Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 11/29/2018
-
(ACC Mentioned) The Lobbyists Who Gave to Hyde-Smith and Espy
Nov 28, 2018 | Politico - Influence
By Theodoric Meyer
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) beat Democrat Mike Espy in a runoff election on Tuesday, bringing the 2018 election cycle to a close. Hyde-Smith was aided by a rush of campaign contributions from K Street and corporate America in the three weeks between the Nov. 6 elections... -
U.S. Farm Sector Stockpiles Chinese Chemicals Before Scheduled Tariffs
Nov 29, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Rod Nickel
U.S. agriculture suppliers are stockpiling the Chinese chemicals that farmers need to kill crop pests and boost yields - before tariffs on them more than double on Jan. 1. -
Pruitt Ally Departs for Top Okla. Energy Job
Nov 29, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Kevin Bogardus
Kenneth Wagner, a top EPA official and a longtime friend of former Administrator Scott Pruitt, is leaving the agency. -
(ACC Mentioned) Democrats Actually Like Trump Pick for EPA Office Ahead of Senate Hearing
Nov 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
Alexandra Dapolito Dunn is the rare Trump administration nominee that Democrats not only support, but embrace. -
EPA Toxics Pick May Not Be Lightning Rod But Will Face Tough Queries
Nov 28, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Alexandra Dunn, President Donald Trump's second nominee to serve as EPA's toxics chief, is not likely to face the same level of opposition during her Nov. 29 confirmation hearing that the administration's first nominee, Micheal Dourson... -
Former ORD Acting Chief Joins EPA Toxics Office Leadership
Nov 28, 2018 | Inside EPA
Lek Kadeli, a top former EPA career official in the research office (ORD), is joining the management team for EPA's toxics office, bolstering the office as it ramps up to implement the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and the Senate prepares to consider Alexandra Dunn... -
NGOs Call US EPA's 'Snur-Only' Approach 'Unlawful'
Nov 29, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Several NGOs say the US EPA’s effort to address risks posed by reasonably foreseen uses of a new chemical under TSCA with only a significant new use rule (Snur) is "unlawful". -
(ACC Mentioned) Maui County Says No to the Foam: What Maui’s Styrofoam Ban Means, How We Got Here, and What’s Next
Nov 28, 2018 | Maui Time
By Rob Parsons
Back in May 2016, a small, dedicated group witnessed a momentous event in Maui County Council chambers: A unanimous vote to restrict the use of polystyrene foam food service wares. -
Wheeler Sees PFAS Plan, Lead Rule in 2019
Nov 28, 2018 | Inside EPA
Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler says EPA will release early next year its rule to reduce lead in drinking water, as well as an action plan for addressing per- and polyfluroalkyl chemicals (PFAS) that are contaminating water supplies... -
As EPA Weighs Plan, Rural Utilities Urge Wheeler to 'Resist' PFAS Limit
Nov 28, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Lara Beaven
As EPA prepares to consider its long-awaited plan to address per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a group of rural utilities is urging acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler “to resist calls for a national” drinking water standard for PFAS, -
No-Deal Brexit: Industry Alliance Warns of £1bn REACH Data Cost
Nov 29, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Oziel
The total cost for companies submitting full data packages for UK REACH under a no-deal Brexit scenario could be as much as £1bn (€1.13bn), a major chemical industry alliance estimated. -
NGOs Urge Stricter Controls on Brominated Dioxins
Nov 28, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Caterina Tani
A group of NGOs is calling for brominated dioxins to be listed among other persistent organic pollutants (POPs) regulated under the Stockholm Convention. -
Surge of Oil and Gas Flowing to Texas Coastline Triggers Building Boom, Tensions
Nov 29, 2018 | Texas Tribune
By Jamie Smith Hopkins and Kiah Collier
To the east, the Gulf of Mexico stretches out, blue-green and sparkling. To the west and north, flounder and trout meander in a chain of bays -
Exxon Will Use Wind, Solar Power to Produce Crude Oil in Texas
Nov 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Christopher Martin and Kevin Crowley
Exxon Mobil Corp. will use renewable energy to produce oil in West Texas. -
Opponents to TransCanada: Hold off on Field Work
Nov 29, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
Groups suing to stop Keystone XL say they are fighting some parts of TransCanada Corp.'s request to conduct pre-construction work on the pipeline. -
Study Shows Gaps in Industry Emission Reduction Commitments
Nov 29, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Jenny Mandel
A group of oil and gas companies that have committed to voluntarily reducing greenhouse gas emissions should close loopholes in their pledges that account for one-fifth of global production, a new study from the Environmental Defense Fund argues. -
Toxins in Our Neighborhood
Nov 28, 2018 | The Community Word
By Bill Knight
Five years ago, a fire at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, resulted in an explosion that created a 93-foot crater; destroyed more than 150 buildings, including an apartment building and school; killed 15 people; and injured 160 others. -
Global Warming Enters Infrastructure Talks
Nov 29, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Maxine Joselow
As momentum builds for an infrastructure deal in the next Congress, a major new report is thrusting climate change into infrastructure talks on the Hill. -
EPA’s Blown Deadlines Trouble Judges at Ozone Pollution Argument
Nov 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
The EPA’s refusal to expand an East Coast region struggling with chronic ozone problems baffled judges who hammered the agency’s repeated failure to meet deadlines on plans to keep air pollution from blowing in from upwind states. -
EPA Chief: Trump Administration May Intervene in Next Climate Study
Nov 28, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Alex Guillen
Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Wednesday accused the Obama administration of tilting last week’s federal climate change report to focus on the worst-case outcomes — and indicated that the Trump administration could seek to shape the next big study of the issue. -
Technology Could Ease Climate Report’s Grim Forecast, EPA Head Says
Nov 28, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
A federal report saying climate change could cost the U.S. billions is based on a worst-case scenario and doesn’t account for American innovation, the country’s top environment official said. -
UN Contradicts Wheeler's Claim That US on Track to Meet Paris GHG Goal
Nov 28, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler says the United States is on track to meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals under the Paris Agreement even as it prepares to withdraw from the international climate deal, though a new United Nations report contradicts that claim... -
Bernie Sanders Not Stepping into Senate Energy Void as Liberals Fear Manchin
Nov 29, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna and Ben Lefebvre
Pro-coal Democrat Joe Manchin is positioned to take his party's top energy policy post in the Senate, to the horror of environmental groups that want aggressive legislative action on climate change. -
Manchin: Enviros 'Ought to Sit down with Me'
Nov 29, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Geof Koss and George Cahlink
Sen. Joe Manchin said yesterday he'd like to meet with environmental critics who are seeking to head off the possibility of the coal-boosting West Virginian leading Democrats on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the next Congress. -
Study Warns of Cascading Health Risks From the Changing Climate
Nov 28, 2018 | New York Times
By Somini Sengupta and Kendra Pierre-Louis
Crop yields are declining. Tropical diseases like dengue fever are showing up in unfamiliar places, including in the United States. Tens of millions of people are exposed to extreme heat.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
-
(ACC Mentioned) The Lobbyists Who Gave to Hyde-Smith and Espy
Nov 28, 2018 | Politico - Influence
By Theodoric Meyer
With David Beavers, Sarah Cammarata and Daniel Lippman
THE LOBBYISTS WHO GAVE TO HYDE-SMITH: Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) beat Democrat Mike Espy in a runoff election on Tuesday, bringing the 2018 election cycle to a close. Hyde-Smith was aided by a rush of campaign contributions from K Street and corporate America in the three weeks between the Nov. 6 elections and the runoff, according to campaign finance disclosures. Lobbyists who gave to Hyde-Smith’s campaign ahead of the runoff include Lanny Griffith, Erskine Wells and Loren Monroe of BGR Group, Thomas Shipman of Cornerstone Government Affairs; Darren Willcoxof W Strategies; Les Spivey of Alpine Group; Michael Esposito of Federal Advocates; and Malloy McDaniel of West Front Strategies. The PACs of the lobbying firms BGR Group and McGuireWoods Consulting also gave her money.
— Hyde-Smith’s campaign also benefited from contributions from PACs affiliated with Washington trade groups, including the Edison Electric Institute, the National Rural Water Association, the National Beer Wholesalers Association, the American Trucking Associations, the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers, the National Chicken Council, Associated General Contractors, the American Chemistry Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Realtors, to name only a few. Corporate PACs gave to Hyde-Smith, too, including those affiliated with Aetna, Amgen, AmerisourceBergen, Freeport-McMoRan, General Dynamics, Google, Koch Industries and Walmart. (Some of those companies, including Google and Walmart, later asked for their money back after Hyde-Smith said she’d be willing to attend a “public hanging.”)
— Espy didn’t attract nearly as much support from trade groups and corporate PACs, which tend to be more reluctant to support challengers. But his campaign did received checks from a handful of Washington lobbyists, according to campaign finance disclosures, including former Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Calif.), Scott Parven and Don Pongrace of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; Jeff Forbes of Forbes Tate Partners; Stephen Hartell of Amazon and Alicia Smith of the Smith-Free Group.
INVARIANT ADDS STEFANIK STAFFER: Lindley Kratovil Sherer is leaving the Hill to join Invariant, the lobbying firm led by Heather Podesta. She was previously chief of staff to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and before that worked for Reps. Todd Rokita (R-Ind.) and Scott Tipton (R-Colo.) and in George W. Bush’s administration. Stefanik provided a statement to the firm praising her “substantive political and policy experience” as well as “her network and relationships.”
Good afternoon, and welcome to PI. Will the government shut down next week? Send us your predictions: tmeyer@politico.com. You can also follow me on Twitter: @theodoricmeyer.
The adage “work hard and get ahead,” is a waning reality in America today. The question is, what can Washington do to create more opportunity and prosperity in struggling communities across the country? POLITICO convened a bipartisan group of 14 business leaders, thinkers and policymakers to explore the problem and identify solutions that have a realistic path forward with political leaders of both parties. Read the latest issue of The Agenda to learn more.
HARD TIMES FOR THE NRA: “Revenue at the National Rifle Associationfell by $54 million in 2017, a 15 percent decline that coincided with a record number of mass shootings in the U.S. and a rise in spending by gun-control groups,” POLITICO’s Lorraine Woellert reports. The gun-rights group posted an even steeper drop in membership dues, which fell 22 percent, or $35 million, to a five-year low, according to documents the NRA filed with the Internal Revenue Service this month. … Advocacy groups frequently post lower receipts in non-election years and revenue totals can fluctuate wildly from year to year, and NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam called the 2017 tax document a dated snapshot of the group’s activity. As evidence of the group’s political clout, he pointed to this year’s jump in NRA magazine subscribers, nearly all of them dues-paying members.” Full story.
OPEN YOUR WALLETS: The next chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee “will inherit $18 million in debt from this year's midterms, a source familiar with the group's finances told NBC News,” NBC News’ Alex Seitz-Wald reports. “It’s common for campaigns and party committees to finish election cycles in the hole as they throw everything they have — and then some — at an election, but the $18 million will have to be made up through fundraising before the new chairman can start building a warchest for the next election cycle. The National Republican Congressional Committeealso spent heavily this year as it fought to defend the GOP majority, taking out a $12 million line of credit that still has to be paid off, according to the committee's communications director, Matt Gorman.” Full story.
Let Women Rule your inbox: The Women Rule Newsletter is a weekly email that shares original content, practical advice, backstage stories, special events and impactful resources for women at any stage of their career. If you are a woman looking to lead or grow your professional network, look no further than Women Rule. No one rises to the top alone, so sign up for our newsletter and get started today.JOBS REPORT
— Amazon has hired Troy Clair and LaDavia Drane to work on diversity issues, including Amazon’s relationship with the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. Clair was previously chief of staff to Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.). Drane was previously chief of staff to Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.).
— Rick Dearborn, a former deputy chief of staff in President Donald Trump’s White House who’s now a partner at the Cypress Group, is joining the Bipartisan Policy Center as a senior fellow.
SPOTTED: At farewell drinks on Tuesday at Capitol Lounge for Corey Malmgren Pretzel, who’s leaving her job as health counsel for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) to join Merck, according to a PI tipster: Kim Trzeciak of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Aruna Kalyanam of the House Ways and Means Committee, Jeff Ziarko of Economic Policy Strategies, Suzanne Beall of the International Franchise Association, Arielle Woronoff of the Senate Finance Committee, Sarah Egge of SplitOak Strategies, Kristin Murphy of the Association of Accessible Medicines, Jeremy Steslicki of Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s (D-Wisc.) office and Justin Malmgren Pretzel of MedStar Washington Hospital Center.
NEW JOINT FUNDRAISERS
Budd North Carolina Victory Fund 2018 (Rep. Ted Budd, North Carolina Republican Party)
NEW PACS
In the Game PAC (Super PAC)
Tea Party PAC (Super PAC)
Velvet Hammer PAC (Leadership PAC: Sen. Tina Smith)
Vote Mama (PAC)NEW LOBBYING REGISTRATIONS
Lincoln Policy Group: Delek US Holdings, Inc.
Sims Strategies, LLC: Connect 4 Strategies, LLC (on behalf of Recordati Rare Diseases)
Stride Policy Solutions, LLC: National Center for Families LearningNEW LOBBYING TERMINATIONS
Wellington Strategies, LLC.: Seegrid Corporation
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2018/11/the-lobbyists-who-gave-to-hyde-smith-and-espy-433956
-
U.S. Farm Sector Stockpiles Chinese Chemicals Before Scheduled Tariffs
Nov 29, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Rod Nickel
U.S. agriculture suppliers are stockpiling the Chinese chemicals that farmers need to kill crop pests and boost yields - before tariffs on them more than double on Jan. 1.
The additional tariffs, threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump, are part of an eight-month trade war between the United States and China affecting $250 billion worth of Chinese products and $113 billion in U.S. goods.
The duties could disrupt supply lines for U.S. companies that sell chemicals and fertilizers, part of a $28-billion U.S. farm chemical industry. The sector relies on Chinese imports for 40 percent of the ingredients and materials needed to make crop chemicals, according to consultancy Informa.
Nutrien Ltd - the biggest U.S. retailer of farm supplies - is stockpiling enough chemicals to last into the busy 2019 planting season, the company said in a statement. Nutrien is carrying $300 million more in chemical inventory than it had a year earlier.
Other distributors are doing the same, said Daren Coppock, CEO of the Agricultural Retailers Association. Those who have the means to stock up will do so, he said.
Higher tariffs on farm chemicals would deal another blow to an agricultural industry that has already seen prices for staple crops plummet because of the trade war between the world’s two largest economies. China has imposed import taxes on U.S. crops including soybeans - effectively shutting off an export worth $12 billion in 2017.
The Trump Administration imposed 10 percent tariffs starting Sept. 24 on about 5,700 Chinese exports, ranging from pork to bicycle tires. The duties are scheduled to rise to 25 percent on Jan. 1, and the potential economic damage adds urgency to a meeting expected between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Argentina that starts Friday.
Trump has lately sounded more hopeful of resolving divisions with China, saying on Nov. 16 that higher tariffs may not be needed.
Small U.S. chemical-makers like Willowood USA and Albaugh, however, say they have already raised prices to account for a continued standoff.
The prospect of higher pesticide costs on top of weak crop prices is “worrisome,” said Joe Ericson, president of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association. The state’s farmers depend on China to buy soybeans, but the oilseeds have piled up in elevators - storage facilities that buy from farmers - as the world’s biggest buyer has instead turned to countries such as Brazil.
“We’re hit probably more than anybody with the Chinese tariffs,” Ericson said. “That’s a big blow to our economy when the elevators can’t get rid of them.”
SPONSORED
Retailers have seen farmers cutting back on chemical and fertilizer purchases in the wake of tariffs, Coppock said.
Farmers’ costs for such supplies are a big part of that equation: U.S. soy farmers spent $52 per acre applying chemicals and fertilizer in 2017, or 12 percent of their total costs, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.WINNERS AND LOSERS
Most chemicals formulated in China - including those containing the widely used weed-killers glyphosate, dicamba and 2,4-D - have incurred new tariffs since September, along with some chemical ingredients, said Sanjiv Rana, editor-in-chief of the crop protection news service Agrow, part of Informa.
The same products hit by tariffs in September will see even higher duties in January, said a spokesperson for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. The spokesperson said the tariffs are designed to discourage China’s “market-distorting actions” and defend the United States from unfair trade practices.
The tariffs are having an uneven impact on chemical companies. Bayer AG, which makes glyphosate and dicamba pesticides in the United States, is largely unaffected, spokeswoman Christi Dixon said.
Tariffs do apply to glyphosate formulations made by Chinese companies, however. They directly benefit Bayer if the prices of the Chinese products exported to the United States rise because the firm sells glyphosate branded as Roundup at a premium over generic brands from China, said Jonas Oxgaard, analyst at Bernstein.
A 25 percent tariff may result in U.S. glyphosate prices rising by 15 or 20 percent, he said.
The tariffs would affect Syngenta, which imports Chinese products for its crop protection formulations, said spokesman Paul Minehart. The company is seeking alternate sources, he said.
BASF SE is concerned about the tariffs but still analyzing their potential impact, spokeswoman Odessa Hines said.
Nutrien, the retailer that sells to farmers, has already stockpiled chemicals including dicyandiamide (DCD), a fertilizer ingredient made almost exclusively in China.
“If the tariffs do come in, you’re going to have higher costs for most of the major agri-chemicals,” Chief Executive Chuck Magro said in an interview. “This will be something that ultimately affects the farmer.”PASSING ON COSTS
Since the Trump administration applied 10 percent tariffs in September, The Chemical Company, based in Rhode Island, has raised its DCD chemical price about 8 percent, said general sales manager AJ Petrarca.
With 25 percent tariffs coming, the company ordered more from Chinese manufacturers including Ningxia Jiafeng Chemicals Co and Beilite, swelling inventories by about 10 percent over normal levels, he said.
Those stockpiles may only last until February or March, however.
“I don’t think we’ll have enough to keep everybody whole throughout the season,” Petrarca said.
U.S. customers, not Beilite, will absorb the tariff cost, said the Chinese company’s export manager, who gave his surname as Wang.
“It is not good to do business in the U.S. market now,” he said.
U.S. chemical-maker Willowood has little choice but to pass higher costs of buying Chinese chemicals on to retailers who sell to farmers.
“There’s not enough margin to eat that difference,” said Joe Middione, Willowood’s strategic business manager. “We’re seeing fairly significant increases across the portfolio.”
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/11/29/world/asia/29reuters-usa-trade-china-chemicals.html
-
Pruitt Ally Departs for Top Okla. Energy Job
Nov 29, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Kevin Bogardus
Kenneth Wagner, a top EPA official and a longtime friend of former Administrator Scott Pruitt, is leaving the agency.
Wagner is heading home to Oklahoma to serve as the state's next secretary of energy and environment, Republican Gov.-elect Kevin Stitt's transition office announced today, reported The Oklahoman and other news outlets.
Wagner arrived at EPA in March 2017 as a senior adviser for regional and state affairs. He traveled the country, often speaking to trade groups and state regulators in an effort to bolster the agency's relationships outside Washington, D.C.
In a statement, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said Wagner traveled to nearly every state on EPA's behalf, working with the agency's 10 regional offices.
"During his time at EPA, Ken was at the forefront of our efforts to work more closely with states and tribes to ensure clean air, water, and land for all Americans," Wheeler said.
"He helped provide our regional offices a direct and open line of communication to headquarters to address local issues in a comprehensive and unified manner," he said.
Wagner and Pruitt both graduated in 1993 from the University of Tulsa College of Law. Wagner was also part of Pruitt's ownership group that bought a minor league baseball team, the Oklahoma City RedHawks (Greenwire, April 13, 2017).
Wagner also served as treasurer for Pruitt's political action committee, and Pruitt worked in an "of counsel" capacity at Latham, Wagner, Steele & Lehman, the Oklahoma law firm where Wagner was partner. During their time in Oklahoma, Wagner helped set up a shell company to purchase a home on Pruitt's behalf from a lobbyist, The New York Times reported in April.
When Pruitt resigned from EPA in July after contending with allegations that he had misused his public office, several of his top aides soon followed him out the door. Wagner, however, remained at the agency until now.
"We are grateful for his service to EPA and the American public, and we know he will bring the same dedication and expertise to Oklahoma as he leads the state's efforts to improve energy production and environmental protection," Wheeler said.
The Oklahoma energy and environment post requires state Senate confirmation, the Tulsa Worldreported.
Stitt also announced yesterday that he'll hire two former staffers of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) to be his chief of staff and deputy secretary of state.
Michael Junk, the incoming chief of staff, was Inhofe's state policy adviser and previously worked for Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).
Donelle Harder, a former communications director for Inhofe, will be deputy secretary of state. She'll provide messaging strategy and policy counsel to the governor and secretary of state, according to Stitt's website.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/11/28/stories/1060107639
-
(ACC Mentioned) Democrats Actually Like Trump Pick for EPA Office Ahead of Senate Hearing
Nov 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
Alexandra Dapolito Dunn is the rare Trump administration nominee that Democrats not only support, but embrace.
Her first public appearance as a nominee to head the EPA’s chemical safety office comes Nov. 29 at her Senate Environment and Public Works Committee confirmation hearing. The bipartisan praise increases the likelihood that Dunn will be confirmed quickly.
“I’m quite pleased with her nomination,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a member of the environment committee, told Bloomberg Environment Nov. 27. “She could make a real difference, and I applaud that.”
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, called Dunn “an impressive nominee” who could help the EPA implement the 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act. The agency has repeatedly missed its deadlines under the law for approving new chemicals before coming to market.
“It’s not been realized as it can be,” Carper told Bloomberg Environment regarding the two year-old law. “She could well be the person to do it, if they’ll let her do her job.”
Familiar FaceDunn is a familiar face in Washington, D.C., after nearly 25 years as an environmental attorney, head of an organization of state environmental regulators, director of a water administrators association, and a law professor.
She spent the last year as the regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 1, serving as a liaison between headquarters and New England states, when she was nominated to be assistant administrator for the agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.
As executive director for the Environmental Council of the States, the state regulator group, Dunn participated in the negotiations that resulted in the 2016 TSCA amendments.
But the Environmental Working Group, which advocates for more restrictions on the use of chemicals and pesticides, remains skeptical that she will tighten regulations in the Trump administration.
Scott Faber, EWG’s vice president of government affairs, said he specifically wants to see if Dunn will work to ban methylene chloride, a paint stripper that is linked to over 60 deaths from inhalation in enclosed bathrooms and other workspaces.
Faber also said he wants Dunn to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide tied to neurodevelopmental delays in children; maintain the Obama administration’s farmworker protection rules; and require health studies before new chemicals can go on the market.
Departure from DoursonThe tone at Dunn’s hearing should be a significant departure from the highly-charged hearing for Michael Dourson, the last nominee for that chemicals position.
Dourson withdrew his nomination in December 2017 to avoid “unnecessarily politicizing” the EPA’s environmental goals, though it was clear at that point he would not receive enough votes in the Senate for confirmation.
Democratic senators railed against Dourson, a toxicologist whose risk assessment nonprofit organization crafted chemical evaluations that they alleged downplayed the risks of toxic chemicals.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) cried while telling the story of chemically contaminated groundwater in Hoosick Falls, N.Y., at the October 2017 hearing, and Sen. Duckworth called his assessments “pseudoscience for the highest bidders.”
“I didn’t get any questions; it was more in-your-face commentary,” during his confirmation hearing, Dourson told Bloomberg Environment Nov. 28.
He added that Dunn has the ability to bring together groups with disparate interests.
The future assistant administrator “needs to have the kind of background that builds collaboration and listens to all sides,” Dourson said.
Bipartisan BackgroundThe office has been without a Senate-confirmed head since the end of the Obama administration.
It is currently run by Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator Charlotte Bertrand, Deputy Assistant Administrator Louise Wise, and Deputy Assistant Administrator Nancy Beck. Beck has drawn scrutiny stemming from her past lobbying work with the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s trade group.
Dunn also would oversee the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, which has the strongest regulatory authority, the largest staff, and the lion’s share of the chemicals office budget, said Stephen Owens, EPA’s assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention under President Barack Obama.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), whose state has faced problems with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in drinking water, said she would ask Dunn about the EPA’s work to assess the risks posed to residents exposed to the chemicals.
“I’m sure she’ll be asked some tough questions, but she’s been in this area for so long,” Capito told Bloomberg Environment. “She has, I think, a very bipartisan background.”
—With assistance from Dean Scott and Pat Rizzuto.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/democrats-actually-like-trump-pick-for-epa-office-ahead-of-senate-hearing
-
EPA Toxics Pick May Not Be Lightning Rod But Will Face Tough Queries
Nov 28, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Alexandra Dunn, President Donald Trump's second nominee to serve as EPA's toxics chief, is not likely to face the same level of opposition during her Nov. 29 confirmation hearing that the administration's first nominee, Micheal Dourson, drew in his failed bid but sources expect that Dunn will still face tough questions on the Trump EPA's implementation of the revised federal toxics law and other issues.
While Democrats who will control the House in the next Congress have already signaled plans to conduct oversight of EPA's TSCA program, Dunne's Nov. 29 confirmation hearing provides Senate Democrats with an opportunity to conduct their own oversight.
Although Dunn is expected to eventually win confirmation, the sources say Dunn, who has has a lengthy resume in the environmental policy arena, will still need to assure Democrats she will address their concerns to secure their support for a speedy vote -- whether in the remaining days of the lame duck session or in the next Congress.
“Dunn is certainly a better nominee” than Dourson, an environmentalist working on TSCA issues tells Inside EPA. But the source expects that Dunn will “be pressed by Democrats to explain how she will strengthen a weak and disappointing [Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)] program that is falling far short of the goals of the 2016 reform legislation.”
The source says that in her responses, “Dunn will need to be forward leaning to secure Democrats' support for a rapid confirmation vote on the floor. While she can’t be expected to be totally definitive about her plans as assistant administrator, a business-as-usual approach will not play well with the many Congressional and NGO critics of the current TSCA program: she needs to signal a sincere interest in reexamining decisions that have been made and chart a new course moving forward.”
And Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group similarly cautions that Dunn will face tough questions in part because of Democrats' concerns over the Trump administration's deregulatory agenda.
“When [Dunn] was nominated, I said this is a job for a janitor. No one should be confirmed for this job if they are not prepared to bring a bucket and a mop,” Faber says, adding the hearing will be “a referendum on the Trump [EPA] as much as a referendum of Alex Dunn's ability.”
“It'll be a humdinger of a hearing,” he says.
Industry sources are also expecting tough questions for Dunn, though there were differing opinions over whether Republicans would also ask tough questions of the nominee. “I think they want a quick confirmation so I don’t [expect] much more than glowing praise,” one industry source tells Inside EPA.
But a second industry source expects substantive questions from both Democrats and Republicans, “just very different perspectives.”
Looming Deadlines
EPA's toxics office includes its pesticides office and its Office of Pollution, Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), which is tasked with implementing Congress' 2016 reform of the 1976 TSCA. The revised statute contains a lengthy list of deadlines that EPA has struggled to meet while standing up a new program to meet its widely broadened authorities and responsibilities regarding industrial chemicals.
“EPA will soon be facing another set of impending deadlines during 2019, including a December 2019 deadline to finalize the risk evaluations for the first ten chemical substances to undergo risk evaluations under the amended TSCA,” writes Lawrence Culleen, a partner with the law firm Arnold and Porter, in a Nov. 27 advisory to clients.
“The Agency also has begun preparations to begin the process for prioritizing another set of chemical substances to undergo risk evaluations. Furthermore, EPA has been working diligently to clear a backlog of premanufacture notices (PMNs) for new chemicals entering U.S. commerce, which has resulted in a substantial number of significant new use rules (SNURs) being proposed in the second half of 2018.”
Dunn, who most recently led the Environmental Council of the States before joining EPA last year as Region 1 Administrator, is an environmental lawyer who has also worked for chemical and wastewater trade associations and taught at several law schools. If confirmed, she would serve as EPA's assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, overseeing both its TSCA implementation activities and its pesticides office.
She is viewed by many as a less partisan professional than Dourson, a toxicology consultant whose work for industry led several Republican senators to join Democrats in blocking his nomination last year.
Still, industry and environmentalists suggested a range of overlapping issues on which Dunn will likely be questioned.
The environmentalist suggests a lengthy list of issues that Democrats may quiz Dunn over, including, delays in finalizing the Obama EPA's proposed first-time bans on uses of three existing chemicals -- the solvents trichloroethylene (TCE), methylene chloride (MC) and n-methyl perrolidone.
The source says Democrats will focus “particularly” on the delayed MC ban, as they fear the agency is “welshing” on former Administrator Scott Pruitt's commitment to finalize a proposed ban in response to bipartisan concerns.
Lawmakers are also expected to ask Dunn about EPA's efforts to address asbestos. And, the source expects Democrats to raise concerns about recent EPA “swerves to the right” in its implementation of the new chemicals program, including the new policy of not imposing any workplace controls, even in the face of demonstrated health risks to workers.
Republicans and industry officials have also raised concerns about the new chemicals program though they are concerned that EPA is taking too long to approve new chemical uses.
Democrats may also wade into the question of EPA's “total failure” to use its section 4 authority to require chemical testing, as well as myriad issues with the ongoing risk evaluations, including the many uses being excluded from review.
In addition, the source hopes Dunn faces questions on how the Agency is approaching the peer review and public comment process, the lack of transparency in decision-making and EPA’s failure to cut down on the massive number of confidential business information claims.
EWG's Faber anticipates questions “around particular controversial chemicals,” such as the Obama EPA's proposed bans on uses of TCE and MC, and the pesticides chlorpyrifos and glyphosate.
He also expects questions on EPA's risk evaluations of chemicals under the revised TSCA, “and whether EPA is considering all the [chemicals'] uses … I'd expect Alex Dunn will be asked to comment on whether all [a chemical's] uses [must be] considered when EPA [determines] whether a chemical poses unreasonable risk.”
New Chemicals
Noting stakeholders' concerns over EPA's handling of the new chemicals review program since Congress reformed TSCA in June 2016, Faber predicted “a lot of scrutiny of the new chemicals program,” as well as questions about “whether EPA should use its strong new [test] order authority” to gather information on chemicals' toxicity from industry.
Faber also suggests that EPA's recently released white paper on systematic review, a process for gathering and evaluating scientific evidence intended to increase the rigor and transparency of chemical evaluations, could be a topic at the hearing, despite its technical nature. Faber predicted questions about “whether [OPPT's new] systematic review framework will place too much emphasis on industry science, and whether it will make use of independent peer review.”
Like other sources, Faber also anticipates the questions will not be reserved for TSCA issues. “I'm sure you'll get some questions around the farmworker protection standard, and if confirmed, whether [Dunn] would require [that farmworkers who could be exposed to pesticides] be at least 18 years old.”
The second industry source also expects a lengthy list of questions for Dunn, with some overlap to others, while also adding, “capacity issues” in EPA's toxics office, responsible for TSCA implementation, which the source says has “too few people” as well as questions over “how will EPA manage [the new] fees program” authorized in the revised statute.
The second industry source also expects “lots” of questions about pesticide issues,” as well as Dunn's position on the pending farm bill, pesticide fee program, Endangered Species Act consultations over pesticide regulation, the pesticide dicamba, the “role of 'science' in EPA reviews” and “climate change and [its] impact on agriculture.”
A veteran science policy specialist says that the timing of Dunn's confirmation hearing “seems to suggest they're teeing it up for a year-end [floor] vote” but says questions remain about the timing of a confirmation hearing and vote on acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, who Trump has nominated for the top EPA slot, as well as another senior science policy nominee, Kelvin Droegemeier to head the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Droegemeier is a meteorologist who has studied extreme weather events and serves as Oklahoma's secretary of science and technology. He won bipartisan support from the Senate Commerce Committee at his confirmation hearing last August, though the full Senate has yet to vote on his nomination.
Several committee spokespersons did not return requests for comment, including on the timing of a floor vote on Dunn. One committee source says only, “Alexandra Dunn is well liked and respected. If confirmed she will be in a position that deals with several issues the committee works on, including TSCA.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-toxics-pick-may-not-be-lightning-rod-will-face-tough-queries
-
Former ORD Acting Chief Joins EPA Toxics Office Leadership
Nov 28, 2018 | Inside EPA
Lek Kadeli, a top former EPA career official in the research office (ORD), is joining the management team for EPA's toxics office, bolstering the office as it ramps up to implement the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and the Senate prepares to consider Alexandra Dunn, the Trump administration's nominee to lead the office.
Kadeli has joined the immediate office of EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OSCPP) as acting deputy assistant administrator (AA) for management, according to a Nov. 26 email to all OCSPP staff, first cited in a Nov. 28 blog from the environmental law firm Bergeson & Campbell.
“Lek has extensive experience managing and supporting a wide range of environmental and human health related programs,” OCSPP's acting chief Charlotte Bertrand writes.
“Most recently, Lek worked at the World Bank Group in Washington, D.C. as the co-program manager of the Pollution Management and Environmental Health Program... Prior to working at the World Bank, Lek worked for eight years as the Principal [deputy AA] in EPA’s [ORD], serving several periods during that time as ORD’s [acting AA]."
“Lek has also served as Director for ORD’s Office of Resource Management and Administration; Chief of ORD’s Resources Planning and Execution Staff; Office of International Activities Senior Budget Officer; and, as a budget analyst in the Office of Administration and Resource Management’s Office of Comptroller,” Bertrand adds.
“Lek Kadeli’s arrival is none too soon,” an industry source tells Inside EPA, noting concerns over “capacity issues” in EPA's Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) program after its 2016 reform by Congress.
The TSCA program has struggled to stand up a largely new office and meet a slew of deadlines included in the original 1976 law's reform legislation. Internally, the toxics office has moved staff in details to try to address a backlog and longer review times in its new chemicals program, resulting from changes to the statute. Toxics office Director Jeff Morris told staff last April that he expected to hire a significant number of new employees to address the issue.
Kadeli has “specialized professionally in the management role. I don't think his experience is unique to ORD,” a veteran science policy specialist tells Inside EPA. The source notes that “ORD is a lot smaller than it was when” Kadeli left the agency several years ago for the World Bank assignment.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/former-ord-acting-chief-joins-epa-toxics-office-leadership
-
NGOs Call US EPA's 'Snur-Only' Approach 'Unlawful'
Nov 29, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Several NGOs say the US EPA’s effort to address risks posed by reasonably foreseen uses of a new chemical under TSCA with only a significant new use rule (Snur) is "unlawful".
And despite industry groups applauding this "Snur-only" approach, consumer advocates are asking for the EPA to reverse course.
The comments have come in response to a consultation on 13 Snurs, issued last month. Unlike hundreds of other Snurs released since August, this batch related to substances which were not subject to section 5(e) consent orders.
For each of the 13 substances, the EPA did not have a concern with its intended use, as specified in its pre-manufacture notice (PMN), but did see possible issues with reasonably foreseen uses. It therefore issued determinations that the substances were not likely to present an unreasonable risk, and proposed Snurs in tandem with those findings to address uses outside the PMN.
The Natural Resources Defense Council challenged the EPA in court when the agency floated plans last year to take such an approach. This lawsuit was ultimately dropped when the agency demonstrated it not had, in fact, been following the Snur-only plan.
But the agency entered new territory by issuing the 13 non-5(e) Snurs after the ligation ended. And environmental advocates, in turn, have continued to protest that the approach is not in keeping with the agency’s mandates under the reformed TSCA.
NGO concerns
The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) says that the EPA’s Snur-only approach is "unlawful".
The EPA can only make a section 5(a)(3)(C) ‘not likely to present an unreasonable risk’ finding based on the substance as a whole, considering all of its conditions of use, said the EDF.
"EPA has never articulated how its Snur-only approach is consistent with TSCA, or why it is sufficiently health-protective," it added.
Safer Chemicals Healthy Families (SCHF) and the NRDC agreed in joint comments that the proposed Snurs represent a step to "circumvent the law and weaken the programme".
The groups noted that the 2016 amendments to TSCA require that EPA make an affirmative determination that a new substance is unlikely to be harmful before it can enter commerce, and increased the agency’s authorities to require testing.
But despite adhering to the law in its first two years, said the groups, industry opposition has led to the EPA "reversing this progress through a series of steps to dismantle a long-standing PMN review process and replace it with one that is both unlawful and significantly less protective of health and the environment".
The groups are urging the EPA to withdraw its ‘not likely’ determinations for the 13 substances and apply section 5(e) orders on them, and to update the Snurs in keeping with the orders.
In the absence of such a reversal, the organisations also advocated for specific changes to the existing proposed Snurs, which they said as drafted "have limited, barebones provisions that will be insufficient in implementing protections for health and the environment".
Industry, animal rights backers
Not all stakeholders, however, agreed that the Snur-only approach is out of step with the law’s requirements.
Writing on behalf of a confidential PMN submitter for one of the substances subject to a Snur, Herb Estreicher, a partner with Keller and Heckman, said that proposing a Snur without a consent order is "consistent with longstanding EPA practice … is fully protective of health and the environment, and is sound from a policy perspective".
The Chemical Users Coalition – a downstream users group representing several aerospace and technology giants – said it thinks the proposed Snurs are "generally consistent" with the law’s requirements. To the extent the approach will improve the agency’s ability to provide more timely review of PMNs, it added, the CUC supports it.
The Semiconductors Industry Association (SIA) similarly said it is "an appropriate approach and should be applied to other chemical substances".
Meanwhile, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a nonprofit advocating for ethical medical practices, said it "enthusiastically supports" the EPA’s approach, which it says is consistent with TSCA’s requirements to reduce and replace the use of vertebrate animals in testing.
Comments on the 13 Snurs were due on 15 November. The agency will evaluate submitted feedback before finalising the rules.
https://chemicalwatch.com/72428/ngos-call-us-epas-snur-only-approach-unlawful
-
Nov 28, 2018 | Maui Time
By Rob Parsons
Back in May 2016, a small, dedicated group witnessed a momentous event in Maui County Council chambers: A unanimous vote to restrict the use of polystyrene foam food service wares. The ordinance was years in the making, and marks the second time Maui would take the lead in regulating the proliferation of a single-item plastic commodity. Back in 2010, Maui was the first county in Hawai‘i to legislate a ban on plastic bags, an initiative that led to the passage of similar bills throughout the rest of the state.
Now, after a 19-month phase-in period, the county’s Division of Environmental Protection & Sustainability is embarking on a Foam Free Maui County campaign to educate restaurateurs, retailers, and the general public on the transition from throwaway polystyrene products to reusable or compostable alternatives.
“We can live without it,” proclaims the county informational webpage. A frequently-asked-questions section answers when the bill takes effect (Dec. 31, 2018), what kind of containers are banned or excluded, what the penalties are for non-compliance, and more. Links indicate that banning polystyrene protects wildlife, reduces plastic waste, and helps combat climate change. Photos illustrate a sea turtle and seabirds ingesting polystyrene and its calabash cousin, Styrofoam.
Much of what is compiled online is the work of recycling specialist Cecile Powell, collaborating with EP&S manager Tamara Farnsworth. They also contracted the services of Geoff Moore and Silver Moon Graphics for the attractive informational poster, fact sheet, and bumper stickers.
“Part of our educational campaign involved calling affected businesses and distributors. It is encouraging to learn how many businesses are already on board with the ban and have already began using alternative products,” Farnsworth said happily. “There were zero times where I needed to explain why the ban is good for our environment. People already know.”
“We’ve had super positive feedback,” she added. “We are seeing lots of Foam Free bumper stickers, even on cars and trucks we don’t recognize.”
“Sheik’s is on board,” noted Powell, referring to the iconic Kahului diner on South Wakea Avenue. “Takamiya Market found alternatives for their trays and bentos,” she said about the Wailuku grocery known as the “Little giant of Happy Valley.”
In fact, many purveyors of food service items provided non-polystyrene alternatives even before the bill passed, often at costs within pennies or equivalent to foam products.
“We do not anticipate any significant adverse affect on businesses due to the implementation of this legislation,” Farnsworth stated. “Taking care of our waste and the ‘aina is everyone’s kuleana. Legislation like this helps to enhance our ability to do better for the environment.”
As 2018 winds to a conclusion, it’s now time for all purveyors, retailers and food servers to ditch the foam and switch to reusable or compostable substitutes. But, it’s also important to recall just how we got to this point.
On the heels of the bill passed by Maui County Council in August 2008 to restrict plastic bag usage, one council member set his sight on the next goal. In autumn of 2009, then-councilmember (now Mayor-elect) Mike Victorino introduced a draft bill to regulate the use and sale of polystyrene food wares. His measure did not, however, maintain the momentum of the plastic bag ban, which had yet to be signed into law. (Mayor Charmaine Tavares did so a year later, in August 2010. The implementation of the law took effect on Jan. 11, 2011).
Undaunted, Victorino re-introduced the measure in 2014, and it was referred to Elle Cochran’s Infrastructure and Environmental Protection Committee. At the initial IEM meeting to consider the bill in July 2014, Victorino volunteered to convene a task force of stakeholders to conduct an in-depth review of the bill’s purpose, scope, impacts, and exemptions.
The task force was comprised of business advocates, county officials, environmental advocates, food providers, and both manufacturers and distributors of disposable food service wares. It would meet four times in August and September 2014, ultimately issuing a report to the IEM Committee in November.
The task force split right down the middle into two groups: those supporting and those rejecting restriction of polystyrene foam products.
“The task force does not have a consensus on whether enacting the bill is a good strategy for mitigating the impacts of plastic litter,” the report states. It goes on to list the assertions of both those opposed to, and in support of the bill.
The business factions opposed to the bill argued that polystyrene is approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration, the measure could impose financial hardships on businesses, passage would merely create another kind of litter (since compostable containers are not currently allowed at composting facilities), and that a law is not needed since industry trends showed food-service providers were already transition to alternatives. The six Maui business representatives on the task force provided a list of recommendations.
Six other, environmental, task force members issued their own set of recommendations. They urged following the lead of about 100 other municipalities in addressing disposable food service wares, clarified which products would be covered, and suggested providing time for food providers and retailers to switch. They refuted that costs of alternatives were a burden, stated that eliminating polystyrene would improve our environment and quality of life, and cited supporting language in the Maui Island Plan.
“We don’t aim just to ban things, but it can’t be just voluntary,” offered task force member Lauren Blickley, then-conservation coordinator with Pacific Whale Foundation. “Our throwaway society has caught up with us, which is why we need bans on single-use plastics.”
The task force report did not, however, elaborate on the arrival of an out-of state participant who appeared unexpectedly at the third meeting.
That particular meeting was convened at Zippy’s restaurant, for the purpose of testing the performance of alternative products on favorites like chicken katsu with gravy and 180-degree hot saimin. The tall, bespectacled man not seen at the first two meetings identified himself as Tom Knox of California, a paid lobbyist of the American Chemistry Council, the advocacy arm of the plastics industry.
Knox stepped to the chalkboard when the third meeting re-convened in a classroom at Iao Intermediate School and began obfuscating the real issues at hand. It’s really only 20 or so towns in California that have done bans, he stated (it is more than 70). No one really composts anymore, he claimed (compost of food waste and compostable food service items is a growing trend, especially on the West Coast). The cost of substitute products is three to five times that of polystyrene, he opined (a statement repeated by the business faction of the task force, even though alternatives are available at equivalent or negligible cost).
“It was eye-opening to understand what and who we are up against when we propose these restrictive measures,” said Gretchen Losano, then a representative of World Centric compostable products and a board member of Styrophobia. “It’s good to remind people that it is the weight of the entire petro-chemical industry that opposes these sorts of bills. They spread so much misinformation in order to perpetuate their use of plastics.”
Despite the industry’s lobbying, “this was a great victory of the ‘little’ person over corporate interference,” remarked Marge Bonar, task force member and the impetus in getting the County Council to take on the plastic bag issue years earlier. “We are among the growing number of places which have recognized that the future has been jeopardized by our irresponsible devotion to the cheap, convenient, and disposable. I am thankful to the County Council for their unanimous approval.”
That approval, however, would take another two-and-a-half years. The inconclusive task force report sparked new rounds of debate over issues raised, but not agreed-upon. Throughout 2015-2016, Councilmember Cochran championed the effort to move the bill forward. It went through at least three substantial revisions, to broaden the purpose of the bill to include potential threats to human health, and to tighten up definitions and language so it would be legally sound.
Along the way the draft ordinance found more supporters, notably several students who produced videos through their affiliation with Maui Huliau Foundation. One was a hilarious skit that included discovery of a “Don’t Take Our Plate Lunch” flyer that had cropped up across the islands… a propaganda effort funded by the American Chemistry Council.
A dream sequence in the video shows a plastics industry boardroom discussion of a growing “problem in Hawai‘i,” with a member being abruptly fired for suggesting they consider providing compostable containers to address a growing market. Even with the comedic approach, it was clear the students had learned the facts of why polystyrene products needed to be curtailed.
In November 2015, the IEM Committee finally sent the draft bill on to full council, recommending passage. At its Dec. 16, 2016 meeting, the Maui County Council offered new amendments to the bill, but passed it on first reading. They stipulated, however, that a special meeting would be convened before second reading, with a panel of scientists and experts to address unresolved issues.
In May 2017, University of California Santa Barbara professors Dr. Hillary Young and Dr. Douglas McCauley shared info from studies of expanded polystyrene, seabirds, and ocean health. Marine biologists and marine debris specialists Cheryl King of Maui and Megan Lamson of Hawai‘i County presented data on beach cleanups and microplastics. Two other presenters shared studies on potential human health risks of styrene, a component of polystyrene classified as a suspected carcinogen (though Councilmember Yuki Lei Sugimura later moved to delete that phrase from the actual bill).
A week later, after more testimony, tinkering, and debate, the council unanimously agreed to pass the bill, and set a phase-in date of Nov. 18, 2018.
“While the legislative process was long and arduous, in hindsight I am grateful for the opportunity to have learned from experts in the field, exactly how critical this environmental protection will be for our ‘aina, and how little an impact it will be for local businesses,” said Councilmember Elle Cochran, adding, “I remain ever-grateful to the community stakeholders that came to the frontlines to help me educate the members and rebut the propaganda and rhetoric being spread aggressively by lobbyists representing corporate interests. I couldn’t have done it without them.”
WHAT’S NEXT?
With the growing understanding of impacts and drawbacks of single-use plastics, many municipalities are setting their sights upon new goals. Last July, Manhattan Beach, California became the first U.S. city to ban plastic straws and utensils. Seattle passed a similar ordinance a month later. The Manhattan Beach City Council has taken additional steps, outlawing polystyrene foam egg cartons and foam packing peanuts.
In October, the European Union lawmakers moved to ban 10 single-use plastic products with readily available alternatives, to take effect by 2021.
Can Maui continue to be a leader in addressing greater education and restrictions of these fossil fuel-based, non-recyclable products, increasingly found during roadside and beach cleanups? “To have everyone using reusable dishes, washable eating utensils, and only truly compostable take out products is my dream,” said Bonar.
To that vision, Councilmember Cochran has drafted a new ordinance, “Restricting the Use and Sale of Single-Use Disposable Plastic Foodware.” The measure sets its sights on plastic straws, utensils, stir sticks, cocktail picks, lids, and other products, while aiming to provide compostable alternatives. Her council term is set to expire before the bill could come forward for consideration, but the measure may be picked up by incoming councilmembers in January 2019.
Campbell Farrell is executive director of Love the Sea, working to spread awareness of the detrimental effects of plastic in our world, especially the ocean environment. Recently in New Zealand supporting the Eat Less Plastic voyage’s arrival, he spoke with the Minister of Climate Change, James Shaw.
“Minister Shaw encouraged very much to keep raising awareness and bring credible data to government officials so they could more effectively lobby for change,” Farrell said. “He loved that we are helping to unite Pacific Island nations people to stand together for a plastic free environment.”
Americans use an estimated 50-billion plastic water bottles annually, with the vast majority – more than 70 percent – discarded rather than recycled. And it doesn’t help that the bottle and cap are made from two different types of plastic, complicating the ability to recycle them. Local recyclers have faced challenges anew over the past year, with more stringent guidelines for contamination and drops in commodity prices. However, they are still collecting #1 and #2 plastics (polyethylene/PET and high-density polyethylene/HDPE).
San Francisco outlawed sale of plastic water bottles 21 ounces or less back in 2014. “We never went to the store when we were kids and walked out with a case of bottled water,” Losano recalled. “We’ve got to get back to that place where we take responsibility for what we purchase and consume.”
“The polystyrene ban breaks the ice for us to commit to sustainability on a much broader scale,” she stated.
Farnsworth said her Environmental Protection & Sustainability division will be launching a “BYO!” campaign in 2019, once the Foam Free initiative is fully in place. “Stay tuned for details,” she said with a smile.
Earlier this year, Losano applied for a county recycling grant to establish a West Maui regional compost operation capable of processing food scraps and compostable food service wares into a nutrient-rich soil amendment. It would mark a first in Maui County.
As part of the grant, she completed Maui Economic Opportunity’s “Core Four,” classes to write a successful business plan. She has been contacting hotels, restaurants, groceries, schools, and landscapers to understand the resource stream availability. She and her partner are continuing the search for a suitable site. With the closest commercial compost sites in Central Maui, a location in West Maui is a dire need.
“I promised the council there would be a place to compost alternative food service items, and we are going to do it,” Losano proclaimed. “We are committed to overcoming the permitting hurdles.”
Thus, Maui’s polystyrene ban may have long-ranging impacts beyond just the disappearance of foam cups, plates, and bentos. Indeed, Hawai‘i County passed their own ordinance just months after Maui led the way, to be implemented in July 2019. Last year’s state legislature came close to passing SB 2498 to limit EPS foam products. Despite more than 600 pieces of supporting testimony, it languished after being referred to Finance Committee, and didn’t receive a final hearing.
Whether 2019 will be the year the measure passes at the state level remains to be seen. But the launching of the Foam Free Maui County campaign will surely give rise to additional forward-thinking measures to reduce litter and protect our environment.
And polystyrene? Perhaps it will be soon forgotten, except as an example of how we are able to learn from our own unsustainable societal missteps.
As the Foam Free website reminds us, “We can live without it.”
Learn more about the Polystyrene Food Service Containers Ordinance at Mauicounty.gov/2282/Foam-Free-Maui-County
https://mauitime.com/news/politics/maui-county-says-no-to-the-foam-what-mauis-styrofoam-ban-means-how-we-got-here-and-whats-next/
-
Wheeler Sees PFAS Plan, Lead Rule in 2019
Nov 28, 2018 | Inside EPA
Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler says EPA will release early next year its rule to reduce lead in drinking water, as well as an action plan for addressing per- and polyfluroalkyl chemicals (PFAS) that are contaminating water supplies -- though both will take decades to implement.
Each plan had been expected in 2018 but Wheeler told a Nov. 28 Washington Post live event that they will now be issued early in 2019.
Wheeler said when he was briefed on planned update to the 20-year-old lead and copper rule in July, shortly after he took over as acting administrator, it had been on track for release before the end of the year but he delayed it to address replacing the leakiest lead pipes first.
“I slowed it down” due to concern that the 20- to 30-year implementation timeline to replace the nation's lead drinking water pipes lacked prioritization to address the most corrosive pipes first.
He asked agency officials to come up with a way to prioritize replacing the worst pipes, and says that work is nearly complete and that the strategy should be released in the new year.
His explanation for the rule's slowdown appears aimed in part at addressing recent criticism that the administration has “stonewalled” an interagency strategy for reducing children's lead exposure, is months behind schedule on issuing the strategy, and is lacking a clear goal for curbing exposures.
Wheeler also teased release of the PFAS action plan, saying that he expects a draft plan to circulate through interagency review beginning this week and that he expects to have “something to announce in January.”
Wheeler's predecessor Scott Pruitt first announced a plan to develop the multi-media PFAS strategy in May, but the agency has not yet released the final plan as it struggles to determine whether to develop an enforceable drinking water standard for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), one of the most common chemicals in the class.
While officials have not yet determined whether to seek a standard, they have warned that if they do it would take years. The slow timeframe is frustrating senators, though EPA officials say there is little they can do to speed it up, testifying in late September that if the agency does move forward with a rule it will take years to promulgate.
EPA also plans to soon move forward with a new waters of the United States (WOTUS) Clean Water Act jurisdiction rule that Wheeler promised will be clear and concise and allow the casual onlooker to view a waterbody and determine whether it is subject to federal rules.
The agency's effort to delay implementation of the 2015 Obama-era WOTUS rule while it issues a less-restrictive version has received split court rulings, meaning that the regulation is in place in 22 states and on hold in the rest of the country. Most recently a Washington federal district court held Nov. 26 that the delay was unlawful.
In response to a request for Wheeler to name three policies the agency is pursuing that will reduce air pollution “in absolute terms” and three similar water pollution policies, the acting administrator could only immediately cite one: a recently announced plan to limit nitrogen oxides from heavy-duty trucks. He noted he was not sure he could name three “off the top of my head,” and then he cited two other rules -- a power plant climate rule and a vehicle greenhouse gas regulation -- that are rollbacks of Obama rules but stressed how they will cut emissions.
Also speaking to the Washington Post forum just after Wheeler was California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) who cited the many adverse court rulings the have gone against the Trump EPA to demonstrate the success of some of his efforts. He also strongly criticized the agency for failing to do its job but promised, “We'll get through this.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/wheeler-sees-pfas-plan-lead-rule-2019
-
As EPA Weighs Plan, Rural Utilities Urge Wheeler to 'Resist' PFAS Limit
Nov 28, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Lara Beaven
As EPA prepares to consider its long-awaited plan to address per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a group of rural utilities is urging acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler “to resist calls for a national” drinking water standard for PFAS, asking the agency instead to focus on alternative methods to deal with contamination rather than regulation.
The call by the National Rural Water Association (NRWA) underscores the competing pressures EPA is facing on the issue -- expected to be the centerpiece of its action plan -- as states, environmentalists and many lawmakers press the agency to craft a drinking water standard as way to prevent a growing patchwork of state standards and ensure consistent national cleanup requirements for the ubiquitous chemicals.
Drinking water standards known as maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) “are regulatory enforcement standards for local governments enforced by levying fines on local citizens (the ratepayers) for communities out of compliance,” the NRWA says in its Nov. 21 letter to Wheeler.
“What is actually needed in affected communities is assistance (i.e., funding for treatment, monitoring assistance, on-site technical assistance for emergency operations, credible public health information, emergency access to safe drinking water, and compensation from responsible parties),” NRWA says.
The group says it believes its recommendations will result in greater public health protection than the MCL regulatory alternative.
The letter is a stark contrast to the push from some states, lawmakers and an EPA advisory committee for the agency to develop a PFAS MCL, and an NRWA source says the group wanted to make sure their perspective was “included in the mix” of recommendations.
Wheeler's predecessor Scott Pruitt first announced a plan to develop a multi-media PFAS strategy in May, but the agency has not yet released the final plan as it struggles to determine whether to develop an MCL for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), two of the most common PFAS.
Wheeler told a Nov. 28 Washington Post live event that he expects a draft strategy to circulate through interagency review beginning this week and that he expects to have “something to announce in January.”
While agency officials have not yet determined whether to seek a standard, they have warned that if they do it would take years.
And Peter Grevatt, EPA's drinking water chief who is slated to retire from EPA next month, has cautioned that monitoring data suggests PFOA and PFOS contamination is relatively limited and are not the nationally ubiquitous substances that many believe.
While EPA's slow response is frustrating policymakers, EPA officials say there is little they can do to speed it up, testifying in late September that if the agency does move forward with a drinking water rule it will take years to promulgate.
Earlier this year, the Environmental Council of the States told EPA its members were split on whether the agency should quickly develop an MCL for PFOA and PFOS, with some states concerned that such regulations “could divert resources from other drinking water issues and impose unwarranted costs on water systems.”
EPA Deadline
But bipartisan members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee told Grevatt in September that there needs to be a national drinking water standard. Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), who is expected to chair the committee next year, noted that Democrats on the panel have long pushed to set a deadline for EPA to issue a stringent drinking water PFAS standard.
Senators from both parties have also urged EPA to develop a standard.
And earlier this month, the agency's Local Government Advisory Committee asked EPA to provide leadership to communities on a “coordinated and comprehensive” approach of regulatory actions, including designating PFAS as hazardous under the Superfund law and setting an MCL.
The NRWA source says it is important to get the group's perspective before lawmakers.
NRWA says the great majority of public water systems affected by any future agency action for PFAS will be small water systems, typically administered by local governments. The group notes that during EPA's PFAS Community Engagement Events held around the country earlier this year local government presenters detailed how they were taking immediate action to remediate PFAS contamination in their drinking water regardless of a federally enforceable standard, though this dynamic was not present in the privately owned water systems.
“Every local government detecting PFAS contamination prefers to have all traces of contamination removed from their drinking water and likely all local governments are advancing plans and policies toward that goal absent a federal regulation or MCL,” the letter says. “The promulgation of an MCL does not advance the goal of removal of all PFAS from community drinking water supplies in locally governed water utilities.”
NRWA emphasizes that local governments are not responsible for PFAS contamination and instead responsible parties should be held accountable for remediation, treatment and providing alternative sources of safe drinking water. But under the Safe Drinking Water Act, utilities that are unable to meet MCLs are subject to fines of up to $25,000 per day, “which actually further penalize the communities whose drinking water was contaminated. This dynamic is especially acute and problematic for economically disadvantaged communities and populations,” the letter says.
An “MCL is a regulatory instrument, not a public health policy,” the NRWA source says.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-weighs-plan-rural-utilities-urge-wheeler-resist-pfas-limit
-
No-Deal Brexit: Industry Alliance Warns of £1bn REACH Data Cost
Nov 29, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Oziel
The total cost for companies submitting full data packages for UK REACH under a no-deal Brexit scenario could be as much as £1bn (€1.13bn), a major chemical industry alliance estimated.
And, in a letter to junior environment minister Thérèse Coffey, the Alliance of Chemical Associations (ACA) says this would come "on top of the significant investment already made in gathering information on safe use of chemicals".
The UK parliament is due to vote on the withdrawal agreement on 11 December, with many MPs saying they will reject the deal. If it fails to pass this would make the no-deal scenario a real possibility.
The confidential letter, seen by Chemical Watch, strongly urges the government to "reconsider" the plan for full data packages, announced by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to widespread disbelief at a meeting in London in October.
The ACA’s members represent 1,300 UK companies contributing an estimated £42bn to the UK economy.
"It is not possible to overstate how serious we consider this to be," says the ACA letter. Dated 31 October, it was sent almost a month before the government agreed a draft withdrawal deal and a draft non-binding political declaration on its future trading relationship with the EU.
The ACA says UK businesses have invested heavily in data supporting their existing REACH registrations, and "having to repeat that exercise, which would involve negotiating access to data and related legal contracts, will be a significant challenge" considering there are more than 12,000 UK registrations.
Many UK registration holders do not have access to the full data package, the letter says. They may be able to gain permission to use the study summaries, but this generates "a very significant" cost, estimated at €70,000 per mid-tier substance, "and at worst duplication of testing, possibly including animal testing".
Such duplication, or the acceptance of incomplete datasets, would "severely compromise" the validity of the entire exercise and is "completely at odds" with one of the fundamental principles of REACH, the letter adds.
Notwithstanding this, it continues, the two-year timeframe Defra has proposed for submitting this data is "unrealistic" considering that REACH registrations spanned ten years. "The scale of the task and the related timeframe are simply not feasible."Deep concerns
The letter expresses "deep concerns" over Defra's plans for implementing a UK REACH, which it says will weaken the UK's competitiveness and stifle innovation.
The high cost and resource commitment "will do nothing to improve our environment" and may well result in a reduction in the number of substances manufactured and traded in the UK", the letter says. It urges Defra to consider "a more efficient and proportionate option".
Other concerns include:
· Defra's proposal for legally ‘grandfathering’ UK registrations;
· the timescale allowed for this process being "too short" considering that in a no-deal scenario companies will have to prioritise day-to-day operations;
· the "huge number" of UK SMEs and downstream users that would potentially become importers and register under UK REACH; and
· "inconsistencies" in the government's no-deal plans for chemicals, biocides and pesticides.
https://chemicalwatch.com/72435/no-deal-brexit-industry-alliance-warns-of-1bn-reach-data-cost
-
NGOs Urge Stricter Controls on Brominated Dioxins
Nov 28, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Caterina Tani
A group of NGOs is calling for brominated dioxins to be listed among other persistent organic pollutants (POPs) regulated under the Stockholm Convention.
Known as polybrominated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PBDD/Fs), brominated dioxins have been found as contaminants in brominated organic chemicals and, in particular, in flame retardants, such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). They are also known to be potential byproducts of commercial PBDE mixtures.
They are suspected endocrine disruptors, the NGOs said, and can also affect brain development, damage the immune system and fetus, and increase risk of cancer and disruption to thyroid function.
Studies have shown that PBDD/Fs are present in indoor dust samples collected in homes, offices, and electronic-waste facilities. They also confirmed, the NGOs added, that "uncontrolled electronic-waste recycling processes are a major source of environmental contamination by PBDD/Fs".
Because brominated dioxins "tend to be less regulated", the NGOs said, there is less data about their presence in the environment.
In 2010, the Stockholm Convention POPs Review Committee recommended further assessment of PBDD/Fs including releases from smelters and other thermal recovery technologies.
Toys study
The recommendation for Stockholm Convention listing follows the release of their global study report Toxic Soup: Dioxins in Plastic Toys, which found brominated dioxins in eight toys and one hair clip made of recycled plastic stemming from electronic waste. Half of the toys were similar to the Rubik's Cube. The articles were analysed for PBDE content in previous studies on waste incineration fly ash or other industrial waste.
They were bought in four EU countries (the Czech Republic, France, Germany and Portugal), as well as Argentina, India and Nigeria between 2016 and 2018.
The study report was produced by Czech NGO Arnika, Friends of the Earth Germany, the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) and The International POPs Elimination Network (Ipen).
It is the first publicly available study to highlight brominated dioxins in children’s products, they said.
It was released ahead of the meeting of the EU competent authorities expert group on POPs, which discussed rules for recycling and definitions of wastes containing POPs, such as PBDEs and dioxins on 27 November.
Main findings
The study found that the significant contamination of children’s products by dioxins ranged from 56-3,800 WHO-toxic equivalency per gram (TEQs/g).
These levels, it said, are on the same scale of PBDD/Fs found in a variety of hazardous waste, as is the case with ash from waste incinerators, and residues of burned printed circuit boards.
Notably, the highest concentration of dioxins was found in a toy purchased in Germany. According to the study, the German sample was the only one that exceeded a national legislative limit for brominated dioxins. However, other toys could include toxic substances as Germany does not limit all the toxic brominated dioxin congeners, the NGOs said.
To provide more protective regulations, and "close the loophole" in EU legislation, the study recommends that:
· regulators should not allow the proposed 1,000 ppm limit for decaBDE in recycled plastics, but rather establish a 10 ppm limit;
· a more stringent limit for the definition of POPs waste (low POPs content level) is established at a level of 50 ppm for the sum of all regulated PBDEs;
· recycling exemptions for commercial pentaBDE and octaBDE – as they are currently established under the Stockholm Convention and registered in the EU and several other states – should be withdrawn;
· PBDD/Fs should be added to the Stockholm Convention for global reduction and elimination; and
· the definition of electronic waste within the framework of the Basel Convention should be improved.
https://chemicalwatch.com/72431/ngos-urge-stricter-controls-on-brominated-dioxins
-
Surge of Oil and Gas Flowing to Texas Coastline Triggers Building Boom, Tensions
Nov 29, 2018 | Texas Tribune
By Jamie Smith Hopkins and Kiah Collier
To the east, the Gulf of Mexico stretches out, blue-green and sparkling. To the west and north, flounder and trout meander in a chain of bays. People flock here to fish. Others come to this beach town near Corpus Christi to kayak, parasail or admire the hundreds of bird species on the barrier island, which is deep into rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Harvey damaged or destroyed 85 percent of the buildings here last year.
A perfect location, from a certain point of view, to put not one but two crude-oil export terminals for ships so big they’re called supertankers.
Those proposals are part of a historic buildout of oil and gas infrastructure in the United States as it becomes a top exporter of both fuels. Texas, home to the most prolific oilfield in the country, is at the epicenter of the frenzy. More than 80 plants, terminals and other projects are in the works or planned up and down the state’s Gulf Coast, from Port Arthur to Brownsville, according to a Center for Public Integrity and Texas Tribune review of corporate plans. Companies have been laying enough pipeline in Texas in the last several years to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific three times over, more than 8,000 miles in all.
Oil and gas production in the U.S. has skyrocketed, particularly in the Permian Basin, most of which underlies West Texas. Producers there are employing new drilling technologies to meet — some would say prolong — the global demand for fossil fuels. When Congress lifted decades-old federal restrictions on crude exports at the end of 2015, a move that came on the heels of rule changes throwing open the doors for exports of natural gas, it set off a mad dash. Companies want to get oil and gas from West Texas to the Gulf Coast and, from there, abroad.
Much of the infrastructure is headed for just two regions: Houston — America’s oil capital — and Corpus Christi, where a port previously focused on oil imports is battling it out with Houston to be the country’s No. 1 location for moving crude to other nations. Each shipped out more than $7 billion in crude during the first nine months of the year, up from less than $1 billion two years earlier, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. Terminals once used to bring oil in are pushing it the other direction.
“At the end of 2015 ... we had the first shipment of crude that was exported,” said John LaRue, executive director of the Port of Corpus Christi. “And now, as I’m sure you know, it’s a constant surge.”
Oil and gas export growth means jobs paying good wages. In Corpus Christi, it’s responsible for roughly 800 new positions so far with another 1,600 expected in the next four years, plus several thousand temporary jobs constructing all those facilities, according to an analysis by Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi’s Jim Lee.
But it also intensifies a tragic quandary bedeviling the Gulf. Heavy industry there pumps out greenhouse gases warming the climate, upping the risks of powerful storms that, in turn, endanger those same facilities and everything around them. Harvey, which dumped more rain than any other U.S. storm on record, damaged hundreds of thousands of homes in Texas last year, killed at least 68 people and, particularly around Houston, sparked industrial spills, air pollution and explosions.
Many of the proposed, under-construction or recently built facilities along the Texas Gulf are in areas that felt Harvey’s bite. Just in the Corpus Christi region, those projects include about nine new or expanding crude oil terminals, a liquefied natural gas terminal, two refined petroleum products terminals and several plants for processing a component of natural gas into a building block of plastic products. Two of those plants, each approved for tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks, are expected to be among the largest of their kind in the world. And roughly seven pipelines are planned or under way to move more oil and gas here from western and southern Texas.
The Corpus Christi liquefied natural gas terminal — which just began operations and already has expansions planned — received permits to release up to 5.8 million tons of greenhouse gases each year, according to an analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project, a research and advocacy group. That’s the equivalent of nearly 1 ½ coal-fired power plants. Other parts of this new supply chain, which extends into the Louisiana side of the Gulf, will facilitate greenhouse gases pumped out in Asia, Europe and beyond.
“There is some irony or poetic justice, depending on your point of view, in having all these greenhouse-gas emitters being the most vulnerable to climate change, but there are a lot of people living around them, and it’s not such a good deal for them,” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and a former head of civil enforcement at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The development boom also sets up a clash over the future of the mid-Gulf, a less industrial and more tourism-focused part of the Texas coast than Houston.
From the Port of Corpus Christi’s perspective, the new export business is a huge plus. “You’re going to see more development, more industry, more jobs,” said Eddie Martinez, the port’s business development representative, as he cruised in a boat along the ship channel in June, passing oil tankers and new projects.
But as the growth spills beyond the port’s industrial spine, it’s upending some communities.
The idea of building crude-oil terminals in Port Aransas to serve ships extending the length of four football fields — requiring a much deeper ship channel in that area — has residents and business owners there up in arms.
“Everyone I speak to says they’re against this,” said Neesy Tompkins, who moved to town in 1978 after falling in love with its natural beauty.
“What they’re proposing is an environmental disaster,” said John Donovan, who lives part-time in town and helped form a new group, the Port Aransas Conservancy, that is pressing back on the oil-terminal proposals.
This type of development boom on the coast isn’t unprecedented, but it hasn’t happened for decades, said Michael Webber, acting director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. World War II kicked off a building spree that extended into the 1950s, he said. This time around, soaring production is the trigger. In the Permian Basin, companies are extracting double the amount of crude oil and natural gas they did four years ago.
“We’re seeing massive buildout,” Webber said. “Export infrastructure, chemical infrastructure, you name it.”
The town that fish built
Port Aransas, a city of about 4,000 full-time residents, runs on tourism. Fishing is a big part of that — it's no accident the community spent a little over a decade around the turn of the last century named for a fish, the enormous tarpon. This is a place that calls itself the fishing capital of Texas, a spot where President Franklin D. Roosevelt once came to try his luck. There’s a tournament for anglers nearly every weekend in the summer. Faced with hurricane-wrecked government facilities from the police station to the library, the city council decided to fix the marina first — to get boaters and their dollars back to town.
“That’s the lifeblood of Port Aransas,” said Councilwoman Joan Holt. “Next to the beach, but the beach was in perfect shape.”
More than a century ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged a deepwater port at Harbor Island, partly within city limits. The Humble Oil and Refining Co. built an oil terminal there. But shippers preferred the Corpus Christi port, opened in 1926. These days, big ships pass through the waters alongside Port Aransas to get to Corpus Christi, farther inland. Offshore oil rigs are stored on Harbor Island, but the terminal and its leaking oil tanks are long gone.
For years, though, officials with the Port of Corpus Christi — now the owner of a substantial piece of Harbor Island — have seen development potential there.
They’ve filed for a permit to build a desalination plant on the island to ensure their burgeoning clientele has enough water amid droughts that climate change is poised to worsen. This is also where they want to put a crude oil export terminal with at least two loading docks. In October they said The Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm, plans to develop the project and have it running by late 2020. Three days later, the infrastructure firm Magellan Midstream Partners said it is considering building another supertanker crude-oil terminal on the island.
Port officials were setting themselves up for a war, and they knew it. In the early 1970s, residents here fought off a similar proposal by the port authority — a terminal for oil imports in that case. In 2014, the city rezoned the land to prevent refineries and comparable development after the port tried to strike a deal with a company that wanted to build a complex of oil and gas processing plants.
This time, though, port officials may have the upper hand. Across from Harbor Island is the city’s marina — that key part of the local economy — and the port owns that property as well. The lease was set to expire in March. Shortly before announcingplans for the oil terminal, port officials negotiated a new contract for the marina that includes language ensuring the lease “will immediately terminate” if the city again moves to make the zoning more restrictive, according to documents released to the Center for Public Integrity and The Texas Tribune under a public-information request.
Dan Pecore, who manages a maritime museum and wooden boatbuilding complex in Port Aransas, calls that “extortion.” Pecore, a founding member of the Port Aransas Conservancy, is upset at the port for inserting the language and the city for agreeing to it. He thinks the timing is unfair to residents still trying to put their lives back together post-Harvey. After the hurricane tore the roof off his home, he had to live 30 miles away until July, when he could finally find another place to rent in town.
The port declined to comment on the marina contract. In a written statement, it said, “We are firmly committed to BOTH our economic development mandate, and our environmental stewardship mandate.” When it announced its partnership with Carlyle in October, the port said, “The result could produce up to a $50 billion annual reduction to the national trade deficit. Importantly, the City of Corpus Christi would benefit from the thousands of direct and indirect jobs as well as billions in incremental economic activity.”
The port already has the go-ahead to deepen its ship channel from 47 to 54 feet. Now, for the Harbor Island project, it’s considering depths of at least 75 feet in that area. Among dredged U.S. channels, only the Port of Long Beach in California would top that, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and it requires dredging infrequently because it is naturally deep.
This is the part of the Harbor Island project that most worries Holt, a fish biologist who became a councilwoman after retiring from the University of Texas at Austin’s Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas. The local catch is plentiful because the larval fish spawned offshore get swept into seagrasses in the shallow water alongside the city, where they’re protected from predators. With a much deeper channel, it seems to her, comes a risk they could get stuck there and die.
Channel deepening can cause more seawater to end up in bays, which can harm the plants and animals there, said Stefan Talke, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Portland State University in Oregon. And in some port communities, deeper channels have amplified tides and worsened storm surge, increasing the flooding from hurricanes. He recommends careful study.
“If we’re going to make decisions, like invest all this money to deepen, we should have a clear-eyed view of what the trade-offs are,” he said.
The Port of Corpus Christi, in its written statement, said it is “partnering with multiple academic and research institutions to ensure the highest levels of science are applied at every step of the process.”
As the port defends its project, it’s aggressively opposing a competing development plan — an oil export facility proposed by the logistics firm Trafigura about 15 miles offshore, south of Corpus Christi. Port officials claim that project, not their own, could be the environmental disaster. For the port, the offshore plan poses a different sort of threat: It could mean millions of dollars in lost revenue as supertankers forgo the ship channel, said Sandy Fielden, director of oil and products research for Morningstar, an investment research firm. Port officials argued that Trafigura’s federal permit application was incomplete and hired a lobbying firm as part of their push to get state leaders to block construction.
It’s an unusual move, Fielden said. It shows, in the rush to grab a share of the export bounty, just how pitched the competition is. Trafigura, whose project is one of four that companies are considering constructing off the coast of Texas, said in a statement that such offshore ports are operated safely around the world and its project would “complement, not replace, exports from other facilities.” Members of the fledgling Port Aransas Conservancy, for their part, think handling crude offshore would be the less-risky option.
In June, when the plan for Harbor Island was still one crude-oil terminal rather than two, Tammy and James King went out in their fishing boat on a beautiful morning. The Kings, who live part time in Port Aransas, tooled past other boats, a parasailer, brown pelicans in search of a meal and the Lydia Ann Lighthouse, a local landmark overlooking marshland and tiny lakes where kayakers roam.
The Kings paused where three channels meet: the Lydia Ann, where baby fish hide in seagrasses; the Aransas, which leads to two bays with water sometimes called as clear as gin, full of trout, redfish and other marine life; and the Corpus Christi ship channel. Twenty miles to the north is the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, where whooping cranes were brought back from the brink of extinction — about 500 were there last winter, compared with just 15 in 1941 — and where scientists and visitors see hundreds of other species, from the reddish egret to the spotted chorus frog.
The Kings, who work in real estate, aren’t against growth or oil and gas. They get income from royalties on production, including in West Texas, where they live when they’re not in town. But they don’t understand the zeal to develop Port Aransas.
“There’s a great port in Corpus Christi with all the industrial infrastructure,” James King said over the thrum of his engine. “Why build industrial infrastructure here?”
Expanding ports, shrinking neighborhoods
The Port of Beaumont didn’t export a drop of crude oil in 2015. This year through September, the Texas seaport near the Louisiana state line moved out nearly $6 billion worth — almost three times the amount it shipped during the same months last year, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
All but one of the top 10 ports for crude shipped abroad are on the Gulf Coast, most in Texas. Beaumont is behind only Corpus Christi and Houston as they vie for first place. Related exports are also rising, from refined oil to propane and other liquids that come with natural gas production. And around the Port of Brownsville alone, companies have proposed a trio of terminals to export liquefied natural gas, known as LNG.
Parts of the new export supply chain, particularly the LNG terminals, are getting big tax breaks to locate along the coast. The LNG facility under construction in Freeport, about 70 miles south of Houston, will avoid more than half a billion dollars in taxes over the 10-year lifespan of its agreements with three school districts, according to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. That’s a more than 75-percent break.
Dale Craymer, president of the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, whose membership includes companies receiving such breaks, said the state must compete for export facilities with its Gulf Coast neighbor. Louisiana has a lower property tax rate and offers an automatic, 10-year break on property taxes.
But in Dick Lavine’s view, schools are giving up much-needed revenue from projects that “very likely would have located there without an incentive.” Lavine, a senior fiscal analyst for the left-leaning Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin-based think tank, said the obvious place to put an oil or gas export facility is on the coast of the state at the heart of the U.S. drilling boom. Companies planning to build two of the LNG terminals in Brownsville did not pick new sites when they were turned down for tax breaks by a school district, a sign that at least some deal-sweeteners aren’t necessary.
Storm protections, meanwhile, won’t be coming nearly as quickly as the new infrastructure.
Extensive storm modeling by top Texas scientists has shown that if a hurricane hitnear the southern end of Galveston Island outside Houston — something that almost happened in 2008 — storm surge would pour into the Port of Houston, dislodging thousands of storage tanks full of crude oil and hazardous chemicals.
In October, a decade after Hurricane Ike prompted calls to safeguard the Texas coast, the state and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finally recommended a plan: building an earthen levee down the two barrier islands that sit between the Houston area and the Gulf, with a gate to shut ahead of a storm.
That “coastal spine” would shield the fourth-largest city and biggest refining and petrochemical complex in the nation. Dozens of refineries and chemical plants line the 52-mile Houston Ship Channel. Tens of billions of dollars in new natural gas processing and chemical facilities are in the works there.
But the protection Texas is contemplating, including dunes and beach restoration on parts of the industrializing lower coast, is years away. A final recommendation isn’t expected until 2021, and then it begins the potentially long process of winning state and congressional approval to pay the expected $23 billion to $31 billion cost of the project. (The estimated expense of Hurricane Harvey damage: $125 billion.)
In July, the Trump administration announced the state would receive nearly $4 billion toward the construction of new coastal levees north of Port Arthur and to shore up existing coastal levees in that city and Freeport — projects that were already in the queue for federal funding. But that’s only 65 percent of that project’s cost. The state of Texas will have to put up the rest, and that is not a done deal.
Steve Everley, spokesman for Texans for Natural Gas, an industry-funded advocacy group, isn’t worried about the industrial buildup coming in advance of storm protections. The oil and gas sector has invested heavily in storm preparedness and proved it can weather big hurricanes, he wrote in an email.
“Within weeks after Harvey’s landfall, 20 of the 24 refineries that shut down had restarted, and 70 percent of petrochemical production was back online,” he wrote.
But so many instances of air and water contamination occurred in the hurricane’s wake that Gov. Greg Abbott suspended some pollution rules in storm-affected counties — and didn’t reinstate them for seven months. Bob Stokes, president of the Galveston Bay Foundation, a conservation group, thinks Harvey showed that the petrochemical industry — smaller facilities in particular — isn’t prepared and that no one is requiring them to do better.
“Somebody should be forcing that issue,” he said, “and unfortunately I’m at a loss for how to do it.”
The state official who oversees coastline protection is George P. Bush, the Texas land commissioner and nephew of former President George W. Bush. He said he’s “absolutely” concerned about new facilities built in harm’s way, including those coming in on the lower coast, where no levee is planned. But he thinks the Corpus Christi channel deepening could help. The material dredged off the ship channel floor can be turned into wetlands that offer some defense from storms, he said.
As to research showing that deepening can worsen storm surge, Bush said he’s aware of “a back and forth on that.”
“The clear upside is that you have more trade and commerce,” he said.
Corpus Christi isn’t the only Texas port trying to deepen its ship channel to accommodate big tankers and keep the growth coming. The Corpus Christi plans are just far more expansive, and they come on the heels of another infrastructure project to make way for those ships.
Corpus Christi’s iconic, aging Harbor Bridge is being replaced with a taller span, part of a $1 billion project that will allow some of the world’s largest vessels to pass underneath. It will also further isolate Hillcrest, a historically segregated neighborhood long afflicted by heavy air pollution. On Hillcrest’s western boundary, two oil refineries pump out toxic, cancer-causing chemicals; to the north, oil and gas tanks line the ship channel; to the south, vehicles spew exhaust on Interstate 37. The bridge project will relocate U.S. Highway 181 just east of the neighborhood, which is largely African-American and Hispanic.
Health fears have long hung over the neighborhood. The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry said in 2016, after a years-long investigation, that inhaling the mixture of chemicals discharged in the area known as Refinery Row over the long term increases the risk of cancer. The agency also said that hydrogen sulfide, a gas with a rotten-egg stench that’s deadly at high levels, regularly wafts over the area at concentrations that can cause headaches and difficulty breathing. (The state agency charged with protecting air quality contested those findings.)
The bridge was the final straw for some residents, who filed a federal civil rights complaint against the Texas Department of Transportation. The outcome: a fund to help homeowners move out, with the initial $20 million coming from the port.
The option to relocate is good, said Pastor Adam Carrington with the Brooks A.M.E. Worship Center in Hillcrest, except for the people left behind. Some are stuck, unable to qualify for the assistance because of liens on their property or problems proving they are the legal owners. Others don’t want to abandon the only homes they’ve known.
In June, Carrington rolled through the vanishing neighborhood in his car, longtime resident Lamont Taylor in his back seat, both pointing out houses marked for demolition, overgrown lots where other homes once stood and people with nowhere else to go.
“This lady here lives in a tent, unfortunately,” Taylor said, looking out the window at the woman’s Harvey-damaged home.
Erin Gaines, a staff attorney at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which represented residents in the bridge complaint, said officials should take a lesson from Hillcrest amid the industrial growth coming to the region. But she’s seen no sign that it’s sunk in yet.
“Our question is, are we going to learn anything from the past in terms of these fence-line communities and not having appropriate buffers between them and industry?” she said. “Or are they going to keep expanding industry and creating new fence-line communities?”
North of Corpus Christi, ExxonMobil and SABIC are planning one of the world’s largest ethane crackers, a petrochemical plant that will process a component of natural gas in a manner, ExxonMobil said, that “protects the environment, as well as the health and safety of our employees and neighbors.” The mayor of Gregory, the tiny city nearby, is all for it. In Portland, also close to the site, residents organized to try to stop it.
Gregory is a city at the intersection of three highways, with a railroad bisecting it, everything passing by en route to somewhere else. Jessica Ortiz, who lives here, and her daughter, Jenna Adams, who was raised here, drove around in June, naming the few businesses left in town and the ones shuttered by Harvey as they explained why they’re excited about the plant. Maybe Gregory would get more restaurants, more jobs, more residents. Maybe their family would benefit, too.
Adair Apple, who started a Portland citizens group opposing the development, also saw the plant through the lens of what it would mean for the area — pollution. Faced with the likelihood that Exxon would get all the permits it applied for, her family moved out.
“I don’t want to have to worry about my daughters’ health,” said Apple, who now lives on the south side of Corpus Christi, away from industrial development.
More is almost certainly headed to the area near her former home. Errol Summerlin, a retired lawyer who lives in Portland and is continuing the fight over the Exxon permits, drove by farmland northeast of the city in June, saying he expected the nearly 3,000 acres will flip to industrial uses. A month later, the Port of Corpus Christi would announce that it planned to purchase the properties to market for development.
Summerlin drove several miles farther north and pulled over to the side of Highway 188, on a bridge overlooking mudflats. Storm water from the Exxon facility was at that point proposed (and since approved by the state) to flow through here, and he was afraid that plastic pellets from the plant would be swept along for the ride and eaten by birds.
Then he saw a flash of shocking pink — roseate spoonbills landing in the marsh. He got out of his car. Standing on the shoulder, momentarily silent, he watched the spindly-legged birds rooting in the shallow water for a meal.
Center for Public Integrity reporter Rachel Leven contributed to this story.
https://www.texastribune.org/2018/11/29/oil-and-gas-surge-texas-coastline-triggers-building-boom-tensions/
-
Exxon Will Use Wind, Solar Power to Produce Crude Oil in Texas
Nov 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Christopher Martin and Kevin Crowley
Exxon Mobil Corp. will use renewable energy to produce oil in West Texas.
Under 12-year agreements with Denmark’s Orsted A/S, Exxon will buy 500 megawatts of wind and solar power in the Permian Basin, the fastest growing U.S. oil field. It is the largest ever renewable power contract signed by an oil company, according to Bloomberg NEF. Terms weren’t disclosed.
“It will be interesting to see how the other oil majors respond,” Kyle Harrison, a BNEF analyst, said. “A purchase like this has historically been unprecedented.”
Exxon, which was sued by investors who alleged the company downplayed risks of global warming, is turning to clean energy as it becomes cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels. The wind and solar farms are being built in a region where electricity demand is soaring as oil production grows.
“We frequently evaluate opportunities to diversify our power supply and ensure competitive costs,” Julie King, a spokeswoman for the Irving, Texas-based oil producer, said in an email. The company denies misleading investors about climate change.
Booming production in the Permian Basin is helping Exxon offset declining output elsewhere in the world. But output in the region has grown so fast that infrastructure including pipelines and power plants have struggled to keep up.
One area of the Permian, called the Delaware Basin, consumed the equivalent of 350 megawatts this summer, tripling its load from 2015. That’s enough to power about 280,000 U.S. homes. Providers say demand is likely to triple again by 2022.
Half the power Exxon will buy will come from the Sage Draw wind farm, which Orsted plans to finish building in 2020, according to a slide from an investor presentation Nov. 28. The rest will be from the Permian Solar farm, scheduled to be finished in 2021.
In August, Exxon was said to be seeking renewable energy under long-term contracts from a group of potential developers.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/exxon-will-use-wind-solar-power-to-produce-crude-oil-in-texas
-
Opponents to TransCanada: Hold off on Field Work
Nov 29, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
Groups suing to stop Keystone XL say they are fighting some parts of TransCanada Corp.'s request to conduct pre-construction work on the pipeline.
A federal judge this month blocked construction until the Trump administration can defend its reversal of former President Obama's decision to deny permits for the embattled project (Energywire, Nov. 9). TransCanada, which had planned to begin construction in early 2019, yesterday asked Judge Brian Morris for the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana to clarify that the injunction does not apply to preliminary activities, such as pursuing permits and securing contracts (Energywire, Nov. 28).
That's fine as long as the activities never reach the field and are carried out at the pipeline developer's own risk, attorneys for the Northern Plains Resource Council wrote this week.
"[B]y making any investments or expenditures toward the Keystone XL project prior to receiving all necessary permits and approvals ... TransCanada assumes the risk that those permits will be denied, and thus any financial injury TransCanada may suffer as a result of those investments would be self-inflicted harm," according to a Tuesday statement to the court.
During a telephone conference yesterday, Sierra Club attorney Doug Hayes said his team opposed the company's motion to conduct field surveys, prepare pipe storage and discourage bird nesting along the proposed project site.
The lawyers are still finalizing their response to those elements of TransCanada's request, and Morris is expected to reach a decision by the end of next week, Hayes said.
TransCanada said that the judge's Nov. 8 injunction has threatened hundreds of jobs created to carry out pre-construction functions.
"Several of these activities are required for the prudent, safe, and environmentally sound construction of the project," spokesman Terry Cunha wrote in an email to E&E News. "Many of our pre-construction activities include submitting reports and other administrative actions required to remain in compliance with valid state and local permits."
Morris, an Obama appointee, instructed the Trump administration to flesh out its climate and economic analyses of the Keystone XL pipeline.
President Trump's State Department failed to explain why the project should be approved to cross the U.S.-Canada border, despite concerns about the effect of increased greenhouse gas emissions and despite a dramatic reduction in oil prices since the Obama administration analyzed the pipeline, the judge wrote.
Morris previously ordered the Trump administration to conduct a deeper analysis of the pipeline's alternative path through Nebraska. One month later, the State Department submitted a draft supplemental environmental impact statement finding minimal impact from the Mainline Alternative Route (Greenwire, Sept. 24). A final version is expected in December.
The Sierra Club denounced the draft analysis as a "sham review."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/11/29/stories/1060108137
-
Study Shows Gaps in Industry Emission Reduction Commitments
Nov 29, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Jenny Mandel
A group of oil and gas companies that have committed to voluntarily reducing greenhouse gas emissions should close loopholes in their pledges that account for one-fifth of global production, a new study from the Environmental Defense Fund argues.
The study looks at eight publicly traded companies that have staked claims of climate leadership through their membership in the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative: BP PLC, Chevron Corp., Eni SpA, Exxon Mobil Corp., Occidental Petroleum Corp., Repsol SA, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Total SA.
Formed in 2014, the industry group aims to reduce carbon emissions through voluntary action. Earlier this year, it announced that its members had adopted a target of limiting methane leakage from their operations to 0.25 percent, down from a 2017 baseline of 0.32 percent (E&E News PM, Sept. 24).
Methane is the primary component in natural gas and a strong driver of climate change.
In the fine print of OGCI's announcement, though, was a distinction that the companies would pare down the methane leaking from their "operated assets," those oil and gas facilities that are run by company personnel or supervised contractors. Excluded are their "non-operated assets," facilities in which the companies have a full or partial ownership stake but that are managed by other entities.
In the new study, EDF's Isabel Mogstad analyzed the portfolios of the eight publicly traded companies within OGCI to assess what share of their assets is covered by the climate pledges. The conclusion? Non-operated production associated with the companies ranged from 26 percent at Occidental to 64 percent at Repsol, with such operations heavily concentrated in the Middle East, Russia and Asia.
Taken together, assets that have one or more of the eight companies as a non-operator partner and fall outside the OGCI pledge account for one-fifth of world oil and gas production, the analysis found.
EDF said the scale of non-operated assets by OGCI members presents an opportunity to expand the reach of climate leadership and exposes them to criticism of their environmental performance if those operations leave methane unaddressed.
"Even if a company's boots are not on the ground, its reputation could be at risk by association," the study says, pointing to a growing body of satellite and other methane monitoring tools that are increasing visibility into the emissions associated with oil and gas infrastructure.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/11/29/stories/1060108135
-
Nov 28, 2018 | The Community Word
By Bill Knight
Five years ago, a fire at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, resulted in an explosion that created a 93-foot crater; destroyed more than 150 buildings, including an apartment building and school; killed 15 people; and injured 160 others.
In central Illinois, about 165,000 people live within a few miles of similarly risky places – more than 20 area chemical sites, according to a new study.
“Life at the Fenceline: Understanding Cumulative Health Hazards in Environmental Justice Communities,” from the Environmental Justice Health Alliance, Coming Clean and the Campaign for Healthier Solutions, notes that no accidents nor violations of existing regulations have been reported in central Illinois. However, even legal air pollution can be dangerous, and such incidents are possible, if not inevitable.
“Accidents at these facilities are fairly routine,” reported Eric Whalen in Earth Island Journal. “The EPA reports that, over the last five years, these chemical plants [nationally] have had over 1,200 accidents. Roughly 16,000 people were injured in these accidents, and 160,000 people were forced to evacuate.”
The report’s interactive map shows that 124 million Americans live within three miles of facilities that store or make large amounts of toxic gas or explosive materials, like large refineries, chemical manufacturers and even water-treatment facilities. That’s almost 40 percent of Americans living, working or playing under threat of chemical exposure, says the study, which adds that if an accident happens, people as far as 25 miles away could be affected.
In central Illinois, about 43 tons of toxic or dangerous substances and 258 tons of flammable chemicals are stored or manufactured at the 20 sites in this area, the report says.
“Peoria has environmental-justice issues such as air pollution from the Edwards coal-fired power plant and from Keystone and ADM, which prevailing winds carry to the south side of the city and minority and poverty-stricken neighborhoods,” said Joyce Blumenshine of the Sierra Club’s Heart of Illinois Group. “The historic, local grassroots effort to stop the expansion of PDC’s hazardous-waste landfill is a key example because the fenceline residents to that toxic waste site are low-income and predominantly minorities in the apartments off Reservoir Boulevard, many low-income, disabled and elderly in that neighborhood, and Pottstown and nearby mobile homes.”
Designated by the EPA as Risk Management Plan (RMP) facilities, the companies in the report must develop such plans in case of emergencies and update them every few years.
“Health impacts from the pollutants can mean major health problems such as asthma attacks and other lung conditions or simply headaches, fatigue, and less well-being because of poorer air quality,” Blumenshine added.
In the greater Peoria area, affected populations by zip codes range from 43,000 in Pekin, 31,000 in the Bellevue area and 28,000 on Peoria’s south side, to rural communities with 1,100 in both Deer Creek and Goodfield and about 300 in Kingston Mines. The median household income within the zip codes is $44,000, from the lowest on the south side to $72,000 in Mapleton.
Further, the Fenceline report says, “Compared to national averages, a significantly greater proportion of African Americans, Latinos and people at or near poverty levels tend to live in close proximity to the most hazardous facilities. Compounding these risks, a large and growing body of research has found that people of color and those living in poverty are exposed to higher levels of environmental pollution than Whites or people not living in poverty.”
Denise Moore, a City Council representative from the First District on Peoria’s south side (where the median household income is about $19,000), voiced concerns.
“It is not very often you see such companies locating in high-valued areas due to the cost of land and greater community oversight and resistance,” she said. “It becomes a matter of economics and ease-of-entry as to where these companies locate.
“The question really is who is looking out for the best interests of residents,” she continued. “Having said that, I believe that companies locate in areas adjacent to low-income residents because regulatory agencies may rely too heavily on companies’ reports of community feedback. In addition, companies [can] make an illegitimate case of bringing value to an unimproved, low-income area emphasizing the promise of jobs; that rarely materializes. If regulatory agencies believe there is no or little opposition, approval is often granted. Once constructed, actions to rein in health-threatening behavior are more difficult.”
The 60-page report’s findings note: Chemicals used within a few miles of central Illinois neighborhoods include ammonia and chlorine, with some companies using carcinogens, such as Archer-Daniels-Midland (hexane and acetaldehyde) and others using toxins such as Chemtura (ethyl chloride and hydrochloric acid), according to the EPA’s latest National Air Toxics Assessment. 45 percent of the approximately 125,000 schools in the United States are located within three miles of
RMP facilities. This puts more than 24 million children and their educators at risk. 39 percent of almost 11,000 hospitals and nursing homes in the United States are near RMP facilities, and they could be difficult to evacuate in emergencies.The U.S. EPA and Illinois EPA try to monitor such sites, but cutbacks have drained resources, and the Trump administration has sought to block improved safety measures for such hazardous chemical facilities. However, a lawsuit by the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists and others forced Clean Air Act safety improvements to take effect.
“While these bolstered safety measures stand for the moment, Trump’s EPA, under Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, is now pursuing an effort to roll them back outright. It’s essential that the disaster-prevention measures remain intact to reduce risks in fenceline communities across the country,” Whalen wrote.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office – which in September complained that the IEPA wouldn’t release emission reports from a Chicago-area plant – has described current safeguards as “alarmingly inadequate.”
As Blumenshine said, citizens’ actions sometimes work. For instance, the Illinois Pollution Control Board this fall shelved Gov. Bruce Rauner’s proposal to relax limits on pollution from some coal-fired power plants in Illinois. It affects the Edwards plant in Pekin previously operated by Dynegy and now owned by Vistra Energy. The PCB ruled that the cap be lowered to a level recommended by the Attorney General’s office, and it’s tentatively scheduled additional hearings on its decision Jan. 29 and 30 in Springfield.
“Residents can provide their representatives with power when residents organize, become familiar with the company’s organizational structure (where the ‘pain points’ may be), and understand and articulate the negative health concerns that are impacting their community,” said Moore. “In small cities, where elected representatives are part-time, have no staff and no budget, it can be a challenge to direct this type of resistance. It has been national organizations that often bring awareness and resources to assist residents in mounting a challenge to company apathy about health concerns. It can be done. However, it is not fast, cheap or easy.”The study’s sources and recommendations
Organizations behind the comprehensive study are “Coming Clean,” a national environmental health and justice collaborative of 200 organizations working to reform the chemical and fossil-fuels industries so they are no longer a source of harm and to secure changes that allow a safe chemical and clean-energy economy to flourish [www.comingcleaninc.org]; and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform, a network of grassroots environmental-justice organizations in communities disproportionately impacted by toxic chemicals.
Their report makes several recommendations, including: Government should strengthen the enforcement of existing environmental and workplace health and safety regulations. “Congress should increase funding to the EPA, OSHA and the states for expanding inspections and improving the enforcement of environmental and workplace health and safety laws so that problems in chemical facilities can be identified before they lead to disasters.” Government should require publicly accessible, formal health-impact assessments and mitigation plans to gauge the cumulative impact of hazardous chemical exposures on fenceline communities. “Federal, state and local agencies should assess, with full participation by affected communities, the potential impact of unplanned chemical releases and the cumulative impacts of daily air-pollution exposures on the health of fenceline communities.” Government should mandate large chemical facilities to continuously monitor, report and reduce their fenceline-area emissions and health hazards. “Unplanned, smaller releases of toxic chemicals often precede more serious incidents at chemical facilities and may directly impact the health of people. Continuous, publicly available monitoring of air emissions will improve community knowledge of hazards and potentially help prevent minor issues from leading to major disasters.” Government should prevent the construction of new or expanded chemical facilities near homes and schools, and the siting of new homes and schools near facilities that use or store hazardous chemicals. “The siting of new facilities that use or store hazardous chemicals, or expansion of existing ones, near homes, schools or playgrounds increases the possibility that a chemical release or explosion will result in a disaster. Similarly, new homes, schools and playgrounds should not be sited near hazardous facilities.” Facilities themselves must share information on hazards and solutions, and emergency-response plans, with fenceline communities and workers. “Employees and neighbors can only participate effectively in their own protection if they have full access to information and to decision-making processes. First responders must know what hazards they face.” Facilities that use or store hazardous chemicals must adopt safer chemicals and processes. “Switching to inherently safer chemicals and technologies – which removes underlying hazards – is the most effective way to prevent deaths and injuries from chemical disasters (as well as eliminate ongoing emissions of the replaced chemicals).”
While these may seem sensible, some may wonder whether they’re feasible – especially concerning government reform.
“The recommendations should be followed,” said State Rep. Jehan Gordon-Booth, D-Peoria. “They were recommended for a reason and that reason is the safety of our fellow citizens. The feasibility of these recommendations has everything to do with whether or not there is a political will to follow through. These recommendations will be expensive, so it will be competing with all of the other spaces that compete for a place at the local, state and federal appropriations table. It will be incredibly important for community members to continue to make their voices heard on this issue to ensure that their elected representatives know that this is an issue that they deeply care about.”
State Sen. Dave Koehler, D-Peoria, chair of the Senate’s Environmental and Conservation Committee added that they might be achievable.
“I would welcome a hearing on environmental-justice issues,” Koehler said. “Under a new Pritzker administration, the new EPA director will hopefully tune in to this.”
http://thecommunityword.com/online/blog/2018/11/28/toxins-in-our-neighborhood/
-
Global Warming Enters Infrastructure Talks
Nov 29, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Maxine Joselow
As momentum builds for an infrastructure deal in the next Congress, a major new report is thrusting climate change into infrastructure talks on the Hill.
The second volume of the National Climate Assessment, a sweeping report produced by 13 federal agencies, warns that the lives and safety of Americans are already being harmed by climate change (Climatewire, Nov. 23).
The document came after leaders of both parties have signaled a willingness to collaborate on broad infrastructure legislation in the next Congress (E&E News PM, Nov. 7).
Climate change has largely been absent from those discussions. But during a hearing yesterday on surface transportation infrastructure, Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee repeatedly highlighted the report and the need to account for a warming planet.
"We cannot have a conversation about surface transportation without talking about climate change and the increasingly extreme weather that accompanies it," ranking member Tom Carper (D-Del.) said in his opening statement.
"Our transportation sector is a major contributor to climate change, and our roads, bridges, and railways are also extremely vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather fueled by climate change," Carper said, citing the assessment's findings.
"Our next infrastructure bill must respond to this threat by focusing on a more resilient and sustainable transportation sector to protect communities nationwide," he added.
The transportation and infrastructure section of the National Climate Assessment warns that roads, bridges and airports in coastal areas are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, including sea-level rise and extreme weather.
As an example of the challenges facing coastal communities, the report cites the impact of Superstorm Sandy in New England. During Sandy, storm tides of up to 14 feet flooded several tunnels, closing them for at least a week while floodwater was pumped out. The three major airports in the region also flooded, with LaGuardia closing for three days.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), a potential presidential candidate in 2020, said yesterday that Sandy illustrated the need to build more resilient infrastructure.
"In the Northeast and in New York in particular, we're faced with the challenge of aging infrastructure that has outlived its useful life and needs repair or replacement," Gillibrand said.
"On top of that, climate change-fueled sea-level rise and extreme weather threaten to put our infrastructure at risk if we do not rebuild it in a more resilient way," she added, citing the flooding and corrosion of the Hudson River rail tunnel during Sandy.
The National Climate Assessment also warns that warmer temperatures will place a strain on transportation infrastructure. For instance, pavement will deteriorate more quickly. Expansion joints on bridges will be stressed. And airplanes could have a harder time taking off, because when air warms, it becomes less dense.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a longtime climate hawk, noted that Arizona's Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport was recently closed because of extreme heat.
"We've got to understand how dramatically the climate is changing. And if we're going to build 30- or 40- or 50-year projects, we've got to be planning for the full life cycle of those projects," Whitehouse said.
"Infrastructure is great," he added. "But these peculiar and changing conditions that are driven by climate change and carbon emissions absolutely need to be taken into account."
Still, Republicans on the EPW panel largely skirted the climate issue. They focused instead on the perennial question of how to pay for broad infrastructure legislation — a question that dogged Trump's failed $1 billion infrastructure plan last year.
"I have to say that this has been a very disappointing hearing," said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). "I was hoping you would choose some magicians to come in here, perhaps some alchemists, to tell us how to stir a pot of lead, get it to the right temperature, and get it to silver and gold, and we wouldn't actually have to pay for infrastructure."
He added, "But here we've learned ... that if we want to build roads and bridges and infrastructure, we have to come up with some revenue solutions to actually pay for this. So I'm just heartsick and disappointed that we're having to go down this path."
In an interview with E&E News after the hearing, Carper said he thought Republicans would care about incorporating climate concerns into an infrastructure package — they just might not use the term "climate change."
"I think everybody's especially concerned about it, whether you call it climate change or extreme weather," the Democrat said.
Reporter Nick Sobczyk contributed.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/11/29/stories/1060108143
-
EPA’s Blown Deadlines Trouble Judges at Ozone Pollution Argument
Nov 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
The EPA’s refusal to expand an East Coast region struggling with chronic ozone problems baffled judges who hammered the agency’s repeated failure to meet deadlines on plans to keep air pollution from blowing in from upwind states.
Members of the Ozone Transport Region—11 Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states established by Congress to take additional steps to address air pollution—petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency in 2017 to include nine more states that they said are responsible for the air pollution blowing across their borders.
The EPA’s claim that expanding the region is unnecessary, given existing regulations to prevent power-plant pollution from blowing across state lines, drew skepticism from U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit judges at oral argument Nov. 28.
Judge Robert L. Wilkins pointed out that the EPA repeatedly missed its legal deadlines to approve state-written plans to keep their pollution from interfering with their neighbors’ air quality “not just by months, but for years and years and years.”
Sonya Shea, a Justice Department attorney representing the EPA, argued that expanding the region is unnecessary because ozone pollution levels are trending downward and the instances of problematic ozone concentrations remain “few and isolated.”
No InterferenceThe Clean Air Act, under its “good neighbor” provision, requires all states to ensure that their pollution doesn’t interfere with other states’ ability to meet federal air quality standards.
The EPA, however, denied every state request to enforce that provision, David S. Frankel from the New York Attorney General’s Office argued.
The EPA “delayed and denied all recent petitions” that Delaware, Maryland, and Connecticut filed to impose new pollution controls on power plants in upwind states that are contributing to ozone problems on the East Coast, he said.
Judges Gregory G. Katsas and A. Raymond Randolph also heard the argument.
The case is New York v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 17-1273, oral arguments 11/28/18.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epas-blown-deadlines-trouble-judges-at-ozone-pollution-argument
-
EPA Chief: Trump Administration May Intervene in Next Climate Study
Nov 28, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Alex Guillen
Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Wednesday accused the Obama administration of tilting last week’s federal climate change report to focus on the worst-case outcomes — and indicated that the Trump administration could seek to shape the next big study of the issue.
“Going forward, I think we need to take a look at the modeling that’s used for the next assessment,” Wheeler said at an event hosted by The Washington Post.
Wheeler’s comments echoed remarks Monday from President Donald Trump, who said he doesn’t believe the National Climate Assessment's conclusions on climate change’s economic impacts.
The report, released on the day after Thanksgiving, was the first major climate assessment produced predominantly during Trump’s presidency. But Wheeler still maintained that Trump’s predecessor was the driving force behind it.
“The drafting of this report was drafted at the direction of the Obama administration,” Wheeler said.
“And I don’t know this for a fact — I wouldn’t be surprised if the Obama administration told the report’s authors to take a look at the worst case scenario for this report,” added Wheeler, who said he had not discussed the report with Trump.
But the Obama White House official who initiated the assessment flatly denied Wheeler's contention.
"Mr. Wheeler’s insinuation is absolutely false," John Holdren, who served as Obama's science adviser, told POLITICO in an email. Holdren says he called on the U.S. Global Change Research Program to conduct a thorough study, and that he had no role in selecting the report's authors.
"My only instruction was that the USGCRP should continue the distinguished tradition of the first three by drawing on the most current peer-reviewed science to illuminate what climate change is doing and is projected to do across the geographic regions and economic and ecological underpinnings of well-being in the United States," he said.
The climate assessment, which is compiled by hundreds of experts across more than a dozen agencies, is mandated by Congress to be released every four years. The report released on Friday warned that the U.S. would face hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming decades, but that steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions could reduce the impacts.
"Earth's climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities" the report said. "Climate-related risks will continue to grow without additional action."
While the initial stages of preparing the report were started in the final year of the Obama administration, the majority of the work, including the final three drafts, collection of comments and agency reviews, were conducted under the Trump administration.
Some of the report's authors have disputed the Trump administration criticism that the report focused on worst-case scenarios, pointing out that it included a wide range of projections, including forecasts where greenhouse gas emissions are sharply curtailed from their current trend.
"Assertions by high officials of the Trump administration that these are 'worst case' reports are nothing more than a flimsy attempt to discredit the careful and comprehensive work of some of the best climate scientists in the country, inside and outside of government," Holdren said.
Wheeler also connected the report’s headline-grabbing projection that climate change could shrink the U.S. economy by 10 percent by the end of the century to an outside study that “my staff tell me was funded by Tom Steyer,” the environmentalist and Democratic mega-donor.
Steyer’s organization Next Generation was one source of funding for the 2017 study, published in the journal Science and written by a dozen academic and private sector experts. It was primarily funded by the National Science Foundation, the Energy Department and the Skoll Global Threats Fund. The study was also supported by a “nonpartisan” grant awarded jointly by Steyer’s Next Generation, along with Bloomberg Philanthropies and former George W. Bush administration Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.
Wheeler said there was no political review of the material by the Trump administration and that such oversight would have drawn accusations of political meddling. And he complained that the report ignored “innovation” and assumed technologies would not advance in the future.
“I think we really need to take a hard look at where the markets are going, where technology is going, where innovation is going and what has driven the reduction in CO2. We need to give credit for the CO2 reduction,” Wheeler said, citing the reductions in U.S. emissions.
Wheeler, a former lobbyist for coal producer Murray Energy, among other clients, said that coal must have a future in the U.S.
“Coal has not yet peaked worldwide in its usage,” he said, citing growing coal consumption in Asia.
He also criticized the Obama administration’s landmark climate rule, the Clean Power Plan, which he said “took the U.S. coal industry out of the mix here, which means that we would no longer be developing clean coal technology in the United States.”
The Trump administration’s proposed replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy rule, will “allow coal technology to continue to expand here” and be exported to other nations, he said.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/11/epa-chief-trump-administration-may-intervene-in-next-climate-study-992872
-
Technology Could Ease Climate Report’s Grim Forecast, EPA Head Says
Nov 28, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
A federal report saying climate change could cost the U.S. billions is based on a worst-case scenario and doesn’t account for American innovation, the country’s top environment official said.
The comments from acting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler are his first on the fourth National Climate Assessment—released Nov. 23 by 13 federal agencies, including the EPA.
The report, required by law every four years, is the most comprehensive look to date at climate science and the impacts global warming could have on the U.S., broken down by regions of the country and economic sectors.
But Wheeler, like President Donald Trump, dismissed projections in the report that the effects of climate change could cost the U.S. tens of billions of dollars.
“I don’t think the assessment took into account the technological advancements and innovation we’ve seen,” Wheeler said, without citing specific examples, during a Nov. 28 live interview at The Washington Post.
More Realistic ProjectionsBut the EPA head also said he hasn’t yet read the full climate assessment, which is more than 1,500 pages, and he didn’t review it before it was published.
“If we had made changes to the report, we would have been accused of manipulating the scientific recommendations of the career staff,” Wheeler said.
He added that the report was drafted at the direction of the Obama administration and likely considered the worst-case scenarios.
The National Climate Assessment is required every four years, though the federal government hasn’t always stuck to that schedule. The last report was released in 2014 during the Obama administration.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/technology-could-ease-climate-reports-grim-forecast-epa-head-says
-
UN Contradicts Wheeler's Claim That US on Track to Meet Paris GHG Goal
Nov 28, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler says the United States is on track to meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals under the Paris Agreement even as it prepares to withdraw from the international climate deal, though a new United Nations report contradicts that claim, finding the U.S. to be far from its reduction pledges.
Wheeler claimed that unlike most other industrialized nations, the U.S. is "on target" to meet its Paris pledge -- known as a nationally determined contribution (NDC) -- to cut emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 26-28 percent by 2025.
“We are meeting our Paris reductions, but we are going to withdraw from the treaty,” he said during a Nov. 28 Washington Post live event.
However, his claims are strongly contradicted by a Nov. 27 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report that lists the U.S. as one of seven countries far from meeting its goals. Other experts also have long said the country would miss the Obama administration's targets, largely due to the Trump administration's suite of climate policy rollbacks.
Wheeler's claim may be limited to the 2020 target, since he repeatedly touted a 14 percent reduction from 2005 levels, including a 2.7 percent cut in 2017. However, he did not address a specific year when discussing targets.
Also noteworthy about Wheeler's remarks is the fact that he is using Obama-era targets as a general benchmark for measuring the country's progress on GHGs, given that President Donald Trump has strongly criticized the prior administration's approach to Paris as unfair and economically harmful, and said his administration would make no efforts to meet the NDC.
The UNEP report concludes the U.S. is “unlikely” to meet its 2025 target and says it is “uncertain” whether it will meet the 2020 one.
The report details Trump's pledge to withdraw from the Paris Agreement unless the country receives better “terms.” It also outlines the Trump EPA proposals to repeal the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) utility GHG rule and to weaken vehicle GHG limits. Further, it cites Trump's increased tariffs on imported solar cells to find, "Under currently implemented policies, the USA is unlikely to meet its NDC target for 2025 and it is uncertain whether it will meet its 2020 target."
The report does note that "action by non-state and sub-national actors in the country could contribute significantly to reducing future emissions," but it also cites "a range of studies" predicting that due to the federal policy rollbacks, GHG emissions in 2025 will be between 0.8 and 1.9 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent higher than the NDC.
For instance, a September report from a group known as America's Pledge finds that “current measures” from sub-national entities could results in a 17 percent cut by 2025, and that a 24 percent cut is achievable under “enhanced engagement” by states, cities and others. While that scenario would come close to the Obama NDC, it would still fall short.
The UNEP report also notes that despite federal efforts to weaken emission rules, several studies also predict that by 2030, GHGs will be 3 to 8 percent lower due to growing natural gas and renewable energy in electricity generation.
"There will be a time lag between policy rollbacks and their impacts on emission levels," the report says.
'Paucity' Of Leadership
Wheeler's remarks underscore the Trump administration's dismissive stance toward Paris, ahead of the annual U.N. climate talks to be held Dec. 2-14 in Katowice, Poland.
Even though the United States remains a participant in Paris until at least 2020, Trump's continued doubts about climate policy and science “will have a corrosive effect on global ambition,” says Elliot Diringer of the Center for Climate & Energy Solutions, in Nov. 26 remarks previewing the meeting.
This is “something we'll only see in time as countries implement their NDCs and come forward with new NDCs,” which he calls the “most important measures of ambition.”
Diringer adds: “For the time being, parties have come to terms with the possibility that the U.S. may withdraw from the agreement” and remain “sensitive” to the issues the U.S. raises because they would like to retain the option of the U.S. ultimately remaining in the agreement or re-entering the deal under a new administration.
Further, Diringer says the “lack of high-level leadership we are seeing extends well beyond the United States. Many governments are distracted or weakened by a set of other issues that have come to the fore. Given that, we actually are seeing a paucity of leadership at the highest levels.”
Nevertheless, he expects countries to adopt a “rulebook” implementing the Paris deal at the Katowice meeting. Governments feel “a collective political pressure to deliver, and I think for that reason, delivery on the rulebook is more likely than not.”
Failure on this point would be seen as further unraveling of the Paris Agreement and would deliver a blow to multilateral agreements across the board -- something the participants will strongly seek to avoid, he adds.
'Realistic Projections'
In the Post interview, Wheeler defended the policy rollbacks and minimized the urgency of the need for swifter climate action as outlined by the National Climate Assessment (NCA), the federal government's recent report that included participation by EPA scientists and contained grave warnings about the skyrocketing costs of adverse climate impacts.
The White House released the report the day after Thanksgiving, but the study has nonetheless garnered significant news coverage even as high ranking officials continue to downplay it. Trump said he does not believe its conclusions and press secretary Sarah Sanders said it is not based on facts.
Wheeler said the NCA was mostly written by the prior administration and had been going through peer review for the past two years, and that he did not review it before it was released. He added that it would have looked bad had political officials sought to change the findings, though he questioned what he said was a focus on the worst-case climate scenario, modeling and other underlying assumptions to suggest that those would be different under the next review.
“If we had intervened and made changes we would have been accused of overriding the career staff," he said. "Going forward," he said Trump officials would look at the modeling and include "more realistic projections" on technology and innovation.
Congress requires that the executive branch issue an NCA every four years.
Wheeler's claim that the U.S. is on track to meet its Paris goals also contradicts several climate experts, including Harvard government professor Joe Aldy, a former Obama climate adviser. He told a Sept. 4 event that while emissions in 2020 will be "quite close" to the NDC target, meeting the 2025 goal "is tough without any new policies."
Aldy added he did not expect any new policies at the federal level in the next few years. “I don't think between now and 2025 there is going to be enough to deliver on the Paris pledge.”
Similarly, a June 28 Rhodium Group analysis found that the U.S. is likely to significantly miss the 2025 goal, and that emissions could begin rising again late in the next decade after years of decline. The analysis predicts a 12-20 percent GHG cut by 2025 and warned that emissions could rise in 2030. Even so, it predicts continued power sector emission cuts, including 37 percent by 2025, which is significantly more than what the CPP required.
Wheeler repeatedly stressed the ongoing GHG cuts and suggested that no other country is doing as much to reduce emissions as the United States, while similarly predicting increased coal use in Asia for the foreseeable future.
On the NCA, Wheeler said he continues to ask his staff questions and will receive further briefings, but that there are no plans for the administration to formulate a response. He also questioned the conclusion that climate impacts would reduce gross domestic product by 10 percent by 2100, saying that finding was made by a study funded by billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, which overlooked up to 15 GDP indicators.
Further discussing rollbacks of Obama climate rules, Wheeler said the administration's proposal to freeze vehicle standards at model year 2020 levels would amount to a "minuscule" increase CO2 compared to the Obama standards.
He acknowledged robust internal debate over a controversial safety analysis that supports the rollback and said EPA is looking at the underlying data as well as other data submitted in public comments to "make sure the final regulation reflects the best" information.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/un-contradicts-wheelers-claim-us-track-meet-paris-ghg-goal
-
Bernie Sanders Not Stepping into Senate Energy Void as Liberals Fear Manchin
Nov 29, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna and Ben Lefebvre
Pro-coal Democrat Joe Manchin is positioned to take his party's top energy policy post in the Senate, to the horror of environmental groups that want aggressive legislative action on climate change.
And climate hawk Bernie Sanders is showing no interest in thwarting him, even though he has the seniority to do so.
The jockeying comes as the top Democratic slot on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is set to come open if ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) jumps to the Commerce Committee. Her most plausible replacement would be Manchin, a conservative West Virginian who famously shot the Democrats’ cap-and-trade climate bill in a 2010 campaign ad.
Sanders outranks Manchin in seniority on the committee and could block him. But the Vermont independent has shown little inclination to leave his perch as the ranking member of the Budget Committee — even though he made climate change and clean energy a major plank in his 2016 presidential run and plans a national town hall on the issue Monday.
“Anyone but Manchin,” said Lukas Ross, senior policy analyst at Friends of the Earth. “I’d rather pick someone from the phonebook.”
Sanders, who is exploring a 2020 presidential campaign, said in an email to POLITICO Wednesday evening that he is proud of his work on Budget Committee, where he’s been for the past two terms, and suggested he’d likely stay.
"As ranking member I have helped fight for budget and national priorities, which represent the needs of working families and not just the 1 percent. I look forward to continuing the fight in the new session for social, racial, economic and environmental justice," he said.
Manchin said he's interested in serving in the position but that no one has spoken to him about it. He urged all groups Wednesday to give him a chance.
“I think they’ll find me, in any capacity I am, very moderate and trying to find a pathway forward for all sides to be heard and listened to,” Manchin told POLITICO.
Liberal groups want to block Manchin, but they have not applied any direct pressure yet to Sanders or Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. The lack of activity in the Senate contrasts with this month's raucous protests calling for House Democrats to back a "Green New Deal," a sweeping proposal to decarbonize the economy being pushed by Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“We’re not shy about bringing the full spectrum of Democratic actions, including protests, to Capitol Hill but right now our priority is building power and building a vision on climate change,” said Julian NoiseCat, a U.S. policy analyst for 350.org, which is helping with the push for the Green New Deal in the House. "We see that primarily in the House at this current moment in time."
Youth advocates flooded the offices of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and incoming Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) earlier this month urging them to back the Green New Deal proposal and make climate change a central plank for their caucus. Pelosi has said she wants to revive a select committee on climate change, and Pallone is promising several E&C hearings on the issue early next year.
Schumer is already facing grumbling on his left flank for making Manchin vice chairman of the party's internal policy and communications committee, and for reappointing him to that leadership post even after Manchin voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Activists warn that allowing the coal-friendly West Virginia Democrat to grab the top spot on Energy would fuel a liberal revolt.
“This is a Chuck Schumer problem,” Ross said. “If he allows Manchin to become ranking member of Energy and Natural Resources, it might be strike three.”
Manchin's critics aren’t explicitly pressuring Sanders to seize the Energy spot. Some say it's up to Schumer to reassess seniority rules or do whatever necessary to prevent Manchin from moving up. Other committee Democrats who are more senior than Manchin and could step into the role include Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who are currently ranking members of the Finance and Agriculture Committees, respectively.
“There’s probably a lot of people that need to take action here to make sure the Democrats make the right choice. We have every faith [Sanders] will do whatever he can to ensure he’s doing whatever he can on climate change,” said David Turnbull, strategic communications director of Oil Change International. “Lifting Joe Manchin to this position would be a horrible own-goal by the Democrats.”
Still, elevating Sanders would bring some risk as well, given how far to the left his positions are. One environmentalist based in the West said Sanders' support for the "keep it in the ground" movement on fossil fuels may not play well with Democrats whose states depend heavily on royalties and taxes from oil and gas development.
“There’s a right way and wrong way do to oil and gas development on public land, and that’s not a conversation Bernie Sanders wants to have,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity because his organization hadn’t formed a position on who should be the committee’s ranking Democrat.
The threat of a liberal backlash and Sanders' decision not to campaign for the job have created a difficult decision for Cantwell, who is next in line to be the top Democrat on Commerce after Bill Nelson of Florida lost reelection this year. The Commerce Committee holds broad jurisdiction over industries like aviation and technology that are key employers in her state.
Cantwell told reporters Wednesday she’d yet to make a decision and doesn’t have a timeline for doing so.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) would also have seniority over Manchin and could face pressure, though she’s expressed happiness with her current top slot on the Agriculture Committee this week.
Elana Schor contributed to this report.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/11/bernie-sanders-not-stepping-into-senate-energy-void-as-liberals-fear-manchin-995388
-
Manchin: Enviros 'Ought to Sit down with Me'
Nov 29, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Geof Koss and George Cahlink
Sen. Joe Manchin said yesterday he'd like to meet with environmental critics who are seeking to head off the possibility of the coal-boosting West Virginian leading Democrats on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the next Congress.
"They ought to sit down with me — I'm always trying to find a balance between the environment and the economy," Manchin told E&E News yesterday.
Although there are a number of unresolved factors that would have to transpire for Manchin to rise in the ranks on Energy, he reiterated his interest if the opportunity presented itself.
"I'm going to serve wherever I'm supposed to serve," he said. "I'm on Energy, if I can do that I'd be happy to do whatever I could to put a balance to the whole process, working with everybody."
Manchin's comments came as environmentalists were mounting a full-court press to keep the dominos from falling his way if current ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) moves to the ranking slot on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, as expected.
Cantwell maintained yesterday she has not made a decision on whether to seek the slot being vacated by Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and has no timeline for doing so. "There's a lot going on," she told E&E News.
But if she leaves, environmentalists want either Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) or Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to replace her. The two are the third and fourth most senior Democrats on the panel, behind Ron Wyden of Oregon, who is staying as the ranking member on the Finance Committee next year — a position he claimed after giving up the Energy gavel in 2014.
Manchin, who is fifth in seniority, currently does not hold a leadership spot on any committee. He's been an active member of the Energy Committee during his Senate tenure, a platform he's used to advocate for the continued use of coal as a fuel source, as well as coal and carbon sequestration technology.
Stabenow remains "committed" to staying on as ranking member of the Agriculture Committee, an aide reiterated yesterday, although environmentalists are hoping that a lame-duck deal on the farm bill will change her mind.
And although Sanders has not been an active member on Energy for the past two years, he is considering the ranking position, a Senate Democratic aide said yesterday.
Enter the Bern
Sanders, who is the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, this week has ignored or sidestepped questions about his plans for the next Congress.
"We're worried about Yemen today," Sanders told E&E News yesterday, referencing the bipartisan push that later passed the Senate to force the U.S. withdrawal from the Saudi-led war in Yemen. His office did not respond to a request for comment.
Although the Budget Committee allows Sanders a megaphone on a variety of topics, it's become less relevant in recent years as regular budgeting order fell by the wayside. Current Budget Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) earlier this year suggested the committee should be abolished because the process was so broken.
Prior to his presidential run in 2016, Sanders was a frequent participant at Energy Committee hearings, where he often politely but pointedly highlighted the risks of climate change and touted renewable energy sources. But in the current Congress he's been largely absent from committee hearings.
Sanders' purported interest in the Energy spot comes as climate activists are raising pressure on the incoming House Democratic majority to take aggressive action on warming.
He told reporters this week that he plans to accelerate his long-standing efforts on climate change.
"We are going to be very aggressive on an issue that this president has no clue about," he said, noting the "town meeting" he has planned for Monday "dealing with climate change, dealing with the impact it is already causing in this country and around the world, and how we transform our energy system."
Sanders said he expects more than 1 million viewers to tune in to the livestream of the event in the Capitol Visitor Center, which will also feature 350.org founder and author Bill McKibben and other prominent environmentalists.
Undeterred
Manchin said he would not be deterred by environmental backlash if the opportunity arose for him to take the ranking spot.
"If you're in my game, you get pushback every day," he said. "The main thing is how do you bring people together to move forward rather than push them back?"
Manchin also dismissed the notion that he could be using the dust-up as leverage to gain other plum assignments and sidestep the controversy entirely, a rumor that one lobbyist said was circulating yesterday.
"This is all news to me," he said.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/11/29/stories/1060108155
-
Study Warns of Cascading Health Risks From the Changing Climate
Nov 28, 2018 | New York Times
By Somini Sengupta and Kendra Pierre-Louis
Crop yields are declining. Tropical diseases like dengue fever are showing up in unfamiliar places, including in the United States. Tens of millions of people are exposed to extreme heat.
These are the stark findings of a wide-ranging scientific report that lays out the growing risks of climate change for human health and predicts that cascading hazards could soon face millions more people in rich and poor countries around the world.
The report, published Wednesday in the public health journal The Lancet, incorporates the work of 24 academic institutions and United Nations agencies and follows a major climate assessment issued last week by the United States government. The two studies represent the most serious warnings to date that climate change is posing a series of interconnected health risks for the global population.
“We don’t see these health impacts individually,” said Kristie L. Ebi, a professor of global health at the University of Washington and one of the authors of the Lancet study. “We see them jointly. We see them coming at communities all at the same time.”
Crop yields are declining. Tropical diseases like dengue fever are showing up in unfamiliar places, including in the United States. Tens of millions of people are exposed to extreme heat.
But as the world continues to warm, the study warned of a number of potential domino effects.Extreme heat
In 2017, 157 million more people were exposed to heat-related health risks than in 2000, the report said. And that was before the scorching summer of 2018.
In England and Wales, for instance, over a 15-day period of exceptionally high temperatures this summer, there were 700 “excess deaths” compared to a comparable period in previous years, said Nick Watts, the report’s lead author.
Some of the most vulnerable people are in relatively prosperous countries in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean region, particularly because these places have large populations of older people living in cities. In both regions, more than 40 percent of people over the age of 65 were found to be at risk.
In the United States, the National Climate Assessment found that some of the largest increases in heat-related mortality in future years would occur in the Northeast. By midcentury, there could be 50 to 100 excess deaths per one million people due to heat in that region, the report said.Lost labor
Heat makes it hard for people to work, especially on farms.
According to the Lancet report, in 2017, 153 billion hours of labor were lost worldwide because of heat, with the largest share in vulnerable rural communities in countries like India. That’s 64 billion more lost labor hours than in 2000.
By midcentury, “Prevalence of heatstroke and extreme weather will have redefined global labor and production beyond recognition,” The Lancet warned in an accompanying editorial. “Multiple cities will be uninhabitable and migration patterns will be far beyond those levels already creating pressure worldwide.”Infectious diseases
The risk of debilitating, often deadly infectious diseases is moving to new places. That’s because even small changes in temperature and rainfall can have a significant effect on where diseases that are spread by bugs and water can take hold.
Habitats for dengue-spreading mosquitoes have expanded significantly, the Lancet study concluded. The National Climate Assessment noted that warmer conditions may have helped transmit Zika in the United States.
Since 1950, the Lancet study said, the cholera bacteria has expanded its reach to the Baltic coastline, and the risk of malaria has spread to higher altitudes in sub-Saharan Africa.
“I don’t want people to be surprised when they see cases of what used to be tropical diseases now being found in the United States as a result of changing climate,” said Gina McCarthy, a professor of public health at Harvard and a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration.Droughts and floods
Extreme droughts and floods are affecting already vulnerable communities, particularly in Southeast Asia and South America. Drought affects agricultural yields, in turn heightening the risk of early death, hunger and childhood malnutrition, according to the Lancet report.
With drought often comes more dust, which can aggravate allergies and asthma and can also accelerate the reproduction of disease-causing fungi in soil, according to the National Climate Assessment. Floods can wash away farmland and homes and spread waterborne diseases.Food production
Though the world still produces more than enough food to feed itself, rising temperatures and extreme weather events are affecting food production. Crop yields are diminishing in 30 countries, reversing a trend of rising agricultural productivity and threatening food security around the world and in the United States.
The quality of some food itself is also expected to decline, according to the National Climate Assessment. Rising levels of carbon dioxide will reduce the presence of key nutrients — including iron, zinc, and protein — in crops and seafood.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/climate/climate-change-health.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
Add recipients
Suggested