Preview Newsletter
AM ACC Clips Report - October 22, 2018
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(ACC Mentioned) Plastic Grocery Bags Reborn as Decking and More Plastic Bags
Oct 21, 2018 | Richmond.com
By Tammie Smith
Since plastic grocery bags shouldn’t be put in curbside recycling containers, what should you do with them? -
(ACC Mentioned) TV Ad Spending More for Dems Casten, Underwood Than GOP Roskam, Hultgren
Oct 21, 2018 | Chicago Sun-Times
By Lynn Sweet
More television ad money is being spent to elect Democrats Sean Casten and Lauren Underwood than for their GOP opponents, Reps. Peter Roskam and Randy Hultgren, according to an analysis of broadcast and cable buys obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times. -
Trump Admin Justifies Regs with Health Benefits It Attacks
Oct 22, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
The Trump administration wants EPA to stop considering ancillary health benefits from some pollution regulations — unless it is using those benefits to justify its own actions. -
(ACC Mentioned) NYS Drinking Water Council To Recommend MCLs By Year's End
Oct 19, 2018 | WAMC
By Allison Dunne
New York state’s Drinking Water Quality Council met this week to discuss recommending maximum contaminant levels for three emerging contaminants, including PFOA and PFOS. -
(ACC Mentioned) Worried About Chlorine in Bossier Water? Here Are the Latest Test Results
Oct 19, 2018 | KSLA
As Bossier City water system officials continue a “chlorine flush” to treat the city’s water, some residents have growing concerns about the amount of chemicals coming out of the faucets. -
PFAS Task Force Looks for ‘Concrete’ Actions
Oct 19, 2018 | The Intelligencer
By Chris Ullery
The congressional task force, convened earlier this year by U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-8, of Middletown, consists of approximately a dozen people representing communities that have had their drinking water contaminated by toxic perfluorinated compounds, also known as PFAS, in recent years. -
"Unreasonable": Superior Court Judge Signals She's Going To Gut Glyphosate Cancer Judgment
Oct 19, 2018 | American Council on Science and Health
In a blow to trial lawyers hoping to profit from a sympathetic jury in San Francisco, not to mention organic trade groups and activists at the University of California San Francisco, Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos has shown she is likely to grant Monsanto's request for a new trial in the case they lost brought by trial lawyers who claim a weedkiller which can only affect the shikimate pathway in plants somehow caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma in a human. -
In Win for Trump, Merkel Changes Course on U.S. Gas Imports
Oct 22, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Bojan Pancevsk
Chancellor Angela Merkel has offered government support to efforts to open up Germany to U.S. gas, a key concession to President Trump as he tries to loosen Russia’s gripon Europe’s largest energy market. -
Frackers Bet on New Terminals to Boost Oil Exports
Oct 21, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Rebecca Elliott
As pipeline bottlenecks crimp the U.S. shale boom, some companies are racing to address the next potential constraint on American oil output: the terminals to export crude to foreign markets. -
Russia Is Said to Offer Exxon New Projects as Sanctions Loom
Oct 19, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Elena Mazneva
Russia has begun discussions with Exxon Mobil Corp. on possible new oil and gas projects, potentially creating a dilemma as the U.S. government mulls more sanctions against the country. -
White House Backed Drillers Over EPA on Plugging Methane Leaks
Oct 19, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
White House officials pushed the EPA to maximize savings for the oil industry despite the agency’s concern that weakening regulations would allow more methane to escape into the atmosphere, according to newly released documents. -
White House Pressured EPA to Favor Industry over Climate
Oct 22, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Maxine Joselow
White House officials urged EPA to make changes to an Obama-era methane rule that would maximize cost savings for the oil and gas industry while allowing the release of more planet-warming emissions, government documents show. -
FERC Approves Plant on R.I. Waterfront
Oct 22, 2018 | AP (In E&E Energywire)
Federal regulators have approved construction of a $180 million liquefied natural gas facility on the Providence, R.I., waterfront. -
Stay in Kids' Case a Harbinger of More Conservative Rulings?
Oct 22, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Hulac
The Supreme Court late Friday stayed discovery and trial in a landmark climate change lawsuit, marking a temporary win for the Trump administration. -
Right to Safe Climate 'Simply Does Not Exist' — DOJ Lawyer
Oct 19, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Ellen M. Gilmer
The kids and young adults seeking to hold the government accountable for climate change impacts have "no legal basis" for their case, the Trump administration's top environmental lawyer said today. -
D.C. Circuit Broadly Rejects Challenges To EPA SO2 NAAQS Designations
Oct 19, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has broadly rejected three challenges to EPA's designations for which areas are attaining or violating the 2010 sulfur dioxide (SO2) air standard, defending the agency's discretion on technical issues and faulting suits from environmentalists and a Kansas utility on procedural grounds. -
No Joke, Trump Admin to Hire 5 Scientists for Climate
Oct 22, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Daniel Cusick
The Interior Department is seeking senior scientists to lead five regional hubs of the Climate Adaptation Science Centers program. -
EPA’s ‘Unclassifiable’ Label for Colo., Ohio Air Upheld by Court
Oct 19, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid Reporter
The Environmental Protection Agency has broad authority to decide whether a locality meets or exceeds national air quality standards—or that it can’t classify the area’s compliance at all—a federal appeals court ruled Oct. 19.
Congressional Hearings - There are no hearings to report at this time.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Plastic Grocery Bags Reborn as Decking and More Plastic Bags
Oct 21, 2018 | Richmond.com
By Tammie Smith
Since plastic grocery bags shouldn’t be put in curbside recycling containers, what should you do with them?
Take them back to where you got them.
“There are a lot of major retailers that have long-established programs for taking those bags back for recycling,” said Shari Jackson, director of film recycling at the American Chemistry Council, which has an informational website at www.plasticfilm recycling.org.
Publix, Walmart, Food Lion, Wegmans, Kroger and other major retailers have bins in their stores, usually near the front entrance, where consumers can drop off plastic grocery bags, dry cleaner plastic bags, bread bags, ice bags, newspaper sleeves and other specific plastic bags.
“It’s polyethylene film that we’re talking about,” said Jackson, describing the industry name for the plastic.
Jackson said the plastic bags are baled and transported to a distribution center where companies that recycle the plastics into products retrieve it. The largest user of recyclable plastic film is Trex, a Winchester-based company that makes porch decking boards, Jackson said.
According to the Trex website, the company uses more than 1.5 billion plastic bags each year to make composite products that are an alternative to wood. A standard 16-foot Trex deck board contains recycled material from approximately 2,250 plastic bags, according to Trex.
Trex will kick off its annual school plastic film recycling challenge on Nov. 15, which is America Recycles Day. The Trex competition challenges K-12 students to collect the most polyethylene plastic. Winning schools receive Trex products.
Other companies use the plastic film to make more plastic bags, crates, buckets, lawn and garden products and more.
Wegmans’ plastic grocery bags indicate they are made from 40 percent recycled material. Kroger bags note that they contain up to 25 percent recycled materials.
According to the council’s most recent data, 1.3 million pounds of recyclable plastic film was collected in 2016, an increase over the year before. That industry has also been affected by China changing policy on importing recyclable material and is looking for options in the domestic market.
Kroger, the nation’s largest traditional supermarket, announced in August plans to phase out single-use plastic bags by 2025 at its stores. It has 18 stores in the Richmond region.
https://www.richmond.com/business/local/plastic-grocery-bags-reborn-as-decking-and-more-plastic-bags/article_273f1edc-b98d-5591-8aa7-3a64f8bde13c.html
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(ACC Mentioned) TV Ad Spending More for Dems Casten, Underwood Than GOP Roskam, Hultgren
Oct 21, 2018 | Chicago Sun-Times
By Lynn Sweet
More television ad money is being spent to elect Democrats Sean Casten and Lauren Underwood than for their GOP opponents, Reps. Peter Roskam and Randy Hultgren, according to an analysis of broadcast and cable buys obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
The 6th District battle between Casten and Roskam has been a top-tier contest since the beginning, with Roskam a target because Democrat Hillary Clinton won the suburban district in 2016.
Combined, some $14.1 million in television ads has been spent through Sunday to elect either Roskam or Casten. That’s $7.6 million on Casten, and $6.5 million for Roskam.
A few months ago, the political landscape expanded, putting the 14th District on the radar – a reason for the sharp television spending disparities.
In all, some $3.6 million in television spots has been spent through Sunday to elect either Hultgren or Underwood. That’s $905,000 for Hultgren, and $2.7 million for Underwood.
The races in the 6th and the 14th, which takes in Chicago suburbs and reaches northwest to include the Rockford media market, are the biggest in the Chicago area.
Democrats need to flip 23 seats (out of 435) to win control of the U.S. House on Nov. 6.
The Sun-Times was provided information by a source tracking television spending, public information stations must disclose.
The totals reflect money spent directly by the campaigns and cash outlays by outside players. The totals do not separate out whether the spending to elect the four candidates is on positive or negative spots.
Broadcast ad buys are analyzed by not only the direct spending but how many rating points are purchased.
For cable, the spending is analyzed by how many times spots run. Because there are so many cable channels, the cumulative numbers get quite high over time.
Outside groups are spending money in these districts on digital advertising, direct mail, and ground game and turnout operations, which is not counted in these television buy reports.
6th
Ads to elect Roskam, total spending, $6.5 million, all in the Chicago market.
Broadcast, $1.9 million with 3,508 rating points.
Cable, $4.5 million with 106,469 cumulative spots.
Television money to elect Roskam comes mostly from his campaign, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and its close ally, the Congressional Leadership Fund.
Outside groups spending on Roskam preferred cable: the American Hospital Association PAC, the American Chemistry Council and the American Action Network (AAN), a non-profit headed by former Republican Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman.
Though officially independent, the AAN spending goes toward electing Republicans. The AAN, which does not disclose its donors, spent $863,856 for cable.
Ads to elect Casten, total spending , $7.6 million.
Broadcast, $4.6 million with 7,283 rating points.
Cable, $3 million, with 79,627 cumulative spots.
Television money to send Casten to Congress comes mainly from his campaign, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and its close ally, the House Majority PAC. The DCCC also paid about $61,000 to reach voters who cut cable – buying time on satellite and streaming providers such as Hulu and Amazon.
Reaching the cord cutters will become increasingly more important in paid political advertising.
Outside groups buying television time for Casten are the Kane County Democrats, with a small cable buy by a coalition of Democratic-allied groups, the Not One Penny group, whose backers, disclosed at notonepenny.org, include organized labor. Not One Penny spent $25,540 on broadcast and $119,375 on cable.
14th
Ads to elect Hultgren, total spending, $905,000, all in the Chicago market.
Broadcast, $219,795 with 427 rating points.
Cable, $685,332 with 24,542 cumulative spots.
Spending to elect Hultgren came from his campaign and the NRCC.
Ads to elect Underwood, total spending , $2.7 million in the Chicago market plus $2,400 , mainly for Rockford market cable.
Broadcast, $1.6 million with 2,658 rating points.
Cable, $1.1 million, with 17,830 cumulative spots.
Ads to elect Underwood were paid for by her campaign, the DCCC and the House Majority PAC.
Roskam and Casten appear together Monday at a 7 p.m. WTTW (Channel 11) forum also streamed live on Facebook and YouTube.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/tv-ad-spending-democrats-republicans-sean-casten-lauren-underwood-randy-hulgren-peter-roskam-midterm-elections/
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Trump Admin Justifies Regs with Health Benefits It Attacks
Oct 22, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
The Trump administration wants EPA to stop considering ancillary health benefits from some pollution regulations — unless it is using those benefits to justify its own actions.
Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler has argued, for example, that the agency should recalculate the costs and benefits of a 2011 regulation limiting mercury emissions from power plants because much of the rule's economic justification relied on the co-benefits of lowering fine particle air pollution.
But when the Trump EPA justified its proposal to water down an Obama-era plan for lowering the power sector's carbon dioxide emissions, it highlighted the indirect benefit of cutting pollution that harms children.
Critics say EPA is trying to have it both ways.
"These cost-benefit analyses around environmental regulations are very easy to manipulate, but it also shows that they are willing to acknowledge when it looks good for them the very real benefits, the health benefits, especially for children, when we address carbon emissions that also takes other pollutants like soot out of the air," said Amit Narang, a regulatory policy lobbyist at the nonprofit Public Citizen.
Critics say the Trump administration's proposal to reduce the consideration of co-benefits in the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards is a seismic shift in the way the agency functions, as well as an attempt to legally justify weaker air pollution rules. That's because EPA is essentially arguing it was irrelevant that the mercury regulation would also prevent about 11,000 premature deaths annually, mostly by reducing fine particle air pollution.
EPA would also dramatically reduce the health cost savings achieved under the plan — which the Obama administration estimated would be between $37 billion and $90 billion — to about $6 million. Wheeler has justified the potential shift by saying the Obama EPA used "suspect" math.
On the other hand, in justifying their weaker proposal to replace the Clean Power Plan, EPA officials acknowledged it would not reduce pollution at the level of the Obama-era version. But EPA noted that its Affordable Clean Energy rule would have indirect benefits for children.
"While the proposed ACE rule does not project to achieve reductions at the level of the CPP, EPA believes that this proposal will achieve CO2 emission reductions resulting from implementation of these proposed guidelines, as well as ozone and PM2.5 emission reductions as a co-benefit, and will further improve children's health as discussed in the [regulatory impact analysis]," EPA officials wrote in their justification for the Affordable Clean Energy plan.
The inconsistency in the treatment of co-benefits in the mercury rule and the Clean Power Plan rollback shows that the Trump administration considers such benefits when it is politically convenient, Narang said.
To make its ACE rule look better, EPA compared it with doing nothing rather than with the Clean Power Plan, which would have achieved far better health results, he said. EPA is attempting to make its actions look better by including the other pollutant reductions that come with trying to tackle carbon emissions, he said.
But there is an important legal distinction between the Obama administration's use of co-benefits and the way the Trump EPA tallied the benefits of ACE, said Jeff Holmstead, who led EPA's Office of Air and Radiation under President George W. Bush.
He said the Obama EPA justified the mercury rule largely based on the benefits of a different pollutant than one it was intended to regulate. It is hard to justify a regulation entirely on co-benefits, he said.
The Trump administration, he said, was being "more honest" about the way it calculated co-benefits because it was not using them in its legal argument.
"What they are doing is conceptually more honest. They're saying, 'Look, here are the benefits that might be accomplished through this rule, but we're not using them to justify the rule legally; we're also not using them in a [public relations] campaign,' which is what I think the Obama folks did," Holmstead said. "There's a range of estimates for what these benefits are worth, and they're showing you what that range is."
In a statement, EPA spokesman Michael Abboud said the agency is still working out the details of the Clean Power Plan replacement.
"The proposal has not yet completed the interagency process, and EPA has a number of mechanisms by which it is working to ensure there is consistency and transparency in any cost-benefit analysis developed pursuant to specific Clean Air Act provisions or EO 12866," he said, referring to an executive order that requires analyses for economically significant rules.
In fact, EPA officials have long touted the co-benefits of regulations, including during the George W. Bush administration, when current EPA air chief Bill Wehrum served as the acting assistant administrator for air and radiation from 2005 to 2007.
During the Bush era, for example, the agency touted the health savings benefits of an internal-combustion engine toxics rule. The rule, which cut air pollution from engines used to pressurize natural gas pipelines and in energy extraction operations, would prevent 90 premature deaths, 1,750 asthma attacks and save $280 million, agency officials wrote.
The Bush EPA also justified a regulation on industrial boiler emissions by pointing to the co-benefit of reducing fine particle pollution.
"Fine (PM2.5) particles can penetrate deep into the lungs to contribute to a number of the health effects," EPA explained then. "These health effects include decreased lung function and alterations in lung tissue and structure and in respiratory tract defense mechanisms which may be manifest in increased respiratory symptoms and disease or in more severe cases, increased hospital admissions and emergency room visits or premature death. Children, the elderly, and people with cardiopulmonary disease, such as asthma, are most at risk from these health effects."
Even as it touts the side benefits of reducing air pollution for its own rules, the Trump administration increasingly relies on industry-connected researchers who question the public health value of cutting emissions.
A new appointment to EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, announced last week, has a history of questioning established science that shows health risks from ozone exposure. Sabine Lange, a section manager in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's Toxicology Division, fought EPA for trying to lower ozone pollution, a key component of smoggy air.
In a paper that she co-wrote with Michael Honeycutt, who was appointed to head EPA's Science Advisory Board by former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Lange argued that studies linking ozone exposure to serious health problems were too reliant on elderly people "within days of death" and that reducing national standards was fruitless because people spend so much time indoors.
"The average American adult, senior citizen, and child will spend only 5.3%, 5.8%, and 7.9% of their time outdoors, respectively, and so they will often not be exposed to ozone," Lange and her co-authors wrote.
EPA also scrapped two panels of science advisers, one tasked with reviewing air quality standards for particulate matter and the other with a review of ground-level ozone limits. Critics say such a move will amplify the viewpoints of Honeycutt, Lange and others the agency has installed whose input is similar to the industry viewpoint.
Last week, EPA announced a list of finalists for the Science Advisory Board that includes a number of researchers funded by the industries fighting agency regulations. Their appointment to the board, which now has 44 members, could tip the balance of its input further toward industry (Climatewire, Oct. 18).
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/10/22/stories/1060103921
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(ACC Mentioned) NYS Drinking Water Council To Recommend MCLs By Year's End
Oct 19, 2018 | WAMC
By Allison Dunne
New York state’s Drinking Water Quality Council met this week to discuss recommending maximum contaminant levels for three emerging contaminants, including PFOA and PFOS. Council members are slated to issue recommendations at their next meeting before the end of the year. Council members have been reviewing scientific studies as well as the actions of other states. Meantime, affected residents and environmentalists say setting the levels is long overdue.
A number of groups and individuals have been calling on New York state and the federal government to set maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs, for a class of chemicals knowns as PFAS, or Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances. It’s a class that includes PFOA and PFOS, chemicals that have affected drinking water in places such as Hoosick Falls and Newburgh, respectively. Then there’s 1,4-Dioxane. Liz Moran, water and natural resources director for Environmental Advocates of New York, spoke during the public comment period at the end of the October 17 meeting.
“The inaction that has been witnessed today is a tremendous disappointment for all New Yorkers. It was over two years ago that Governor Cuomo and the Department of Health promised action on these very chemicals and testing if the federal government did not act,” Moran says. “That was September 2016. This sentiment has been reiterated several times since. How long do you have to say it until you actually do it?”
Moran is among those who have criticized the council for not having set levels by an October 2 deadline. Steve Risotto, however, is urging the council to take their time. He’s senior director of the Washington, D.C.-based American Chemistry Council.
“While we recognize the state’s interest in moving quickly to the development of standards for PFOS and PFOA, ACC urges the council and the health department to take a thoughtful, scientific approach to assessing the available information prior to proposing MCLs for these two substances.” Risotto says.
Yet state Health Department Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Public Health Brad Hutton wants to get moving. At the outset of the October 17 meeting, he said the next council meeting, to be held in November or December, is to recommend MCLs.
“And it’s our intention that we would schedule that next meeting, once again, a shorter special meeting, to get your recommendation to the commissioner on an MCL for 1,4-Dioxane, PFOA and PFOS,” Hutton says. “The thinking is that there’s some new information that we really want to focus on today to put you in the best position to make that recommendation but we are going to be moving quickly to get your availability and get that meeting on the calendar and get that recommendation.”
It’s a recommendation that would then be issued for public comment. Again, Hutton.
“While we’ve asked you to remain laser focused on PFOA, PFOS and 1,4-Dioxane, we’ve been having all along a discussion about the fact that there’s this broader and growing group of Per- and Polyfluorinated alkyl substance chemicals, that we need to really conceive of a broader approach for them as opposed to one at a time,” Hutton says.
It’s an approach Nisha Swinton advocates. She is Northeast senior organizer for Food & Water Watch.
“We were really disappointed that they kicked the can down the road to the next meeting in December/November but we definitely request that the state regulate PFAS chemicals as a class,” Swinton says. “We also want them to establish a combined maximum contaminant level of 4 parts per trillion, and then immediately adopt regulations to require statewide testing for these and then other emerging contaminants.”
Risotto says the American Chemistry Council does not see a scientific reason to assign an MCL for the entire PFAS class. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a health advisory of 70 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS in drinking water. In June, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, or ATSDR, released a more than 850-page draft report recommending an MCL of 7 parts per trillion. And there was talk during the council meeting about this report. Frank Natalie is business agent for United Association of Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 7, which includes nine counties surrounding Albany.
“The inaction by this council makes no sense to me considering the risk that these chemicals pose to our families, children and the unborn,” Natalie says.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature created the 12-member council in September 2017. Earlier in October, Cuomo announced $200 million in grant funding to help communities address federally unregulated contaminants in their drinking water, saying the state is about to take the step of setting enforceable drinking water standards for the emerging contaminants PFOA, PFOS, and 1,4-Dioxane.
http://www.wamc.org/post/nys-drinking-water-council-recommend-mcls-years-end
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(ACC Mentioned) Worried About Chlorine in Bossier Water? Here Are the Latest Test Results
Oct 19, 2018 | KSLA
As Bossier City water system officials continue a “chlorine flush” to treat the city’s water, some residents have growing concerns about the amount of chemicals coming out of the faucets.
The treatment began after water at one site tested positive for what’s known as the “brain-eating amoeba.”
Some people living in Bossier City have reported a strong chlorine odor from their tap water.
Erin Brokovich, the famed environmental activist and consumer advocate, also expressed concerns about the amount of chlorine in the water on her Facebook page.
But recent documents obtained by KSLA News 12 show the chlorine levels in the city’s water remain acceptable, according to Environmental Protection Agency standards.
The documents, provided by Bossier City, include the latest available test results from water test sites. The tests were completed between October 9 and October 12.
Health officials tested the chlorine levels at 71 of the city’s test sites. Here is a breakdown of the chlorine levels found at those sites:
According to the EPA, the highest level of chlorine that is allowed in drinking water is 4.0 mg/L. None of the sites tested had water with chlorine levels that exceeded that requirement.
More than half the sites tested did have chlorine levels at 2.0 mg/L or above. For context, this is similar to the amount of chlorine that should be in swimming pools, according to the American Chemistry Council and The Association of Pool & Spa Professionals.
http://www.ksla.com/2018/10/19/worried-about-chlorine-bossier-water-here-are-latest-test-results/
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PFAS Task Force Looks for ‘Concrete’ Actions
Oct 19, 2018 | The Intelligencer
By Chris Ullery
The congressional task force, convened earlier this year by U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-8, of Middletown, consists of approximately a dozen people representing communities that have had their drinking water contaminated by toxic perfluorinated compounds, also known as PFAS, in recent years.
The newly organized PFAS Task Force met for the first time in Newtown Township on Friday to discuss initial steps to advance remediation efforts stalled by bureaucratic gridlock between the Navy and Air National Guard.
The congressional task force, convened earlier this year by U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-8, of Middletown, consists of approximately a dozen people representing communities that have had their drinking water contaminated by toxic perfluorinated compounds, also known as PFAS, in recent years.
Local officials from Warminster, Horsham, East Rockhill and West Rockhill attended Friday’s meeting, including Tim Hagey, manager of the Warminster Municipal Authority, and East Rockhill Supervisor Chairman Gary Volovnik.
State Rep. Todd Stephens, R-151, of Horsham, and staff from the offices of state Reps. Kathy Watson, R-144, of Warrington, and Bernie O’Neill, R-29, of Warminster, also were in attendance Friday.
The contamination has been linked to the use of firefighting foam at former military installations in and around Horsham, Warminster and Warrington, where contamination levels are at some of the highest concentrations in the country.
Friday’s meeting was primarily an opportunity for Fitzpatrick and his staff to speak directly to local representatives, but the congressman said multiple times the ultimate goal of the task force is “concrete” legislative solutions.
A common frustration brought up by nearly everyone at Friday’s meeting is the slow remediation process, which Fitzpatrick, Hagey, Stephens and others referred to as “finger-pointing” between the Navy and Air National Guard.
Remediation efforts for residents whose water supply is above an Environmental Protection Agency health advisory level for PFAS of 70 parts per trillion seems to be a more straightforward process than for those under that level.
Hagey said Friday residents don’t feel safe drinking water with any detectable PFAS contamination, but can’t get federal government assistance because they are under the advisory level. The township has made a commitment to remove PFAS from its water supply to nondetectable levels.
“70 (ppt) is their magic number, and anything below that they will not pay for,” Hagey said.
Fitzpatrick reiterated comments following a meeting with West Rockhill residents more than a month ago to hold chemical companies that manufactured PFAS accountable for remediation efforts.
The contamination in the West Rockhill area has so far been linked to the use of firefighting foams during a 1986 fire at Bergey’s Tire and Auto, which has now left residents such as Sandy Moyer drinking bottled water supplied through the state’s Department of Environmental Protection for over a year.
Chris Crockett, chief environmental officer for the Aqua PA Neshaminy Treatment Plant, said there have been class action lawsuits filed in other states against companies like 3M and DuPont.
Fitzpatrick likened the lawsuits to similar action from states, counties and even municipalities suing pharmaceutical companies to help pay the costs of the ongoing opioid epidemic.
Fitzpatrick added that any action against chemical companies would be done in conjunction with ongoing remediation efforts aimed at the military.
A set of long-term task force goals includes pushing for studies documenting the long-term effects of PFAS on humans and investigating funding to connect homes in the West Rockhill area to the Perkasie Regional Authority’s water supply.
The task force has already scheduled another meeting between its members, senior officials from the Department of Defense and U.S. Rep. Tom Graves, R-Georgia, for next Thursday at 3:30 p.m.
Graves is a member of the House’s appropriations committee and the appropriations’ defense spending subcommittee.
The exact location and whether the meeting will be open to the public has not been determined Friday.
http://www.theintell.com/news/20181019/pfas-task-force-looks-for-concrete-actions
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"Unreasonable": Superior Court Judge Signals She's Going To Gut Glyphosate Cancer Judgment
Oct 19, 2018 | American Council on Science and Health
In a blow to trial lawyers hoping to profit from a sympathetic jury in San Francisco, not to mention organic trade groups and activists at the University of California San Francisco, Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos has shown she is likely to grant Monsanto's request for a new trial in the case they lost brought by trial lawyers who claim a weedkiller which can only affect the shikimate pathway in plants somehow caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma in a human.
In the first trial, an attorney from Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman assured jurors they would "change the world" if they found Monsanto liable. Brent Wisner painted a picture of terrified corporate executives lamenting a decision against them. suggesting the science community knows it is wrong and was worried about being caught. Though it was pure theater, it worked, and despite it being impossible for a weedkiller to have a cancerous effect on human biology, they awarded an alarming $250,000,000 in punitive damages, because the left coast jury believed the company knew that the product could cause cancer and warned no one. And that seems to be what concerned Judge Bolanos, who noted there was no "clear and convincing evidence" of malice. Which is legalese for 'the jury got it wrong.'
In reality, the company would not warn people about cancer because it would be illegal. It is false advertising and they can't be compelled to lie on a label any more than they could claim Roundup cures cancer. The entire scientific community has proved glyphosate only acts in plants. The only group that suggests otherwise is a cabal of statisticians at the U.N., and one of them, Chris Portier, was outed as being a consultant for an activist group which was lobbying against glyphosate. He even signed a contract with trial lawyers out to sue over glyphosate before the IARC finding he helped manipulate was released. How did they know it would go in their favor? Critics believe Portier tipped them off so he could collect a check.
The ruling was scientifically an abomination but the behavior of the jury since has been even more bizarre. Three jurors have written the judge to tell her she would be wrong to overturn it, and have made numerous media appearances, which is uncharacteristically aggressive. But the lawyers, armed with a support network of trade groups for a sector that competes against companies like Monsanto, have made that part of their strategy. The fact that Organic Consumers Association, the trade group which provides the bulk of the funding behind Baum Hedlund allies U.S. Right To Know, is prominently egging on the jurors may be a concern for the judge.
“I have never heard of jurors after the fact picking a fight with the judge over judicial rulings,” said Dr. Val Giddings, a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington.
The plaintiff, Dewayne Johnson, contracted non-Hodgkin lymphoma and was convinced that sporadic use of glyphosate in the weedkiller Roundup caused it, but a study of 55,000 full-time agriculture workers who used the herbicide found no evidence it increased risk of cancers. The American Council on Science and Health submitted an amicus brief for the pro-science side.
https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/10/19/unreasonable-superior-court-judge-signals-shes-going-gut-glyphosate-cancer-judgment-13535
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In Win for Trump, Merkel Changes Course on U.S. Gas Imports
Oct 22, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Bojan Pancevsk
Chancellor Angela Merkel has offered government support to efforts to open up Germany to U.S. gas, a key concession to President Trump as he tries to loosen Russia’s gripon Europe’s largest energy market.
Over breakfast this month, the chancellor told a small group of lawmakers her government had decided to co-finance the construction of a €500 million ($576 million) liquefied natural gas shipping terminal in northern Germany, according to people familiar with the meeting, giving a crucial nudge to a project that had failed to get off the ground for years in a country that gets most of its gas cheaply from Russia.
Mr. Trump has intensively lobbied Europe to buy significant amounts of LNG as part of his campaign to rewrite the terms of trade relations. German and U.S. officials said Berlin hoped embracing U.S. gas might help solve a protracted trade dispute and possibly even defuse threats by Washington to sanction Nord Stream 2, an unbuilt German-Russian gas pipeline that would double Russia’s existing gas export capacity to Germany.
As she briefed lawmakers from Germany’s northern coastal region, Ms. Merkel didn’t describe her change of mind as a defeat but as a “strategic” decision that could pay off in the longer term, according to the people. Experts agree that opening up its energy market won’t have an immediate economic benefit for Germany, but it could eventually help the country diversify.
For years, plans to build an LNG terminal by several groups were stalled because there was no government support that would make such a project economical. On Oct.16, less than a week after the meeting, an international consortium filed its first official bid for state support for a terminal in the northern town of Stade, near Hamburg.
A ceremony took place on a terrace overlooking Berlin’s landmark Brandenburg Gate in the presence of senior politicians and U.S. Ambassador Richard A. Grenell, a confidant of Mr. Trump and the president’s main conduit in his lobbying effort.
“We’re creating jobs and we’re also deepening the trans-Atlantic relationship. The U.S. is totally committed to bringing U.S. LNG to Europe and to Germany,” Mr. Grenell said.
How much support Berlin will provide and in what form—cash subsidies, loans, credit guarantees, loss protection for investors, or a mixture of the four—remains unclear. But the government has already decided to fast-track the review of the application, according to people familiar with the process, making it likely that the decision will be made by the end of the year.
The Stade project is backed by Macquarie Ltd , the Australian financial group, China Harbour Engineering Co mpany Ltd, a Chinese dredging firm, and DowDuPont Inc. of the U.S.
Two competing consortia are expected to file their own applications for government backing to build an LNG terminal—one in Brunsbüttel, some 30 miles to the north of Stade, and a third in Wilhelmshaven, a nearby marine base that boasts a deep-sea container ship terminal. German officials said Stade and Brunsbüttel are front-runners due to their advanced stage and location advantages.
U.S. LNG is mostly mined from underground rock formations, turned into liquid and shipped in 300-meter-long tankers. It requires special terminals for unloading, storing and converting it back into gas. The complex process means it remains around 20% more expensive than Russian gas, which is delivered straight to Germany mainly via the Nord Stream pipeline.
Some of the German projects have been derided by government officials as white elephants that never stood a chance of making a profit. A 2016 University of Cologne study found that the German terminal wouldn’t be viable in the short term since the market’s LNG needs could be covered via an existing terminal in the Netherlands.
During her conversation with local lawmakers, Ms. Merkel said she didn’t think an LNG terminal would break even for at least a decade and would require long-term government support.
A German government spokesman said the decision to fund a terminal was made in accordance with commercial interests and not U.S. pressure.
One U.S. argument making headway in Germany is that buying U.S. LNG would improve Germany’s energy security by making it less reliant on Moscow. Russia accounts for over 50% of German gas imports, with the rest primarily from Norway and the Netherlands, according to BP’s 2018 Statistical Review of World Energy. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said Berlin was “captive” to Moscow and would become dependent on Russian exports.
Dan R. Brouillette, U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary, said the U.S. government felt “very strongly” that Berlin shouldn’t put all its eggs in one basket. “LNG is a personal priority for the president and a policy priority for the government,” he said.
The economics of LNG are likely to improve, some experts say. Germany wants to phase out nuclear power and its reliance on coal, which produces large quantities of climate-warming CO2, means it will need to turn to cleaner gas to meet ambitious climate targets, said Oswald Clint, a London-based LNG expert.
Dutch gas mining is expected to be phased out within a decade due to environmental concerns and U.S. LNG could make up for that share of the German market, he said.
Manfred Schubert, the CEO of LNG Stade, said his site would be fully operational by 2023 if the funding is granted by the end of the year.
“Subsidies would of course make our project more attractive, but it’s based on sound economics and it will be profitable,” he said.
The terminal would be based in the 550-hectare (1,400-acre) Dow chemical plants on the bank of the Elbe River. Dow hasn’t publicly commented on the project but senior managers said the plant’s connection to Germany’s gas grid offered synergies that would make building an LNG terminal there some €100 million cheaper than other proposed sites.
Oliver Grundmann, a lawmaker from Ms. Merkel’s conservatives for the Stade constituency, said the terminal could supply LNG to the port of Hamburg to refuel new ocean liners. AidaNova, a luxury cruise ship owned by Carnival Corp. & PLC to be launched this month, will be the first to be powered by LNG, in line with new environmental regulations.
“We need to make this step now, and not just because Mr. Trump is demanding it, but because it’s necessary for our future,” Mr. Grundmann said. “Stade will be a symbol of the new trans-Atlantic relationship.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-win-for-trump-merkel-changes-course-on-u-s-gas-imports-1540209647?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1
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Frackers Bet on New Terminals to Boost Oil Exports
Oct 21, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Rebecca Elliott
As pipeline bottlenecks crimp the U.S. shale boom, some companies are racing to address the next potential constraint on American oil output: the terminals to export crude to foreign markets.
Oil exports have been a key release valve for U.S. producers in the three years since Congress lifted a longtime ban on overseas crude sales. Exports topped 2.1 million barrels daily in September and are projected to approach four million barrels within two years, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics.
Yet a surge of crude from prolific West Texas wells, which has already pushed regional pipeline networks to capacity and made it more expensive for some companies to move their oil to market, could next challenge port infrastructure.
Existing U.S. shipping terminals are already ill-equipped to handle the growing load, because only one can fully accommodate the giant tankers used to ship oil to Asia and Europe. That has at least four companies, including commodities trader Trafigura Group Pte. Ltd. and pipeline builder Enterprise Products Partners L.P., planning new or expanded terminals to load up the big ships.
“You need more efficient ways of loading oil out of the Gulf Coast,” said Kevin Jebbitt, head of crude oil trading for Trafigura, which has requested permits to build a deepwater port near Corpus Christi, Texas.
The terminals can cost more than a billion dollars to build, and some experts believe there won’t be sufficient long-term demand for all of the facilities being proposed. So companies interested in constructing these terminals are racing to complete their projects quickly to ensure success.
The Permian basin of West Texas and New Mexico has been the primary engine behind soaring U.S. crude production, which recently topped 11 million barrels daily. Inadequate pipeline capacity has reduced prices of oil in the area and forced some companies to curtail drilling.
Crude in Midland sold for $23 a barrel below the Houston price in August, reflecting the added costs companies have to shoulder to move crude to market without pipelines, though that differential has since contracted to about $10, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics. The firm estimates that by the end of this year, Permian drillers will be producing about 400,000 barrels of oil a day less than they would have without pipeline constraints.
Last month, Marathon Oil Corp. chief executive Lee Tillman said at an industry conference that the company had removed a drilling rig in the Permian in the face of bottlenecks. He touted the benefits of having operations in multiple basins, saying it means the company doesn’t have to “accelerate our activity into pricing headwinds.”
Relief is set to arrive next year in the form of new pipelines aimed at carrying crude to the coast for export. But congested docks and waterways could hamper export growth and depress regional oil prices.
“Infrastructure takes a lot more time than the market typically expects,” said J. Alexander Blackman, an executive at the Houston-based trading company Standard Delta LLC. “When export terminal capacity is maxed out, U.S. oversupply gets trapped in storage onshore, which leads to lower prices.”
On paper, Gulf Coast terminals appear to have room to accommodate millions of additional barrels of Permian crude, which is lighter and less sulfurous than the oil preferred by many domestic refineries. Crude exports could more than double next year before overloading existing and planned shipping infrastructure, according to estimates by S&P Global Platts Analytics.
However, some exporters worry ports could become congested as companies try to push more oil across a limited number of docks while navigating narrow, shallow channels. Most U.S. facilities also aren’t deep enough to fully load Very Large Crude Carriers, or VLCCs, which can hold up to 2 million barrels of oil. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, south of New Orleans, is the sole exception, but it is primarily used for imports.
Instead, companies must load smaller vessels onshore, then transfer the crude onto the giant tankers in open water. Those ship-to-ship transfers cost between $700,000 and $1 million per loading, according to E.A. Gibson Shipbrokers Ltd.
“You’re bumping up pretty close to maximum capacity now,” said Trafigura’s chief economist Saad Rahim.
Tallgrass Energy L.P . , a Kansas-based pipeline company, announced plans this year to build a terminal in the New Orleans area to take in smaller vessels by 2020. The company also is considering an extension that would accommodate VLCCs by late 2021.
Unlike many of the other proposed projects, which would be fed by pipelines from the Permian basin, the facility would capture crude en route from Cushing, Okla., where the West Texas Intermediate benchmark price is set.
“Instead of taking all this crude to an already congested market, if you’re going with shale product to the export market, we’re in a much better position,” said Jason Reeves, who manages the company’s terminals business. “There won’t be as much competing traffic.”
Enterprise has proposed an offshore VLCC loading terminal south of Houston. “It’s a bet on Asian demand,” Brent Secrest, an Enterprise senior vice president, said at an industry conference in Houston this month.
Still others have proposed infrastructure expansions that would fit smaller tankers, and the Port of Corpus Christi intends to deepen and widen its ship channel.
Even with export demand projected to increase, many expect only some of the proposed new VLCC export terminals to ultimately be built.
“Is it a good business? Yes, it is. But I think the lion’s share of the market is going to go to that first mover,” said Jorge Piñon, a former oil executive who now directs the University of Texas at Austin’s Latin America and Caribbean Energy Program.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/frackers-bet-on-new-terminals-to-boost-oil-exports-1540119600?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=3
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Russia Is Said to Offer Exxon New Projects as Sanctions Loom
Oct 19, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Elena Mazneva
Russia has begun discussions with Exxon Mobil Corp. on possible new oil and gas projects, potentially creating a dilemma as the U.S. government mulls more sanctions against the country.
The talks could lead to increased cooperation between the U.S. energy giant and state-run Rosneft PJSC, Russian government officials said, asking not to be named discussing confidential information. Several options have been prepared for Exxon, including in natural gas, refining and chemicals, none of which are currently subject to American sanctions, two officials said.
Exxon and Rosneft declined to comment.
Exxon abandoned most of its joint ventures with Rosneft earlier this year amid a previous round of sanctions. That was a blow for both companies: their agreements signed five years ago to drill millions of acres in the Arctic and Black Sea should have been the crowning achievement of Rex Tillerson’s 11-year tenure at the helm of Exxon. It would also have cemented the dominance of Rosneft boss Igor Sechin over Russia’s oil industry.
Exploration PotentialPresident Vladimir Putin personally blessed those ventures, foreseeing decades of exploration in the country’s richest—and largely untapped—offshore areas. After Exxon withdrew, Rosneft bought out its stakes in projects holding an estimated 12.3 billion tons of potential oil and condensate resources. Rosneft has said it would welcome Exxon back should it see an opportunity to do so without legal risks.
Meanwhile, the U.S. company is left with just one major operation in Russia—the Sakhalin-1 venture, which started more than a decade ago and pumps more than 200,000 barrels of crude a day. The potential offer of new projects is something Russia agreed on with Exxon in 2017 while settling a lengthy tax dispute at Sakhalin-1, two officials said.
The two companies resolved a separate dispute related to that project last month, which helped improve relations between Exxon and the Russian government though isn’t linked to the new offer of work, one of the officials said. Should the U.S. major go ahead with one of the new ventures, an agreement is possible before the end of the year, one official said.
The U.S. is considering more sanctions against Russia, potentially as soon as next month. A multitude of measures have been proposed as punishment for alleged election meddling and use of chemical weapons in the U.K. In August, Washington banned the export of certain “sensitive” goods and technologies to Russia, which could affect liquefied natural gas, refining, or chemical projects.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/russia-is-said-to-offer-exxon-new-projects-as-sanctions-loom
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White House Backed Drillers Over EPA on Plugging Methane Leaks
Oct 19, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
White House officials pushed the EPA to maximize savings for the oil industry despite the agency’s concern that weakening regulations would allow more methane to escape into the atmosphere, according to newly released documents.
The White House pressure campaign came as the Environmental Protection Agency honed a proposal to relax Obama-era requirements governing how frequently oil companies have to check for and repair leaks of methane, an intense greenhouse gas that warms the atmosphere 84 times more than carbon dioxide.
Every move to dial back required inspections and reduce industry costs triggered a corresponding climb in projected methane emissions, a jump that appeared to trouble some EPA officials, according to internal documents filed in a government docket Oct. 16.
The documents show that EPA officials also repeatedly resisted White House pressure to dramatically decrease the frequency of required inspections at oil wells and compressor stations in the name of saving money.
In one case, officials with the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs argued that less frequent inspections would provide “the highest net benefits.”
Less Means MoreBut the EPA rejected that argument in May, countering that less frequent inspections also would allow more methane to escape.
The behind-the-scenes debate, revealed in hundreds of pages of correspondence, analysis and drafts from a White House-led review of the plan, offers a rare look at how the Trump administration is pursuing a deregulatory agenda it said is saving the U.S. $1.6 billion annually.
The entire process was driven by an attempt to maximize corporate profits at the expense of public health and the environment, said Amit Narang, a regulatory policy expert with Public Citizen. “The further OIRA tried to force EPA to maximize net benefits, the more it forced a weakening of the rule, and the more emissions went up.”
OIRA’s edits boosted projected cost savings from $246 million over six years to $484 million—and resulted in a plan that is projected to more than double the release of methane. Representatives of Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs didn’t respond to an email seeking comment on the documents.
The correspondence reveals how President Donald Trump’s zeal to cut regulatory costs has sometimes run into resistance from government officials worried the efforts go too far.
Agency AgendaThe EPA has been a willing partner in fulfilling Trump’s pledge to roll back environmental regulations he blames for stifling the U.S. economy. But under Trump, the agency has at least twice advocated taking a more moderate course and cautioned against deeper weakening of Obama-era environmental rules. Earlier this year, EPA officials disputed the safety and economic assertions underpinning a Trump administration plan to ease vehicle efficiency and emission standards.
The Trump administration had already decided to relax a 2016 methane rule in response to oil industry complaints the inspections were too frequent and costly. Under the Obama-era mandates, wells had to be inspected twice a year and compressor stations on a quarterly basis.
The question was how far to go in easing them.
$75 Million SavingsIn the end, the EPA’s replacement plan proposed dialing back the frequency of those inspections to as little as annually for wells and compressor stations and once every other year for low-producing wells.
But that wasn’t what Trump’s EPA originally had in mind. For leak-prone compressor stations, the agency initially insisted that quarterly inspections were necessary to keep fugitive emissions at bay.
“The EPA is not proposing changes to the quarterly monitoring frequency requirement for the collection of fugitive emissions components located at compressor stations,” said one early draft of the proposal. The EPA defended that approach by asserting that “quarterly monitoring is cost effective.”
But analysts at OIRA didn’t agree, and that EPA language was axed as a result.
OIRA’s insistence on less-frequent inspections dovetailed with the wishes of many oil companies that lobbied the Trump administration to relax the timetable. The issue was at the top of the agenda during a May 10 meeting Trump administration officials held with representatives from the American Petroleum Institute, BP Plc, Chevron Corp., Anadarko Petroleum Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc, and other oil companies.
The EPA defended its dogged insistence on quarterly inspections again in June, arguing that the more frequent timetable reflects “what can be supported by the currently available data.”
But OIRA didn’t give up. After pressing for yearly compressor station inspections again in a phone call, OIRA’s Chad Whiteman emailed an EPA official to emphasize the point in July. “We still feel that annual monitoring for compressors” is “the best option,” Whiteman told told EPA’s David Cozzie, a Durham, N.C.-based group leader in the agency.
Legal ThresholdEven after EPA employees relented and agreed to semiannual inspections for compressor stations, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs pushed them to relax the requirement even more. Officials questioned why the EPA was willing to move to a semiannual schedule “but could not use the same justification to move to annual monitoring,” EPA environmental engineer Karen Marsh recounted in an Aug. 14 email.
The EPA’s response: Semiannual monitoring could qualify as the “best system of emission reduction”—a legal threshold under U.S. law—but annual inspections would fall short of that benchmark. “We can achieve greater emission reductions for a cost that is well within the acceptable cost of control,” Marsh bluntly told OIRA.
EPA ended up relenting—partially—from its insistence on quarterly inspections. But it didn’t make a choice between semiannual and annual inspections, instead proposing both timetables and offering it up for public comment.
The EPA is now taking public comments on the proposal through Dec. 17, which will help guide a final version, expected next year.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/white-house-backed-drillers-over-epa-on-plugging-methane-leaks
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White House Pressured EPA to Favor Industry over Climate
Oct 22, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Maxine Joselow
White House officials urged EPA to make changes to an Obama-era methane rule that would maximize cost savings for the oil and gas industry while allowing the release of more planet-warming emissions, government documents show.
The exchange came this past spring and summer, as EPA was working to relax a 2016 rule stipulating how frequently oil companies must check for and repair methane leaks.
The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs repeatedly pressured EPA to relax inspection requirements, according to hundreds of pages of documents posted last week on Regulations.gov and first reported by Bloomberg.
But some EPA officials worried that easing the requirements would allow more methane to enter the atmosphere. Methane is roughly 30 times more potent as a heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide.
In May, EPA officials presented an interagency working group with a slideshow detailing their initial proposal for relaxing the Obama administration's New Source Performance Standards for new and modified oil and gas facilities.
The proposal would have saved the industry an estimated $246 million over six years.
In subsequent correspondence, OIRA officials pushed EPA to increase the projected cost savings to $484 million.
The OIRA officials argued that greater cost savings could be achieved through yearly compressor station inspections, rather than quarterly inspections.
Less frequent inspections were on the wish list of several oil and gas industry groups. Indeed, "monitoring frequency" was the first item on the agenda of a May meeting between Trump administration officials and representatives of the American Petroleum Institute, Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC and other oil companies.
EPA initially pushed back on OIRA's suggestions, noting that they could double the amount of methane entering the atmosphere.
"While Option 3 provides for the highest net benefits, it also provides the highest amount of forgone emission reductions," EPA said.
By July, EPA had begun implementing some of OIRA's suggested changes, the documentsshow.
In September, EPA released its proposed revisions to the Obama-era methane rule, which required industry to monitor wells on an annual basis and low-production ones every other year (Greenwire, Sept. 11).
The revelations come as the Trump administration touts the cost savings from its deregulatory agenda.
The White House on Wednesday unveiled its fall 2018 regulatory plan, which says that federal agencies achieved $23 billion in net regulatory cost savings in fiscal 2018. A senior administration official, in a conference call with reporters, described the past two years as an "amazing turnaround" (Greenwire, Oct. 17).
Amit Narang, regulatory policy advocate with Public Citizen, said the documents show that the White House is bent on helping industry at the expense of public health and the environment.
"These documents show very clearly that OIRA only had maximizing cost savings to the oil and gas industry in mind, and really wasn't concerned about the massive amount of methane emissions it would lead to," Narang said. "That will have an effect not only on climate change, but on the health of Americans."
EPA is now soliciting public comments on the methane proposal through Dec. 17. A final rule is expected next year.Transparency
The documents underscore the need for transparency regarding communications between agencies and the White House regulatory affairs shop, sources said.
"This exchange demonstrates the importance of transparency in administrative policy development," Janet McCabe, acting EPA air chief under former President Obama, said in an email.
Not all federal agencies are required to publicize their communications with the White House. EPA is required to do so through a special provision in the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act. That's why the documents about the methane rule were posted online at Regulations.gov, where they were accessible to E&E News and other media outlets.
"All of this is coming out because of this really unique provision in the Clean Air Act," Narang said. "The provision says that if EPA is doing regulations under the Clean Air Act and OIRA is reviewing those regulations, all of those communications and changes need to be included in the docket."
James Goodwin, senior policy analyst with the Center for Progressive Reform, echoed those sentiments.
"This shows the importance of whoever included those provisions in the Clean Air Act amendments," Goodwin said. "And that's exactly what they had in mind, because agencies weren't disclosing stuff from OIRA review before that."
New legislation could affect the transparency of the OIRA review process.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) this summer introduced the "Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act," S. 3357.
Although the bill is largely focused on ethics in law enforcement, it also contains a small regulatory reform section aimed at increasing "disclosure of intergovernmental rule changes."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/10/22/stories/1060103909
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FERC Approves Plant on R.I. Waterfront
Oct 22, 2018 | AP (In E&E Energywire)
Federal regulators have approved construction of a $180 million liquefied natural gas facility on the Providence, R.I., waterfront.
The Providence Journal reports the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued the decision late Wednesday.
Labor unions and business groups supported the project. Environmental advocates, local residents and elected officials including Democratic Mayor Jorge Elorza opposed it.
The commission says approving the project wouldn't significantly affect "the quality of the human environment."
Elorza called the facility an affront to the city's climate, energy and racial equity goals and said he's disappointed.
Utility National Grid said it needs a domestic source of liquefied natural gas.
The company said the plant will make operations more efficient. It gets liquefied natural gas from overseas delivered to a terminal in Massachusetts.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/10/22/stories/1060103879
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Stay in Kids' Case a Harbinger of More Conservative Rulings?
Oct 22, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Hulac
The Supreme Court late Friday stayed discovery and trial in a landmark climate change lawsuit, marking a temporary win for the Trump administration.
As expected, industry officials cheered the announcement, and environmental advocates denounced it. But the action also served to underscore the conservative bent of the high court and the importance of Chief Justice John Roberts in active and future environmental lawsuits, including climate change cases.
In a short order, Roberts halted the case, Juliana v. United States, which was slated to begin trial Oct. 29 in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. He did not provide an explanation (Greenwire, Oct. 19).
The plaintiffs, a group of 21 young Americans, said they would fight the stay and file a response today, two days before Roberts' Wednesday deadline. They have accused the government of violating their constitutional right to live in and occupy a safe climate and ecosystem. And they are seeking a court order that would press the U.S. government into drawing up a plan to phase out fossil fuels nationwide.
"We are confident once Chief Justice Roberts and the full Court receive the youth plaintiffs' response to defendants' mischaracterization of their case, the trial will proceed," said Julia Olson, chief legal counsel for Our Children's Trust, the group behind the plaintiffs.
The order may be a harbinger of a top court more averse to hearing climate change arguments, with Roberts as the likely deciding vote in future cases.
Since conservative justices have a "solid five-member majority on the court, I'm not optimistic that the Juliana plaintiffs will ever see the trial of their claims come to pass," Richard Frank, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Davis, wrote shortly after the stay was issued.
In taking the unusual step of issuing the stay, the court drew immediate comparisons with its 5-4 vote in February 2016 staying EPA's implementation of the Clean Power Plan. The Trump administration has since proposed to water down the rule, which was aimed at lowering carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
"Supreme Court halts Juliana case (young peoples' climate change case)," Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said on Twitter. "Highly unusual action, reminiscent of their stay of the Clean Power Plan."
The parallels between the stays didn't escape Frank's eyes, either.
"Of course, this is not the first time the U.S. Supreme Court has taken extraordinary and previously-unprecedented steps to sidetrack efforts to address climate change concerns," he said. The halting of the Clean Power Plan marked "the first time the Court had ever stayed a federal regulation before a decision by the lower federal courts," he said.
Roberts has been skeptical of the judiciary's role in addressing the effects of heat-trapping emissions and of legal standing in climate change cases.
"Global warming may be a 'crisis,' even 'the most pressing environmental problem of our time,'" Roberts wrote in a dissenting opinion in Massachusetts v. EPA, the 2007 decision that gave EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. "It is not a problem, however, that has escaped the attention of policymakers" in Congress and in the administration, "who continue to consider regulatory, legislative, and treaty-based means of addressing global climate change," he said.
Massachusetts, which brought the case, could take up its fight to address climate change through Congress, he said.
Shortly following Friday's order staying Juliana, two lawyers who have represented energy companies said climate change should be handled outside court.
"The Supreme Court is acknowledging what we have really known all along: This is a policy issue that belongs in the halls of Congress, not the courts," said Jeff Holmstead, an energy lobbyist at the law firm Bracewell LLP, which represents fossil energy companies.
His colleague Scott Segal, another partner at Bracewell, said the trial, which is expected to run 50 days or more if it occurs, was organized for "show."
"We have long suggested that the courts are an inappropriate mechanism to address a policy issue as complex as climate change," he said in an emailed statement. He called the stay "a step in the right direction."
After the departure of former Justice Anthony Kennedy and confirmation to the court of President Trump's two nominees — Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both of whom lean further to the right than Kennedy — Roberts will be the deciding vote on many contentious cases.
An overlooked repercussion of Kennedy's leave, though, may play out in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is known for its often favorable views toward environmental cases.
Roberts replaced Kennedy temporarily as the "circuit justice" for the 9th Circuit, so the Julianadecision fell in his lap. But Justice Elena Kagan was assigned to the role effective Friday, a posting that will allow her to make unilateral decisions from now on about certain appealed cases or refer them to the full court.
With the pair of stays in mind, Frank said he is doubtful that any of the three federal government branches will do much to address rising global temperatures.
"So it would appear that these days the U.S. Supreme Court isn't hospitable to either innovative climate change litigation or major climate change regulatory initiatives by the Executive Branch," he said.
"That leaves Congress," he continued. "Yikes."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/10/22/stories/1060103925
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Right to Safe Climate 'Simply Does Not Exist' — DOJ Lawyer
Oct 19, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Ellen M. Gilmer
The kids and young adults seeking to hold the government accountable for climate change impacts have "no legal basis" for their case, the Trump administration's top environmental lawyer said today.
In remarks at the fall conference of the American Bar Association's Section of Environment, Energy and Resources in San Diego, the Justice Department's Jeffrey Wood delivered a scathing assessment of the legal claims in the "kids' climate case."
The plaintiffs are asserting a constitutional right that "simply does not exist," he said, describing their argument that they are entitled to a safe climate.
Wood has served as acting head of DOJ's Environment and Natural Resources Division since President Trump took office. The Senate last week confirmed Jeffrey Clark to fill the role (Greenwire, Oct. 11).
Wood said Clark would start at the department at the beginning of November. Wood will stay on as a top attorney in the division.
Wood spent a large portion of his keynote address discussing the climate case, which is set to go to trial later this month in Oregon. He criticized the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon for allowing the case to move forward.
"In our view, the Oregon lawsuit is an unconstitutional attempt to use a single court to control the entire nation's energy and climate policy," he said in prepared remarks. "It is a matter of separation of powers and preserving the opportunity in our system of government for those policies to be decided by the elected branches, not the courts."
Government lawyers during both the Obama and Trump administrations have made similar arguments against the kids' case, repeatedly asking the district court, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court to halt the case.
DOJ just yesterday made its second plea for the Supreme Court to step in and stop the litigation (Greenwire, Oct. 18).
Wood said the government is continuing to prepare for the trial.
He noted that ENRD lawyers have also been busy this year on other issues before the Supreme Court. The department has helped defend the Fish and Wildlife Service's protections of a rare southern frog and is preparing for upcoming arguments in disputes over tribal hunting rights and a hovercraft-riding moose hunter in an Alaska national preserve.
The division has also carried out noteworthy enforcement actions under President Trump, Wood said.
"When the new administration took office, there were probably some who mistakenly believed that we would be soft on enforcement," he said. "Twenty-one months later, I suspect that there are fewer who have that belief."
Since January 2017, he said, ENRD has recovered more than $1 billion in injunctive relief for Superfund cleanups and levied big penalties in cases dealing with wetlands destruction and oil spills.
DOJ pulled in $1.57 billion in civil penalties in 2017 — the department's second-best year in the past two decades. Most of that came from a previously negotiated emissions settlement with Volkswagen AG, but Wood noted that $121 million came from other matters. That number still ranks in the top half of annual totals for the past 20 years.
Wood also touted the division's work defending the Trump administration's deregulation efforts, though he acknowledged it hasn't always gone smoothly.
Federal courts have struck down several recent rollbacks targeting environmental protections, including EPA pesticide restrictions and Obama-era efforts to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas industry.
"Anyone who has litigated on behalf of the federal government knows that you win some and you lose some," Wood said. "While we strive to win, we seek to do so consistent with doing justice."
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/10/19/stories/1060103871
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D.C. Circuit Broadly Rejects Challenges To EPA SO2 NAAQS Designations
Oct 19, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has broadly rejected three challenges to EPA's designations for which areas are attaining or violating the 2010 sulfur dioxide (SO2) air standard, defending the agency's discretion on technical issues and faulting suits from environmentalists and a Kansas utility on procedural grounds.
In an Oct. 19 ruling in Samuel Masias, et al. v. EPA, et al., a three-judge panel unanimously rebuffs challenges from Colorado citizens, Ohio environmentalists and a Kansas power generator to its determinations of which areas are attaining the 2010 national ambient air quality standard set at 75 parts per billion over one hour.
EPA is years behind schedule in completing the designations, because the agency is allowing states to establish new air monitoring networks to measure compliance over the novel one-hour averaging time. States can also opt to use air quality modeling instead of monitoring to determine compliance.
In the consolidated litigation, petitioner Samuel Masias, a Colorado citizen, challenged EPA's decision to designate the area around a power plant in the state as “unclassifiable,” and sought instead a finding of “nonattainment" based on data gathered at a nearby airport. A nonattainment designation triggers tougher air pollution control requirements for the state and industry, and states typically seek to avoid this.
Separately, Sierra Club sought to shift EPA's designation of Gallia County, OH, from “unclassifiable” to “nonattainment,” claiming errors in the state's methodology in calculating air emissions.
And petitioner Kansas City Board of Public Utilities (BPU) pressed for EPA to designate Wyandotte County, KS, as “unclassifiable/attainment,” rather than “unclassifiable,” a move that BPU claims would provide regulatory certainty that it need not plan for possible additional controls on a Kansas power plant.
But D.C. Circuit Senior Judge Stephen Williams in his unanimous opinion for himself and Judges Patricia Millett and David Tatel dismisses the challenges and broadly upholds EPA's discretion to decide on designations using its technical expertise. He further faults the challenges on procedural grounds.
Williams finds that Colorado citizens failed to properly raise in public comments their objection that EPA and Colorado's modeling of air emissions for the Martin Drake coal-fired power plant is inaccurate.
Citizens claim that EPA should have used meteorological data from the nearby Colorado Springs airport in its modeling for Martin Drake, a major source of SO2. But EPA rejected that data as unrepresentative of the power plant, and Williams accepts this. “EPA reasonably relied on a multi-factor test to reject the data” preferred by Masias, Williams writes, finding that the conditions at the airport are indeed different to those at the power plant, due to differences in terrain and wind patterns.
Masias also claims that “EPA used a different standard for judging representativeness of meteorological data for Colorado Springs versus” four other areas, Williams notes. “But only a fragment of that theory was raised before the agency; we review the fragment and find it wanting.”
“Masias relies on a single sentence from a 14-page expert report,” which states that EPA can accept data from points “further away” than the airport is from the power plant as representative of weather patterns. Williams finds this is sufficient to raise in court “the objection that EPA’s weighing of the proximity of meteorological data for Colorado Springs differed from its weighing of proximity for other areas."
However, EPA asserts that other factors such as wind speed and direction render the airport unrepresentative of the Martin Drake plant. Williams finds that the expert report “did not put the agency on notice that it needed to defend its weighing of other factors, such as terrain and wind speeds, across different areas. Our finding that EPA adequately addressed [the expert's] concern therefore disposes of Masias’s claim of agency inconsistency across sites.”
Sierra Club's Claims
Williams faults Sierra Club's claims regarding Gallia County, OH, on the grounds that the group failed to raise its objections first in a petition for administrative reconsideration.
“Sierra Club claims that the Ohio modeling was susceptible to a 'basic mathematical fix,' namely restoring pollution levels that Ohio’s inappropriate 38% reduction had removed. This would have resolved EPA’s sole objection, says Sierra Club, and conclusively demonstrated nonattainment,” Williams writes.
“Perhaps so. But Sierra Club’s is an argument for the agency, not this court -- at least in the first instance.” Because Sierra Club’s objection “is based entirely on modeling that EPA received after the period for public comment and on EPA’s even later assessment of that modeling, Sierra Club did not raise that objection during the comment period -- and could not possibly have done so,” Williams finds.
Therefore the group failed to raise its objection with “reasonable specificity” during the public comment period and is barred from bringing suit under the Clean Air Act.
Sierra Club claimed that its public comments made reference to “available information” showing that the county is in fact in nonattainment, but Williams finds this reference insufficient.
Williams notes that Sierra Club did in fact file a petition for reconsideration based on information that became available after the public comment period closed. EPA purported to grant that petition, but Sierra Club claims its grant of approval did not go far enough because the agency only agreed to evaluate, “when available,” more-recent air quality monitoring data for 2017-2019 to support the attainment status of Gallia County.
Williams finds that “perhaps Sierra Club could have petitioned for [judicial] review of EPA’s reconsideration order by claiming that the 'grant' was functionally a denial,” but that issue is not before the court.
Kansas Utilities' Claims
The court rejects the claim of the Kansas City BPU, on the grounds that the board failed to state an injury that would confer standing to sue. A designation of “unclassifiable/attainment” does not carry any regulatory implications beyond those of the “attainment” designation, despite the BPU's claim that the unclassifiable designation implies damaging uncertainty over the future nonattainment status of the area.
“Because EPA designated Wyandotte County as 'unclassifiable,' the Board does not -- and cannot -- claim that it was subjected to regulatory burdens beyond those applicable under the Board’s preferred designation” of attainment, Williams writes. “In these circumstances, the Board appears to meet no part of the familiar threefold standing requirement -- that it has suffered a concrete and particularized injury that is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct, and is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision."
Williams finds that BPU offers no empirical evidence to support its claim that the unclassifiable designation places it at higher risk of being classified nonattainment later.
“Finally, the Board expresses concern that finding no standing here would eliminate all review because EPA 'always' has authority to redesignate 'any area under any designation.'” Williams writes, “This is, unfortunately for petitioner, nonsense."
Agency authority to re-designate couldn't undermine legal standing of petitioners, in general, “unless it were so common as to render designations non-final,” Williams says, noting that petitioners typically establish standing by showing harm they would suffer as a result of EPA's designation.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/dc-circuit-broadly-rejects-challenges-epa-so2-naaqs-designations
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No Joke, Trump Admin to Hire 5 Scientists for Climate
Oct 22, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Daniel Cusick
The Interior Department is seeking senior scientists to lead five regional hubs of the Climate Adaptation Science Centers program.
But who wants to work for a Trump administration known for denying or downplaying climate science? And why is it filling the positions?
Sharpen your pencils, applicants. Resumes are due tomorrow.
According to a posting from the U.S. Geological Survey, Interior plans to fill top slots at five of eight regional climate adaptation centers housed at research universities from Hawaii to Massachusetts.
The openings for a "supervisory physical scientist/biologist" are attractive federal civil service jobs. They carry a top-tier GS-15 rank and salary of $127,000 to $164,000 annually. Hires will be made at the Southeast, Northeast, South Central, Northwest and Pacific Islands adaptation centers.
According to at least one university program director who is waiting for USGS to fill a position at her host school, the University of Washington, there's been no shortage of interest.
"I have to say that I've been getting quite a lot of inquiries from folks who want to know what the job is about, but I don't know how many have applied," said Amy Snover, university director of the Northwest CASC and an affiliate associate professor at UW's College of the Environment.
Snover will not make the hiring decision. That will be left to USGS, whose director, James Reilly, promised during his Senate confirmation last April to keep politics out of the agency's scientific work.
The same can't be said of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, the former Montana congressman who has openly challenged climate science. In August, he said California's devastating wildfires "have nothing to do with climate change," even though studies have demonstrated the link between massive wildfires and California's warmer, drier climate.
Independent scientists felt a collective chill when Zinke issued a directive in December 2017 requiring discretionary grants of $50,000 or more to undergo political screening to ensure federal spending is better aligned with administration policy positions.
Zinke appointed Steve Howke, a personal friend from Montana, to oversee the screening for funds going to universities, nonprofit organizations and conservation groups.
It's unclear how many projects from the adaptation centers have been subject to screenings, but Snover said the political vetting of science is a concern among many scientists. She noted that most grants going to the adaptation centers would meet the $50,000 review threshold.
All CASC work is to help Interior agencies such as the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Bureau of Indian Affairs understand how climate change is affecting natural and cultural resources, she said.
Snover said most of the prospective applicants she's spoken to have not cited the Trump administration's climate policies as an obstacle. "Maybe people already figured out what they think about that before they call me," she said.
Emailed questions to the Interior press office about the CASC vacancies — including why five of eight positions are being filled simultaneously — were not answered by deadline. But a person with knowledge about the program said "there was nothing nefarious" about the departures of the former directors.
Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said: "It's telling that you have so many vacancies. It means that senior officials have left the program."
And although government-sponsored science remains integral to exploring the causes and effects of climate change, Rosenberg said the Trump administration's dismissal of human-caused warming has placed many government scientists in an untenable position.
"I think any academic taking on one of these positions would need to think very carefully about whether they could do the work they want to do under this administration," he said. "This is the kind of Faustian bargain that a lot of scientists have to figure out right now."
But Snover, who has overseen the University of Washington's CASC partnership since 2017, said she is unaware of any scientific work that has been squelched for political reasons. Research done by the Northwest center has included inquiries into the risk and patterns of wildfires in the Pacific Northwest as well as how rising stream temperatures affect fish.
"It's really obvious to people that the climate is changing, and there's an urgency to preparing for the changes that are in the pipeline," she said.
Even if CASC's core goals retain the support of higher-ups, the Trump administration has already tinkered around its edges.
Established by Congress in 2008 as the National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center, the program was expanded in 2009 to include eight research hubs called "Climate Science Centers." All of the regional centers were established between 2010 and 2012.
But early this year as part of the 2018 budget process, the name was changed to "Climate Adaptation Science Centers."
According to USGS, "the mission of our network did not change. The changes more clearly align the national and regional centers and emphasize the centers' focus on meeting natural resource adaptation needs."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/10/22/stories/1060103923
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EPA’s ‘Unclassifiable’ Label for Colo., Ohio Air Upheld by Court
Oct 19, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid Reporter
The Environmental Protection Agency has broad authority to decide whether a locality meets or exceeds national air quality standards—or that it can’t classify the area’s compliance at all—a federal appeals court ruled Oct. 19.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the EPA’s decision to list Colorado Springs, Colo., and Gallia County, Ohio, as “unclassifiable” under those standards—essentially, the agency lacks the data to decide whether the area is in compliance.
The lack of an EPA designation means that Colorado and Ohio won’t have to impose new pollution controls on nearby coal-fired power plants, factories, and vehicles.
Burning fossil fuels in power plants and other industrial facilities ranks among the largest contributors of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere, according to the EPA. Sulfur dioxide can harm the respiratory system of children, the elderly, and people with asthma.
Challenge to UnclassifiableThe Sierra Club and Colorado Springs residents challenged the EPA’s 2016 decision to not deem these two localities to be in violation of the federal sulfur dioxide of 75 parts per billion.
The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Environment is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg.
The Sierra Club argued that the EPA should have corrected math errors in the data Ohio collected that would have shown that Gallia County is violating the federal standards.
Gallia County is home to the James M. Gavin power plant, a 2,600-MW coal-fired utility which is now owned by Lightstone Generation LLC, a joint venture of Blackstone and an affiliate of ArcLight Capital Partners LLC. The power industry’s perspective was represented by the Utility Air Regulatory Group, which backed EPA’s determination for Gallia County.
However, the utility group argued—and the court agreed—that the fix the Sierra Club suggested to Ohio’s modeling was received after the comment period closed. Hence, the judges said they couldn’t review the Sierra Club’s objection to the “unclassifiable” label because it wasn’t presented to EPA before the agency made its designation.
The judges also refused to consider Colorado Springs’ argument that meteorological data from a nearby airport would have shown that the city exceeded sulfur dioxide standards. They deferred to the EPA, which despite using multiple approaches—including meteorological data from other sources—was unable to find Colorado Springs in violation of the federal standard.
The Sierra Club hasn’t yet decided whether to seek a rehearing, attorney Lisa Perfetto told Bloomberg Environment Oct. 19.
Attorney Robert Ukeiley, whose Boulder-based Law Office of Robert Ukeiley represented Colorado Springs residents, said he was disappointed the court didn’t consider whether the city would violate the federal standards even if the wind patterns were different.
The EPA said it was still reviewing the decision.
Lucinda Langworthy—a Washington based attorney with Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP that represented the Utility Air Regulatory Group—told Bloomberg Environment the court made the right call in allowing the EPA’s “unclassifiable” designation for the Ohio county to stand.Faced with conflicting modeling results, the EPA reasonably concluded that it could not determine whether or not the air quality in the county met the standard and appropriately designated the area unclassifiable, she said.
Kansas Utility UnaffectedJudge Stephen F. Williams—writing for a panel with Judges David S. Tatel and Patricia A. Millett—also rejected a challenge filed by the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities, which operates the coal-fired Nearman Creek power plant in Wyandotte County.
The board was worried that the region could be designated as exceeding the standards in the future, which would entail installing costly additional power plant air pollution controls.
During oral arguments in September, all three judges expressed skepticism of the board’s argument, given that the current decision to list the region as unclassifiable means the power plant is unaffected.
That skepticism translated into a rejection of the board’s position. “The Board cannot point to a heavier regulatory burden resulting from EPA’s failure to make what the Board claims is the legally correct choice,” Williams wrote.
The case is Masias v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 16-1314, 10/19/18.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epas-unclassifiable-label-for-colo-ohio-air-upheld-by-court-3
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