Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 23/10/18
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Emails Show ‘Cozy’ Ties Between EPA’s Air Office And Its Chief’s Former Firm
Oct 23, 2018 | Huffington Post
By Itai Vardi
A trove of emails obtained by HuffPost sheds light on the ongoing relationship between the Environmental Protection Agency’s air quality chief, Bill Wehrum, and people at his former law and lobbying firm. -
California Extends Consultation on Calculating Prop 65 Reprotox Exposures
Oct 23, 2018 | Chemical Watch
California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has extended the public comment period on its proposed amendment on how reprotoxic exposures are calculated under Proposition 65. -
Delayed PFAS Rule a 'Drop in the Bucket' — Advocate
Oct 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Courtney Columbus
In the White House's latest regulatory agenda released last week, EPA repeated a pledge made earlier this year to start taking steps to designate two harmful chemicals as hazardous substances, but advocates worry the agency won't be aggressive enough. -
U.S. Judge Affirms Monsanto Weed-Killer Verdict, Slashes Damages
Oct 23, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
A U.S. judge on Monday affirmed a verdict against Bayer AG unit Monsanto that found its glyphosate-based weed-killers responsible for a man’s terminal cancer, sending the German company's shares down 8 percent. -
OECD Finds 'Major Challenges' in Assessing Benefits of Chemicals Regulation
Oct 23, 2018 | Chemical Watch
There are major challenges in estimating the benefits of regulating chemicals, according to an OECD report. -
Research: Russian Lab Behind Life-Threatening Malware
Oct 23, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Tim Starks
A Russian government-owned lab is behind malware that renders industrial control systems unsafe and jeopardizes human lives, FireEye concluded in research released today. -
Ewire: Trump Clean Air Boast Misses Key Details
Oct 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
President Donald Trump is boasting about the country's air quality in superlative terms, citing a map showing U.S. levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) are well below much of the developing world, though the trend is almost wholly attributable to prior administrations' clean air standards and market shifts in the power sector. -
EPA Has 'Extremely Ambitious' Timeline for Climate Rules
Oct 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Niina Heikkinen
EPA is aiming to complete at least two major overhauls of Obama-era climate rules in less than a year. It's a goal analysts call ambitious and will help the agency meet the president's rule-busting agenda. -
First Detection of 'Volatile Fluoroorganic Compounds' in Arctic Air
Oct 23, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Andrew Turley
A Norwegian Air Research Institute (NILU) monitoring project has found five volatile fluoroorganic and related compounds in Arctic air for the first time. -
Young People Are Suing the Trump Administration Over Climate Change. She’s Their Lawyer.
Oct 23, 2018 | The New York Times
By John Schwartz
Julia Olson climbed the slope of Spencer Butte, taking the steeper of the two paths. Near the summit, shrouding pines suddenly gave way to a vista of the Cascades.
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Emails Show ‘Cozy’ Ties Between EPA’s Air Office And Its Chief’s Former Firm
Oct 23, 2018 | Huffington Post
By Itai Vardi
A trove of emails obtained by HuffPost sheds light on the ongoing relationship between the Environmental Protection Agency’s air quality chief, Bill Wehrum, and people at his former law and lobbying firm. This latest instance of Trump appointees communicating with previous employers highlights the extent to which corporate interests have gained access to crucial government decision-makers and raises questions about the usefulness of President Donald Trump’s ethics rules.
Since he became assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation last November, Wehrum has been criticized as the embodiment of regulatory capture.
Wehrum, a seasoned lawyer and lobbyist at the firm Hunton Andrews Kurth, previously worked at the EPA during the George W. Bush administration. Upon returning to private practice, he fought the agency on the energy industry’s behalf. His clientele included such powerhouses as ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, Koch Industries, Dominion Energy and Enbridge.
Now, he’s back at the EPA and seeking to erase some of the hallmarks of Obama-era regulation of air pollution ― an agenda that will benefit many of Wehrum’s former clients.
A month after rejoining the EPA, Wehrum was already visiting Hunton’s Washington offices to lay out his plan for regulatory reform before the Utility Air Regulatory Group, a onetime client, and other eager listeners. The Utility Air Regulatory Group is a trade association that speaks for major energy companies and utilities such as American Electric Power and Southern Company.
But the relationship between Wehrum and his former colleagues at Hunton did not end there, according to the emails obtained by HuffPost through an open records request. Those messages show that both sides continued to communicate regularly after Wehrum’s transition to the EPA. This, despite his ethics pledge not to be involved in matters concerning his former firm and clients. Last month, under growing pressure to clarify his relationship with Hunton, he signed a formal recusal letter listing numerous ex-clients that he vowed not be involved with in “particular matters.”
Critics have pointed to many instances in which Trump’s “drain the swamp” ethics rules have proved to be toothless. The rules, announced shortly after the president’s inauguration, have repeatedly been ignored or circumvented by the granting of waivers.
Most of the emails between Wehrum and Hunton employees that were uncovered by HuffPost have been heavily redacted by the EPA, which cited the “personal information” exemption. But the unredacted communications provide a window into an ongoing relationship between the official and his former colleagues.
Hunton lawyers reached out to Wehrum often, looking to touch base and meet, attempting to glean information about EPA decisions, and ascertaining expected dates for future regulations.
While several exchanges show more casual interactions between Wehrum and lobbyists for companies like ExxonMobil and Koch Industries, others reveal former colleagues seeking inside information. In June, Hunton attorney David Landin ― who previously lobbied for one of Wehrum’s former clients, the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association ― emailed Wehrum to “catch up” on asbestos regulations, including a “problem formulation document; systematic review document; transparency rule.” Landin added, “NSSGA wants to be supportive.”
When Wehrum was at Hunton, he and Landin lobbied together for the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association on asbestos regulations. Now the EPA is in the midst of refining how it evaluates the risks posed by asbestos. The proposed new rule has come under criticism, including by scientists within the EPA, because it could potentially open the door for further uses of the known carcinogen in consumer products.
In an email earlier this year, under the subject line “Strengthening regulatory transparency rule,” Landin asked Wehrum, “How do I best get insight of what is driving this and the goals?”
On at least two other occasions, Landin tried to gain information from Wehrum about the EPA’s upcoming inventory of all chemical substances manufactured or processed in the U.S. (including imports) that are covered under the Toxic Substances Control Act. The agency updates the list, which plays an important part in regulating toxins, every six months. “Any insights that can be shared?” he asked Wehrum in one email. In another, Landin requested that Wehrum facilitate an “informal introduction” between him and other EPA officials.
Public interest advocates who were shown the emails acknowledge that loopholes in the Trump administration’s ethics rules leave a lot of gray area for assessing whether officials are technically acting properly. But even so, they say that Wehrum’s actions were highly problematic.Subscribe to the Politics email.How will Trump's administration impact you?
“Even if Wehrum is somehow abiding by the narrow definitions of his recusal letter, the appearance of these cozy relations is simply wrong,” said Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project, an EPA watchdog group. “And it’s a major part of what people don’t like about Washington. This is an unusual amount of [email] traffic and I would expect Wehrum to put distance between himself and his former colleagues, to let them know that he’s now obligated to serve the public.”
Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the public interest group Public Citizen, agreed. “Those emails are very revealing of the extent of the close working relationship between the Hunton firm and Wehrum,” Holman told HuffPost. “Bill Wehrum has shown considerable disregard for conflicts of interest generally and Trump’s own unenforceable ethics rules in particular. He is supposed to recuse himself from matters affecting his former clients within the previous two years of appointment.”
In August, Wehrum told The New York Times that he was “scrupulously complying” with the ethics rules.
“Since joining the EPA, Mr. Wehrum has understood and abided by ethics rules,” said an agency spokesperson in response to HuffPost’s request for comment. “He has screened participants in meetings held at EPA and invitations to events external to EPA and will continue to do so.”
In regards to Wehrum’s talk at his former law firm’s office, the spokesperson said, “He spoke to a group that included former clients in the audience and also included many other interested parties which follow ethics rules and the Trump pledge.”ASSOCIATED PRESS
The emails also reveal that Hunton’s attempts at influence peddling extend beyond Wehrum to other top officials in the Office of Air and Radiation. Since the beginning of the year, the firm’s attorneys have arranged several meetings between air office staffers and Hunton clients ― including the Utility Air Regulatory Group and the Air Permitting Forum, which also works to advance the interests of major utilities and energy companies.
Hunton Andrews Kurth did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
A prominent figure in these contacts is Wehrum’s senior adviser Mandy Gunasekara, a political appointee and former Republican Senate staffer.
In March, Gunasekara sent two Hunton lawyers a new EPA memo that was embargoed until the following day. The memo, titled “Project Emissions Accounting Guidance,” effectively loosened the regulations for permitting new sources of emissions from power or industrial plants. That has long been an industry goal, including for the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a Hunton client that represents the interests of power generating companies.
Wehrum said at the time that the changes reflect a “common-sense interpretation” of the rules that will “remove unnecessary administrative barriers to the construction of cleaner and more efficient facilities.”
In April, Hunton attorney Colleen Doyle asked Gunasekara for “any news” on the “source aggregation issue” on behalf of building materials supplier Lehigh Hanson, a former Wehrum client. Her message referred to the industry’s push for new rules to raise the bar set in the Clean Air Act for when emission sources must be “aggregated” and counted as a single source.
Gunasekara promised Doyle that she would “check on the status and follow up.” By April 30, Wehrum had announced that the rule revision was underway.
The emails similarly detail Hunton’s lobbying on behalf of another former Wehrum client, the Brick Industry Association. Three months before his nomination to become part of Trump’s EPA, Wehrum had requested a meeting with the agency to discuss an extension for compliance with rules limiting mercury and other toxic emissions from facilities used by the brick industry. The meeting, he wrote, was to determine how to “lessen” the burden on the industry.
In February this year, Hunton lawyers brokered a meeting of Gunasekara and other officials with representatives of the Brick Industry Association. “We really need immediate relief from the December compliance deadline,” wrote an association representative. Keith Barnett, an official in the air office, responded that the EPA would “discuss these options.”
Four months later, the brick industry got its relief. In a memo from the air office’s Penny Lassiter, the EPA instructed its regional offices to consider granting the brick industry compliance extensions on a case-by-case basis.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-wehrum-epa-lobbying-hunton_us_5bcdeb2ee4b055bc9483285f
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California Extends Consultation on Calculating Prop 65 Reprotox Exposures
Oct 23, 2018 | Chemical Watch
California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has extended the public comment period on its proposed amendment on how reprotoxic exposures are calculated under Proposition 65. The deadline for comments has been pushed back a week to Monday 26 November.
The change comes after a request from the state's Chamber of Commerce for a public hearing on the proposed regulation. This will take place on 19 November in Oakland.
California published a notice of the proposed rulemaking on 5 October.
https://chemicalwatch.com/71234/california-extends-consultation-on-calculating-prop-65-reprotox-exposures
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Delayed PFAS Rule a 'Drop in the Bucket' — Advocate
Oct 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Courtney Columbus
In the White House's latest regulatory agenda released last week, EPA repeated a pledge made earlier this year to start taking steps to designate two harmful chemicals as hazardous substances, but advocates worry the agency won't be aggressive enough.
The chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, are types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which have been detected in drinking water in some states at levels higher than the 70 parts per trillion health advisory level EPA set in 2016. Those two chemicals are types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
Also in the administration's latest regulatory plan is a PFAS rule first proposed in 2015 but that has been repeatedly pushed back since then.
The agenda, however, leaves out any mention of steps toward legally enforceable drinking water standards for the chemicals.
Tom Bruton, scientist with the Green Science Policy Institute, said, "This will be a disappointment for state regulators and impacted communities around the country who continue to call on EPA to issue enforceable drinking water limits for these contaminants."
EPA has said it "will initiate steps to evaluate the need for a maximum contaminant level (MCL) for PFOA and PFOS."
In an email, an agency aide said a management plan "is expected to identify actions, including next steps for potential regulatory and policy actions, by the end of the year."Hazardous substances designation
A paragraph in the agency's statement of priorities released with the regulatory agenda says EPA is "evaluating the various statutory mechanisms" for dealing with PFAS.
That includes the Superfund law, under which the administration could designate PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances. The agency has yet to decide which mechanism "is most appropriate," said the agenda.
Still, Bruton said, mention of the hazardous substances designation in the agenda "seems to indicate that EPA is moving ahead seriously with this issue."
"That's good news," he said, "because designating PFOA and PFOS as hazardous will give the Agency much-needed authority to order cleanup of contaminated sites and recover costs from polluters."
Lawmakers, including Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), have called on EPA to use a broader, class-based approach to regulating PFAS instead of focusing on the more widely known and studied types such as PFOS and PFOA.
"Given what we know about the effects of other PFAS chemicals, including shorter chain PFAS variants, it is critical that EPA take a broader approach and attempt to address the entire class of chemicals that are linked to a number of serious health conditions," Peters said in a statement.Proposed rule
The proposed rule on PFAS designates as a "significant new use" the manufacturing, importing or processing of a subset of PFAS, including PFOA and similar chemicals. The rule would also apply to those chemicals imported as part of articles.
The proposal wouldn't ban those chemicals but would trigger an EPA review, said Richard Denison, lead senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund.
"Before a company would do [those activities], they would have to notify EPA of their intent, and EPA would have to conduct a review and determine whether to allow that," he said.
Denison said he couldn't be sure what was causing the rulemaking delay, but the dates in the agendas are "notoriously fluid."
"With the enactment of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (amended TSCA), EPA is developing a supplemental proposal to reflect the new requirements of the amended statute," an EPA aide wrote in an email.
"Additionally," the email said, "EPA continues to work to address comments received on the proposed rule."
The agenda said EPA would release a supplemental proposal this month, with a final rule issued in November 2019.
The proposed rule would be "a big step in the right direction," wrote Bruton. It "would be a useful backstop to prevent the restart of uses of long-chain PFAS that have been phased-out," he said, although "a stronger approach would address both ongoing and phased-out uses of these chemicals."
Daniel Rosenberg, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council's health program, said the rule is "a drop in the bucket."
"It falls so far short of what is needed to address what is essentially a PFAS crisis. Would it be good if they finalized it? Yes. Is it a drop in the bucket and years delayed? Also yes," he said.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/10/23/stories/1060104101
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U.S. Judge Affirms Monsanto Weed-Killer Verdict, Slashes Damages
Oct 23, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
A U.S. judge on Monday affirmed a verdict against Bayer AG unit Monsanto that found its glyphosate-based weed-killers responsible for a man’s terminal cancer, sending the German company's shares down 8 percent.
In a ruling by San Francisco's Superior Court of California, Judge Suzanne Bolanos said she would slash the punitive damages award to $39 million from $250 million if lawyers for school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson agreed.
Bayer said in a statement the decision to reduce the damages was a step in the right direction, but it would still file an appeal with the California Court of Appeal, because the verdict was not supported by the evidence presented at the trial.
"According to an earlier hearing, the judge toyed with the idea of dropping the damages altogether," brokerage alpha said in a note to clients. "Now, however, the judge made a U-turn and confirmed the jury's previous verdict."
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Monsanto, which denies the allegations, had asked the judge to throw out the entire original $289 million verdict or order a new trial on the punitive damages portion.
A jury on Aug. 10 found the company’s glyphosate-based weed-killers, including RoundUp and Ranger Pro, had caused Johnson’s cancer and that the company failed to warn consumers about the risks.
The verdict wiped 10 percent off the value of the company and marked the first such decision against Monsanto, which faces more than 8,000 similar lawsuits in the United States.
The German company, which bought Monsanto this year for $63 billion, says decades of scientific studies and real-world use have shown glyphosate to be safe for human use.
Lawyers for Johnson in a statement on Monday said they were still reviewing whether to accept the reduced award or retry the punitive damages portion.EDITORS’ PICKSThey Survived a Massacre. Then the Lawyers Started Calling.The Adopted Black Baby, and the White One Who Replaced HerSolange, the Polymathic Cultural Force
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"The evidence presented to this jury was, quite frankly, overwhelming," the lawyers said.
The amount of punitive damages is limited by law, and Bolanos said California's constitution did not permit a higher award. If Johnson accepts the reduced damages, the final verdict would order Monsanto to pay a total of $78 million, split equally between compensatory and punitive damages.
Bolanos' Monday decision is a turnaround from a previous tentative ruling she issued on Oct. 10.
In that preliminary order, Bolanos said she was considering ordering a new trial on punitive damages, saying Johnson had failed to meet his burden of producing clear and convincing evidence of malice or oppression by Monsanto, a requirement for allowing a jury to award punitive damages.
But following that tentative ruling, at least five of the jurors who delivered the Aug. 10 verdict sent letters to the judge, urging her to uphold their decision. Bolanos did not directly refer to the jurors' letters in her Monday ruling, but said the jury was entitled to its findings.
In September 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded a decades-long assessment of glyphosate risks and found that the chemical was not a likely carcinogen to humans.
However, in 2015, the cancer unit of the World Health Organisation classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans."
Johnson's case, filed in 2016, was fast-tracked for trial due to the severity of his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system, that he alleged was caused by years of glyphosate exposure.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/10/23/business/23reuters-bayer-glyphosate-lawsuit.html
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OECD Finds 'Major Challenges' in Assessing Benefits of Chemicals Regulation
Oct 23, 2018 | Chemical Watch
There are major challenges in estimating the benefits of regulating chemicals, according to an OECD report.
The report – Assessing the economic valuation of the benefits of regulating chemicals – rounds up the findings of five OECD case studies on the regulation of:phthalates;mercury;PFOA and its salts;NMP; andformaldehyde.
The aim of the case studies was to review the literature, or 'original papers', on the quantification and economic valuation of benefits from regulating those chemicals.
The OECD found that there were "very few detailed applications of the full impact-pathway or damage-function approach (IPA/DFA), even for mercury, which is the chemical with most available assessments". The IPA and DFA are standard techniques used by economists for estimating the costs or benefits of environmental effects.
The case studies show that the values used for morbidity impacts are often incomplete, in most cases covering only lost productivity, lost earnings or cost-of-illness, the report says.
Furthermore, the morbidity impacts mostly disregard the "disutility costs" of pain and suffering from the illnesses and in general "benefits transfer estimates" are simplistically applied.
The report gives four key recommendations:identification of the potentially most important health and environmental impacts in term of aggregate economic benefits;quantification of the consequences of these potentially most important impacts;valuation of these impacts with the aim of generating data for benefit transfer and use in CBA; andimprovement of guidance for benefit transfer and treatment of uncertainty in CBAs of chemicals regulation.
The case studies – which focused on human health effects, rather than effects on the environment – were conducted as part of the OECD's Sacame project.
Sacame stands for 'Socio-economic analysis of chemicals by allowing a better quantification and monetisation of morbidity and environmental impacts'. The project, set up to address knowledge gaps, has two parts with a focus on economic valuations and sharing of risk management information between countries.
https://chemicalwatch.com/71164/oecd-finds-major-challenges-in-assessing-benefits-of-chemicals-regulation
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Research: Russian Lab Behind Life-Threatening Malware
Oct 23, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Tim Starks
A Russian government-owned lab is behind malware that renders industrial control systems unsafe and jeopardizes human lives, FireEye concluded in research released today.
Cybersecurity experts have dubbed the malware, known as Trisis or Triton, the most dangerous in existence because of its capacity to kill or cause environmental damage.
"FireEye Intelligence assesses with high confidence that intrusion activity that led to deployment of TRITON was supported by the Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics, a Russian government-owned technical research institution located in Moscow," the company wrote in a blog post.
FireEye reached its conclusion by discovering testing activity it traced back to the lab. The time of activity was consistent with a Moscow time zone at a facility, which FireEye estimates has the technical know-how necessary to develop malware this sophisticated.
It's unlikely that a rogue operator at the lab is responsible, the company said.
Any supposed rogue employee involved "would have had to conduct extensive, high-risk malware development and intrusion activity from CNIIHM’s address space without CNIIHM’s knowledge and approval over multiple years," the company wrote in a blog post.
FireEye and the firm Dragos first revealed last year that they found the malware in Schneider Electric’s Triconex safety system. Dragos named the group behind the malware Xenotime, but didn't attribute it to a specific nation.
Xenotime has since moved beyond targets outside Triconex, Dragos reported this summer.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Ewire: Trump Clean Air Boast Misses Key Details
Oct 23, 2018 | Inside EPA
President Donald Trump is boasting about the country's air quality in superlative terms, citing a map showing U.S. levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) are well below much of the developing world, though the trend is almost wholly attributable to prior administrations' clean air standards and market shifts in the power sector.
In addition, several news reports about Trump's Oct. 22 tweet -- which was quickly retweeted by acting EPA chief Andrew Wheeler -- say it is misleading to claim that America has the cleanest air in the world, “BY FAR!”
The Washington Post, for example, notes that the U.S. is ranked 9th in a World Health Organization (WHO) database of countries with the lowest PM2.5 concentrations in urban areas. Further, Trump's map dates from 2016, the last year of Barack Obama's presidency.
The article also cites Natural Resources Defense Council attorney John Walke who notes that 45 cities in the U.S. have PM2.5 concentrations above the WHO recommended level -- contrary to Trump's tweet that “none in the U.S.” are exposed to pollution above that level.
In addition, a Politico dispatch on the issue notes that Trump's map focuses solely on PM2.5 and not other air pollutants such as carbon dioxide, which is the primary driver of climate change.
The U.S. is the world's second-largest CO2 emitter, after China.
In broad terms, the tweet -- and Wheeler's endorsement of it -- highlights the Trump EPA's attempts to tout historical improvements in air and water quality, what the EPA chief terms “risk communication,” as part of an effort to justify its deregulatory agenda
As Inside EPA's Dave Reynolds recently chronicled, top agency officials are citing those improvements to justify their current deregulatory efforts, even though increasing public concerns about the environment are not helping their cause.
At a meeting of state officials last month, a top agency air official cited Gallup polling showing, for the first time in 18 years, more than half of Americans are dissatisfied with the state of the environment.
The poll, issued earlier this year, found that 62 percent of respondents say the government is not doing enough to protect the environment.
“The majority of Americans say protection of the environment should be a priority, even at the risk of curbing economic growth, and believe the U.S. government is not doing enough to protect the environment,” Gallup said.
“About three-quarters support spending more government money on solar and wind power, and support higher emissions and pollution standards for industry,” the organization added.
Part of that shift likely is tied to growing public awareness of the dangers posed by climate change, as well as the halting and inconsistent efforts at the federal and international levels to address the problem.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-trump-clean-air-boast-misses-key-details
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EPA Has 'Extremely Ambitious' Timeline for Climate Rules
Oct 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Niina Heikkinen
EPA is aiming to complete at least two major overhauls of Obama-era climate rules in less than a year. It's a goal analysts call ambitious and will help the agency meet the president's rule-busting agenda.
EPA says it intends to finalize both its replacement for the Clean Power Plan and changes to standards related to methane emissions from the oil and gas industry in roughly six months.
The rapid timelines came out this month as part of the Fall 2018 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, which tracks federal agency progress on rulemaking.
EPA released its proposed Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, to replace the CPP, on Aug. 31 and now predicts it will finalize the regulation in March.
The agency is taking two related actions to change the Obama team's regulation on new and modified sources in the oil and gas industry.
In October, EPA announced certain technical changes, which it expects to complete by April. The agency then expects to release a broader proposal in December. Final action is due by June.
The estimated completion dates are part of another ambitious deregulatory fiscal year for EPA and other arms of the federal government.
Collectively, agencies are projected to cut $18 billion in regulatory costs next fiscal year, not counting finalized changes to the corporate average fuel economy standards.
To help meet that goal, EPA has a negative $817.8 million regulatory budget for fiscal 2019. That follows the agency slashing $1.2 billion in regulatory costs in fiscal 2018.
Regulatory budgets come from the president's executive order calling for agencies to cut two regulations for every new one. Agencies that were able to achieve that standard were expected to reduce regulatory costs further to achieve negative budgets.'Very challenging'
Janet McCabe, the acting air chief at EPA under President Obama, called the quick turnaround on the rules "extremely ambitious."
"If you build in the 90 days presumptive OMB [Office of Management and Budget] review, that only leaves 3-4 months to read and assimilate the comments, do whatever additional analytic work required or desired, make changes to the rule (if any) and out all the documentation together," she wrote.
In an email, McCabe said of the Trump EPA's plans: "Very challenging even for a more straightforward rule."
The timing of the final rules' release for the first half of 2019 doesn't seem like a coincidence to James Goodwin, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform.
"I almost wonder if there is some sort of concerted effort to finalize certain rules to make sure they go through judicial review during the Trump administration," Goodwin said.
The Obama administration had ambitious timelines for several major actions, as well, only to see some of them delayed by years.
Susan Dudley, former OIRA administrator under President George W. Bush, acknowledged the "tension between getting something done during a political tenure and taking the time to develop supporting justification that will withstand legal challenge."
She pointed out that if EPA was able to complete its replacement for fuel economy standards, the "Safer Affordable Fuel Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Proposed Rule for Model Years 2021-2016," that rulemaking alone would not only more than meet EPA's overall target of slashing more than $800 million in costs, it would also surpass the overall governmentwide target of $18 billion.
EPA expects to finalize this rule by the end of next year for a savings of between $120 billion and $340 billion.
In a press release following the unified agenda's release, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler praised the agency's rule-cutting efforts, noting the agency had finalized 28 significant deregulatory actions since the start of the Trump administration. The agency is planning 25 "priority actions" in fiscal 2019, including the ACE and SAFE rules.
"We are providing the states and regulated community the regulatory certainty they need to advance new technologies, improve environmental protections, and enhance economic growth," Wheeler said in a statement.How other agencies compare
An analysis of federal agency regulatory cost reductions from fiscal 2018 by Daniel Pérez, a policy analyst at George Washington University, found EPA was among a handful of agencies to exceed the Trump administration's expectations for slashing regulatory costs.
The Department of Transportation similarly surpassed its anticipated costs savings. Both EPA and DOT cut $1.2 billion in regulatory costs.
More than half of the $23 billion in savings came from $12 billion in regulatory cuts from the Department of Health and Human Services, which had only been expected to cut $410 million.
Other departments failed to meet the administration's targets for fiscal 2018. The Department of the Interior, for example, slashed $2.5 billion, but fell short of expectations.
The Energy and Agriculture departments were also well below their targets, each slashing around $400 million in regulatory costs.
Agencies other than EPA also face significant cuts to their regulatory budgets in fiscal 2019. DOT has a negative $1.9 billion budget. Interior will be aiming to slash $793.6 million in regulatory costs, and DOE is expected to reach a net zero regulatory budget this coming fiscal year.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/10/23/stories/1060104093
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First Detection of 'Volatile Fluoroorganic Compounds' in Arctic Air
Oct 23, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Andrew Turley
A Norwegian Air Research Institute (NILU) monitoring project has found five volatile fluoroorganic and related compounds in Arctic air for the first time. Several of these chemicals had not been detected previously in environmental media of any kind.
The NILU report, published on 12 October, raises questions about the possible environmental fate of these chemicals, which are marketed for a wide range of industrial and medical applications.
The terms 'volatile fluoroorganic and related compounds' and 'volatile fluoroorganic compound' appear to have been coined by the authors of the report to demarcate a new class.
The five chemicals found in Arctic air are:PFPHP, a "pure" perfluorocarbon;PFTBA, a perfluorinated tertiary amine;TCHFB, a fluorochloro compound;DCTFP, a fluorochloro compound; andDCTCB, a chlorinated compound.
"The detection of these compounds in Arctic air samples is a potential indication of long-range transport and persistency," the report says.
Furthermore, it is "very likely" that they can act as long‐lived greenhouse gases. "A follow-up study with more dedicated sampling and analysis should receive high priority."
PFPHP and PFTBA have "very special technical properties, which make them very attractive for a lot of industrial and medical applications", the report says. They are used in cooling and rinsing liquids in the electronics industry, as speciality solvents in the chemicals industry and as solvents in cosmetics.
The properties that make them useful are chemical inertness, good solubility in relation to gases like oxygen and carbon dioxide and high density.
The compounds are just two examples of a large group of perfluorocarbons and perfluoroamines with similar properties and uses, the report adds.
PFPHP is marketed as Flutec PP-11 and PFTBA as Fluorinert FC-43.
It is expected that TCHFB, DCTFP and DCTCB are used as intermediates in the production of other chemicals.
Many of the chemicals in the same class are fluorinated during production using electrochemical fluorination, making them similar to per- and polyfluorinated alkylated substances (PFASs), the researchers say. However, the structures differ fundamentally.
PFASs typically combine a hydrophobic fluorinated alkyl group and a hydrophilic group in the same molecule, making them useful as surfactants. In contrast, volatile fluoroorganic and related compounds are chemically inert and do not function as such. The report adds that little is known about their global production and consumption.
The NILU's 2017 monitoring project forms part of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), an initiative of the Arctic Council. The project focused on 25 chemicals, prioritised according to a wide range of factors in a previous AMAP report.
The Norwegian Environment Agency provided funding.
https://chemicalwatch.com/71177/first-detection-of-volatile-fluoroorganic-compounds-in-arctic-air
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Young People Are Suing the Trump Administration Over Climate Change. She’s Their Lawyer.
Oct 23, 2018 | The New York Times
By John Schwartz
Julia Olson climbed the slope of Spencer Butte, taking the steeper of the two paths. Near the summit, shrouding pines suddenly gave way to a vista of the Cascades. On this day, summer wildfires, their season lengthened by climate change, put a haze in the sky.
The climb and return, which she can power through in an hour, is a head-clearing ritual for Ms. Olson, an environmental attorney. It is also a place to compose the soaring language of opening and closing arguments. “I do my legal thinking here,” she said.
If all goes as planned, Ms. Olson will deliver her opening argument on Monday in a landmark federal lawsuit against the Trump administration on behalf of 21 plaintiffs, ages 11 to 22, who are demanding that the government fight climate change. It is a case that could test whether the judicial branch has major role to play in dealing with global warming, and whether there is a constitutional right to a stable and safe climate.
The young plaintiffs claim that the government’s actions, and inaction, in the face of global warming violate their “fundamental constitutional rights to freedom from deprivation of life, liberty, and property.” Their age is central to their argument: For older Americans, the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change are somebody else’s problem. But today’s children will be dealing with disaster within their lifetimes; the youngest of the plaintiffs, Levi Draheim, will be just 33 in 2040, the year by which a United Nations scientific panel now expects some of the biggest crises to begin.
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But as of now, less than a week before the trial is scheduled to start in Federal District Court in Eugene, whether the young people will get their day in court is still an open question. On Friday, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. granted a Trump administration request to put a brief hold on the proceedings to consider government filings that could derail the case.
It is unclear how long the delay will last, or what the outcome will be. The Supreme Court could even dismiss the litigation, though that would be unusual at this early stage.
The lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, is the most visible case for Ms. Olson and her nonprofit organization, Our Children’s Trust. The group is involved in similar legal actions in almost every state, and other climate suits around the world.ImageActivists gathered outside the federal courthouse in Eugene for a hearing on the case in 2016.CreditBrian Davies/The Register-Guard, via Associated Press
Ms. Olson originally filed the federal suit in 2015 against the Obama administration, demanding faster action from a president already seen as friendly to environmental interests. Working under a legal principle known as the public trust doctrine, which can be used to compel the government to preserve natural resources for public use, the initial complaint stated that government officials had “willfully ignored” the dangers of burning fossil fuels.
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Then came President Trump, whose administration is reversing Obama-era climate policies and encouraging the use of fossil fuels, which greatly contribute to warming. “In the view of the plaintiffs, Obama was moving too slowly, and now Trump is moving backward,” said Michael B. Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.
The young plaintiffs have demanded, among other things, that the courts force the government to “implement an enforceable national remedial plan to phase out fossil fuel emissions” in an effort to “stabilize the climate system.” The courts could then supervise the government’s efforts.
The Trump administration’s lawyers are not arguing that climate change is a hoax. Instead, they are making similar arguments to those that the Obama administration made when it, too, tried to dismiss the case: that the young people don’t have standing to sue (a legal formula requiring plaintiffs to show that, among other things, they have suffered a concrete, particular injury because of the actions of the defendant) and that the courts are the wrong place to deal with the issue.
“This lawsuit is an unconstitutional attempt to use a single Oregon court to control the entire nation’s energy and climate policy,” Jeffrey H. Wood, the Justice Department attorney in charge of the division representing the government, said in a statement.
But Judge Ann Aiken, who is scheduled to preside over the trial on Monday, has been receptive to the plaintiffs’ theory of the case. “I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society,” she said in a November 2016 decision allowing the case to go forward.
Since then, the case has rumbled toward trial. In an earlier order in July, the Supreme Court denied a government request to intervene, but wrote that the breadth of the plaintiffs’ claims was “striking,” which could be taken as a note of skepticism about the case’s prospects should it reach the justices.EDITORS’ PICKSSolange, the Polymathic Cultural ForceThe Adopted Black Baby, and the White One Who Replaced HerTonya Harding Would Like Her Apology NowImageJudge Ann Aiken of Federal District Court in Eugene met with a newly naturalized citizen.CreditBrian Davies/The Register-Guard, via Associated Press
Trial preparation has been intense at Ms. Olson’s little law firm. Like many law offices, there is a conference room with a long table and computers humming, but there is also chilled kombucha on tap in the kitchen. “I’ve sort of addicted everybody to it,” Ms. Olson said.
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Before her sprint up the butte on the day I visited, Ms. Olson had already attended a morning hearing at Eugene’s soaring federal courthouse. Back at the converted 1920s bungalow that houses Our Children’s Trust, she talked with some young plaintiffs who had stayed over from a campground retreat she had held the week before. The subject: what would be expected of them in their depositions.
Philip L. Gregory, another lawyer in the case, described the deposition setup, jumping up and taking positions where the young people would be seated, where their attorney would be, where the questioning attorney would be and where the videographer would be. At that point, he mimicked someone hand-cranking a camera, which got confused giggles from the smartphone generation.
“The most important rule about the deposition is to tell the truth,” Mr. Gregory said. “A deposition is not a test of understanding the law of thermodynamics. It’s not a test on the history of World War II.”
“Or climate change,” Ms. Olson interjected.
“Or climate change,” he agreed.
Ms. Olson grew up in Colorado Springs, the daughter of Nebraskan transplants who tended to vote Republican. She attended the University of Colorado, Boulder, and stayed in the state to live the life of a ski bum while deciding her next move.
She took the LSAT but left the test thinking she had done poorly. “I didn’t even apply to any law schools,” she said. The test results were a pleasant surprise. She received her degree from Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.
In 2010, she encountered the legal theory that would launch the climate lawsuits when she met Mary Christina Wood, a law professor at the University of Oregon.
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Professor Wood had been proposing for some time that lawsuits to stop climate change could be built around the public trust doctrine. But she was no litigator, she said. Ms. Olson was.
Since then, Ms. Olson has pursued the federal case with meticulous preparation and a relentless work ethic, Professor Wood said. “This could have fizzled with anyone but Julia,” she said. “She has built not just a case, but a movement.”ImageMs. Olson outside the courthouse on Nov. 10, 2016, holding a copy of Judge Aiken’s decision to reject requests to dismiss the lawsuit.CreditChris Pietsch/The Register-Guard, via Associated Press
Legal experts view Ms. Olson’s chances with a measure of ambivalence.
“The claims are compelling, and the legal theory is creative,” said David M. Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former top Justice Department official on environmental crimes. However, he said, “It is hard to see the Supreme Court upholding a favorable verdict, if the case gets that far.”
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, pronounced himself a fan of the suit. Though he acknowledged that the courts tend to frown on creative legal theories, he noted that they do sometimes make new law in cases like Obergefell v. Hodges, which found a right to same-sex marriage, and Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark school desegregation case. “Creative lawyering there triumphed,” he said. With this case, he said, “We’ll see how it goes in the courts.”
The plaintiffs say they are ready, having waited three years of their young lives to see the case reach a courtroom. Ms. Olson found many of them through their own environmental activism. She interviewed each of them, exploring the personal threats they faced from climate change (Levi Draheim, for example, lives on a Florida barrier island imperiled by sea-level rise).ImageKelsey Juliana, one of the young plaintiffs in the lawsuit, in a Eugene courtroom for a earlier climate case she filed against the State of Oregon.
Kelsey Juliana, the plaintiff whose name appears first in the case, is the oldest of the group at 22. Ms. Olson, she said, is “an idol of mine” who balances her legal practice with activism and motherhood.
Ms. Juliana recalled a news conference at the courthouse two days after the 2016 election, after Judge Aiken had denied a government request to dismiss the case. Despite that victory, “I was really heartbroken” about the election results, she said.
Ms. Olson came up to her and looked her in the eye. No words passed between them, but Ms. Olson’s expression, she said, was eloquent. “She was basically saying, ‘I see you’re emotional, and that’s O.K. But we still have work to do. And we’re going to do it.’”
As she told the story of their silent moment, her eyes filled with tears. “It was vulnerability on both of our parts, and it was O.K. to be vulnerable,” she said. “But we were also strong.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/climate/kids-climate-lawsuit-lawyer.html
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