report.
An EPA spokesman told E&E News that the agency disagreed with the IG in determining how much protection is needed for the administrator.
"Specifically, because persons intending harm often do not make threats, EPA believes — based on DOJ's report, 'Protective Intelligence & Threat Assessment Investigations,' Secret Service practices and real-life scenarios such as the recent attack on the Republican congressional baseball team and the shooting of [former Arizona Democratic] Rep. [Gabby] Giffords — that a threat analysis cannot be the sole source of information used to determine if protective services are provided or the level of protection," said the spokesman, referring to a 2017 shooting at a congressional baseball game practice in which Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) was injured and a 2011 shooting in Arizona that killed six and left Giffords injured.
"Accordingly, there is no support for the OIG's insinuation that expenditures for protective services carried out before a threat analysis was conducted were not justified."
The IG also found security agents worked overtime without proper authorization, which resulted in improper payments of $106,507 between January 2016 and March 2017.
Investigators also questioned whether EPA had the law enforcement authority to provide protection to the administrator. The agency prepared a legal opinion in response to the report that asserted EPA's protective service did have that authority.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/stories/1060095647
-
EPA Failed to Properly Justify Pruitt Security Costs, Watchdog Says
Sep 4, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama and Miranda Green
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) didn’t fully justify why it needed to significantly ramp up security efforts for embattled former Administrator Scott Pruitt that lead to millions of dollars in extra costs, the agency’s internal watchdog office said.
In a wide-ranging report released Tuesday, the EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that the costs for Pruitt’s detail grew to $3.5 million for his first 11 months, more than double his predecessor’s costs, and the EPA never documented why it was necessary.
“Failure to properly justify the level of protective services provided to the Administrator has allowed costs to increase from $1.6 million to $3.5 million in just 11 months,” the OIG, led by Inspector General Arthur Elkins, wrote in the report.
The report concluded it was an "undocumented decision" and "an inefficient use of agency resources."
Auditors also questioned whether the agency has the authority to provide a round-the-clock security detail for the administrator, noting that the EPA didn’t provide a legal finding that it has the law enforcement authority to do so until June, after more than a year of prodding by the OIG, and after auditors already completed a draft report.
Pruitt resigned from the EPA in July, after a rocky 17-month tenure laced with five months of controversy over his compliance with ethics rules and over spending of taxpayer money. His ballooning security costs, including his decision to have unprecedented 24/7 security protection, were central to the scandals.
In its own statement, the EPA defended its decisions regarding Pruitt’s security.
“Because persons intending harm often do not make threats, EPA believes — based on DOJ’s report, ‘Protective Intelligence & Threat Assessment Investigations,’ Secret Service practices and real-life scenarios such as the recent attack on the Republican Congressional baseball team and the shooting of Representative [Gabby]Giffords — that a threat analysis cannot be the sole source of information used to determine if protective services are provided or the level of protection,” EPA spokesman Michael Abboud said in a statement.
“Accordingly, there is no support for the OIG’s insinuation that expenditures for protective services carried out before a threat analysis was conducted were not justified.”
While the EPA routinely asserted throughout Pruitt’s tenure that the security detail was justified due to a number of threats made against the administrator, the OIG found that the EPA never conducted a true threat analysis to determine the need for increased security.
Instead, the agency relied on statistical details related to the number of threats received against Pruitt and his family.
“The report did not assess the potential danger presented by any of these threats. This information is considerably narrower in scope and only an element of what would be contained as part of a threat analysis as defined by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or GAO,” the watchdog’s report found.
The Trump administration requested a round-the-clock security detail for Pruitt before he was even confirmed by the Senate, and the detail started on his first day.
Auditors said that premeditated decision, done without a threat analysis, represents an “inefficient use of agency resources.”
The EPA agreed to mitigate four of the 12 recommendations made by the OIG regarding the agency’s failures with Pruitt’s security.
The round-the-clock detail was just one ramped-up security decision made under Pruitt. The former administrator also used security to justify frequent first-class flights, keeping his calendar secret, having his office swept for surveillance bugs and buying tactical pants and other gear, among other measures.
The Tuesday report is the first in what is expected to be a series of OIG reports that look into many of the controversies that embattled Pruitt, which additionally include his decision to rent a $50 a night condo from the wife of a prominent energy lobbyist, and his prolific use of first class business travel during his first year heading the agency.
Andrew Wheeler, the EPA’s current acting administrator, requested the the 24/7 security detail be eliminated just a week after taking office, the report said. Instead, he uses the “portal-to-portal” method, only utilizing a security detail when he travels and when he commutes from home to work, which was the standard practice before Pruitt.
A representative for Pruitt did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/404905-epa-failed-to-properly-justify-pruitt-security-costs-watchdog-says
-
Shouts of 'Sham' at Chaotic Start of Kavanaugh Hearing
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Senate Republicans' efforts to quickly confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court spiraled into chaos immediately as hearings began this morning.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee interrupted Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) as he attempted to open proceedings. They say they're entitled to thousands of pages of unreleased documents from Kavanaugh's time in the George W. Bush White House.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) led calls for Grassley to adjourn the hearing until those records are made available.
Protesters, mostly women, erupted in applause and shouted from the back of the room that Kavanaugh's nomination was a "sham" from an "illegitimate president." Several were ejected from the hearing.
It was a fiery start to the first day of a high-stakes week of questioning and posturing from both sides over the conservative jurist President Trump nominated to fill the seat of retired Justice Anthony Kennedy.
A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for 12 years, Kavanaugh has broad experience in environmental and administrative law and will hold a critical vote on those issues if confirmed.
Grassley blasted Democrats' effort to delay the confirmation process for Kavanaugh as an overblown stalling tactic.
"In short, the American people have unprecedented access and more materials to review for Judge Kavanaugh than they ever had for a Supreme Court nominee," he said.
The chairman defended the disclosure of the nominee's record and touted the tens of thousands of additional pages released over the holiday weekend.
He then rejected calls to adjourn the meeting or to go into executive session to further discuss whether the proceedings should move forward.
Ranking member Dianne Feinstein of California pushed back, arguing that it was inappropriate for the committee to move so quickly on Kavanaugh's nomination before all records are released and while the president is under investigation.
"It's this backdrop that this nominee comes into," she said. "When what we're looking at is, 'Is he within the mainstream of American legal opinion, and will he do the right thing by the Constitution?' we are also experiencing the vetting process that has cast aside tradition in favor of speed."
Committee members debated the issue informally for more than an hour before they launched into their formal statements this morning.
Kavanaugh is slated to speak this afternoon after senators wrap up their opening remarks. Tomorrow, the hearing will shift to what promises to be a heated round of questioning from the committee members.
'Handmaids' show up in protest
If confirmed swiftly, Kavanaugh will play a role in a number of upcoming cases with environmental law implications. The court will open its new session Oct. 1 with an Endangered Species Act dispute and has cases on deck dealing with property rights, uranium mining and other issues.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) noted the Supreme Court's record of 5-4 splits in a litany of major cases, including disputes affecting wetlands protections, endangered species and the Obama-era plan to cut carbon emissions from the power sector.
He warned that Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court would seal the fate of similarly consequential future disputes.
But environmental concerns have largely taken a back seat to debate over Kavanaugh's views on reproductive rights, the Affordable Care Act and executive power.
Outside the Hart Senate Office Building hearing room, a handful of women in red robes with white headdresses evoking "The Handmaid's Tale" milled around in silent protest. The 1985 dystopian Margaret Atwood novel, popularized by the current Hulu TV series, depicts a future dictatorship set in the former United States in which fertile women are forced to bear children for elites.
The activists, organized by progressive advocacy group Demand Justice, plan to return tomorrow in costume for day two of the Kavanaugh hearings.
The Atwood story "really captures where I think this country can go," said D.C. activist Noor Mir, who was with the group but not in costume.
Mir passed out fliers that called Kavanaugh an "extremist ideologue" who "will take away women's basic rights" if confirmed to the high court.
Other bystanders spotted outside the Hart hearing room wore T-shirts from the NAACP and NARAL, the abortion-rights advocacy group.
Inside the room, Senate Republicans slammed protesters' interruptions as unprecedented and disrespectful.
"These people are so out of line," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), "they shouldn't even be allowed in the dadgum room."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/09/04/stories/1060095731
-
(ACC Mentioned) Sperm Count Zero
Sep 4, 2018 | GQ Magazine
By Daniel Noah Halpern
Men are doomed. Everybody knows this. We're obviously all doomed, the women too, everybody in general, just a waiting game until one or another of the stupid things our stupid species is up to finally gets us. But as it turns out, no surprise: men first. Second instance of no surprise: We're going to take the women down with us.
There has always been evidence that men, throughout life, are at higher risk of early death—from the beginning, a higher male incidence of Death by Mastodon Stomping, a higher incidence of Spiked Club to the Brainpan, a statistically significant disparity between how many men and how many women die of Accidentally Shooting Themselves in the Face or Getting Really Fat and Having a Heart Attack. The male of the species dies younger than the female—about five years on average. Divide a population into groups by birth year, and by the time each cohort reaches 85, there are two women left for every man alive. In fact, the male wins every age class: Baby boys die more often than baby girls; little boys die more often than little girls; teenage boys; young men; middle-aged men. Death champions across the board.
Now it seems that early death isn't enough for us—we're on track instead to void the species entirely. Last summer a group of researchers from Hebrew University and Mount Sinai medical school published a study showing that sperm counts in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and New Zealand have fallen by more than 50 percent over the past four decades. (They judged data from the rest of the world to be insufficient to draw conclusions from, but there are studies suggesting that the trend could be worldwide.) That is to say: We are producing half the sperm our grandfathers did. We are half as fertile.
The Hebrew University/Mount Sinai paper was a meta-analysis by a team of epidemiologists, clinicians, and researchers that culled data from 185 studies, which examined semen from almost 43,000 men. It showed that the human race is apparently on a trend line toward becoming unable to reproduce itself. Sperm counts went from 99 million sperm per milliliter of semen in 1973 to 47 million per milliliter in 2011, and the decline has been accelerating. Would 40 more years—or fewer—bring us all the way to zero?
I called Shanna H. Swan, a reproductive epidemiologist at Mount Sinai and one of the lead authors of the study, to ask if there was any good news hiding behind those brutal numbers. Were we really at risk of extinction? She failed to comfort me. “The What Does It Mean question means extrapolating beyond your data,” Swan said, “which is always a tricky thing. But you can ask, ‘What does it take? When is a species in danger? When is a species threatened?’ And we are definitely on that path.” That path, in its darkest reaches, leads to no more naturally conceived babies and potentially to no babies at all—and the final generation of Homo sapiens will roam the earth knowing they will be the last of their kind.
If we are half as fertile as the generation before us, why haven't we noticed? One answer is that there is a lot of redundancy built into reproduction: You don't need 200 million sperm to fertilize an egg, but that's how many the average man might devote to the job. Most men can still conceive a child naturally with a depressed sperm count, and those who can't have a booming fertility-treatment industry ready to help them. And though lower sperm counts probably have led to a small decrease in the number of children being conceived, that decline has been masked by sociological changes driving birth rates down even faster: People in the developed world are choosing to have fewer children, and they are having them later.
The problem has been debated among fertility scientists for decades now—studies suggesting that sperm counts are declining have been appearing since the '70s—but until Swan and her colleagues' meta-analysis, the results have always been judged incomplete or preliminary. Swan herself had conducted smaller studies on declining sperm counts, but in 2015 she decided it was time for a definitive answer. She teamed up with Hagai Levine, an Israeli epidemiologist, and Niels Jørgensen, a Danish endocrinologist, and along with five others, they set about performing a systematic review and meta-regression analysis—that is, a kind of statistical synthesis of the data. “Hagai is a very good scientist, and he also used to be the head of epidemiology for the Israeli armed forces,” Swan told me. “So he's very good at organizing.” They spent a year working with the data.
“We should hope for the best and prepare for the worst,” said Hagai Levine, a lead author of the study. “And that is the possibility that we will become extinct.”
The results, when they came in, were clear. Not only were sperm counts per milliliter of semen down by more than 50 percent since 1973, but total sperm counts were down by almost 60 percent: We are producing less semen, and that semen has fewer sperm cells in it. This time around, even scientists who had been skeptical of past analyses had to admit that the study was all but unassailable. Jørgensen, in Copenhagen, told me that when he saw the results, he'd said aloud, “No, it cannot be true.” He had expected to see a past decline and then a leveling off. But he couldn't argue when the team ran the numbers again and again. The downward slope was unwavering.
Almost all the scientists I talked to stressed that not only were low sperm counts alarming for what they said about the reproductive future of the species—they were also a warning of a much larger set of health problems facing men. In this view, sperm production is a canary in the coal mine of male bodies: We know, for instance, that men with poor semen quality have a higher mortality rate and are more likely to have diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease than fertile men.
Testosterone levels have also dropped precipitously, with effects beginning in utero and extending into adulthood. One of the most significant markers of an organism's sex is something called anogenital distance (AGD)—the measurement between the anus and the genitals. Male AGD is typically twice the length of female, a much more dramatic difference than height or weight or musculature. Lower testosterone leads to a shorter AGD, and a measurement lower than the median correlates to a man being seven times as likely to be subfertile and gives him a greater likelihood of having undescended testicles, testicular tumors, and a smaller penis. “What you are seeing in a number of systems, other developmental systems, is that the sex differences are shrinking,” Swan told me. Men are producing less sperm. They're also becoming less male.
I assumed that the next thing Swan was going to tell me was that these changes were all a mystery to scientists. If only we could figure out what was causing the drop in sperm counts, I imagined, we could solve all the attendant health problems at once. But it turns out that it's not a mystery: We know what the culprit is. And it's hiding in plain sight.
The sixth floor of the Rigshospitalet, a hospital and research institution in Copenhagen, houses the Department of Growth and Reproduction. The babies are all a few floors downstairs—on six, the unit is populated not with new parents but with doctors and researchers hunched over mass spectrometers and gel imagers and the like. I was there to meet Niels E. Skakkebæk, an 82-year-old pediatric endocrinologist, who founded the department in 1990. After walking me through the lab, he showed me to his office, a cramped, closet-like space—modest for someone who is a giant in his field. Male fertility and male reproductive health, Skakkebæk told me, are in full-blown crisis. “Here in Denmark, there is an epidemic of infertility,” he said. “More than 20 percent of Danish men do not father children.”
Skakkebæk first suspected something was going wrong in the late '70s, when he treated an infertile patient with an abnormality in the cells of the testes that he had never seen before. When he treated a second man with the same abnormality a few years later, he began to investigate a connection. What he found was a new form of precursor cells for testicular cancer, a once rare disease whose incidence had doubled. Moreover, these precursor cells had begun developing before the patient was even born. “He had the insight that testicular cancer, which is a cancer of young men, is something that is actually originated in utero,” Swan told me. And if these testes had somehow been misdeveloping in utero, Skakkebæk asked himself, what else was happening to these babies before they were born?
Eventually, Skakkebæk linked several other previously rare symptoms for a condition he called testicular dysgenesis syndrome (TDS), a collection of male reproductive problems that include hypospadias (an abnormal location for the end of the urethra), cryptorchidism (an undescended testicle), poor semen quality, and testicular cancer. What Skakkebæk proposed with TDS is that these disorders can have a common fetal origin, a disruption in the development of the male fetus in the womb.
So what was causing this disruption? To say there is only a single answer might be an overstatement—stress, smoking, and obesity, for example, all depress sperm counts—but there are fewer and fewer critics of the following theory: The industrial revolution happened. And the oil industry happened. And 20th-century chemistry happened. In short, humans started ingesting a whole host of compounds that affected our hormones—including, most crucially, estrogen and testosterone.
The scientists I talked to were less cautious about embracing this explanation than I expected. Down the hall from Skakkebæk's office, I met Anna-Maria Andersson, a biologist whose research has focused on declining testosterone levels. “There has been a chemical revolution going on starting from the beginning of the 19th century, maybe even a bit before,” she told me, “and upwards and exploding after the Second World War, when hundreds of new chemicals came onto the market within a very short time frame.” Suddenly a vast array of chemicals were entering our bloodstream, ones that no human body had ever had to deal with. The chemical revolution gave us some wonderful things: new medicines, new food sources, faster and cheaper mass production of all sorts of necessary products. It also gave us, Andersson pointed out, a living experiment on the human body with absolutely no forethought to the result.
When a chemical affects your hormones, it's called an endocrine disruptor. And it turns out that many of the compounds used to make plastic soft and flexible (like phthalates) or to make them harder and stronger (like Bisphenol A, or BPA) are consummate endocrine disruptors. Phthalates and BPA, for example, mimic estrogen in the bloodstream. If you're a man with a lot of phthalates in his system, you'll produce less testosterone and fewer sperm. If exposed to phthalates in utero, a male fetus's reproductive system itself will be altered: He will develop to be less male.
Women with raised levels of phthalates in their urine during pregnancy were significantly more likely to have sons with shorter anogenital distance as well as shorter penis length and smaller testes. “When the [fetus's] testicles start making testosterone, which is about week eight of pregnancy, they make a little less,” Swan said. “That's the nub of this whole story. So phthalates decrease testosterone. The testicles then do not produce proper testosterone, and the anogenital distance is shorter.”
The problem is that these chemicals are everywhere. BPA can be found in water bottles and food containers and sales receipts. Phthalates are even more common: They are in the coatings of pills and nutritional supplements; they're used in gelling agents, lubricants, binders, emulsifying agents, and suspending agents. Not to mention medical devices, detergents and packaging, paint and modeling clay, pharmaceuticals and textiles and sex toys and nail polish and liquid soap and hair spray. They are used in tubing that processes food, so you'll find them in milk, yogurt, sauces, soups, and even, in small amounts, in eggs, fruits, vegetables, pasta, noodles, rice, and water. The CDC determined that just about everyone in the United States has measurable levels of phthalates in his or her body—they're unavoidable.
What's more, there is evidence that the effect of these endocrine disruptors increases over generations, due to something called epigenetic inheritance. Normally, acquired traits—like, say, a sperm count lowered by obesity—aren't passed down from father to son. But some chemicals, including phthalates and BPA, can change the way genes are expressed without altering the underlying genetic code, and that change is inheritable. Your father passes along his low sperm count to you, and your sperm count goes even lower after you're exposed to endocrine disruptors. That's part of the reason there's been no leveling off even after 40 years of declining sperm counts—the baseline keeps dropping.
With all due respect to Dr. Swan and the problems of extrapolating beyond one's data, I wanted to get back to What It All Means. The answer, I thought, might be found at the 13th International Symposium on Spermatology, which took place in May, on Lidingö, a small island in the inner Stockholm archipelago. A hundred spermatologists in one place: You'd think (incorrectly) that the jokes would be good. Skakkebæk had told me I'd be able to find some dissenters to the conclusions of Swan's meta-analysis there, but what I witnessed instead was the final vanquishing of the few remaining doubters.
At the welcome dinner (reindeer and rooster), I met Hagai Levine, the Israeli co-author of the Hebrew University/Mount Sinai meta-analysis. Levine, who is 40, told me we had reasons to worry. “I'm saying that we should hope for the best and prepare for the worst,” he said. “And that is the possibility that we will become extinct. That's a possibility we must seriously consider. I'm not saying it's going to happen. I'm not saying it's likely to happen. I'm not saying that's the prediction. I'm just saying we should be prepared for such a possibility. That's all. And we are not.”
His session the next morning—“Are Spermatozoa at the Verge of Extinction?”—would be the defining event of the conference: It cast a shadow over all the other talks. At a panel discussion that followed his presentation, Levine continued his argument for addressing the causes of the crisis, saying, “My default, if I don't know, is that it is up to the manufacturers of chemicals to prove that their chemicals are safe. But I don't feel like I need any more evidence to take action with chemicals already known to disrupt the endocrine system.”
The organizer of the symposium, Lars Björndahl, a Swedish spermatologist who had presented earlier in the morning, urged caution. “I have great respect for epidemiological studies, but we should remember that mathematical correlations don't prove that there is a causative relation,” he said. Questions from the audience—often taking the form of statements—were much along the same lines: Be careful of a bias toward the assumption that all these things are connected. Levine nodded with only a hint of chagrin, like a patient professor waiting hopefully for his students to catch up.
David Mortimer, who runs a company that designs and establishes assisted-conception laboratories, was one of the only members of the audience willing to question Levine's study itself. He pointed out that methods for measuring sperm had changed dramatically over the time period of the study and that the old studies were profoundly unreliable.
Levine was ready with an answer. “So that's one of the reasons we also conducted a sensitivity analysis,” he said from the stage, “with studies with sample collection only after 1995—and the slope was even steeper. So that could not explain the decline we see after 1995.”
“I've never said there was no decline in sperm counts,” Mortimer said, a bit defensively. Levine, who had been so gracious and engaged with his critics, began to look a little tired. He rallied, though, when the group agreed to put out a joint statement about the crisis. The chairs of the symposium called on the world to acknowledge that male reproductive health was essential for the survival of the species, that its decline was alarming and should be studied, and that at present it was being neglected in funding and attention.
Mortimer came around and ended up signing the statement. When I caught up with him later, he wasn't nearly as dismissive of the study's conclusions as I expected. He agreed there was little question that sperm counts were dropping, and he even embraced some of the direst predictions of scientists like Levine. “The epigenetics are the scary bit,” he told me, “because what we're doing now affects the future of the human race.” When even the skeptics are scared, it's probably time to pay attention.
Can anything be done? Over the past 20 years, there have been occasional attempts to limit the number of endocrine disruptors in circulation, but inevitably the fixes are insubstantial: one chemical removed in favor of another, which eventually turns out to have its own dangers. That was the case with BPA, which was partly replaced by Bisphenol S, which might be even worse for you. The chemical industry, unsurprisingly, has been resistant to the notion that the billions of dollars of revenue these products represent might also represent terrible damage to the human body, and have often followed the model of Big Tobacco and Big Oil—fighting regulation with lobbyists and funding their own studies that suggest their products are harmless. The website for the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade association, has a page dedicated to phthalates that mostly consists of calling Shanna Swan's research “controversial” and asserting that her “use of methodologies that have not been validated and unconventional data analysis have been criticized by the scientific community.” (Cited critics of Swan include Elizabeth Whelan, now deceased, an epidemiologist famous for fighting the regulation of chemicals from her position as president of the American Council on Science and Health, which has received funding from Chevron, DuPont, and other companies in the plastic business.)
Assuming that we're unable to wean ourselves off plastics and other marvels of modern science, we may be stuck innovating our way out of this mess. How long we're able to outrun the drop in sperm count may depend, finally, on how good we get at IVF and other fertility treatments. When I spoke with Marc Goldstein, a urologist and surgeon at Weill Cornell medical center in New York City, he said that while there was “no question I've seen a big increase in men with male-factor infertility,” he wasn't worried for the future of the species. Assisted reproduction would keep the babies coming, no matter how sickly men's sperm become.
It's true that fertility treatments have already given men with extremely low sperm counts the chance to be fathers. Indeed, by looking at their cases, we can glimpse what our low-sperm-count future might look like. We know that it will be arduous to conceive, and expensive—so expensive that having children may no longer be an option available to all couples. A fertility-treatment-dependent future is also unlikely to produce a birth rate anywhere near current levels.
Not long ago, I spoke with Chris Wohl, a research materials/surface engineer at the NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia, who spent six years trying to conceive a child. Both he and his wife had fertility problems: Wohl's sperm count was under 2 million per milliliter—the average count we'd expect to reach, at the current rate, by 2034. “We started in the normal way of trying to have kids,” he said, “and after a few years, we said, ‘Okay, let's talk to some folks.’ ” They went through several rounds of intrauterine insemination. “And then after that sixth time, we said, ‘This isn't working. We need to kind of up our technology game.’ So we went to a reproductive endocrinologist and went through several rounds of IVF. And then when that failed, we were going to look into adoption. That's when somebody came forward and said that they would be a surrogate for us.” Finally, with the surrogate, the process worked. He and his wife now have a healthy, strong-willed 4-year-old girl.
So perhaps that's the solution: As long as we hover somewhere above Sperm Count Zero, and with an assist from modern medicine, we have a shot. Men will continue to be essential to the survival of the species. The problem with innovation, though, is that it never stops. A new technology known as IVG—in vitro gametogenesis—is showing early promise at turning embryonic stem cells into sperm. In 2016, Japanese scientists created baby mice by fertilizing normal mouse eggs with sperm created via IVG. The stem cells in question were taken from female mice. There was no need for any males.
https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero
-
From Fish to Humans, A Microplastic Invasion May Be Taking a Toll
Sep 4, 2018 | Scientific American
By Andrea Thompson
Mark Browne had a suspicion. He hoped the samples of dried blood taken from a blue mussel and placed under a special microscope would tell him if he was correct. As a fuzzy, three-dimensional image of the mussel’s blood cells appeared, there they were, right in the middle—tiny specks of plastic.
Whereas photos of sea turtles eating plastic bags have become the poster child of the environmental harm wrought by humanity’s plastic waste, research like Browne’s illustrates the scope of the problem is far larger than the trash we can see. Tiny pieces of degraded plastic, synthetic fibers and plastic beads, collectively called microplastics, have turned up in every corner of the planet—from Florida beach sands to Arctic sea ice, from farm fields to urban air.
Their size—from about five millimeters, or the size of a grain of rice, down to microscopic—means they can be ingested by a wide range of creatures, from the plankton that form the basis of the marine food chain to humans. As Browne’s 2008 study was one of the first to demonstrate, those plastic particles don’t always pass harmlessly through the body. The finding “was one of those sort of bittersweet moments,” the ecotoxicologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney says. “You’re pleased that some prediction you’ve made has come true—but then you’re devastated” because of the potentially profound ecological implications.
Ingested microplastic particles can physically damage organs and leach hazardous chemicals—from the hormone-disrupting bisphenol A (BPA) to pesticides—that can compromise immune function and stymie growth and reproduction. Both microplastics and these chemicals may accumulate up the food chain, potentially impacting whole ecosystems, including the health of soils in which we grow our food. Microplastics in the water we drink and the air we breathe can also hit humans directly.
Browne is one of dozens of scientists trying to sort out exactly what this widespread, motley assortment of microplastics pollution might be doing to animals and ecosystems. Tantalizing evidence is emerging, from the impaired reproduction of fish to altered soil microbe communities. As researchers accumulate more data, “we start realizing we’re just at the tip of the iceberg with the problem,” Browne says.A THREAT TO ORGANS AND BLOODSTREAM
When Browne experimented with blue mussels back in 2008, many researchers thought animals would just excrete any microplastics they ate, like “unnatural fiber,” as Browne called it—but he wasn’t so sure. He tested the idea by placing mussels in water tanks spiked with fluorescent-tagged microplastic particles smaller than a human red blood cell, then moved them into clean water. For six weeks he harvested the shellfish to see if they had cleared the microplastics. “We actually ran out of mussels,” Browne says. The particles “were still in them at the end of those trials.”
The mere presence of microplastics in fish, earthworms and other species is unsettling, but the real harm is done if microplastics linger—especially if they move out of the gut and into the bloodstream and other organs. Scientists including Browne have observed signs of physical damage, such as inflammation, caused by particles jabbing and rubbing against organ walls. Researchers have also found signs ingested microplastics can leach hazardous chemicals, both those added to polymers during production and environmental pollutants like pesticides that are attracted to the surface of plastic, leading to health effects such as liver damage. Marco Vighi, an ecotoxicologist at the IMDEA Water Institute in Spain, is one of several researchers running tests to see what types of pollutants different polymers pick up and whether they are released into the freshwater and terrestrial animals that eat them. The amount of microplastics in lakes and soils could rival the more than 15 trillion tons of particles thought to be floating in the ocean’s surface alone.
What matters most is whether these physical and chemical impacts ultimately affect an organism’s growth, reproduction or susceptibility to illness. In a surprising study published in March, not only did fish exposed to microplastics reproduce less but their offspring, who weren’t directly exposed to plastic particles, also had fewer young, suggesting the effects can linger into subsequent generations. Some organisms such as freshwater crustaceans called amphipods haven’t yet exhibited any ill effects, perhaps because they can handle natural indigestible material like bits of rock, says Martin Wagner, an ecotoxicologist at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, who studied them. And some species have shown toxic effects from microplastics exposure from certain types of plastic, but not others, says Chelsea Rochman, a microplastics researcher at the University of Toronto.
Most work on microplastic impacts has been done in the lab for short stints, with only a single type of plastic, often with larger particles than some species tend to eat, and at higher concentrations than are found in the environment. The studies “won’t tell us about long-term ecological consequences happening at low concentrations,” Wagner says. He is one of several researchers starting to bridge that gap by matching animals to the polymers and pollutants they are most likely to encounter and incorporating the intricacies of the real world where microplastics “won’t be the only stressor,” Wagner says. Microplastics could be a last straw for species subject to pressures as chemical pollutants, overfishing and climate change. “It’s just damn complicated,” Wagner says.INVITING CHAOS
Messy, real-world conditions are the goal on the green lawn of a botanical garden in Frankfurt, Germany. A row of small, identical ponds stretch across the grass, exposed to the elements. Wagner spiked each one with different microplastic particles—some virgin polymers, some contaminated with pollutants—to see how freshwater insects and zooplankton fare. Although Wagner hasn’t yet observed any overt impacts, he is investigating whether certain organisms exhibit more subtle signs of harm, which could have a ripple effect throughout an ecosystem’s food web.
Such cascading impacts could happen even when individual species don’t seem to suffer. Browne’s mussels showed no short-term ill effects but he worries their accumulated microplastics could be transferred to animals that eat them. “They might not be so kind to the other organisms,” he says.
Like Wagner, Browne is venturing farther out into the real world. He has several freezers’ worth of fish and other organisms plucked from Sydney Harbor that he will examine for ingested microplastics. His team will be linking those to the routes by which microplastics might be entering the harbor and looking for signs of ecological damage such as changes in population size. The approach means animals can behave normally and are exposed to typical environmental conditions such tides and storms, as well as a host of other stressors such as changing ocean temperatures and industrial pollutants. “We want a chaotic system because if something can cause an impact in that chaotic system, above those other stresses, we know that we really, really need to be worried about it,” Browne says.
Matthias Rillig, a plant ecologist at Free University of Berlin, has shown how microplastics can affect organisms by altering their environments. In a recent study he co-authored, soil laden with polyester microfibers was much fluffier, retained more moisture and seemed to affect the activity of microbes that are crucial to the soil nutrient cycle. The finding is an early but concerning one, given that farmers around the world apply microfiber-rich treated sewage sludge as fertilizer to agricultural land. Rillig is also one of several scientists looking to see how microfibers in soils might be affecting crop growth.FULL CIRCLE
Microplastics may threaten people more directly. A study published in April found particles and microfibers in packaged sea salt, beer, bottled water and tap water, making it virtually certain we are ingesting microplastics. In bottled beverages microplastics could be infiltrating during the bottling process; microfibers could be falling from the atmosphere into the reservoirs that supply tap water. Even for researchers steeped in the field, “it still comes as a shock,” Rochman says. “It just shows that the mismanagement of our waste is coming back to us.”
Because it is unethical to intentionally feed doses of microplastic particles to humans, some researchers, like Browne, have turned to medical studies that use particles to deliver precise amounts of drugs to specific areas of the body to get a better sense of how easily microplastics might move through humans. If particles are small enough, they might migrate through the body and potentially accumulate in places like the bloodstream. A study of hamsters injected with microplastics suggests such particles can lead to blood clots.
Humans could also be inhaling microfibers as they fall from the sky—everywhere from the heart of Paris to the remote Arctic. Small airborne particles are known to lodge deep in the lungs where they can cause various diseases, including cancer. Factory workers who handle nylon and polyester have shown evidence of lung irritation and reduced capacity (although not cancer), but they are exposed to much higher levels than the average person. Stephanie Wright, a research associate at King’s College London, is trying to better understand how much microfiber humans are actually exposed to and whether airborne microplastics might penetrate the lungs. She is also teaming up with the university’s toxicology unit to examine their lung tissue collection for signs of microfibers and related damage.
Some scientists say the focus on microplastics in humans might be missing a larger point: People are continually exposed to plastic food and beverage containers, which could be a much bigger source of at least the chemicals added to plastics such as the endocrine disruptor BPA. The potential exposure to microplastics hasn’t stopped Rochman from eating seafood, however. “To the best of my knowledge the benefits outweigh the costs,” she says. It could be that, as with many pollutants, there is a threshold beyond which microplastics become toxic to humans or other species. “We just need to try to understand what that threshold is,” she notes.
Experts say the sheer ubiquity of the contaminant combined with the harm that has already been observed is enough for humanity to start to clean up its act. “There are always questions to be answered,” Rochman says, but we have reached the point where “it’s enough information to act toward solutions.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-humans-a-microplastic-invasion-may-be-taking-a-toll/
-
UK Backs Authorisation Route for Dechlorane Plus
Sep 4, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
The UK has said it prefers the REACH authorisation route rather than restriction to regulate the SVHC dechlorane plus in the EU.
The UK’s comments come in a risk management option analysis (RMOA) conclusion document finalised in July and recently published by Echa.
Dechlorane plus is used in adhesives, sealants and binding agents, and as a non-plasticising flame retardant. It was added to the REACH candidate list in January because of its very persistent and very bioaccumulative (vPvB) properties. This means it will eventually be subject to authorisation.
According to Echa, some SVHCs can face both authorisation obligations and restrictions – some uses are restricted, while others require authorisation. For example, certain chromium compounds are on both authorisation and restriction lists because they are restricted in leather articles.
The RMOA process helps authorities decide whether further regulatory risk management activities are needed for a substance and to identify the most appropriate instrument to address a concern.
In this case the UK said it "does not currently favour" restriction because the level of risk is uncertain due to the lack of detailed information about:all uses;amounts in articles;actual emissions;substitution potential; andthe "generally low" concentrations found in the European environment.
This would also make it difficult to assess its relative costs and benefits, it said.
Restricting the chemical under REACH "might result in multiple derogations and perhaps long transitional periods". On balance, the UK said it prefers the authorisation route "because it places the responsibility on industry to provide the arguments about why they continue to need this substance".
RMOAs usually take place before the regulatory risk management process under REACH is initiated, for example when considering inclusion in the candidate list. However, as they are a voluntary step, and not part of the processes as defined in the legislation, the submitting member state can choose when to conduct and submit them, Echa told Chemical Watch.Next steps
Now that dechlorane plus is included in the candidate list, Echa may prioritise it for inclusion in Annex XIV – the authorisation list – in due course. Echa or the Commission could then consider a restriction for articles after the conclusion of the authorisation application process, the UK said.
Once the compliance check is complete and if an additional hazard is identified consistent with persistent organic pollutant (POP) designation, the UK said the European Commission could seek an EU restriction to avoid implementation difficulties in the case of a subsequent POPs nomination. This activity should be completed before a final decision is made on the addition to Annex XIV, the UK added.Market presence
Dechlorane plus is imported into the EU from China and has one active registrant – the only representative – supplying quantities of 10-100 tonnes/year, the UK said.
Based on the registration information, "it seems likely", it added, that annual EU emissions to water will be "well below" 200kg. A small number of non-EU companies also sell the substance, so there could be a "handful" of other EU importers of less than 100 tonnes/year.
Final registrant numbers will be clarified in September, once Echa finishes its completeness check of REACH 2018 registrations.
The substance is also likely to enter the EU in imported articles. But there is no information available about numbers, types or amounts, "so the emissions, and therefore risks, cannot be established with any certainty".
https://chemicalwatch.com/70048/uk-backs-authorisation-route-for-dechlorane-plus
-
Zinke's Ex-Energy Adviser Takes Post in Offshore Drilling
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Pamela King
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's former energy adviser today joined the staff of an oil and gas firm operating in the Gulf of Mexico.
Vincent DeVito, a former attorney and George W. Bush-era Energy Department official, will serve as executive vice president and general counsel for Cox Oil Offshore LLC.
"As we continue to expand our market position within the Gulf of Mexico, it is imperative that Cox Oil have strong legal counsel with a comprehensive knowledge of public policy and experience working with global private and publicly-held companies," Cox Oil Chairman Brad Cox said in a statement. "Mr. DeVito will help guide us through this next phase of growth."
As Zinke's counselor on energy policy, DeVito led Interior's push to achieve "energy dominance." The department announced last month that DeVito would leave his post and return to the private sector (E&E News PM, Aug. 23).
"I lent my skills and contributed to the success of our government," said DeVito, who was previously treasurer of Zinke's political action committee and a partner at the law firm Bowditch & Dewey LLP. "Now, I look forward to this outstanding opportunity with Cox."
As part of the "energy dominance" agenda, DeVito and other Interior officials expanded oil and gas lease sales both on public lands and in federal waters.
Industry demand hasn't necessarily matched the federal government's larger offering. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's summer lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico generated more competition than the agency's March auction, but companies still bid on fewer than 1 percent of the available blocks (Greenwire, Aug. 15).
Jayson O'Neill, deputy director for the Western Values Project, noted that DeVito follows other former Interior officials into the fossil fuels industry. Downey Magallanes, Zinke's former deputy chief of staff, left the department last week for a position at BP PLC (Greenwire, Aug. 28).
"Mr. DeVito's departure from the government to his new position working for a major oil and gas corporation is part of a larger pattern of Secretary Zinke's political appointees jumping ship to go work for corporate special interests," O'Neill said in a statement. "After they do the bidding of oil and gas corporations at Interior, former staff are being rewarded for the favors they did for these companies by getting lucrative jobs in the private sector."
DeVito also led Interior's Royalty Policy Committee, which Zinke resurrected last year after lifting the Obama administration's coal leasing moratorium. The committee controversially proposed to lower royalty rates on deepwater oil and gas leases, an action Zinke later declined to implement (E&E News PM, April 17).
The royalty committee will hold its fourth meeting in Denver next week. In DeVito's absence, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Director Scott Angelle will serve as acting chairman of the panel, Interior announced last week.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/09/04/stories/1060095725
-
Southwestern to Double Down in Appalachia After $1.9B Fayetteville Sale
Sep 4, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Southwestern Energy Co. is going all-in on the Appalachian Basin, announcing on Tuesday that it would exit the play it gave rise to with the $1.9 billion sale of the Fayetteville Shale assets and move some of the proceeds into the liquids-rich Northeast, which has consistently outperformed declining production in Arkansas.
Southwestern, which has been marketing the Fayetteville properties since the beginning of the year to reposition its portfolio as part of a broader cost-cutting initiative, said it would sell its Fayetteville assets to privately held Flywheel Energy LLC, a company backed by Kayne Private Energy Income Funds. The deal is expected to close in December.
Under the transaction, Southwestern would become a pure-play Appalachian operator, selling 915,000 net acres in the Fayetteville, 4,033 operated producing wells, 3.7 Tcf of proved reserves, associated midstream assets and anticipated 2019 production of 225-230 Bcf.
The sale marks the end of an era, as the Fayetteville built Southwestern’s brand as an unconventional explorer. The Houston-based independent lays claim to the first successful natural gas production from the formation, becoming one of its most dominant players over the years. It spent $11 million for 343,000 acres in 2003 at a time when benchmark natural gas prices traded above $5.00/MMBtu for most of the year and continued increasing to hit a peak of nearly $13.00/MMBtu in 2012.
“The sale of the Fayetteville represents a pivotal and deliberate step towards fulfilling our promise to reposition Southwestern Energy to capture greater returns from our higher margin Appalachia assets,” said CEO Bill Way. The transaction is “a significant milestone in advancing our strategic plan.” He said shareholders would benefit from an “optimized portfolio, stronger balance sheet, including improved financial flexibility, and the return of capital to all shareholders through a share repurchase program.”
The company would receive $1.865 billion in cash, while the buyer would assume $438 million of future contractual liabilities. The proceeds would go toward retiring debt, as Southwestern also announced Tuesday that it would buy up to $900 million of its senior notes and expects to have pro-forma debt of $2.3 billion after closing. The company has also authorized a $200 million share repurchase program.
Moreover, Southwestern said it expects annualized interest and organizational cost reductions of $60-75 million from the sale.
To replace the cash flow that would have been generated by the Fayetteville assets, the company plans to allocate $600 million from the sale to its liquids-rich Appalachian assets in West Virginia over the next two years. The company plans to keep running up to six rigs next year in the Northeast, where it is guiding for 8-12% year/year production growth and liquids growth of 15-25%. In 2020, management said the company anticipates production growth in the mid-teens and liquids growth in the mid-twenties.
To be sure, higher oil prices have emboldened Southwestern and other Appalachian operators to target more liquids in the region, where it holds more than 475,000 net acres. Southwestern produced 234 Bcfe during the second quarter, including 61,370 b/d of natural gas liquids (NGL) and condensate, or a 44% year/year increase in liquids volumes driven by Appalachian volumes. Overall, production was up from 222 Bcfe in the year-ago period and 226 Bcfe in 1Q2018. During the same period, the company saw a 34% and 46% increase in NGL and oil prices.
Earlier this year, Way said Appalachia had set a high bar for the Fayetteville, and the company began exploring strategic alternatives for the assets. To push the properties’ value up, Southwestern has been proving the Moorefield Shale, which sits below the Fayetteville, and has redeveloped legacy areas with the latest generation of drilling and completion techniques.
But while the company’s Appalachian production has skyrocketed in recent years, the Fayetteville has only declined. Production there last year dropped to 316 Bcf from 375 Bcf in 2016. Production from the play dropped again in the second quarter to 67 Bcf from 82 Bcf in the year-ago period. It was flat from 1Q2018.
NGI’s Patrick Rau, director of strategy and research, noted that production has dipped across the play, as several midstream companies have written down their asset value there or recontracted capacity at substantially lower rates. Indeed, Southwestern reached an agreement with Boardwalk Pipeline Partners LP in late 2017 to restructure firm transportation agreements in the play to reduce excess capacity. But Rau added that the deal is principally related to higher returns in the Northeast and the Fayetteville’s effect on the company’s balance sheet.
“There's been a general trend for publicly traded companies selling to private equity, primarily those public companies that have a multi-asset portfolio,” Rau said. “By selling properties with lesser returns, the publicly traded exploration and production companies can focus on their higher return assets, and it can improve their returns on invested capital, which is the new mantra among those public producers.
“These firms are more capital conscience these days. Wall Street is shunning new equity raises, and loading up on debt to outspend cash flows is frowned upon as well,” he added. “That means publicly traded companies are relatively more capital constrained, so they will really wish to focus on their very best properties for the foreseeable future.”
Rau said private equity and investment firms like Kayne “can take their time on growing their assets.” Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors LP in 2016 formed the energy income fund that’s backing Flywheel to partner with companies and acquire mature, long-life oil and gas assets throughout North America. For Flywheel, Rau noted that the Fayetteville is downstream of Appalachia closer to demand, which provides a cost advantage.
“The Fayetteville could look a lot better in a few years, when liquified natural gas exports really take off in earnest, and particularly if the second wave of final investment decision projects comes forth,” he said. “Southwestern was reporting some interesting wells in the underlying Moorefield Shale, so perhaps there is a bit of a call option on that as well.
“The Fayetteville may very well be better suited for another time, and private equity companies have more of a luxury to wait until then, everything else being equal.”
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/115648-southwestern-to-double-down-in-appalachia-after-19b-fayetteville-sale
-
(ACC Mentioned) Time to Kick It into High Gear
Sep 4, 2018 | Politico - Morning Energy
By Kelsey Tamborrino
TIME TO KICK IT INTO HIGH GEAR: Senators made progress in August on some appropriations measures, but the real negotiations on conference bills are expected to pick up now that the House is back in town. Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, who chairs the committee on Energy-Water spending, previously told reporters he expects the “minibus” Energy-Water package, H.R. 5895 (115), to be negotiated this week, a sentiment Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby also echoed.
“Our goal is to have our conference immediately after we return from Labor Day,” Alexander told reporters when asked about the multi-pronged appropriation that would cover fiscal 2019 funding for the Energy Department and water projects, among other things.
Lawmakers also must conference another measure: The Senate on Aug. 1 passed a four-bill spending package, H.R. 6147 (115), that includes the $35.8 billion Interior and Environment title. The package again contrasts the House version, which attached policy riders to its bill that include language to block an Obama-era rule on methane emissions, to weaken enforcement of Chesapeake Bay cleanup and to bar the EPA from regulating truck trailers under the Clean Air Act. And keep in mind: We are now just 11 legislative days away from the Sept. 30 funding deadline.
EPA IG TO RELEASE PRUITT REPORT: Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt may be gone from the agency but the investigations into the many controversies that surrounded his tenure are just starting to trickle out. EPA’s watchdog arm will issue a report this morning on Pruitt’s security detail — one of the first official reports into Pruitt’s activities from the Office of Inspector General. The scope of today’s report is unclear, Pro’s Alex Guillén reports, but the OIG said it would look into several aspects of Pruitt’s security detail, including the increase in its spending compared to previous administrators and its use on personal trips.
But that’s not all: EPA’s inspector general last week also announced it will begin examining the agency’s implementation of its scientific integrity policy more than a year after Pruitt was cleared of violating that policy following controversial statements about climate change science, Alex also reports.
I’M BACK! It’s Tuesday and I'm your host, Kelsey Tamborrino, back in the saddle after a week of tipsheet hiatus. In August, Entergy’s Rob Hall was first to correctly name North Carolina’s Kay Hagan as the first woman to defeat a female incumbent (Elizabeth Dole) in a Senate race. For today: Name the five former presidents who once had offices in the Russell Senate Building. Send your tips, energy gossip and comments to ktamborrino@politico.com, or follow us on Twitter @kelseytam, @Morning_Energy and @POLITICOPro.
BREAKING DOWN THE BALLOT: Voters will weigh in on a host of major energy issues on ballots across several states come November. Your ME host breaks down seven of those initiatives here, but here's a few to keep in mind:
— Colorado’s anti-fracking measure: Initiative 97 revives Colorado's long-running fight over fracking, in the nation's seventh-largest oil producing state. The measure calls for widening the buffer zone to 2,500 feet between new fracking operations and “vulnerable areas” including homes, schools and water sources — a move energy industry backers says amounts to a de facto ban on drilling in the state.
— Washington’s carbon fee: Washington state could make history by passing the first fee on carbon emissions in the U.S. Known as Initiative 1631, the ballot measure would charge “large emitters” $15 per metric ton of carbon content beginning in 2020, increasing by $2 each year. The funds would go toward promoting clean air and energy. But oil and gas companies operating in the state oppose the measure and are pouring millions into the opposition campaign.
— California's gas tax repeal fight: Proposition 6 would repeal California's 12-cent per gallon tax that only took effect in November and was designed to raise $5.4 billion a year to pay for infrastructure spending. The ballot measure has energized state Republicans, who hope voters will see the higher price at the pump as a motivator to head to the polls.
WHERE’S ZINKE? Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is in Nauru today, where he’s leading a U.S. government delegation to the Pacific Islands Forum. Zinke will lead senior officials from the White House, departments of State, Defense and Interior, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. During the excursion, Zinke will host a roundtable meeting with Pacific Island leaders and PIF members to discuss issues ranging from responding to the threat posed by North Korea to combating illegal fishing and sustainable development, according to DOI.
Following the forum, the Zinke-led delegation will head to Papua New Guinea to meet senior officials in advance of APEC Leaders’ Week. They will also make stops in Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa.
SUPREME COURT SHOWTIME: Confirmation hearings kick off today for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Greens have mobilized in recent weeks against Kavanaugh, arguing in part that the judge has previously weighed in on the wrong side of environmental decisions. The Sierra Club, for one, released an ad last week comparing Kavanaugh to Pruitt and Michael Cohen, the former attorney to Donald Trump.
Binders full of prep: Ahead of his appearance, POLITICO’s Andrew Restuccia, Elana Schor and Lorraine Woellert report Kavanaugh’s prep work for his confirmation hearings includes “dozens of binders packed with information and suggested answers about everything from the establishment clause to environmental law.” Recall: Kavanaugh has had his fingers in numerous environmental cases over the years, and is widely seen as critical of many Obama-era EPA rules. Catch up on what Kavanaugh could mean for energy regulations here.
MIT TRIES TO CRACK THE NUCLEAR NUT — AGAIN: While many energy sources like wind, solar and natural gas have dropped in price since a 2003 MIT report sought to chart a future for nuclear power, reactors have largely gone the other direction. So, researchers at the university have been at it again, issuing a new report this week seeking to “arrest and reverse” nuclear’s global costliness and stave off “the existential challenges” to the sector. The study offers a half-dozen recommendations aimed at retaining nuclear power and its zero-emissions profile, many of which sound familiar: standardizing reactor designs, implementing a “level playing field” through zero-emission credits like New York and Illinois have done, and a shift to passive safety technologies.
Interestingly, the report also counters much of what the nuclear industry has been saying for a half-decade — and what Rick Perry’s Energy Department has charged for a year — about how plants were closing because of market “defects.” “While the details of electricity market design need scrutiny and improvement, market design failures have not been a primary factor in the recent closure of existing U.S. nuclear plants,” the report states. Translation: Nuclear is losing to cheap gas. Pricing (or repricing) a wide range of attributes like grid stability, baseload generation and resiliency in the markets wouldn’t address nuclear power’s money problems, the report says. “In the United States, most of the system benefits advertised as unique to nuclear power can now be provided by competing technologies at lower cost.” That said, researchers argue, the issue is about policymakers not putting a bigger emphasis on nuclear’s climate benefits.
ARMY CORPS RELEASES PEBBLE SCOPING DOCUMENT: The Army Corps of Engineers on Friday posted the scoping document for the environmental review it will perform for the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska. Scoping, or determining what issues to study, is an early step in the process under the National Environmental Policy Act. The 306-page document was developed after receiving public comment and holding nine meetings in Alaska. It doesn't make any conclusions about the proposed mine itself, instead only identifying matters for study, ranging from impacts on nearby fisheries to climate change to preserving important archaeological sites. The Corps projects releasing a draft environmental impact statement in January and a final EIS in late 2019.
GUESS WHAT’S BACK: The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered EPA to immediately reinstate an Obama-era chemical safety rule on Friday — two weeks after the court overturned EPA’s delay of the regulation. The unusual move cuts short the typical period for any appeal, Alex reports, leaving industry groups that supported the Trump administration’s delay to decry 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, but environmental and labor groups on Aug. 24 asked the court to more quickly order EPA to reinstate the rule. They argued 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. 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 agency, for its part, echoed that sentiment in its own filing, as did a similar filing from a host of red states.
STAND BY YOUR PERMIT: The Army Corps of Engineers issued a brief decision on Friday backing up its initial environmental assessment of the Dakota Access pipeline. In June 2017, a federal judge called on the agency to redo certain sections of its environmental analysis surrounding the pipeline, concluding it failed to adequately consider potential consequences of a spill from the project. But in its Friday decision, the Army Corps said its “review on remand did not reveal ‘significant new circumstance[s] or information relevant to environmental concerns.’”
ON TAP TODAY: The House Rules Committee will meet at 5 p.m. to set up the floor debate on H.R. 4606 (115), which would speed up the approval of shipments of small amounts of liquefied natural gas that qualify for categorical exclusions under NEPA. The bill, from Republican Rep. Bill Johnson, would codify into law a final Energy Department rule that went into effect Aug. 22, Pro's Anthony Adragna reports.
SPEAKING OF LNG: FERC dropped a four-page memorandum on Friday outlining an understanding with federal pipeline regulators to help process the more than a dozen applications for LNG export terminals, Pro’s Darius Dixon reports. The agreement aims to better coordinate project siting and safety reviews.
RECOMMENDED READING: Almost two years after Trump first pledged to roll back regulations, while still protecting workers’ health, a new analysis by POLITICO’s Ian Kullgren finds the Trump administration has done the opposite, rolling back worker safety protections affecting underground mine safety inspections and offshore oil rigs, among others. Read the story.
TRUMP TAPS NEW NPS HEAD: The president officially tapped David Vela, the superintendent of Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park, on Friday to lead the National Park Service. Vela is a 28-year career veteran of the NPS, Anthony reports.
— Alexandra Dunn also received the formal nod to lead EPA’s chemicals office on Friday. Dunn, who currently leads EPA's Region 1 in New England, previously served as executive director of Environmental Council of the States.
MOVERS, SHAKERS: Bryan Shaw, the chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality who was appointed by former Gov. Rick Perry, announced his retirement Friday after 10 years at the agency. “It has been an honor and a joy to come to work every day because I love this agency and all we do to use sound science to protect the environment of the state,” Shaw said in a statement.
— Blaine Collison joined David Gardiner and Associates last week as senior vice president. Collison previously served as managing director of marketing and partnerships at Altenex, which is now Edison Energy, and also directed EPA’s Green Power Partnership.
A NEW FACE: Clearway Energy Group launched Friday after the completion of this year’s sale of NRG Energy’s renewables platform and controlling interest in NRG Yield, Inc. to Global Infrastructure Partners. Clearway Energy Group also announced Friday the purchase of 4.7 GW of utility-scale solar development projects from SunPower.
MAIL CALL! TO THE MATS: Nine health and medical organizations, including the American Lung Association and the March for Dimes, sent a letter to acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Friday, calling on him to ditch plans to reconsider the agency’s work to limit mercury and other air toxics from power plants, including the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-energy/2018/09/04/time-to-kick-it-into-high-gear-328420
-
EPA Ordered to Enforce Obama Chemical Plant Safety Rule
Sep 4, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
A federal court has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to start enforcing a major Obama administration regulation on the safety of chemical plants and similar facilities.
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit made the order Friday after environmental groups and Democratic state attorneys general asked the judges to skip the traditional 52-day waiting period to enforce their Aug. 17 ruling, which found that the Trump administration improperly delayed the regulation.
Judges Judith Rogers and Robert Wilkins did not explain their brief order Friday accepting the litigants’ arguments.
“Petitioners and the public have a strong interest in the court’s mandate issuing promptly, due to the serious and irreparable harm and imminent threats to public health and safety that EPA’s Delay Rule is causing,” the groups and attorneys general wrote in their Aug. 24 petition.
The Obama administration’s EPA wrote the rule to try to prevent and mitigate chemical plant disasters, like the 2013 West, Texas, fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15. It beefed up requirements for disaster planning and for post-incident investigations, among other changes.
It was due to start taking effect in March 2017, but the Trump administration has delayed implementing it while it reconsiders major aspects of the rule. The EPA proposed earlier this year to eliminate some of the most substantial provisions, but that rollback has not been made final.
In its decision last month, the D.C. Circuit Court said the EPA didn’t follow the Clean Air Act in delaying the regulation.
“Because EPA has not engaged in reasoned decisionmaking, its promulgation of the delay rule is arbitrary and capricious,” the judges said.
After the Friday ruling that the EPA must start enforcing the rule, business groups and Republican attorneys general immediately asked the court to hold off, saying they weren’t given sufficient time to rebut the arguments by the environmental groups.
“The court never gave industry intervenors notice of its decision to grant petitioners’ motion before the running of this 10-day period and thereby violated Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 27(a)(3)(A),” write the business groups, led by the Chamber of Commerce.
“The court should accordingly rescind the order and recall its mandate to give industry intervenors the opportunity to exercise their right to respond.”
The EPA said in its own brief response that it agrees with the business groups and wants the court to undo its order.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/404942-epa-ordered-to-enforce-obama-chemical-plant-safety-rule
-
Health Groups Urge EPA to Retain Mercury Regulations
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
EPA should scrap newly announced plans to revisit its 2012 regulations limiting power plant emissions of mercury and other air toxics, a coalition of public health groups said in a letter released this morning.
"Americans have nothing to gain from the rollback of these lifesaving, highly effective standards, and many people — including pregnant women and their unborn children — have everything to lose," the American Lung Association, the March of Dimes and seven other organizations said in the letter, sent Friday to acting EPA chief Andrew Wheeler.
Mercury is a neurotoxin "that causes brain damage, learning disabilities and birth defects in children," the groups wrote, adding that what are formally known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards have also cut releases of pollution linked to cancer and smog formation.
The standards apply to coal- and oil-fired power plants. While the entire industry is now in compliance, EPA announced last week that it would launch a review aimed in part at relooking at whether the standards are "appropriate and necessary" under the terms of the Clean Air Act (Greenwire, Aug. 29).
While the regulations have long since gone into effect, the Supreme Court in 2015 ruled that EPA should have done a better job of weighing potential compliance costs in making that initial determination. In response, the agency reaffirmed its decision in a 2016 "supplemental finding."
That finding is now the subject of lawsuits brought by utilities and Republican-leaning states.
At the Trump administration's request, proceedings in the combined litigation before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit have been on hold since April 2017. As of this morning, EPA had not sought court approval to lift that hold, according to online records.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/09/04/stories/1060095729
-
GOP Attorneys General Side with EPA on Ozone Decisions
Sep 4, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is battling one EPA compliance decision for its 2015 ground-level ozone standard, is sallying to the agency's defense on another.
In a court motion filed late last week, Paxton (R) asked to intervene in a lawsuit challenging EPA's decision to deem El Paso County as "attainment/unclassifiable" for the 70-parts-per-billion standard.
Texas environmental regulators, who backed that decision, have an interest in avoiding changes to a recommendation that would "result in a more onerous regulatory task," Paxton's office wrote in the motion, filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
On similar grounds, however, Paxton last week challenged a separate EPA determination to override the state's recommendation and designate Bexar County, the heart of the booming San Antonio metro area, in nonattainment for the 70-ppb threshold (Greenwire, Aug. 29).
His bid to intervene in the El Paso County litigation is part of a broader scramble by state officials and advocacy groups to make sure the D.C. Circuit hears their views in the half-dozen consolidated suits contesting various EPA's attainment designations in Texas and other states.
Also seeking to intervene in the El Paso County litigation are business groups, including the Texas Oil and Gas Association, that argue a nonattainment designation for the area could push up compliance costs.
Elsewhere, Republican attorneys general for two other states are also making common cause with federal regulators who were a favorite nemesis during the Obama administration.
In a Friday intervention motion in a Sierra Club lawsuit, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, now running for governor, said the state backs EPA's decision to deem Ottawa County on Lake Michigan in attainment for the 2015 ozone standard.
If the Sierra Club succeeds in overturning that determination, "Michigan will have to develop a plan to control sources of air pollution in Ottawa County, despite its technical determination that such controls are unnecessary to bring neighboring counties into attainment with the federal standard," Schuette's office wrote in the motion.
The state would also have to divert money and staff from efforts to clean up the air in 10 other counties deemed out of compliance with the ozone standard, the motion added.
Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said the state backs EPA's controversial decision to whittle down the number of counties originally proposed for nonattainment listings (Greenwire, May 1).
The state of Illinois and Clean Wisconsin, an environmental group, are now challenging that decision. If they prevail, Wisconsin's manufacturing-based economy could be hurt, Schimel's office said in its motion.
Ozone, a lung irritant that is the main ingredient in smoggy air, is closely tied to the production of and consumption of fossil fuels. The Obama-era EPA tightened the ground-level ozone standard from 75 ppb to 70 ppb in October 2015, citing the need to protect public health in light of growing research on ozone's health effects.
EPA completed its initial round of nationwide attainment designations for the standard in July. For areas deemed in nonattainment, those designations start the clock for states to come up with cleanup plans.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/09/04/stories/1060095721
Industry and Association News
LCSA News - There are no clips to report at this time.
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