Preview Newsletter
AM ACC Clips Report - December 10, 2018
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Hearing on Energy Efficiency
Dec 12, 2018 | The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy
Location: 2322 Rayburn / 10:15 AM -
(ACC Mentioned) Chemical Makers Seek to Boost U.S.-Canadian Regulatory Cooperation
Dec 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Adam Allington
U.S. and Canadian companies are calling for more action to streamline cross-border trade in chemicals. -
(ACC Mentioned) US Exports of Polyethylene Surge to Record High in October: USITC
Dec 7, 2018 | Platts
By Phillipe Craig
US October exports of polyethylene climbed for a third consecutive month to reach a record high, according to data released Friday by the US International Trade Commission. -
(ACC Mentioned) US Sends More PE to Latin America in October Amid Trade Tensions with China: ITC
Dec 7, 2018 | Platts
By Phillipe Craig
US polyethylene exports to Latin America rose in October as target diversification continued to take shape amid trade tensions with China, according to US International Trade Commission data released Friday. -
EPA, Canada Reject Industry Push To Align Chemical Regulatory Decisions
Dec 7, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
EPA and Canadian regulators are rejecting a push from the chemical industry and other sectors to align regulatory decisions on pesticides and other toxic chemicals, citing conflicting statutory directives and strict time lines for decision-making under the countries' governing statutes such as the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
Pennsylvania Redeveloper to Defend Use of PCB-Laced Fill Material
Dec 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
A Pennsylvania company working to reclaim an abandoned mine is challenging the EPA’s determination that the company potentially violated a federal chemical waste law and state permit. -
South Carolina Court Handed Firefighting Foam Cases
Dec 8, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
Tyco Fire Products LP and Chemguard Inc. will face allegations in a South Carolina court that their firefighting foam contaminated groundwater around the country. -
Three Years Later, Wisconsin Hasn't Stopped Toxic Chemical Flow
Dec 10, 2018 | Wisconsin State Journal
By Steven Verburg
Toxic chemicals linked to an array of life-threatening illnesses are contaminating Wisconsin’s drinking water and fish, but the government has been slow to enact regulations to hasten cleanups. -
Major European Project Finds High Phthalates Levels in Toys
Dec 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
A joint customs and market surveillance operation by four EU countries has found that of 104 samples of toys it checked, more than a third contained illegal levels of phthalates. -
(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Department of Energy Reports Touts Need for Appalachian Ethane Storage Hub
Dec 10, 2018 | Wheeling Intelligencer
By Steven Allen Adams
A new report released by the U.S. Department of Energy cites the potential of West Virginia and other Appalachian states for the location of centralized storage hub for natural gas production. -
EPA Climate Finding Questions Could Pave Way for Methane Rule Rewrite
Dec 8, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
The EPA wants to define a threshold for the amount of pollution required to pose a significant threat to public health and prompt controls, a move that could raise questions about limits on oil and gas methane emissions, the agency’s air chief said. -
A Push to Make Fracking Waste Water Usable in Agriculture — and Even for Drinking
Dec 8, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Rebecca Beitsch
Fracking requires a huge amount of water, a major concern in dry Western states that otherwise welcome the practice. But New Mexico thinks it can mitigate that problem by pushing oil companies to treat and recycle fracking waste water for use in agriculture — or even as drinking water. -
Lawmakers Eye Partnerships to Boost Building Efficiency
Dec 10, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Christa Marshall
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy this week will examine the role of public-private partnerships in boosting efficiency in federal buildings. -
'I Don't Know Why FERC Can't Do Better' — Judge
Dec 10, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
A panel of judges last week scrutinized federal energy regulators' oversight of natural gas pipelines and associated projects. -
Gas Industry Looks to DHS to Speed up Cyber Reviews
Dec 10, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
Dave McCurdy, president of the American Gas Association, said he hopes that by the end of next year, the Department of Homeland Security will have completed voluntary cybersecurity reviews of the nation's most critical natural gas pipelines. -
White House Advisers Warn of Catastrophic Grid Outages
Dec 10, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
How can America cope with a monthslong power outage of "a magnitude beyond modern experience"? -
Schumer Says Infrastructure Deal Must Include Climate Measures
Dec 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
Republicans hoping to strike a deal with Democrats on an infrastructure bill next year should be prepared to pony up on climate change, according to the Senate’s top Democrat. -
Former Trump Aide Says Schumer Raising 'Serious Obstacles'
Dec 7, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Maxine Joselow
President Trump's former infrastructure adviser today criticized Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's proposal to include climate change components in a broad infrastructure package. -
PATH Completes Positive Train Control Installation
Dec 10, 2018 | Occupational Health and Safety
PATH, the Port Authority Trans-Hudson train system serving the New York City area, announced Dec. 4 that it is the first regional rail system to achieve compliance with the federal mandate of installing Positive Train Control (PTC) technology by the deadline of Dec. 31. The technology is designed to prevent derailments and collisions. -
(ACC Mentioned) Science Adviser Allowed Oil Group to Edit Research
Dec 10, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
When EPA begins a major review of air pollution standards this week, a researcher who has received funding from an industry group opposed to the rules will be leading the agency's panel. -
EPA Plans Review of Toxic Air Limits by Next Month, Wehrum Says
Dec 8, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
The EPA plans to publish its review of Obama-era toxic air pollution limits by the end of the month or early January, the agency’s air chief said Dec. 7. -
Final CSAPR 'Close-Out' Rule Details EPA Defense Of Interstate Air Policy
Dec 7, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA's final rule to “close-out” the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) emissions trading program offers a broad defense of the agency's policy on reducing interstate air pollution that could help it defend the close-out rule from legal attacks, and that it might also use in ongoing suits aiming to force stricter EPA rules on the pollution. -
N.J., Va. Poised to Enter Cap-And-Trade Program
Dec 10, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Ines Kagubare
New Jersey and Virginia are on their way to joining nine other states in a regional cap-and-trade program. -
Northeast’s Carbon Allowance Prices Jump 19 Percent
Dec 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
The cost for electric power companies to comply with the Northeast’s carbon trading program rose by almost 19 percent in the latest auction of carbon allowances by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. -
New Governors Plan Aggressive Climate Steps
Dec 9, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Reid Wilson
New and recently reelected Democratic governors plan a series of aggressive steps to address climate change and bolster renewable energy industries in their states. -
Conservatives Eye Data Law To Force Retraction Of Trump's Climate Study
Dec 7, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
Conservatives usually allied with the Trump administration are considering filing a data quality petition to force officials to withdraw or correct their recently released National Climate Assessment (NCA), charging it is flawed, undercuts the president's pledges to reexamine climate science and will drive suits to force regulatory action.
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
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Dec 12, 2018 | The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy
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(ACC Mentioned) Chemical Makers Seek to Boost U.S.-Canadian Regulatory Cooperation
Dec 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Adam Allington
U.S. and Canadian companies are calling for more action to streamline cross-border trade in chemicals.
Of particular concern are problems related to the naming of chemical compounds.
“Nomenclature standards on the chemical inventory are a huge issue for us,” Christina Franz said at a Dec. 5 forum of the U.S.-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC), held in Washington, D.C. She heads regulatory and technical affairs at the American Chemistry Council, the primary trade group representing chemical makers.
Many compounds—say a fat or an acid—can be produced from different sources, Franz told Bloomberg Environment. But, under the nomenclature rules used globally by the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), the same chemical can have a different name if it is derived from different feedstocks.
“This creates all kinds of challenges to maintain accurate inventories, to first identify which chemicals are being used, and then constantly update and remove duplicates,” Franz said.
The American Chemistry Council and its Canadian counterpart, the Chemical Industry Association of Canada, co-authored a letter to the RCC Nov. 20, urging it to take up the nomenclature issue through its “rolling work plan” to facilitate regulatory cooperation and collaboration on chemical risk evaluations
A Potential WorkaroundBut U.S. and Canadian officials don’t oversee the CAS registry, which is run by the American Chemical Society, a professional membership organization of chemists, not a trade group.
“That isn’t something we control, said Maya Berci, director of new substances assessment and control bureau for Health Canada. “CAS develops international nomenclature standards, which are continually refined to make them more specific,” Berci said.
If a chemical isn’t already on Canada’s domestic substances list (DSL), it is considered a new substance subject to new registration requirements.
“So every time a CAS number changes, a company can suddenly find themselves out of regulatory compliance,” Berci said.
The RCC has recognized that the nomenclature issue is a problem and has developed an operational approach to address it, she said.
“If a company submits a new registration for a chemical already registered under a different CAS number, they can just tell us, and once we confirm it’s the same substance, we’ll just take the risk assessment used for the old CAS number, and match it to the new one,” Berci said.
More HarmonizationIndustry groups point to opportunities to further reduce barriers by harmonizing the classification and labeling of chemicals as workplace hazards, as well as sharing information on how they are screened and assessed.
“The Canadians have a system for evaluating chemicals that works really well,” said David Wawer, executive director of the Color Pigments Manufacturers Association.
The current backlog in the U.S. EPA’s approval of new chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has resulted in only one approval over two years, he said. Canada by comparison added 15 new chemicals to the DSL in just one year.
“I think we could learn a lot from our friends up north,” Wawer said. “If we don’t, why are we spending people’s time and money going to these RCC events if we don’t produce some commonality?”
New Chemical SNURsCanada’s nondomestic substances list (NDSL) identifies chemicals that are in commerce internationally. Manufacturers of chemicals on that list have a number of advantages, including less onerous data requirements. Canada uses the TSCA inventory as the basis for the NDSL.
However, since TSCA was amended in 2016, new chemical notifications frequently result in consent orders and Significant New Use Rules (SNURs), which is a way EPA manages risks for new chemicals.
Once a chemical has a SNUR imposed, it’s no longer eligible for automatic inclusion on the Canadian NDSL.
“It would be beneficial if the two countries could explore whether there are modifications that could be made to enable U.S. substances with SNURs to be added to the NDSL,” the chemistry council said in its letter to the Regulatory Cooperation Council.
Need for EvaluationBut Health Canada’s Berci said any chemical subject to new risk management measures, including SNURs, is something Canada needs to evaluate.
“If the EPA is risk managing a substance, that’s not something Canada takes lightly,” she said.
Moreover, any changes to the way Canada manages it’s NDSL, would require regulatory and statutory amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which would be a large undertaking.
“It’s not guaranteed that all solutions minimize regulatory burden,” Berci said. “We have to protect the environment and health of our citizens, and only minimize regulations where it make sense.”
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/chemical-makers-seek-to-boost-us-canadian-regulatory-cooperation
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(ACC Mentioned) US Exports of Polyethylene Surge to Record High in October: USITC
Dec 7, 2018 | Platts
By Phillipe Craig
US October exports of polyethylene climbed for a third consecutive month to reach a record high, according to data released Friday by the US International Trade Commission.
US exports of all grades of PE totaled 441,232.1 mt in October, up 13.2% month on month and 70.9% year on year, USITC data showed.
October's total represented an increase of 11.1% compared with the US' previous record of 397,052.2 mt, set in in June, with capacity additions over the last two years driving much of the increases seen in 2018.
By grade, US high-density PE exports totaled 255,671 mt in October, an all-time high and up 9.9% on the month and 85.8% on the year.
Linear-low-density PE exports, meanwhile, came to 72,928.1 mt to open the fourth quarter of 2018, up 14.9% compared with September and 73.9% higher than October 2017's total.
US low-density PE exports totaled 105,799.3 mt in October, up 20.6% month on month and 49.1% year on year, the data show.
RECOVERING FROM HARVEY
While the month-on-month increases in PE exports can be at least partially attributed to recent domestic demand shifts and capacity additions, the year-on-year gains were more heavily reflective of Hurricane Harvey's impact on the US Gulf Coast in the final two quarters of last year, when both US production and logistics were severely impacted for an extended period.
The US petrochemical industry -- and the PE sector in particular -- has been the primary beneficiary of the shale gas boom and its resulting abundant and cheap ethane that makes output competitive in global markets. The first wave of investments saw a total of eight ethane steam crackers and 13 PE plants slated for startup between 2017-19 along the USGC, with 2020 marking the beginning of a second wave that will bring more of both.
Overall, US PE capacity had risen 19.7% from the beginning of 2017 through the third quarter of this year, rising from around 20.3 million mt/year to around 24.4 million mt/year, according to the most recent American Chemistry Council data.
Recent weak domestic demand in the US has also been leading to more exports, sources have said, adding that ongoing US-China trade tensions have limited US producers' options for moving much of the new resin.
After the US imposed $250 billion in tariffs on a wide array of Chinese products, China countered in kind to the tune of $110 billion while including tariffs of 25% two PE grades that make up more than 90% of planned new US capacity.
The majority of the US production increases in the last two years have come from the two grades targeted by China's retaliatory tariffs, with US LLDPE capacity rising by 34.4% and HDPE capacity climbing 13.1% during that period, ACC data shows.
US-CHINA TRADE TENSIONS FELT
To that end, US exports of PE to China fell for a fourth straight month in October, totaling just 22,564.3 mt for a share of only 5.1% of all exports.
The US last sent this little in the way of PE volumes to China in September of last year, with exports at the time falling to 20,452.5 on the heels of Harvey making landfall in the US in late August 2017.
Other key export markets have filled the gap for the US, with Latin America, Vietnam, Europe and Canada serving as the primary "relief valves," sources say.
Those markets each saw an increase in cargoes sent from the US in October, with Latin America seeing the biggest increase in terms of volume. US exports of PE to Latin America totaled 192,073.4 mt in October, up 14.4% month on month and 40.5% year on year.
US exports to Vietnam rose to an all-time record high of 31,049.7 mt to open Q4, up 12.2% for the month and exponentially higher when compared with October of last year, when less than 700 mt was sent there.
US exports of PE to the 28-member European Union totaled 35,735.1 mt in October for its highest total since March 2016, when a little more than 36,000 mt was shipped. US exports to Europe were 17.7% higher month on month in October and 405.9% higher year on year.
PE exports to Canada came to 60,345 mt in October for its highest total in a year, with the month-on-month increase coming in at 11.9%.
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/petrochemicals/120718-us-exports-of-polyethylene-surge-to-record-high-in-october-usitc
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(ACC Mentioned) US Sends More PE to Latin America in October Amid Trade Tensions with China: ITC
Dec 7, 2018 | Platts
By Phillipe Craig
US polyethylene exports to Latin America rose in October as target diversification continued to take shape amid trade tensions with China, according to US International Trade Commission data released Friday.
Overall, US exports of PE reached a record 441,232.1 mt in October, beating the previous record, set in June, by more than 10%.
The cumulative gains came as PE exports to China fell for a fourth straight month to settle at a 5.1% share, the result of demand destruction tied to 25% tariffs on two key grades of US-origin PE.
October's overall export PE gains came as domestic demand has slowed in recent months, sources have said. It also comes on the heels of US production capacity rising 19.7% from the beginning of 2017 through the third quarter of this year, according to the American Chemistry Council.
Latin America saw its share of exports from the US rise in tandem with the overall gains, reaching 192,073.4 mt for all grades combined -- the highest total since July 2016, when the US sent 199,289.8 mt.
Exports to Latin America in October represented a 43.5% share, with the volume rising 14.4% from September and 40.5% year on year.
While month-on-month export gains can be at least partially attributed to domestic demand shifts and capacity additions, year-on-year increases more reflected Hurricane Harvey's impact on the US Gulf Coast in the second half of last year, when the storm severely affected output and logistics for months.
HDPE TRAFFIC DRIVES GAINS
By grade, high-density PE exports to Latin America represented the biggest source of growth, reaching 108,375.6 mt for its highest total since 116,143.1 mt in August 2016. October's HDPE exports to Latin America rose 10.1% month on month and 42.2% year on year.
Exports of low-density PE to Latin America came to 49,095.8 in October, a record that represented a 3.2% increase over the previous high set in May 2008. October's LDPE exports rose 30.5% from September and jumped 69.8% compared with the first month of Q4 2017.
Linear-LDPE exports to Latin American markets totaled 31,071.9 mt in October, up 4.8% for the month and 2.7% for the year, with the lack of more substantial gains tied to other key export regions seeing bigger increases. By comparison, US exports of LLDPE to Europe rose 62.3% for the month, while exports to Canada jumped 32.9% in October. The US also sent 11.5% more LLDPE volumes to Vietnam in October compared with September shipments.
Each of the top five Latin American countries in terms of PE exports from the US -- Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru -- saw October bring both month-on-month and year-on-year gains, with only Mexico showing minimal growth from September.
Mexico, the primary recipient of PE exports from the US to Latin America, saw volumes bound for its markets rise to 79,995.4 mt to open Q4, up just 0.8% for from September and 16.3% year on year.
MEXICO MARKETS COMPLICATED
That growth in exports to Mexico was not stronger in October is in part from a sense of market saturation, sources have said, adding that currency woes are also pushing down domestic demand.
Local producers Braskem Idesa and Pemex have both reported strong competition from US imports, according to recent market feedback, although US exporters have found little in the way of relief in Mexico from a volume standpoint.
Mexican distributors and converters have been dealing with elevated stocks while practicing a "hand-to-mouth" approach of buying minimal hold-over volumes and waiting out a price floor on US- and Mexico-origin resins, sources have said.
Elsewhere, US exports of PE to Brazil reached an all-time high of 27,122 mt in October, besting by the previous record of 25,483.5 mt set in January 2014. Compared with the previous month, October's PE exports to Brazil rose 23.5% in October and 151.1% for the year.
Colombia, which typically represents the second strongest South American market for US PE exports, saw its volumes rise to a record 20,196.2 in October, representing an 8.7% increase from the previous record set in May 2015. Compared with September's volumes, US exports of PE to Colombia rose 28.5% for the month and 65.7% for the year.
Combined PE exports out of the US to Chile totaled 12,910.6 mt in October, up 34.4% on the month and 72.6% for the year. Peru, which historically has taken in as much as, or slightly less than, Chile, saw its volumes from the US rise to 11,716.1 mt to open Q4, up 39.8% from September and 84.8% from October 2017.
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/petrochemicals/120718-us-sends-more-pe-to-latin-america-in-october-amid-trade-tensions-with-china-itc
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EPA, Canada Reject Industry Push To Align Chemical Regulatory Decisions
Dec 7, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
EPA and Canadian regulators are rejecting a push from the chemical industry and other sectors to align regulatory decisions on pesticides and other toxic chemicals, citing conflicting statutory directives and strict time lines for decision-making under the countries' governing statutes such as the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
During a Dec. 5 Canada-U.S. Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC) stakeholder forum in Washington, D.C., industry officials urged regulators from both countries to expand their alignment of certain risk assessment approaches to also cover steps taken to mitigate chemical risks.
But regulators, including a top EPA toxics official, said the countries' different laws made aligning risk management a challenge.
“We have a mandate to prioritize and assess, and if risks are found, to act with very very strict deadlines,” Tala Henry, acting deputy director of EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, said, citing requirements under the recently revised TSCA that set time lines for the agency to promulgate new rules for chemicals.
Henry added that U.S. and Canadian regulators would seek further collaboration but suggested that aligning the countries' determinations on how to manage chemical risks is unlikely. While EPA used to issue its regulatory decisions on its own time frame, Henry said, “We are on to a production mode, so we will be doing this continuously."
Her remarks echoed those of Richard Aucoin, executive director of Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency, who rejected pesticide industry and growers' requests to align U.S. and Canadian decisions on mitigating risks of pesticides, such as neonicotinoids. Aucoin said that each country's final determinations must comply with its own laws.
While Henry focused on TSCA's timeframes for decision-making, Aucoin said that Canadian pesticide law requires that PMRA consider a substance's risks and benefits separately, instead of weighing the two as EPA pesticide officials do in their ecological assessments conducted under the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.
“We have to conduct separate but parallel assessments. A product needs to have acceptable risk and acceptable value,” Aucoin said, adding that it would require a legislative change -- an unlikely proposition -- for Canadian regulators to harmonize risk management decisions with their U.S. counterparts.
He also said that Canadian law requires that PMRA act quickly once risks are identified, complicating aligning decisions with EPA.
“In Canada, the legislative framework operates under the understanding that when risk issues are identified the ministry shall act, so the clock is ticking,” Aucoin said. “We are obligated to consult fully with the public, and I don't think there is a lot of room there for waiting too long after” reaching a risk determination, and “I can't see us aligning."
Regulatory Cooperation Council
Under the RCC, U.S. and Canadian officials seek to promote economic growth and innovation by eliminating unnecessary differences in regulation.
During the stakeholder forum. EPA and Canadian regulators outlined efforts to share and align processes for assessing chemicals' risks, but industry officials pushed for alignment in risk management, or the regulatory restrictions countries impose after determining a substance poses risks.
For example, in a session on pesticide regulation, an audience member with the growers group Canola Council of Canada urged EPA and PMRA to align regulatory decisions on mitigating potential risks of the controversial neonicotinoid insecticides, which the agencies are reviewing. Environmentalists blame neonicotinoids for declines in bee populations over the last decade.
The industry official argued that given their collaboration on reviews, EPA and PMRA are looking at the same science and using similar approaches so it stands to reason the final decisions would be similar. The official added that differences in U.S. and Canadian regulations could affect competitiveness for crops sold in the two countries.
“What can be done . . . to align the risk management part?” the official asked. “How can we align the outcomes of the risk assessments of both countries?”
Aucoin and Rick Keigwin, director of EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs, suggested aligning pesticide restrictions is unlikely, noting different statutory requirements for considering pesticides' risks and benefits, as well as requirements to promptly address risk.
Similarly, in a session on chemicals management, officials with Responsible Distribution Canada, a chemical sector trade association, and the Ford Motor Company of Canada, urged EPA and Health Canada chemicals regulators to more closely align risk management decisions following their assessments.
Ford's Blake Smith asked officials to “comment on the potential for collaboration at the risk management phase as opposed to just the risk assessment phase.”
He added that “As a user community we would certainly encourage it."
Maya Berci, director of Health Canada's New Substances Assessment and Control Bureau, said that EPA and Health Canada officials do have “some pretty strong bilateral collaboration on risk management,” citing as an example the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), which seeks to address environmental issues in NAFTA countries.
But Berci also suggested that greater collaboration on risk management may be difficult given the two countries' differing regulatory priorities.
“In order to collaborate, your regulatory priorities have to align,” she said. “When that happens there is definitely more opportunities, so right now, we're kind of at different stages, Canada and the U.S., at least in terms of existing chemicals.”
Given the differing priorities, Berci said regulators would continue to collaborate through existing mechanisms like the CEC.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-canada-reject-industry-push-align-chemical-regulatory-decisions
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Pennsylvania Redeveloper to Defend Use of PCB-Laced Fill Material
Dec 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
A Pennsylvania company working to reclaim an abandoned mine is challenging the EPA’s determination that the company potentially violated a federal chemical waste law and state permit.
Hazelton Creek Properties LLC asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Dec. 6 to review the Environmental Protection Agency’s notice. The company’s Hazelton, Pa., property has 277 acres of abandoned mine pits as well as municipal and industrial waste.
The company is accepting materials including coal ash, cement kiln dust, concrete, and asphalt to eventually create a performing arts center on the site. According to the Hazelton Creek Properties’ website, “HCP is authorized to conduct the site reclamation/remediation using the residual materials” approved by several government agreements.
Solid vs. Hazardous WasteThe agency took issue with Hazelton’s use of material that contains polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which are probable carcinogens, according to the EPA. The federal Toxic Substances Control Act and EPA regulations limit the concentration of PCBs that are acceptable for use.
A Sept. 26 letter from the EPA to the company noted that the agency wasn’t taking corrective action at the time, but may do so if the firm continued to accept materials in violation of federal regulations.
Neither the company nor the EPA immediately responded to Bloomberg Environment’s requests for comment.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/pennsylvania-redeveloper-to-defend-use-of-pcb-laced-fill-material
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South Carolina Court Handed Firefighting Foam Cases
Dec 8, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
Tyco Fire Products LP and Chemguard Inc. will face allegations in a South Carolina court that their firefighting foam contaminated groundwater around the country.
The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation Dec. 7 ordered the transfer of more than 80 cases centering on claims of environmental contamination to the District of South Carolina because that district wasn’t already hearing cases regarding poly- and perfluorinated compounds. The panel is a special body within the federal court system managing litigation across multiple districts.
The South Carolina district “has the capacity and resources to successfully guide this litigation,” the panel’s acting chair, Lewis A. Kaplan, wrote.
Per- and polyfluorinated compounds have been used to manufacture firefighting foams as well as nonstick and stain-resistant coatings in clothing, fast-food wrappers, carpets, and other consumer products. The chemicals could cause developmental effects to fetuses, testicular and kidney cancer, liver tissue damage, immune system or thyroid effects, and changes in cholesterol, according to the EPA.
The two most widely known members of the fluorinated chemical family are perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which have turned up in drinking water supplies across the country.
The case is In re: Aqueous Film-Forming Foams Prod. Liab. Litig., J.P.M.L., No. 2873, 12/7/18.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/south-carolina-court-handed-firefighting-foam-cases
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Three Years Later, Wisconsin Hasn't Stopped Toxic Chemical Flow
Dec 10, 2018 | Wisconsin State Journal
By Steven Verburg
Toxic chemicals linked to an array of life-threatening illnesses are contaminating Wisconsin’s drinking water and fish, but the government has been slow to enact regulations to hasten cleanups.
The chemicals — fluorinated compounds referred to by the acronym PFAS (pronounced “Pea-fass”) — spread through air and water. Once ingested, they can take years to leave the body.
Across the country, PFAS compounds have been released from military installations that used heat-resistant firefighting foam, and from businesses that applied impermeable, nonstick coatings to items such as frying pans, microwave popcorn bags, pizza boxes, carpeting and fabric.
Heavy concentrations have been found in groundwater near at least a half-dozen Wisconsin locations, including the state Air National Guard base on Madison’s North Side.
Lower PFAS levels have been detected a mile away in drinking water pumped by a municipal well on East Washington Avenue. Concentrations in Well 15 water have tested below federal health advisory levels.
However, more is being learned about health effects, and government agencies disagree on whether the advisory is adequate. It doesn’t take into account a major federal study President Donald Trump’s administration tried to suppress last summer, and it only addresses two of the more than 3,000 PFAS compounds that have been created. Five of the compounds were detected at Well 15.
The military hasn’t done testing to determine if or when drinking water quality could worsen. Cost of equipping the well with a filter system could easily exceed $3 million, and that doesn’t include ongoing costs of disposing of pollutants captured by the filter.
PFAS from the air base could also pose a threat to people who eat fish from Starkweather Creek and Lake Monona, which receive stormwater runoff from the base.
Infants and children are most susceptible to health hazards linked to PFAS, but the synthetic chemicals are also associated with testicular cancer, and diseases of the liver, kidneys, glands and immune system in adults.
PFAS compounds build up in tissue and don’t usually break downinto harmless material. They move through water more quickly than many other toxic substances, so wherever they have been released, lakes, streams and wells are at risk.
“It doesn’t stick to anything so it moves as fast as water,” said Laura Olah, who has gathered data on PFAS pollution as executive director of the Merrimac-based Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger. The nonprofit has fought for years to remove hazardous chemicals from the former Badger Army Ammunition Plant in Sauk County.
Olah and others have been urging the military to conduct public meetings about the potential threat, and for the state to set an enforceable safety standard.
“That would allow people with wells to know if they want to test their water,” Olah said. “For years people near Badger didn’t know there was a big plume of solvents in groundwater, so they couldn’t make an informed decision about whether to drink the water.”State action sought
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and military bases in the state are facing criticism for failing to move quickly on cleanups.
The DNR said it is taking several steps and evaluating options allowed under state law.
Congress allotted about $180 million for the fiscal year that started Oct. 1 for cleanups and for replacement of firefighting foam known to include high levels of harmful PFAS compounds.
The military said it was conducting cleanups within budget constraints.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, has urged the DNR and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to replace the federal health advisory with an enforceable standard that would allow expenditure of Superfund and safe drinking water money.
The DNR is considering action, but it could take years. The agency took a first step in March by asking the state Department of Health Services to recommend a possible groundwater standard for two of the roughly 3,700 known PFAS compounds.
Last month a state senator whose district includes an area with contaminated drinking water, called on the DNR to immediately issue a health advisory and quickly create an enforceable standard covering a broad spectrum of PFAS compounds.
“I am aware that the U.S. EPA has established a Health Advisory Level for (two PFAS compounds,) however it is not applicable to the complex mixture of PFAS found in Wisconsin’s groundwater and affected drinking water wells,” Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, said in a letter to DNR secretary Dan Meyer.
PFAS has caused more serious drinking water problems elsewhere. PFAS-based fire-suppression foam made and tested at Tyco Fire Products of Marinette is believed to be the source of contaminants exceeding the EPA advisory in 15 wells. Another 41 wells had lower detection levels, said Fraser Engerman, spokesman for Tyco’s parent company, Johnson Controls in Milwaukee.
Tyco has installed water treatment systems in 41 homes and supplied 125 homes with bottled water, Engerman said.Frustration in Madison
In Madison, there is frustration because the military hasn’t yet begun to remove heavily tainted soil and groundwater from the Truax Field Air National Guard base, or tried to determine the level of contamination in an underground plume that stretches nearly a mile to Well 15.
Three years ago, the Air National Guard Headquarters in Maryland produced a report on PFAS pollution at the base.
In 2015, the EPA required water systems with more than 10,000 customers to test for PFAS. The Madison Water Utility found none. But last fall the utility retested using a more sensitive method and detected the chemicals in Well 15 and in lower levels at a well on the West Side.
At the urging of activists, a few Madison City Council members have been asking more questions. The council added $5,000 to the city budget for a study of PFAS in fish in Starkweather Creek.
But so far, the Air National Guard hasn’t tested soil or groundwater beyond the base perimeter, so there’s no way to know how much more PFAS is heading for the well or Lake Monona.
Late last month, Mayor Paul Soglin released a letter asking the Air National Guard environmental officer at Truax to immediately begin a full investigation and cleanup.
Activists and council members said they were grateful, but noted Soglin didn’t suggest a timetable for completion of an assessment and cleanup.
“Sounds good, but there is absolutely no timeline provided for the testing, and the Air National Guard has absolutely no incentive to do it,” said Sue Pastor, whose water comes from the well.
Pastor was on a Madison Water Utility advisory group a few years ago when a treatment system to remove other pollutants was added to the well. Recently she’s been pushing for a PFAS cleanup.
“The city should insist on a plan for the testing by a certain date and it should be a short deadline,” Pastor said. “If the deadline is not made, then the city and county should pay for the work and bill the (military).”
Soglin defended his approach, saying he isn’t in a position to order the National Guard around.
“Making a request is going to be more effective than making hollow threats,” Soglin said.Priority for violations
About $430,000 has been spent investigating levels of the two most well-known PFAS compounds at Truax and two of the other bases, said Lt. Col. Randy Saldivar, public affairs director for Air National Guard headquarters.
“The working estimate for future investigation and mitigation for these three bases is $4.9 million,” Saldivar said.
Nationally, site investigations are prioritized based in part on whether water quality standards are being violated. Funding is in place for investigations at least through September 2021, Saldivar said.
City Council President Samba Baldeh, whose district includes Well 15, said he has been disappointed more hasn’t been done about pollution that has been known about for at least three years.
“There is no acceptance of a longer rather than shorter time before there is a full PFAS investigation and remediation effort,” Baldeh said. “We want this done now.”
Well 15 serves the East Washington Avenue corridor including neighborhoods such as Westchester Gardens, Mayfair Park, Bluff Acres, Carpenter-Ridgeway, Eken Park, Emerson East and the High Crossing area east of Interstate 90-94.Foam used until 2015
PFAS-based firefighting foam was used at the Truax base and throughout the military from 1970 until 2015 in accordance with the regulations of that time, said Wisconsin National Guard spokesman Capt. Joseph Trovato.
Trovato said the base has altered practices to limit and control release of the foam.
Starting in 2016, the military began using a new foam formulated with different PFAS chemicals that appear to have some characteristics that are different from the older ones.
Still, it may be years or decades before researchers determine if the new compounds are hazardous to human health.
“Our environmental regulatory system is clearly failing,” said Maria Powell, president of the Midwest Environmental Justice Organization in Madison, who has used open records laws to unearth volumes of documents on what she describes as lax enforcement of pollution laws in Wisconsin.
The DNR said it is evaluating but hasn’t finalized a plan to look systematically for PFAS contaminants where they have likely been used in manufacturing — paper manufacturing and metal plating are two examples.
Under a 2011 state law, new regulations typically take years of study, including scrutiny by industry groups, the public, lawmakers and the governor.
In 2016, the DNR published a study of PFAS in fish tissue that recommended more research to determine if people who eat fish should be warned about health hazards. More research is expected next year, funded in part by the $5,000 from Madison.Standards in other states
Several other states have established their own standards and advisory levels of PFAS in drinking water and groundwater.
Michigan is requiring sewage treatment plants to take action on PFAS from sewer lines that is discharged untreated into public waters.
Most states haven’t established PFAS advisories or limits. The EPA advisory drinking water limit of 70 parts per trillion covers two of more than 3,000 existing PFAS compounds. A toxicology report issued by a U.S. Department of Health Services agency found the EPA advisory was five times too high to protect children and fetuses.
State and federal governments are all looking at the same body of research on PFAS health hazards, said Joe Grande, Madison Water Utility water quality manager.
“There are just different interpretations and differences in the margins of safety they are applying,” Grande said.
https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/three-years-later-wisconsin-hasn-t-stopped-toxic-chemical-flow/article_cf5986c9-39c6-53f4-bb5e-08ad62093c2b.html
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Major European Project Finds High Phthalates Levels in Toys
Dec 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
A joint customs and market surveillance operation by four EU countries has found that of 104 samples of toys it checked, more than a third contained illegal levels of phthalates.
And 92% of the offending items carried the CE marking that indicates conformity with health, safety, and environmental protection standards for products sold within the European Economic Area.
The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia inspected samples from 438 consignments of 2.25m pieces of toys from China, between September and October last year.
The inspections focused on those plasticised toys – especially dolls – thought to present a high risk because of suspected concentrations of phthalates exceeding restrictions under REACH Annex XVII articles 51 and 52.
Three of the phthalates found – DEHP, DBP and BBP – are on the REACH candidate list of SVHCs due to their reprotoxic and endocrine disrupting properties. The others are DINP, DIDP and DNOP.
Speaking to Chemical Watch after a European Commission conference on REACH, CLP and biocides enforcement in November, Anna Kobylecka, from the customs department at the Polish ministry of finance, said the aim of the project "was not to determine the percentage of safe products imported via the countries, but to ensure that dangerous products are not released for free circulation".
What was "worrying", she added, was that the high level of toys with excessive levels of phthalates that had the CE marking was a declaration by the producer that all the relevant requirements were met at production stage.
The enforcers blocked more than 722,000 toys from the market during the initial stage of control. At a later stage some toys were rectified and released for free circulation, she said. Certain toys were re-exported when importers did not want to take corrective measures on labelling or providing warnings or instructions.
National market surveillance authorities destroyed 31,590 toys because their suspected high levels of phthalates were deemed a "serious risk".
Following the control measure 21 notifications were made to the EU’s Rapid Alert System (Rapex) for dangerous non-food products.Practical solutions
In a Q&A session at the Commission conference, Mauro Scalia from textiles industry association Euratex said the findings suggest testing is needed on individual products, but asked: "do we have the right tools or do we need different tools?"
The EU textiles sector, he said, imports 22b products, while 4bn are made in the European Union. "Less than 1% are checked."
"As customs we believe that we have the proper tools because we are the ones to stop the goods, to choose and target for controls and we have proper legislation and powers to do it," Ms Kobylecka said.
It is really a question for enforcement authorities, she added, as to whether they have enough resources to conduct laboratory checks of all products. "Of course it’s not possible." For the time being, she said, authorities should check that products meet formal requirements.
Mike Potts, from the UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE), said Britain does two things:it ensures accurate targeting: this enables inspectors to test as many non-compliant products as possible; andit looks at the testing companies, such as large importers, undertake. The HSE will contact a company and ask about their testing strategy, what questions they ask suppliers and the kind of contracts they have with non-EU suppliers to require them not use restricted substances or SVHCs.
Michael Flueh from the Commission agreed it is impossible to control 100% of products. "The first responsibility is the source doing the business" to make sure marketed products are compliant, he said.
"We have taken recently new measures on CMRs [carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic substances] in textiles. So this is already an indicator target on which enforcement authorities might focus in the future," he added.
Last year a REACH-En-Force-4 (Ref-4) project found almost a fifth of toys checked on the European market were non-compliant with an EU restriction on phthalates. Coordinated by Echa’s Enforcement Forum, it looked at 14 restriction entries in REACH Annex XVII across 29 countries.
https://chemicalwatch.com/72692/major-european-project-finds-high-phthalates-levels-in-toys
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(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Department of Energy Reports Touts Need for Appalachian Ethane Storage Hub
Dec 10, 2018 | Wheeling Intelligencer
By Steven Allen Adams
A new report released by the U.S. Department of Energy cites the potential of West Virginia and other Appalachian states for the location of centralized storage hub for natural gas production.
The report takes a look at West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania as potential locations for a storage hub for ethane — a byproduct of natural gas. Ethane, when broken down through a process called “cracking,” creates ethylene and is used in the manufacturing of plastics, chemicals, insulation and fertilizer.
The tri-state region is home to the Marcellus and Utica shale plays, where a combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling has created an energy boom. Those shale formations contain a large amount of “wet gas,” or a gas stream that includes natural gas liquids, such as ethane, propane and butane.
“There is an incredible opportunity to establish an ethane storage and distribution hub in the Appalachian region and build a robust petrochemical industry in Appalachia,” said Rick Perry, secretary of the Department of Energy, when he announced the report at the annual National Petroleum Council Meeting in Washington, D.C. “As our report shows, there is sufficient global need, and enough regional resources, to help the U.S. gain a significant share of the global petrochemical market.”
According to the energy department, the U.S. is a top producer of oil and natural gas, with gas production expected to grow to 640,000 barrels per day by 2025 — 20 times greater than five years ago. Most of the growth is expected in the Appalachian region.
“Appalachia’s abundant resources coupled with extensive downstream industrial activity may offer a competitive advantage that could enable it to displace marginal producers and help the U.S. gain global market share in the petrochemical industry,” the report said.
The Energy Information Administration’s most recent numbers show that natural gas production in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania jumped from 2 percent in 2008 to 27 percent in 2017.
“This report affirms what we have been talking about for years,” said U.S. Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va. “Natural gas production in the region has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade. The next logical step is to take full advantage of this resource and develop a petrochemical industry in the region.”
West Virginia features prominently in the report, which shows the growth of gas processing plants and natural gas liquid fractionator plants between 2010 and 2019, with most of the production capacity growing in the Northern Panhandle and North Central West Virginia. The report also makes mention of crackers — facilities that break down ethane into multiple byproducts — including the proposed Odebrecht/Braskem cracker which was slated to be built near Parkersburg.
Royal Dutch Shell is in the process of building a $6 billion cracker plant at Monaca, Pennsylvania, and other international companies are considering construction of another cracker at Dilles Bottom in Belmont County. PTT Global Chemical and Daelim Industrial Co. have purchased property at the proposed site and are seeking approval for air and water pollution permits, but the companies have not yet announced an official decision on whether they will build the plant. Based in Thailand and South Korea, respectively, PTT and Daelim have said they may invest as much as $10 billion in the project.
The federal report cites a study conducted by West Virginia University in 2017 looking at geological locations for a possible underground storage hub. These possible locations include the Salina F4 salt caverns along the Ohio River in Hancock, Brooke and Tyler counties; the Upper Devonian Sandstones between Harrison and Lewis counties; and even locations in the Kanawha Valley.
A similar storage facility is proposed for Monroe County in Ohio. Mountaineer NGL Storage officials announced in 2017 plans to spend $150 million — and potentially as much as $500 million — on an NGL storage facility along the Ohio River near Clarington. By 2019, company Managing Director David Hooker said he hopes to store up to 420 million gallons of ethane, propane and butane in caverns along the river, with the goal of allowing the potential PTT cracker to access the product via pipelines that would only need to stretch about 10 miles. At the time, he said the Mountaineer NGL Storage project could be the first part of the Appalachian storage hub that American Chemistry Council officials said could eventually lead to $36 billion worth of investment and about 100,000 permanent jobs.
The energy department report compares a potential petrochemical hub to current hubs in Texas along the Gulf coast and in the Permian Basin. It presents a plan to grab more market share globally for petrochemical manufacturing without hindering further expansion in the Texas plays.
“With the vast majority of America’s petrochemical industry located on the Gulf Coast and vulnerable to disruptions by hurricanes, it is in the national interest to diversify and build a secondary hub in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kentucky,” said McKinley, who has introduced two pieces of legislation regarding ethane storage hubs.
The first — the Appalachian Ethane Storage Hub Study Act — directed the energy department to conduct feasibility studies on creating an underground storage hub in Appalachia. Besides Tuesday’s report, energy released two other reports looking at feasibility and demand in 2017 and 2018. The second — the Capitalizing on American Storage Potential Act — would allow storage projects to qualify for loan programs through the energy department.
Other members of West Virginia’s congressional delegation have been active in introducing legislation to make a storage hub in Appalachia a possibility. U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., introduced similar legislation to McKinley’s to make petrochemical companies eligible for loan guarantees as an incentive to build a hub.
“I am pleased that the Department of Energy’s report recognizes the benefits of the development of an ethane storage hub in Appalachia,” Manchin said. “Given the high concentrations of natural gas in our region, I look forward to working with the Department of Energy to examine the potential national security benefits of a hub that can support all natural gas liquids.”
In 2017, the Appalachia Development Group — a consortium of multiple energy and natural gas companies — was invited to submit an application for this loan program.
Another piece of legislation introduced by U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., would expedite the permitting process for potential companies considering building a hub.
“I’ve said time and time again that a regional ethane storage hub would do a lot to benefit West Virginia — like driving economic growth and enabling us to make the most of our natural resources,” Capito said. “We’ve been working to help advance this project for a long time, and this study is another affirmation that it’s one worth pursuing. I’m excited about the benefits this could bring to the Mountain State, and I will continue working with Secretary Perry, the Department of Energy, and others to see this project through.”
Perry, who McKinley hosted for a visit to West Virginia in 2017 to discuss opportunities for a storage hub in the state, said President Donald Trump is interested in seeing such a facility in the region in the near future.
“The Trump Administration would also support an Appalachia hub to strengthen our energy and manufacturing security by increasing our geographic production diversity,” Perry said.
http://www.theintelligencer.net/news/top-headlines/2018/12/u-s-department-of-energy-reports-touts-need-for-appalachian-ethane-storage-hub/
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EPA Climate Finding Questions Could Pave Way for Methane Rule Rewrite
Dec 8, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
The EPA wants to define a threshold for the amount of pollution required to pose a significant threat to public health and prompt controls, a move that could raise questions about limits on oil and gas methane emissions, the agency’s air chief said.
The Environmental Protection Agency in a footnote in its Dec. 6 proposal to reconsider Obama-era carbon dioxide controls for new and modified power plants opened the door for comment about whether the agency has made an adequate finding that greenhouse gases from the power sector must be regulated. That determination is twofold—that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare; and that such emissions from the power sector significantly contribute to overall pollution.
But the EPA may not be targeting the basis for the Obama-era power sector rule or the pivotal 2009 endangerment finding underpinning the agency’s regulation of greenhouse gases. Instead, the EPA is trying to make a determination about the scope of its authority and whether a threshold exists for pollution to become a major contributor to endangerment, Bill Wehrum, the agency’s air chief, told Bloomberg Environment in an exclusive interview.
The question is only a footnote in the EPA’s power plant proposal because the sector ranks second-highest, behind transportation, in greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., Wehrum said. But the agency wants people to be thinking about what the legal standard is and whether it can be satisfied in other source categories the EPA regulates, including oil and gas operations, he said.
The EPA regulates power plant carbon emissions and oil and gas methane emissions under section 111 of the Clean Air Act.
‘Closer Question’The EPA in September proposed to relax Obama-era limits on methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from new oil and gas drilling operations. Oil and gas industry groups, though, have urged the EPA to rewrite the rule to remove methane as a regulated pollutant altogether.
“It will be a closer question” of whether the oil and gas sector emits enough methane to qualify as a significant contribution, Wehrum said.
“When the time comes, I’m sure we’ll ask the same question in that context, but it will be much more relevant in that context because we’re dealing with a smaller slice of the emissions inventory,” he added.
‘Bait-and-Switch’But critics say Wehrum’s approach reverses the EPA’s decades-old interpretation of the Clean Air Act.
The EPA has historically read Section 111 to require a finding that a source category, such as power plants or oil and gas operations, endangers public health and welfare, Joseph Goffman, former senior counsel in the EPA’s air office during the Obama administration, told Bloomberg Environment. Once a source category is listed under the statute as a significant contributor to air pollution, the EPA can regulate any pollutant from that sector, he added.
Wehrum is “introducing a bait-and-switch in terms of a long-standing interpretation of” the air law, Goffman, now executive director at Harvard University’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, added.
The air chief, though, said he believes the EPA must make for each specific pollutant findings that the pollutant endangers public health and that a particular sector’s emissions contribute significantly to the problem.
“What is a significant contribution? How is it different from a mere contribution? That’s the question,” Wehrum said.
Existing SourcesThe stakes are the prospect that the EPA could be required to regulate methane emissions from existing oil and gas drilling operations, Goffman said.
The Obama EPA had begun that process in 2016, working to collect data from the industry about emissions from existing sources, but former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt withdrew that request in the first days of his tenure in 2017.
“They want to blow up the 2016 rule, so that any successor administration has to start all over again,” Goffman said.
But he added that even if the EPA must make a finding of significant contribution, oil and gas methane emissions pass that test. Goffman pointed to the potency of methane, which is dozens of times more potent than carbon dioxide.
“The oil and gas sector’s methane is well above any plausible significance threshold,” he said.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-climate-finding-questions-could-pave-way-for-methane-rule-rewrite
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A Push to Make Fracking Waste Water Usable in Agriculture — and Even for Drinking
Dec 8, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Rebecca Beitsch
Fracking requires a huge amount of water, a major concern in dry Western states that otherwise welcome the practice. But New Mexico thinks it can mitigate that problem by pushing oil companies to treat and recycle fracking waste water for use in agriculture — or even as drinking water.
State officials, with the help of the Environmental Protection Agency, are still working out the details. If they move forward with the strategy for fracking, also called hydraulic fracturing, other arid states may follow New Mexico’s lead.
“Oil and gas in New Mexico provide over a third of our general fund,” said Ken McQueen, who heads the New Mexico Department of Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources. “We have to be concerned we’re doing what’s necessary into the future to make sure this industry continues to be alive and vibrant.”
In addition to keeping a vital industry going, McQueen thinks the reclaimed waste water could be a boon to New Mexico farmers and ranchers who need water for their crops and herds. Factories could use it, and it might help revive parched wildlife habitat, he said. And even though the waste water is filled with salt and other minerals, it might even be treated and used for drinking.
In a typical month, the amount of waste water generated by the fracking process in New Mexico, the country’s third-largest producer of oil, would be enough to fill Elephant Butte, the state’s largest lake.
During fracking, oil companies inject fluid — a mixture of water and chemicals, plus sand — deep underground into rock formations to release oil and natural gas. For every barrel of oil fracking produces in New Mexico, it yields up to five barrels of “produced water” — a combination of the excess fracking water and water released from the rock.
Sometimes oil companies reuse the waste water to bring up more oil, but in many cases they dispose of it by pumping it deep underground using bore holes called injection wells.
Injecting the waste water has created serious problems in states such as Oklahoma and Kansas. Both states have passed restrictions on injecting the water after scientists concluded that the practice has caused earthquakes, sometimes several in a single day.
“Our hope is that it has a significant impact,” McQueen said, eyeing figures that might total a billion barrels of water a year. “As we see the produced water volumes increase, it just makes sense that we explore other methods of disposal, particularly if those methods may have an upside or beneficial use to New Mexico.”
But even in the nation’s fifth-driest state, where water is as precious as crude, environmentalists are skeptical of a strategy many state leaders view as a greener approach to dealing with waste water. Even after it is treated, they argue, the water can be tainted by harmful metals or chemicals used in fracking, creating long-term risks for people and the environment.
“If they go without challenge, these plans will forever change New Mexico’s water,” the Red Nation, a Native American advocacy group, said in a statement released in advance of a protest at a recent oil and gas industry conference in New Mexico. The new regulations would “guzzle up the region’s scarce and sacred freshwater resources for fracking and then ‘reintroduce’ dirty water back into the hydrological cycle.”
With the help of the EPA, New Mexico officials last month released a draft document on how to clarify state and federal regulations to promote reuse of the waste water.
The EPA also is conducting a separate study to potentially find other uses for produced water, citing the limitations of injection and requests from dry states asking “what steps would be necessary to treat and renew it for other purposes.”
Bob Poole of the Western States Petroleum Association said energy companies may opt for treatment and reuse instead of injection, but only if “it works economically for the company.” If there happens to be an environmental benefit, he said, “that is a win-win.”
In Pennsylvania, for example, a complex permitting process makes it difficult for companies to inject produced water within the state. Some of the water is trucked to Ohio and West Virginia for injection there, and some of it ends up with companies such as Eureka Solutions, based in Williamsport, Pa., which removes the salt so it can be used for de-icing roads and cleaning swimming pools. Eureka dumps the treated leftover water into the Susquehanna River.
Eureka charges about $8 a barrel, which is comparable to the cost of trucking it elsewhere.
But in New Mexico, where it costs as little as a dollar a barrel to inject produced water, treating it would have to be cheaper still to make it worthwhile.
“We’d love to get it cheaper and that would really [provide an incentive to] producers to move in our direction,” said Kevin Thimmesch, Eureka’s chief operations officer. “But I think we’ll need economic incentives with states to get us to that level.”
Aubrey Dunn, New Mexico’s outgoing land commissioner, said the state isn’t doing enough to incentivize treatment instead of injection. He supports state tax breaks for companies that treat the waste water so it can be used for agriculture or drinking.
But even if the water can be treated in a way that’s economically viable, environmentalists question whether it should be used at all.
Eleanor Bravo, head of Food & Water Watch in New Mexico, said, “we oppose even entertaining the idea of using this on crops.”
“Because it’s chemically altered, we believe it can never be returned to the evolutionally process as water,” she said.
A 2015 study lead by a Duke University professor found that even treated waste water from the oil and gas industry had up to 50 times the amount of ammonium allowed by the EPA.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-push-to-make-fracking-waste-water-usable-in-agriculture--and-even-for-drinking/2018/12/07/9a22e496-f803-11e8-8d64-4e79db33382f_story.html?utm_term=.6386bd8130e5
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Lawmakers Eye Partnerships to Boost Building Efficiency
Dec 10, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Christa Marshall
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy this week will examine the role of public-private partnerships in boosting efficiency in federal buildings.
The federal government is the nation's largest energy user, with more than 350,000 facilities. With that footprint, there have been fierce debates about the best way to increase energy efficiency, including whether there should be increased research spending at the Department of Energy and a phaseout of fossil fuel use in federal buildings (E&E News PM, July 27).
In a statement, the committee said encouraging public-private partnerships is "essential" to ensuring that government facilities operate as effectively and efficiently as possible.
"Public-private partnerships can allow us to minimize costs while improving energy and water efficiency without burdening the taxpayer with massive improvement projects, while simultaneously providing opportunity for business growth for energy providers," said Energy Subcommittee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.).
Last year, the committee passed the "Energy Savings Through Public-Private Partnerships Act" co-authored by Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.), which would facilitate the use of energy savings contracts to encourage private-sector investment in efficiency upgrades.
The Trump administration has faced sharp criticism for proposed budget cuts to efficiency programs, including those that affect federal buildings.
In fiscal 2019, the administration proposed a more than 60 percent cut to the Federal Energy Management Program, which assists federal agencies in achieving energy-related goals. According to FEMP, agencies should move to reduce greenhouse gas emissions approximately 40 percent from its facilities by fiscal year 2025.
In May, President Trump also issued an executive order on federal sustainability that called for agencies to increase "efficiency and environmental performance." The directive overturned an Obama-era plan and was criticized for loosening agency requirements of producing federal sustainability reports (Climatewire, May 18).
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/stories/1060109141
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'I Don't Know Why FERC Can't Do Better' — Judge
Dec 10, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
A panel of judges last week scrutinized federal energy regulators' oversight of natural gas pipelines and associated projects.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday heard oral arguments in a pair of lawsuits concerning a compressor station in Weymouth, Mass., and the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline through Pennsylvania. At several points in the morning proceedings, Judge Patricia Millett grew critical of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's handling of eminent domain and climate analysis.
"I don't know why FERC can't do better," she said during a line of questioning about the taking of private property in the Atlantic Sunrise case.
Millett, an Obama appointee, questioned whether FERC's process freezes out affected landowners, leaving them without a venue to contest gas pipeline development. By using "tolling orders" to extend its own decisionmaking process, she said, the agency has in some cases allowed developers to take private land before the property owner has a chance to dispute the action.
"My clients are effectively without a forum," said Siobhan Cole, an attorney for landowners in the Atlantic Sunrise case. The court doesn't necessarily need to require FERC to spend less time on its decisionmaking, she added, but construction should not take place until all affected parties have had a say.
The pipeline faces several legal challenges, including a Supreme Court petition that contends the project violates a group of Catholic nuns' religious freedom (Energywire, Oct. 29).
Beth Pacella, a FERC attorney, said the agency is following the procedures laid out in the Natural Gas Act, which authorizes FERC to regulate interstate gas pipelines. Oil pipelines are subject to a separate regulatory process.
Millett said she was puzzled that FERC seems to say there is not enough time to address landowner concerns, but there is plenty of time for the agency to approve pipeline construction.
"As a matter of good government, does that make sense?" she asked.
FERC's analysis of climate impacts on gas projects also came under the microscope.
In the compressor station case, Carolyn Elefant, representing residents opposed to the project, argued that FERC made a "conclusory" determination the station would have no significant climate impact. Meanwhile, she said, the agency failed to incorporate Massachusetts' own greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.
"States are very concerned about this," Elefant said, citing a recent multistate amicus brief submitted to the D.C. Circuit in a separate case (Energywire, Dec. 4).
Even after the D.C. Circuit decided last year in Sierra Club v. FERC that the agency was falling short of its duty to assess the environmental impact of gas projects, FERC is still neglecting to conduct more robust analysis, environmental attorneys in both cases told the court Friday.
Chief Judge Merrick Garland, a Clinton appointee, questioned whether environmental interests would be satisfied with a FERC analysis that includes a more detailed discussion but ultimately comes to the same "no impact" conclusion.
Pacella, the FERC attorney, said the agency's climate analysis in the Atlantic Sunrise case is the same as the one it conducted for the Southeast Market Pipelines Project after the Sierra Clubremand.
No one has challenged that review, she said.
Elizabeth Benson, representing the Allegheny Defense Project, responded to Pacella's remark in her closing statement.
A lack of challenge, she said, does not signal agreement.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/12/10/stories/1060109137
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Gas Industry Looks to DHS to Speed up Cyber Reviews
Dec 10, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
Dave McCurdy, president of the American Gas Association, said he hopes that by the end of next year, the Department of Homeland Security will have completed voluntary cybersecurity reviews of the nation's most critical natural gas pipelines.
Last month DHS outlined plans to accelerate reviews of the cybersecurity readiness of pipelines. Congress placed security oversight of pipelines under DHS's Transportation Security Administration, but the number of cybersecurity experts in the office is small and the pipelines aren't subject to strict standards and requirements.
The ability of TSA's cybersecurity staff to keep up with cyber assessments of gas pipelines has concerned the Energy Department's policy staff and some leaders of an electric power industry increasingly dependent on pipeline supplies to fuel power generation (Energywire, Nov. 19).
"We are on the Hill working to secure appropriations for TSA for additional reviewers that have cybersecurity capability," McCurdy said. "We're not satisfied that they're where they should be right now."
James Torgerson, CEO of New Haven, Conn.-based Avangrid Inc. and the new AGA chairman, said pipelines' cyber readiness has been a mystery for some time. "We hadn't heard much. We sat down [recently] with the leadership of the pipelines in the U.S.," he said. "They assured us they're doing quite a bit in making sure their systems were secure from a cyber standpoint. The comment back was, nobody seems to know that."
AGA organizes peer reviews of cyber defenses of the gas distribution companies in its membership using an AGA checklist. It covered about 10 percent of its 200 utilities last year, AGA says. "There have been instances where there was an 'Aha!' moment from the host, who said, 'I didn't realize we were doing it that way,'" McCurdy said.
"The reviewers, coming from other utilities, are able to say, 'This is something you probably ought to look at, and here's how you can do that,'" he said.
Whether such a voluntary regime is adequate could get increased attention next year. The PJM Interconnection, which is the grid operator for the Mid-Atlantic and eastern Great Lakes region, has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to examine whether it makes sense for the bulk power sector to be governed by mandatory cyber regulations while the pipeline industry on which it increasingly depends is not.
The ranking members on congressional energy panels, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), have asked the Government Accountability Office to examine TSA's ability to determine the adequacy of pipeline cyber defenses. With Pallone expected to be chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the new Congress, a critical finding by GAO, when the report is issued, could launch a committee move for tighter oversight.
Torgerson and McCurdy said federal law enforcement and security agencies have improved the sharing of cyberthreat information over the past year. "In my own company, the FBI now is working proactively with us to come in and talk to us about things they're hearing and making sure that our systems are being secured against the threats," Torgerson said. "They give us enough information that we can modify our systems.
"This is not something to be trifled with," Torgerson said. "Because there are actors out there who are trying to disrupt our systems and get information out of them. So the good thing is we're working with the government. Five years ago that wasn't even happening."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/12/10/stories/1060109153
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White House Advisers Warn of Catastrophic Grid Outages
Dec 10, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
How can America cope with a monthslong power outage of "a magnitude beyond modern experience"?
Clear lines of command, flexible communications networks, plenty of exercises and protective "community enclaves" should all play a role, according to a draft report from a group of presidential advisers.
Members of the White House's National Infrastructure Advisory Council are poised to approve a new report on surviving a catastrophic power outage in a quarterly business meeting Thursday.
The council consists of 20 executives drawn from various critical infrastructure sectors, and includes Xcel Energy CEO Ben Fowke, former President of the International Association of Fire Chiefs President Rhoda Kerr and former PJM Interconnection CEO Terry Boston.
The draft power outage study calls on the Trump administration to develop incentives for state and local governments to shore up their ability to withstand weeks or months without electricity, perhaps shifting around critical services and resources to allow "community enclaves" to sustain themselves in the dark.
Citing interviews with 60 experts and industry leaders, the NIAC found that the mass migrations that would follow an especially long power outage would rank among the most devastating side effects. Enclaves — "not new mass shelters or camps" — would draw on existing facilities and infrastructure to enable U.S. citizens to stay put for long periods of time.
The report credits the U.S. officials for improving their ability to respond to major disasters and associated power outages in recent years, from major hurricanes to wildfires.
But the National Security Council tasked the NIAC to think about unlikely but even more devastating crises, such as a "sophisticated cyber-physical attack" timed to disable critical infrastructure after a major natural disaster.
"This profound threat requires a new national focus," the NIAC concluded.
The advisers ultimately focused on how the U.S. would respond and rebuild after an unprecedented blackout, rather than what caused it.
The report suggests emergency response officials work to improve their understanding of "cascading failures" across multiple sectors, such as a natural gas interruption that leads to a fuel crisis at gas-fired power plants.
To that end, the NIAC has proposed adopting a recommendation to "ensure that all critical natural gas transmission pipeline infrastructure has the appropriate standards, design, and practices to continue service" during a worst-case outage.
The Transportation Security Administration, part of the Department of Homeland Security, currently monitors the physical and cyber security of the nation's oil and gas pipeline systems on a voluntary basis (see related story).
The NIAC report calls for putting the Department of Energy in charge of efforts to coordinate defenses among the pipeline, electricity and communications industries, citing the U.S. power grid's growing reliance on natural gas as a fuel source for generation.
"These programs may include voluntary, industry-led efforts, mandatory standards, or a combination of these approaches," the draft report said, noting "modest" steps like recent TSA efforts to update pipeline security guidance "need to be expanded."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/12/10/stories/1060109121
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Schumer Says Infrastructure Deal Must Include Climate Measures
Dec 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
Republicans hoping to strike a deal with Democrats on an infrastructure bill next year should be prepared to pony up on climate change, according to the Senate’s top Democrat.
In a letter to President Donald Trump, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) outlined priorities Democrats want included such as making permanent tax credits for renewable energy production and electric vehicles, more spending on energy storage and transmission, and funding to help communities harden themselves against extreme weather.
“Any infrastructure package considered in 2019 must include policies and funding to transition to a clean energy economy and mitigate the risks that the United States is already facing due to climate change,” Schumer wrote in the letter released Dec. 7.
A spending bill for roads, bridges, airports, transit, wastewater, and other public works is considered to be a prime area for compromise next year, and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, who is in line to get the speaker’s gavel, has already had conversations with Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on the possibility.
Schumer cited in his letter to the president a report released by the administration last month that warned about devastating economic costs from climate change and a recent spate of wildfires and hurricanes.
“Climate change is real, caused by humans, and its impacts are already being felt in communities across the country,” he wrote.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/schumer-says-infrastructure-deal-must-include-climate-measures
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Former Trump Aide Says Schumer Raising 'Serious Obstacles'
Dec 7, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Maxine Joselow
President Trump's former infrastructure adviser today criticized Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's proposal to include climate change components in a broad infrastructure package.
D.J. Gribbin, who served as the president's top infrastructure aide before exiting the White House last spring, told E&E News that Schumer (D-N.Y.) was adding a stumbling block to what's already an uphill battle.
"The conversation hasn't even started, and already we're raising very serious obstacles to getting legislation passed," Gribbin said in a phone interview this afternoon.
"Infrastructure on its own is hard, right?" Gribbin said. "But infrastructure plus climate change is nearly impossible."
In an opinion piece published in The Washington Post, Schumer said any infrastructure deal in the next Congress should include components of the "Green New Deal," the climate change policy being touted by House progressives (E&E Daily, Dec. 7).
Schumer reiterated this point in a letter sent to the White House, noting that critical infrastructure remains vulnerable to extreme weather and other impacts of a warming planet.
While Trump's promised $1 trillion infrastructure plan never materialized last year, leaders of both parties have signaled a willingness to work together on the issue since the midterm elections, raising hopes for an accord in the next Congress (E&E News PM, Nov. 7).
But Gribbin said the political will is lacking for including climate and other relevant issues in a broad package.
"Clearly, there is an overlap between infrastructure and climate change," he said. "But again, if you included every issue that was relevant to infrastructure in an infrastructure package, it would be just completely unwieldy."
Environmentalists heralded Schumer's call.
"Senator Schumer is right: a strong infrastructure package is an opportunity to make a significant down payment on transitioning to a clean energy economy that generates millions of family-sustaining jobs, while helping communities prepare for the devastating climate impacts many are already experiencing," Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, said in a statement.
"Voters across the country just sent a loud and clear message that they want our elected officials to act on climate, and we urge Congress and the Trump administration to do just that."
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/12/07/stories/1060109107
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PATH Completes Positive Train Control Installation
Dec 10, 2018 | Occupational Health and Safety
PATH, the Port Authority Trans-Hudson train system serving the New York City area, announced Dec. 4 that it is the first regional rail system to achieve compliance with the federal mandate of installing Positive Train Control (PTC) technology by the deadline of Dec. 31. The technology is designed to prevent derailments and collisions.
The Federal Railroad Administration has certified that PATH's system-wide signal upgrade has met the federal regulatory requirements for PTC; the announcement said PATH is the first railroad system in the region and one of the first in the country to meet the PTC requirements by the deadline.
The FRA certification followed extensive testing and review by the federal oversight agency and affirms PATH and the Port Authority's compliance with all technical and operational elements of the PTC mandate. The new technology provides automatic emergency braking capabilities on each line to prevent accidents such as train-to-train collisions and derailments caused by excessive speed.
PATH scheduled weekend station and service outages between early June and the end of October 2018 to complete the process of installing and testing equipment and software. The new PTC-mandated signal system is now operational on all PATH lines.
"The Port Authority and PATH have worked diligently to ensure that we continue to provide exceptional safety and security for all of our customers," said Port Authority Chairman Kevin O'Toole. "What this will mean in the long term is a safer passenger experience for PATH riders that meets the most rigorous federal safety standards."
"A system for which safety has always been the top priority is now even safer," added Port Authority Executive Director Rick Cotton. "This is an important moment in PATH's commitment to provide the highest level of safety to the riding public, and we thank all riders for their patience as PATH has installed this critical technology."
The release said PTC is one component of Communication Based Train Control, described as a more comprehensive signal system that is currently being installed to replace a fixed-block system that limits the movement of trains from one section to the next. CBTC calculates and communicates a train's exact position, speed, travel direction, and safe braking distance. As installation of this new signal system continues, regular software updates and patches required by the new technology will enable PATH to continue to fine-tune the new system. When it is completed, trains will be capable of running more frequently and closer together, a key component in future plans to increase rush-hour service on PATH and reduce car and platform congestion.
https://ohsonline.com/articles/2018/12/10/path-completes-ptc-installation.aspx?admgarea=news&m=1
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(ACC Mentioned) Science Adviser Allowed Oil Group to Edit Research
Dec 10, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
When EPA begins a major review of air pollution standards this week, a researcher who has received funding from an industry group opposed to the rules will be leading the agency's panel.
Tony Cox, who was named chairman of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee by former Administrator Scott Pruitt, accepted funding from the American Petroleum Institute to help finance his research into particulate matter pollution. He also allowed the lobbying group to proofread and copy edit his findings before they were published, according to his own acknowledgements.
It's highly unusual to give an industry group, or anyone who funds scientific work, a chance to influence the outcome of research, according to scientists.
"Certainly his ties to industry and comfort with allowing them to influence the science is concerning given he is heading a process where we know there will be heavy industry pressure to influence it," said Gretchen Goldman, research director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The arrangement is unusual in the scientific community because it stands to discredit a researcher's work, even if the group that provided funding makes innocuous changes, other researchers said. In this case, the access that Cox gave to API doesn't seem to have dramatically altered the conclusions of his study. Instead, a small change here and there could have made it a friendlier vehicle for the industry's message, Goldman said.
It "implies that the messaging matters," she said.
Cox, who was nominated for his position by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has been critical of EPA air pollution regulations and has said that research showing the connection between air pollution and serious human health consequences is overblown. He sent E&E News a study that happened to contain copy edits, which he said were made by reviewers. It's unclear which changes were made by API, and Cox denies that the fossil fuel lobbying group offered meaningful edits.
Cox is a statistician who is now tasked with overseeing the advisory committee's review of particulate matter pollution standards. It's supposed to make a key health determination that could affect millions of Americans: chiefly whether the level of air pollution they are breathing is hurting them.
The Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee is meeting Wednesday and Thursday to review EPA's science assessment for particulate matter. It's part of the legal requirement under the Clean Air Act that EPA review scientific information related to the national ambient air quality standards for six pollutants. They are: particulate matter, ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, lead and sulfur dioxide.
Cox states in his study that API provided input before it was published last year.
"This paper benefited from close proof-reading and copy-editing suggestions from API, but these reviews and suggestions were provided for the author's consideration without constraints that any of them be incorporated," he wrote in the study, which was published in the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology.
API, which lobbies the government on behalf of fossil fuel companies, has a history of fighting regulations on air pollution, sometimes by pointing to the scientific conclusions of studies that it funded.
Before Pruitt resigned amid a flurry of ethics investigations earlier this year, EPA replaced academic researchers on its science advisory boards with researchers supported by industry groups. Pruitt declared that scientists who received EPA grants had conflicts of interest, while those who are paid by polluting industries deserved a louder voice. That's when he named Cox to lead the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.
Under acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, EPA has gone even further to sideline scientists, particularly around air pollution. It recently disbanded a separate panel of scientists, who are supposed to review particulate matter pollution, and canceled plans for another panel that was to review ozone.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has remade the panel led by Cox. It now includes an academic and several state regulators who have downplayed the effects of air pollution.
Cox's 2017 study, which examines the causal relationship between air pollution and human health, was published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology. The journal has a reputation for publishing industry-funded work that's sometimes used to argue against government regulations.
Cox's research questions previous studies that have connected serious human health problems to air pollution. It fits with the approach that Cox has taken when testifying to Congress: He emphasizes uncertainties, including in 2015, when he told lawmakers that health benefits of reducing ozone exposure were "unwarranted and exaggerated."
Cox denied that API influenced his work and said the organization did not suggest any substantive changes. The fossil fuel group offered "some minor copy editing suggestions on punctuation and my use of 'relation' vs. 'relationship,'" Cox said.
"Neither in effect nor in actual fact did they interfere with, shape, or direct my findings or the conduct of my research in any way," Cox said in an email to E&E News. "My research was complete before I drafted the paper, and nothing of substance changed thereafter except in response to journal reviewer comments and my own re-reading for clarity. My research is and always have been my own, and I do not accept outside interference."
Cox has a history of attacking established research on the health risks of air pollution, using his own statistical model to crunch data associated with particulate matter, or PM2.5.
In one study, he said there was "no evidence that reductions in PM2.5 concentrations cause reductions in mortality rates." In addition to API, he has received funding from the American Chemistry Council and Philip Morris International Inc., the tobacco company.
There's a large body of science that connects serious health ailments to air pollution. Ozone and fine particle air pollution are particularly dangerous to vulnerable groups of people, including children, the elderly, people with asthma and outdoor workers.
The World Health Organization published research earlier this year that found nine out of 10 people globally breathe polluted air and that air pollution kills 7 million people annually. It's one of the leading causes of death. Vehicle emissions are a leading cause of air pollution worldwide.
John Bachmann, EPA's director for science policy on air quality during President George W. Bush's administration, said it's "crazy" that EPA is barring researchers who received agency grants from sitting on advisory panels. They are often some of the best researchers, he said.
That change means the panel overseen by Cox is reviewing air pollution standards without the help of a single epidemiologist. Altogether, the altered panels once included at least seven epidemiologists; they're all gone, Bachmann said.
He added that current members of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee are qualified, but their capabilities, expertise and perspectives are greatly limited compared with those who once served on a specialized panel to review particulate matter. Pruitt disbanded it.
"It's a huge loss to claim you can review a document that has hundreds and hundreds of pages on epidemiology by people who don't do it, don't do the research in it and the one guy who has done some of it has a point of view that is not mainstream," Bachmann said, referring to Cox.
Cox's 2017 study is a "review paper that focuses on epidemiological literature and application of epidemiological methods to case studies by someone who is not an epidemiologist," said Christopher Frey, a former chairman of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and a professor of environmental engineering at North Carolina State University.
In the past, it was rare to appoint a chair who had not previously served on the panel, Frey said. The Clean Air Act requires reviews by the advisory panel to be thorough and to rely on the latest science. He said industry researchers, going back to tobacco industry efforts to discredit the health effects of smoking, are largely focused on uncertainty rather than the risks. Frey said EPA, when it funded some of his research, did not seek to edit his work beforehand.
"In a regulatory purpose, you really want all the members of the committee to be perceived as impartial and free of conflict of interest, and I don't think as a group this committee earns that perception."
Frey, who served as chairman of the committee from 2012 to 2015 and was first appointed in 2008 under Bush, said the current board is derived of stakeholders with a vested interest.
The panel lost prominence in other ways too. In the past, there were dozens of people reviewing air pollution research for three years. Now, it's seven people doing the review in one year.
"It's a perfect storm," Frey said. "So many things have been changed all at once, and every one of them weakens the process, and collectively it just creates a tremendously weak process that borders on being a total sham."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/12/10/stories/1060109129
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EPA Plans Review of Toxic Air Limits by Next Month, Wehrum Says
Dec 8, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
The EPA plans to publish its review of Obama-era toxic air pollution limits by the end of the month or early January, the agency’s air chief said Dec. 7.
The White House Office of Budget and Management is currently reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed reconsideration of “what we think are the appropriate ways to consider costs” of the 2012 mercury and air toxic standards, Bill Wehrum, EPA assistant administrator for air and radiation, told Bloomberg Environment in an exclusive interview.
The EPA maintains it isn’t revising the standards, but rather following the Supreme Court’s orders to reexamine how the Obama administration calculated the costs and benefits of reducing mercury and other toxic air pollutants from power plants.
This review also includes the EPA’s decision to assess the risks the public faces and the technology the power sector has already used to meet the standards, with an eye to either retain or weaken the standards themselves.
“We are hoping to clear it before the holidays,” Wehrum said of when he expects the White House to finish its review. “Hopefully next week.”
Revisiting CalculationsThe EPA is revisiting the Obama administration’s calculation of costs and benefits in implementing the standards set in 2012. The Supreme Court in 2015 asked the Obama EPA to redo the analysis as part of its justification for setting the standards.
The Trump EPA disagreed with the way the Obama administration did the cost-benefit analysis in 2016, and is redoing that analysis as part of its review.
Wehrum wouldn’t give further details, but EPA acting chief Andrew Wheeler said in October that the agency isn’t planning to change the standards.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-plans-review-of-toxic-air-limits-by-next-month-wehrum-says
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Final CSAPR 'Close-Out' Rule Details EPA Defense Of Interstate Air Policy
Dec 7, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA's final rule to “close-out” the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) emissions trading program offers a broad defense of the agency's policy on reducing interstate air pollution that could help it defend the close-out rule from legal attacks, and that it might also use in ongoing suits aiming to force stricter EPA rules on the pollution.
The rule released Dec. 7 finds that 20 Eastern states need do nothing beyond existing requirements in order to fulfill their Clean Air Act “good neighbor” obligations to cut emissions that are hindering other states' ability to attain federal air standards. CSAPR, as updated in 2016 by the Obama EPA, required 22 Eastern states to participate in an air trading program to curb ozone-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx). The goal of the updated rule was to help states meet the 2008 ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) of 75 parts per billion (ppb).
The rule was never a “full remedy” to enable states to attain the 2008 NAAQS, however, except for Tennessee. The final close-out finds that 20 of the remaining CSAPR NOx trading states will attain the NAAQS by 2023, while another CSAPR state, Kentucky, is the subject of a separate rule that likewise finds it will attain by 2023. Therefore, EPA finds no need to further tighten the program's controls by reducing state emissions “budgets” or by other means.
Further, EPA is not proposing any similar trading program to help states meet the tougher 2015 ozone NAAQS of 70 ppb, relying instead on states to undertake extra measures to meet the good neighbor mandate.
In a response to comments on the proposed version of the rule, the agency outlines a legal defense against various criticisms from some Eastern states and environmentalists -- detailing arguments to justify its emissions modeling, approach to trading allowances, and other policy issues that could arise in future lawsuits.
Environmentalists and some Democrats from coastal states were quick to condemn the final rule, suggesting potential legal challenges. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Earthjustice, Environmental Defense Fund and Sierra Club in a Dec. 6 joint statement called the rule a decision “to allow harmful cross-state air pollution to continue unchecked."
Senate Environment & Public Works Committee ranking member Tom Carper (D-DE) said the rule “is another blow to downwind states like Delaware and a failure by the Trump Administration to protect families from the harmful pollution emitted from power plants in upwind states.” The existing CSAPR “isn’t cutting it. Upwind states can and must do more for downwind states to meet ozone attainment,” Carper said.
East Coast states and the 12-state Ozone Transport Commission (OTC) of Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states faulted the Trump EPA's approach to interstate air pollution in their comments on the proposal. East Coast states say the agency's choice of 2023 as a target year for attainment unlawfully ignores many states' earlier deadlines to attain NAAQS, and that EPA's projections of NAAQS attainment are unrealistically optimistic.
The OTC states also pressed EPA to force upwind power plants to run their existing NOx controls continuously, rather than relying on buying CSAPR emissions allowances to meet their emissions reduction mandates.
OTC states including Maryland and New York have filed petitions under air law section 126 for EPA to directly regulate emissions from multiple power plants upwind that the petitioning states cannot regulate, seeking to mandate “optimal” use of existing controls in order to reduce ozone on the coast. EPA has already rejected section 126 petitions from Maryland and Delaware, drawing lawsuits challenging those decisions.
And OTC-area states have also criticized the agency's decision to allow use of some “banked” allowances from the first phase of the program that sought to meet a weaker 1997 ozone NAAQS, saying the banked credits depress the allowance price to the point where it is cheaper to buy credits than run controls.
EPA's Defense
In its final CSAPR close-out rule, EPA defends against the criticisms with an extensive response that it could use not only in litigation over the close-out, but also in suits and policy decisions on related issues including the agency's response to section 126 petitions and state-led efforts to force interstate emissions cuts.
Some of the issues are already being tested in court, such as the choice of 2023 as a target year for emissions projections, in consolidated litigation against the CSAPR update rule. For example, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard oral argument Oct. 3 in the suit, State of Wisconsin, et al. v. EPA, et al., asking tough questions of both EPA and the rule's critics, which include Midwestern states arguing the rule is too tough, and East Coast states arguing it is too weak.
EPA in the CSAPR close-out says its choice of 2023 as a “future analytic year” is justified by ambiguity in the Clean Air Act about how EPA should decide whether interstate air emissions “will” impact NAAQS attainment. Nothing in the air law ties EPA to a particular date, or to the differing NAAQS attainment deadlines of states.
EPA says, “it is appropriate for the EPA’s evaluation of air quality to focus on a future analytic year that is aligned with feasible timing for installation of controls,” not NAAQS attainment deadlines. Nor is the agency breaking the law by not eliminating NAAQS nonattainment through CSAPR with immediate effect, EPA says.
The agency ties its future analytic year to the time it estimates is necessary for power plants to install new pollution controls; up to four years for selective catalytic reduction (SCR), the most effective, but also most expensive, option.
Some state critics of the CSAPR close-out say it relies on assumptions about continuing NOx reductions from various sectors, such as power plants and cars, that may not hold true under Trump EPA deregulatory efforts, or that are not “enforceable” under the air law. “EPA does not agree that modeling used to evaluate ozone concentrations . . . must only consider enforceable emission levels,” the agency says, arguing that the air law does not require it.
With respect to upwind power plants not running their SCR controls enough, EPA says, “EPA does not agree that it is necessary to consider any further emission reductions ostensibly available from the optimization of existing SCRs.”
The agency says, “the best data available at this time -- 2017 [power plant] emission data reflecting CSAPR Update implementation -- indicate that in general these controls are optimally operating to mitigate NOx emissions across the CSAPR Update region.”
This contradicts information from the OTC showing that during high ozone episodes in summer, several CSAPR-area power plants are not running their controls, or running them less than is desirable. The “success of the program is ultimately indicated not by the employment of any particular control strategy, but rather by regionwide and state-level emission reductions” that emissions trading has achieved, EPA says.
On emissions allowance banking, EPA says, “the emission reduction potential asserted by commenters is hypothetical and the EPA has no reason to believe at this time that the adjustments to the bank would lead to significant real-world NOx reductions.”
Further, “EPA also disagrees with the assertion that low allowance prices necessarily mean that emissions will be higher” than EPA projected. “In most cases, lower allowance prices reflect the market’s expectation that future emissions will be lower than anticipated, rather than higher, as other market forces continue to drive down emissions, thus decreasing demand for allowances authorizing those emissions.”
Emissions Projections
EPA also defends the accuracy of its emissions projections against accusations that it overstates ozone reductions by 2023. “EPA disagrees with the suggestion that its 2023 EGU emission projections and the underlying methodology to generate those projections are unreasonable. As with all projections, there is inherent uncertainty, but with respect to [power plant] NOx emissions, the EPA’s 2023 projections likely reflect a more conservative (i.e., higher) NOx emissions estimate than comparable alternative methods for projecting future . . . emissions.”
Actual NOx reductions since the CSAPR update of 2016 have trended down, and are now below the emissions budgets set by the rule, EPA says. “2017 ozone-season data reflected emissions that were already 7 percent below the CSAPR Update budgets, reflecting a 21 percent drop from the prior year, a pace of reduction that would, if continued, put actual emissions well below 2023 assumptions,” and “[p]reliminary 2018 data suggest continuing reductions."
This is again in tension with air quality monitoring by OTC states that shows the ozone reductions of recent years have either stalled or even reversed in some areas, and OTC projections that areas such as New York City and its environs will suffer from stubbornly high ozone for some time to come, with much of the pollution resulting from out-of-state emissions.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/final-csapr-close-out-rule-details-epa-defense-interstate-air-policy
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N.J., Va. Poised to Enter Cap-And-Trade Program
Dec 10, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Ines Kagubare
New Jersey and Virginia are on their way to joining nine other states in a regional cap-and-trade program.
The governors of both states have introduced regulations that will officially begin the process to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the first market-based regulatory program in the United States to cap and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector.
New Jersey, which withdrew from the program in 2011 under then-Republican Gov. Chris Christie, is in the process of rejoining it. Its newly elected governor, Democrat Phil Murphy, signed an executive order earlier this year requiring the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Board of Public Utilities to craft regulations that will guide it back to the program.
A spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection said the agency will soon introduce two major rules to launch its re-entry.
The first involves the mechanics and regulatory conditions of rejoining the program, including specifics on the carbon dioxide cap. The second rule prioritizes projects funded with RGGI auction proceeds, including those that serve communities that are disproportionately affected by environmental injustice. The state hopes to participate in the first quarter of the RGGI auction in March 2020.
"The impact of pulling out [from the program] is still hurting New Jersey," said Doug O'Malley, director of Environment New Jersey, a green group.
Under the executive order, the governor estimated that New Jersey lost about $279 million in revenue from withdrawing from the program.
Currently, New Jersey is close to an emission cap of 19 million metric tons, which state officials would like to reduce to 12 million metric tons per year, O'Malley said.
"We need to ratchet down our carbon pollution, and we need an aggressive cap that will put incentives to burn less fossil fuels and to invest more money in clean renewable energy technologies," O'Malley said.
According to a recent report released by the Environment America Research & Policy Center, if New Jersey were to rejoin the program, adopt a cap on power plant emissions and invest revenues in clean energy, "its investments from 2020 through 2030 could save nearly 9 million megawatt-hours of electricity, equal to the amount of electricity consumed by more than 96,000 households over that period."Virginia
Last month, Virginia's Air Pollution Control Board approved a regulation to join RGGI. If successful, Virginia would be the first Southern state to enter the climate change regional program.
The state decided that its starting cap on emissions would be 28 million metric tons, which was based on revised modeling from other states, said Michael Dowd, director of the Air and Renewable Energy Division at the state Department of Environmental Quality.
The proposed rule is currently under executive review at the governor's office until the end of the year. The DEQ will publish a re-proposal for public comment in the spring, Dowd said.
Gov. Ralph Northam (D) promised to join RGGI while campaigning for office in 2017.
"We believe that working together and through a regional approach like RGGI achieves carbon reduction at a far cheaper cost than doing it alone," Dowd said.
Under its proposed cap, Virginia stands to reduce carbon emissions by between 56 million and 65 million metric tons between 2020 and 2030, raising as much as $2.8 billion for reinvestment, according to a report released in February by the Environment America Research & Policy Center.
"We're looking forward to getting our rule promulgated by early next year, and we look forward to joining RGGI in 2020," Dowd said.
According to the report, if both New Jersey and Virginia enter the program, they could generate as much as $4.2 billion in revenue by 2030, while cutting as much as 88 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
RGGI was created more than a decade ago by Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/12/10/stories/1060109157
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Northeast’s Carbon Allowance Prices Jump 19 Percent
Dec 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
The cost for electric power companies to comply with the Northeast’s carbon trading program rose by almost 19 percent in the latest auction of carbon allowances by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
RGGI carbon allowances sold for $5.35 in the Dec. 5 auction, according to auction results announced Dec. 7.
The auction raised $71.5 million for the nine states—Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
The $5.35 price was the highest in three years and marked a 41 percent increase from the December 2017 auction.
The spike in prices can be attributed to a more stringent emissions cap and the expansion of RGGI to New Jersey and Virginia, Paul Tesoriero, environmental markets director at Evolution Markets Inc., a White Plains, N.Y., environmental markets brokerage, told Bloomberg Environment.
The emissions cap will be reduced by 30 percent from 2020-2030, under a model rule approved by the RGGI states. New Jersey and Virginia are on track to join the cap-and-trade program in 2020, expanding the total emissions covered by the program by about 60 percent.
“I think it’s fair to say that it’s all about Virginia and possibly New Jersey,” William M. Shobe, director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies at the University of Virginia, told Bloomberg Environment in an email.
One of the key factors that had kept RGGI carbon prices low was an oversupply of allowances, but the expectation is that the expansion to Virginia and New Jersey will increase demand for allowances and tame the oversupply, according to Jordan Stutt, director of carbon programs at the Acadia Center, a regional environment group.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/northeasts-carbon-allowance-prices-jump-19-percent-2
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New Governors Plan Aggressive Climate Steps
Dec 9, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Reid Wilson
New and recently reelected Democratic governors plan a series of aggressive steps to address climate change and bolster renewable energy industries in their states.
The new climate plans come amid federal and international reports that show significant and immediate threats to the environment and the global economy as carbon emissions rise and temperatures spike faster than anticipated.
At the same time, President Trump has said he will pull the United States out of the Paris climate accords, rolled back several anti-pollution regulations imposed by the Obama administration and pledged to revitalize the struggling American coal industry.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown will prioritize a measure to create a cap-and-trade system in her state that is similar to one already underway in neighboring California. Brown’s proposal, laid out in a budget blueprint last month, would set a limit on greenhouse gas emissions that would decline over 30 years.
“Using a cap and invest strategy, that means using a market-based approach that allows our business and industry to use the lowest cost option to reduce their carbon emissions,” Brown said in an interview. “We are very committed to tackling global climate change.”
Brown’s plan would create an Oregon Climate Authority to oversee the state’s efforts to combat climate change.
Some Oregon Republicans skeptical of Brown’s plan say it would hurt the state’s economy as businesses are forced to reduce emissions perhaps faster than technology allows.
“The most important thing is to make sure that whatever we do we take into account energy-intensive or -exposed businesses,” said state Sen. Cliff Bentz, the top Republican on the Joint Interim Committee on Carbon Reduction.
Bentz said he expected the proposal to pass, “absent some seismic change in current leanings” in Salem. “I think the real challenge is to go into these discussions, which I’m very happy to be part of, and to make sure it isn’t destructive to businesses.”
Aseem Prakash, a political scientist and director of the University of Washington’s Center for Environmental Politics, said Brown’s proposal has yet to be fully fleshed out.
“What she’s laid out is broad ideas,” Prakash said. “These are very complex political issues, and the governor cannot unilaterally decide this.”
The cap-and-trade plan carries no small amount of political risk. Voters in Washington this year rejected a ballot measure to create a cap-and-trade system by a wide 56.6 percent to 44.4 percent margin.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who has suggested that climate change would be at the top of his agenda if he runs for president in 2020, told The Hill last week that he will try to advance new climate measures through the legislature.
“We are using the loss in Washington to develop policy and strategy,” Oregon’s Brown said. “Under these circumstances, we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
Governors in states where the energy sector is a larger part of the economy have not proposed similar cap-and-trade plans. Instead, they promote renewable energy industries as a promising alternative.
In Colorado, the state’s largest utility, Xcel Energy, said this week it would reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent of 2005 levels by 2030, and that it would become completely carbon-free by 2050. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), who will soon leave Congress to become Colorado’s next governor, said that is a step in the right direction.
“The sooner we can achieve true energy independence, the better economic growth we’ll have and the cleaner air we’ll have,” Polis told The Hill. “Retiring coal is our priority. There’s good green jobs that can’t be outsourced.”
Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.), who will take over as New Mexico’s governor next year, said she wanted her state to produce enough energy through solar and wind farms to be able to sell excess energy to California and other neighboring states.
“If there was ever a state that could export renewable energy, it’s us,” Lujan Grisham said in an interview. During her campaign, Lujan Grisham aired an advertisement showing herself atop a wind turbine, hundreds of feet above the ground.
Still, Lujan Grisham said she isn’t ready to embrace a cap-and-trade proposal yet.
“Those issues will get robust discussion and debate in our legislature, but where we’re going to start is by finishing up the kind of investments that allow you to unequivocally get to renewable energy,” she said.
Other incoming governors plan to dramatically increase the amount of energy they use from renewable sources.
Illinois Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker has said his state will increase its reliance on renewable energy to 25 percent of total consumption by 2025. In Nevada, Gov.-elect Steve Sisolak backed a ballot measure this year that would require the state to get half of its energy from renewable sources by 2030. In Maine, Gov.-elect Janet Mills wants her state to get 80 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.
“On the big issues, we can’t afford to wait,” Polis said. “If we want to move forward on climate and renewable energy, it will be on the state level.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/420276-new-governors-plan-aggressive-climate-steps
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Conservatives Eye Data Law To Force Retraction Of Trump's Climate Study
Dec 7, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
Conservatives usually allied with the Trump administration are considering filing a data quality petition to force officials to withdraw or correct their recently released National Climate Assessment (NCA), charging it is flawed, undercuts the president's pledges to reexamine climate science and will drive suits to force regulatory action.
Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) who also led the Trump administration's EPA transition team after the 2016 election, says he believes -- as do many conservatives -- that the analysis is “deeply flawed” because it does not rely on data but computer modeling.
“It comes up with very scary stories about what could happen in the future even though . . . there is very little evidence such scary scenarios will ever come to pass.”
If CEI pursues a petition, it would argue that the Trump administration needs to correct the “process errors and scientific information, and maybe we can get it improved or withdrawn.” Ebell says it will take a while to put such a petition together and that CEI would have to bring in scientists with different expertise help write it. “If we're going to do it, we have to do it right.”
The petition would be filed under the Information Quality Act (IQA), the 1999 law requires all government-disseminated information to be objective, reproducible and peer-reviewed, though the requirement is not enforceable as courts have consistently ruled that petitions filed under the law are generally not judicially reviewable.
Ebell says CEI had also filed an early petition for correction under the first NCA issued in 2000 but ended up settling with the Department of Justice and won a notice on the assessment's website that it had not been subjected to IQA requirements.
At issue is the NCA, which the Trump administration quietly released the day after Thanksgiving. The 1,600-page document paints an increasingly dire picture of both current effects from climate change and future risks, including a conclusion that annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach “hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century” if GHG emissions continue at historic rates.
Environmentalists and state critics of the Trump administration's deregulatory agenda have warned they will cite the report to bolster their challenges to climate rollbacks. “We will use every bit of that report,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) said after its release.
While the findings are at odds with the administration's general policy seeking to downplay potential adverse effects of climate change, administration officials including President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler have minimized the urgency of the need for swifter climate action and defended regulatory rollbacks.
At a recent event, Wheeler said the NCA was mostly written by the prior administration and that Trump administration officials had refrained from intervening for fear of being accused of political interference.
But he questioned what he said was the report's focus on the worst-case climate scenarios, modeling and other underlying assumptions to suggest that those would be different under the next review -- due in four years.
His comments have already drawn strong pushback from Senate Democrats, who say they are at odds with commitments he made during his confirmation as EPA's deputy administrator not to distort climate science.
'Horror Show'
But Wheeler's comments, and the administration's approach to the NCA, are also drawing strong criticism from Ebell and other conservatives, who say the administration failed to heed their warnings to oversee the report's development.
One source also calls the administration's handling of the report's Nov. 23 release -- issued on Black Friday apparently with the hopes that it would not get much notice -- “a horror show.”
Ebell says he has been concerned about the NCA for a long time but that his efforts to elevate the issue when he was on the transition team were met with “general incomprehension.”
The White House had been urged to halt the release of the NCA and undertake a broad review of the underlying science in an August 2017 memo that was reviewed as high up as the office of Vice President Mike Pence but ultimately ignored, according to a source familiar with the document.
“Absent quick action, the President will lose the opportunity to carry out one of his key election promises: reexamination of climate science and how that science informs policy-making that has vast economic and political implications,” the memo says.
“Failure to delay the Assessment until reconsideration of the science would result in law suits demanding the Administration formulate its regulatory and budget policy on the back of an 'alarmist' view of climate science, effectively adopting the last Administration's climate policy and leaving no room to apply President Trump's campaign promises.”
Ebell notes that at the start of the administration there were not the right people in place at key agencies most involved with the drafting of the document -- and that situation largely remains the case today.
The White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) lacks a confirmed leader, as does the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.
Former Rep. Jim Bridenstine has been confirmed as administrator of NASA and has endorsed mainstream climate science but Ebell downplayed his role in the conservative push.
Because these agencies lack top personnel, “what happened with the national assessment is that this is the Obama assessment released by the Trump administration, because the White House allowed the process at the” U.S. Global Change Research Program, which is overseen by OTSP, “to continue on auto pilot with the career staff continuing down the path of the draft produced” by the prior administration.
On the one hand, Ebell says because it is not a Trump administration report, it is correct that officials disavow it. “But on the other hand, it is all their fault and they will be stuck with it. At every hearing on the Hill, they'll be asked, 'How can you be doing this when your own NCA says'” otherwise. “It's endless.”
Ebell expects administration officials to eventually reach out to its allies and ask for help in countering that expected response but given the prior ignored warnings, “It is hard to have much sympathy.”
Ebell also believes that because of how the administration handled release of the fourth assessment, the fifth one is unlikely to be different. “I have had several conversations with people in the administration” and they promised “to make sure the next one is better.” But given that they still are not taking it seriously, “I will believe it when I see it.”
He says conservatives need to push the White House more. Instead of being “so thrilled they are not sitting on their hands like the [two] Bush administrations did,” the administration's allies need to take a page from environmentalists' strategy during the Obama administration, which was to always demand more.
Strong Bias
Other conservatives are similarly critical of the report and the administration. GOP energy strategist Mike McKenna noted in a Dec. 3 memo that while much of the press coverage focused on the report's projected adverse economic impacts, it failed to note that the economy is expected to have grown significantly by then. The reporting failed to note even if there is a 10 percent economic hit by 2100, that “would come from an economy more than three times larger than it is today.”
McKenna also cited vast limitations in predicting “economic conditions 80 years in the future” as well as the fact that the economic work was based on studies sponsored by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, both likely 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.
“Perhaps not coincidentally, many impartial people have concluded or are in the process of concluding that the possibility of bias in the NCA4 is probably strong. . . . In short, the idea that warming will shrink the economy by 10 percent ignores the context of enormous economic growth, assumes twice the damages of worst-case temperatures . . . and finds such high costs arise almost exclusively from preventable heat deaths.”
And Joseph Majkut of the Niskanen Center says the report's findings are “relatively unobjectionable” though he agrees with McKenna that it has taken a lot of criticism in conservative circles and in the right-wing media for emphasizing worst cases. But that's media reporting of the report, not the report itself, he notes.
The administration's response, however, was “incomprehensible,” he says. It is “incongruous” that Wheeler complained it focused on worst-case scenarios when the agency's own baseline scenario in its proposed rollback of vehicle GHG rules assumes nearly 4 degrees C of global warming by century's end.
They need to “get the story straight. That's a lot of warming. This assessment helps us understand its implications."
Also questioning the findings means the administration is “not dealing with the main body of the report, which is that climate change poses manifest risks to every region of the country."
Wheeler's second complaint that the NCA may be underestimating innovation and technology is a “valid critique” but one that is not necessarily possible to model out into the future, Majkut says.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/conservatives-eye-data-law-force-retraction-trumps-climate-study
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