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AM ACC Clips Report - January 2, 2019
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EPA Update Regarding TSCA SACC Meetings on C.I. Pigment Violet 29 Draft Risk Evaluation
Jan 1, 2019 | National Law Review
By Lynn L. Bergeson and Margaret R. Graham
On December 31, 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), even though they had already shut down due to funding issues, announced that if the government shutdown continues through 5:00 p.m. (EST) January 4, 2019, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals’ (SACC) January 8, 2019... -
‘Not a Problem You Can Run Away from’: Communities Confront the Threat of Unregulated Chemicals in Their Drinking Water
Jan 2, 2019 | The Washington Post
By Brady Dennis
The day this small town told its residents to stop drinking the water, Jennifer and Justin Koehler decided to sell their white clapboard house and move their two children elsewhere. -
State Sen. Maria Collett to Introduce PFAS Bills
Jan 2, 2019 | Bucks County Courier Times
By Kyle Bagenstose
The newly sworn-in state senator from Lower Gwynedd said she intends to push for a drinking water standard and adding the chemicals to the state’s list of hazardous substances. -
Most US Rail Systems Miss Safety Deadline
Jan 1, 2019 | CNN
By Gregory Wallace
Only four of the nation's 41 rail systems required to implement lifesaving technology to prevent train accidents met Monday's deadline, according to the Department of Transportation. -
5 New Governors to Watch on Climate
Jan 2, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Storrow
Climate change prominently featured in a number of gubernatorial elections this fall. Here's a list of newly elected governors who stand to make a mark on America's greenhouse gas emissions in the coming year.
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EPA Update Regarding TSCA SACC Meetings on C.I. Pigment Violet 29 Draft Risk Evaluation
Jan 1, 2019 | National Law Review
By Lynn L. Bergeson and Margaret R. Graham
On December 31, 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), even though they had already shut down due to funding issues, announced that if the government shutdown continues through 5:00 p.m. (EST) January 4, 2019, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals’ (SACC) January 8, 2019, Preparatory Virtual Meeting for the January 29 through February 1, 2019, meeting on Colour Index (C.I.) Pigment Violet 29 will be cancelled, and discussion of charge questions will be folded into the face-to-face meeting scheduled for January 29 through February 1, 2019.
Further, if the shutdown continues through 5:00 p.m. (EST) January 11, 2019, the TSCA SACC’s January 29 through February 1, 2019, Peer Review of the draft risk evaluation for C.I. Pigment Violet 29 will be postponed. More information on the draft risk evaluation of C.I. Pigment Violet 29 is available in our memorandum EPA Publishes First Draft TSCA Chemical Risk Evaluation.
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/epa-update-regarding-tsca-sacc-meetings-ci-pigment-violet-29-draft-risk-evaluation
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Jan 2, 2019 | The Washington Post
By Brady Dennis
The day this small town told its residents to stop drinking the water, Jennifer and Justin Koehler decided to sell their white clapboard house and move their two children elsewhere.
Sara and Matt Dean, who had relocated several years earlier from Chicago, started worrying about the health of their young son and the baby arriving soon.
And Tammy Cooper felt a welling indignation that would turn her into an activist — one who would travel to Washington to push for action on the unregulated chemicals contaminating her family’s drinking water and that of millions of other Americans.
That late July day, this town along the banks of the Kalamazoo River became the latest community affected by a ubiquitous, unregulated class of compounds known as polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
The man-made chemicals have long been used in a wide range of consumer products, including nonstick cookware, water-repellent fabrics and grease-resistant paper products, as well as in firefighting foams. But exposures have been associated with an array of health problems, among them thyroid disease, weakened immunity, infertility risks and certain cancers. The compounds do not break down in the environment.
In Parchment, where they were once used by a long-shuttered paper mill, tests found PFAS levels in the water system in excess of 1,500 parts per trillion — more than 20 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended lifetime exposure limit of 70 parts per trillion.
Local officials promptly alerted residents. Michigan officials declared a state of emergency. Residents started picking up free cases of bottled water at the high school. Within weeks, the town abandoned the municipal wells that had served 3,000 people and began getting water from nearby Kalamazoo.
“This is not a problem you can run away from,” Cooper said. “There are Parchments across the country.”
Harvard University researchers say public drinking-water supplies serving more than 6 million Americans have tested for the chemicals at or above the EPA’s threshold — which many experts argue should be far lower to safeguard public health. The level is only an agency guideline; the federal government does not regulate PFAS.
The compounds’ presence has rattled communities from Hoosick Falls, N.Y., to Tucson. They have been particularly prevalent on or near military bases, which have long used PFAS-laden foams in training exercises.
Both houses of Congress held hearings on the problem this year, and lawmakers introduced bills to compel the government to test for PFAS chemicals nationwide and to respond wherever water and soil polluted by them are found. In late November, the head of the EPA vowed that the agency would soon unveil a “national strategy” to address the situation.
Affected communities are still waiting.
“There are some very real human impacts from this stuff,” said Erik Olson, a drinking-water expert for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Most people have no idea they are being exposed.”
Michigan is one of the few states where officials are trying to determine the extent of PFAS contamination. Health officials undertook statewide tests this year across 1,380 public water supplies and at more than 400 schools that operate their own wells.
“When we look for it, we tend to find it,” said Eden Wells, the state’s chief medical executive. Yet detection raises difficult questions, given the lack of regulation involving PFAS in water and the evolving research on its long-term health effects.
“Many of our responses are outstripping the scientific knowledge we need,” Wells said.
More is known about two particular types of the chemicals, perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOA) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOS), which companies phased out years ago amid growing evidence that both were ending up in the blood of nearly every American. But thousands of other PFAS chemicals remain in use — among the many threats, including arsenic and lead, to drinking water nationwide.
“From a policy perspective, what bothers me about all this is there are industries everywhere that don’t really have to report what they are using,” said Detlef Knappe, a North Carolina State University environmental engineer whose research helped identify another PFAS chemical, known as GenX, in Wilmington’s drinking water supply. “As a class, there are so many compounds . . . and it pops up in the most unexpected places.”
The Trump administration’s focus on the problem has been inconsistent.
Politico reported in May that the White House and EPA sought to block publication of a federal health study on the nationwide effects of PFAS contamination after one administration aide warned in an email that it could result in a “public relations nightmare.” The study from the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which eventually was released, suggested that the EPA’s existing, nonenforceable standard is inadequate to protect public health and should be much lower.
The same month, the EPA held a PFAS “summit” with industry representatives, public health groups, tribal leaders and officials from all levels of government. Then-administrator Scott Pruitt pledged action, saying, “There are concerns about these chemicals across the country because of their persistence, their durability, getting into the environment and impacting communities in an adverse way.”
Little has happened since then, however.
At a hearing in early fall, Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) pressed the EPA’s director of groundwater and drinking water on when the agency might announce its plans to regulate the chemicals and finalize a drinking-water standard. Peter Grevatt, an agency veteran who recently retired, responded that officials were continuing to visit communities and develop a long-term “management plan.” He acknowledged that it could take the agency a “number of years” to put enforceable regulations in place — if it determined that the contaminants were surfacing in enough water systems to be considered a nationwide health concern.
“Is it a national standard that requires all the nation’s systems to sample on some regular basis and has the tools to get treatment in place?” Grevatt said. “Or is it something that we’ll address more locally?”
Environmental attorney Robert Bilott successfully sued DuPont on behalf of plaintiffs exposed to PFOA in Ohio and West Virginia, and this year he filed a class-action lawsuit against 3M, DuPont, Chemours and several other companies on behalf of all Americans with PFAS chemicals in their blood. Some states have taken aggressive steps on their own, with New Jersey the first to regulate certain types of PFAS chemicals in its drinking water.
Federal attention is long overdue, Bilott contends.
“It’s a national issue that needs to be addressed in a national way,” he said.
At least outwardly, a sense of normalcy has returned to Parchment.
Bottled water is no longer being handed out at the high school, though the town is still relying on water from Kalamazoo. Officials say their investigation is ongoing, with one likely culprit of the contamination being a local landfill once used by the now-closed paper mill.
Yet beneath the surface, many people continue to worry.
“In our minds, our water was safe,” said Mayor Robert D. Britigan III, who noted that Parchment always had been in compliance with Michigan’s drinking-water regulations. The city has since left the municipal water business. “We will never go back to those wells,” he said.
On a sunny day this fall, customers lined up at the window of Twisters for the last ice cream cones of the season. The regulars sat in their usual spots inside Scooter D’s, a popular diner off the main drag, where the waitresses call people “sweetheart” and the smell of hash browns hangs in the air.
“We lost a lot of business, primarily because of fear,” said manager Carrie Klinger, whose father started the diner more than two decades ago. During the month-long water crisis, the family bought 80 pounds of bagged ice a day, made soups with bottled water and served canned sodas because the drink machine was hooked to a water line.
“It’s still not quite back to where it was,” Klinger said. “I still have customers who say they’ll never drink the water again.”
Echoes of that distrust linger on Glendale Avenue, where the Koehlers lived until moving away and where the Dean and Cooper families remain.
“It made me so scared, because our kids are so little. And it made me angry,” Jennifer Koehler said.
Tammy Cooper and her husband David have wrestled with the same emotions. “What did this crisis do? It woke me up to what the government is and is not doing on many levels,” she said.
For the Deans, their days remain a mix of anxiety, resignation and doubt.
“We relocated here thinking it would be a really great life decision,” Sara Dean said as her 2-year-old son, Patrick, played on the floor. “You’re supposed to hear about this somewhere else. This is the most average of average communities that there could be. It’s ‘Leave It To Beaver’ average. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.”
The family spent thousands of dollars to install a top-notch water filter. Still, they hesitate to wash their vegetables or cook with tap water. “It’s just this giant question mark,” Matt Dean said. “Are we responsible staying here?”
But they are staying, for now. On Oct. 17, Sara gave birth to a second son, Britt. The next day, the family brought him home to Parchment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/not-a-problem-you-can-run-away-from-communities-confront-the-threat-of-unregulated-chemicals-in-their-drinking-water/2019/01/01/a9be8f72-dd4b-11e8-b732-3c72cbf131f2_story.html?utm_term=.aeaff2a84ee4
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State Sen. Maria Collett to Introduce PFAS Bills
Jan 2, 2019 | Bucks County Courier Times
By Kyle Bagenstose
The newly sworn-in state senator from Lower Gwynedd said she intends to push for a drinking water standard and adding the chemicals to the state’s list of hazardous substances.
There are few local issues that have fostered bipartisan agreement more than water contamination, and new state Sen. Maria Collett, D-12, of Lower Gwynedd, is joining the team.
Even before she was sworn in Tuesday, Collett announced that she would be introducing two pieces of legislation related to PFAS chemicals, which have contaminated public and private water wells in Horsham, Warminster, Warrington and some neighboring communities.
“After decades of unregulated PFAS use by the United States military in firefighting training on thee former bases ... in Bucks and Montgomery counties, PFAS have turned up in elevated levels,” Collett said in a prepared statement. “This is unfair and punitive. Our residents are innocent victims whose health and safety have been compromised through no fault of their own.”
PFAS are synthetic chemicals based on a carbon-fluorine bond, one of the most indestructible combinations in chemistry. They last for decades, and potentially much longer, in the environment, and accumulate in the bodies of animals and humans exposed to them. Studies have linked them to a variety of potential health issues, including high cholesterol levels, immunodeficiencies, reproductive effects, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disorders and some cancers.
Collett’s bills intend to address a growing area of concern among the public and lawmakers: Although the water systems in the three primarily affected towns have filtered out the chemicals, ratepayers continue to shoulder a large portion of the economic burden through surcharges and rate increases. Because the chemicals are largely unregulated at the state or federal levels, the towns are unable to recoup much of their costs from the military, and regulators are limited in their ability to stop pollution from continuing to leach off area bases.
Collett’s bills, which somewhat pick up where the efforts of her predecessor, state Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, left off, would seek to give local towns and state agencies more heft by formally regulating the chemicals. The first bill would establish a 10 parts per trillion (ppt) drinking water limit for four of the chemicals: PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS and PFNA.
That’s significantly lower than a 70-ppt advisory limit for just PFOS and PFOA currently put forth by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which the military is using as the basis of its response here. PFHxS is not even listed on many environmental reports issued by the military, although the chemical was found in high amounts in the blood of about 230 area residents who recently took part in a state sampling program.
“There are legitimate and reasonable concerns regarding this contamination as well as what the acceptable levels of PFAS should be,” Collett said in a memo to her colleagues asking for support for the bill. “It is time to lower the acceptable standard of PFAS levels in drinking water in Pennsylvania.”
The concept of using legislation to implement a state drinking water standard for PFAS is not new, and is likely to meet resistance. In previous sessions, state Rep. Tom Murt, R-152, of Upper Moreland, introduced a bill that would set a 5 ppt standard for PFOA and a 5 ppt standard for PFOS.
However, Murt’s bill ultimately stalled in committee. Those watching the efforts say the concept received private pushback from water utility interests throughout the state. As testing in communities around Bucks County has shown, PFAS often appear in single-digit parts per trillion, even in areas with no known source of contamination. The chemicals have been used for decades in various industrial and commercial processes, and are believed to be common at lower levels in the environment and water sources.
Filtration, which typically involves purchasing large carbon filtration units, costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in upfront capital costs, plus ongoing annual maintenance costs.
Others also have questioned the legal vulnerabilities of a law that sets a drinking water standard generated without a robust scientific process. Typically, Pennsylvania relies on EPA drinking water standards, which are traditionally developed after years of scientific and political deliberation. Pennsylvania appears to be moving in direction of states such as California and New Jersey, which set their own standards, announcing last year it is seeking to hire toxicologists who can develop drinking water standards. However, the state has been unable to make a hire to date.
But one additional hurdle to legislation might be lifted in the new session. Former state Rep. Kathy Watson said in an interview last year that former Rep. John Maher, who chaired the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, was not the biggest fan of the legislation.
“He just said he wasn’t that interested, quite frankly,” Watson said.
But Maher retired last year. Murt said he thinks it could be an important change.
“A different chairperson with a different perspective might be more receptive,” to PFAS legislation, Murt said.
Murt, along with state Rep. Todd Stephens, R-151, of Horsham, have been active on the issue in the past and say they look forward to working with Collett in the new session. But both also hinted they may ultimately push for legislation to remove the chemicals to the lowest levels possible, and Stephens said he intends to introduce his own package of bills.
“Unless (and) until the scientific community agrees on a safe long-term exposure level for our most sensitive citizens we should not tolerate any level of these chemicals in our drinking water,” Stephens said.
Stephens said Tuesday, after being sworn-in to a new term, he would continue to fight to hold the federal government accountable for clean up of PFAS contamination.
“While the federal government is responsible for the contamination, local ratepayers and taxpayers have been bearing the costs to remove these harmful contaminants from our public drinking water,” he said in a statement. “I also want the federal government to provide medical testing for residents who used the drinking water and to follow up with biomedical studies and care.”
State Rep. Todd Polinchock, R-144, of Chalfont, who took over for Watson and was also sworn-in Tuesday, said he too has spoken with Collett and plans to work collaboratively. A Navy veteran, Polinchock said he served at the former Naval Air Station-Joint Reserve Base Willow Grove, whose water source was later shown to contain the chemicals at extremely high levels.
“I drank a lot of coffee with that water,” Polinchock said, adding he wants to make sure residents don’t continue to pay the costs of contamination.
A second bill Collett is proposing may face fewer hurdles than a drinking water standard. It would add the four PFAS chemicals to the state’s designated list of hazardous substances, along with any chemicals “designated by executive order that poses a threat to public health and safety or the environment.”
Collett’s memo on the proposed legislation echoed arguments made by other advocates in the past: that designating PFAS as hazardous substances would open up legal avenues to “fully recoup remediation costs” from the military or another polluter.
Collett says the bill would also permit the governor to declare an emergency, similar to a natural disaster such as a flood, for water sources impacted by PFAS above 10 ppt. The governor could then establish drinking water or cleanup standards for the affected area, which could allow a more narrow approach than a statewide regulation such as a drinking water standard.
The bill also would make communities impacted by an emergency declaration eligible for state grants to pay for treatment, infrastructure, and other measures to address contamination.
Collett’s staff said Monday they didn’t have a firm date on when the legislation would be formally introduced and instead were focused on building additional bipartisan support in the coming weeks. Chief of Staff Correne Kristiansen called the efforts a “top priority.”
http://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/news/20190102/state-sen-maria-collett-to-introduce-pfas-bills
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Most US Rail Systems Miss Safety Deadline
Jan 1, 2019 | CNN
By Gregory Wallace
Only four of the nation's 41 rail systems required to implement lifesaving technology to prevent train accidents met Monday's deadline, according to the Department of Transportation.
The others -- including Amtrak -- have either applied for or been granted extensions of the deadline.
The technology, called positive train control, can prevent collisions and derailments. It involves installing equipment on locomotives and tracks that communicates information about the train's speed as well as the position of the train and track switches.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates rail accidents, has repeatedly called for positive train control. Chairman Robert Sumwalt told Congress last February that the board has identified 150 accidents, which caused 300 deaths, since 1969 that could have been prevented by the technology."I've always referred to it as the angel on our shoulder," said John Hiatt, a former railroad engineer who is now an investigator with the Bremseth Law Firm, whose clients include railroad employees.
Hiatt told CNN that Congress, railroads and federal regulators share the blame for the missed deadline. In 2008, Congress set a 2015 deadline for implementing the technology, then extended it until 2018 and required federal regulators to approve extensions until 2020 for railroads that demonstrate progress toward implementing positive train control."The blood is on their hands," Hiatt said of Congress.
In December 2017, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao wrote to railroad executives that she was "concerned that many of the Nation's railroads must greatly accelerate their efforts" to meet the deadline.She suggested the Federal Railroad Administration would not look kindly on further requests for extensions, saying its leaders had been directed to "create an increased level of urgency to underscore the imperative of meeting existing timeline expectations for rolling out this critical rail-safety technology."
But the railroad administration subsequently granted 10 exemptions or extensions and is considering requests from the other 27 rail systems that did not meet the deadline, according to the Department of Transportation."
FRA has sought to hasten and facilitate the deployment of PTC," the department said in a statement provided in response to questions from CNN.
The Department of Transportation, the railroad administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are largely closed due to the partial government shutdown.
"There really are no consequences," Hiatt, the accident investigator, said of the missed deadline.He believes that rail system operators are "dragging their feet" on installing the expensive technology and are compromising safety. In the meantime, he said, rail systems could improve the signage and warnings for train engineers, a relatively inexpensive approach.
Amtrak, one of the nation's largest commuter rail operators, did not return CNN's call for comment on Monday. Amtrak is a federally owned corporation but is not subject to the shutdown.
In mid-November, Amtrak requested an extension of the December 31 deadline. The railroad administration has not yet ruled on that request. In September, it warned that Amtrak was at risk of not qualifying for an extension, but it said in October that the rail line was making acceptable progress.
https://edition-m.cnn.com/2019/01/01/politics/positive-train-control-deadline/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co.il%2F
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5 New Governors to Watch on Climate
Jan 2, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Storrow
Climate change prominently featured in a number of gubernatorial elections this fall. Here's a list of newly elected governors who stand to make a mark on America's greenhouse gas emissions in the coming year.
1. California's Gavin Newsom (D)
Few states embody the climate challenge quite like California.
The Golden State is America's second-largest carbon emitter. It was ravaged by wildfires in 2018, and it's home to one of the country's leading climate hawks, outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown (D).
That means there will be considerable focus on Newsom when he takes office Monday. Newsom, the lieutenant governor and former San Francisco mayor, inherits the country's most ambitious carbon-cutting policies. California has committed to slashing greenhouse gas levels 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2030 and is striving to make its grid carbon free by 2045.
Emissions are trending downward. The latest state data show emissions fell below 1990 levels in 2016. State law requires emissions to meet the 1990 threshold by 2020.
But serious questions abound for Newsom.
Transportation emissions, which account for 40 percent of California's greenhouse gases, have steadily edged upward in recent years. They climbed 2 percent in 2016. That complicates California's path to a 40 percent reduction by 2030.
The governor-elect has said he wants to eliminate pollution from diesel engines by replacing trucks and port equipment with electric or hydrogen fuel alternatives by 2030 (Climatewire, Sept. 26, 2018).
He also expressed some support for the $77 billion high-speed rail project championed by Brown. Newsom told the Los Angeles Times he supports a northern leg of the rail line connecting the Central Valley to the Bay Area, but he raised questions about the southern section of the project.
Another item to watch is whether Newsom will have a heavier hand when it comes to the state's oil and gas industry. Some greens were miffed by Brown's decision to permit new wells in the state, but Newsom has signaled he may be willing to take a stricter approach (Climatewire, Oct. 9, 2018).
2. Florida's Ron DeSantis (R)
Florida Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis (R) visited President Trump in the White House last month. White House/Flickr
State officials weren't allowed to mutter the phrase "climate change" under outgoing Gov. Rick Scott (R). Whether that changes under DeSantis remains to be seen.
Florida's governor-elect has sought to walk a fine line on climate. He has committed to addressing sea-level rise and cleaning up the state's waterways. But when asked whether he accepts mainstream climate science during one of last fall's debates, he famously quipped: "I don't want to be an alarmist. I want to look at this and do what makes sense for Florida" (Greenwire, Oct. 22, 2018).
The stakes in Florida are considerable.
Sea-level rise is already affecting parts of the coastline, and the state is the country's fourth-largest carbon emitter. Several large coal units retired in 2018, but there are major questions about what replaces them. Solar installations, which languished for years in the Sunshine State, have just started to increase thanks in part to a ballot measure in 2016.
DeSantis said little about renewables on the campaign trail, but he was a vocal opponent of the production tax credit for wind during his time in Congress. The League of Conservation Voters gave him a 2 percent lifetime score.
3. Illinois' J.B. Pritzker (D)
Former President Obama is seen with Illinois Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker (D) in November. Armando L. Sanchez/TNS/Newscom
Pritzker's victory over Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) means Illinois could be in for a sharp turn from its current course.
Rauner isn't from the climate-denying wing of the Republican Party, but he also rarely mentioned the issue during his four years in Springfield. And he did try to relax air quality standards on the state's large coal fleet.
That's not happening now. State regulators recently rejected the idea, and Pritzker is likely to cement the shift away from the black mineral.
An heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, Pritzker has said he wants to put the state on track to generate all its power from renewables. He has also cast wind and solar as an economic development solution for southern Illinois, which is home to several large coal mines.
Implementing a 2016 law that provided subsidies to two nuclear power plants and called for a big increase in renewable generation figures to be one of Pritzker's most important tasks.
Why does it matter?
Illinois is America's second-largest coal-consuming state (Climatewire, Oct. 29, 2018). There has long been speculation that Vistra Energy Corp. may move to shutter some of its downstate coal plants, but mining interests are pushing a plan that could help those facilities swap Wyoming-mined coal for Illinois coal (Climatewire, Dec. 21, 2018). The plants burn Wyoming coal to comply with the Clean Air Act.
How Pritzker approaches the situation will help determine the trajectory of Illinois' emissions and its coal sector.
4. Wyoming's Mark Gordon (R)
Wyoming Gov.-elect Mark Gordon (R) talks with constituents in Lusk, Wyo. Gordon/Facebook
Speaking of coal, no state mines more of the stuff than Wyoming.
And the decline of the industry means Gordon will have a lot on his hands when he assumes the governor's office Monday.
Gordon, the state treasurer, hails from his party's moderate wing. He even did a stint as chairman of the Sierra Club's state chapter. But he campaigned as an ardent supporter of the coal industry. Which Gordon shows up in the governor's office is a matter of considerable speculation in Cheyenne.
Several big questions confront Wyoming right away. Chief among them: Will Gordon continue his predecessor's policy of pushing coal exports and carbon capture and sequestration? Both figure to be central to the industry's long-term future. The question is whether they arrive soon enough.
The rapid pace of coal plant retirements has ravaged two large coal mining firms in the state. Westmoreland Coal Co. filed for bankruptcy in October, and Cloud Peak Energy Inc. could soon follow. The company's stock traded for less than a dollar in December.
At the same time, PacifiCorp, Wyoming's largest utility, recently released a report suggesting that many of its coal plants are gasping financially. It suggested moving up the retirement dates of several units in the state (Climatewire, Dec. 5, 2018).
With all the talk of coal, it's easy to forget Wyoming has also played host to a minor oil boom in the Powder River Basin. The state recently tightened its rules governing methane emissions from new wells, but some greens worry it doesn't go far enough (Climatewire, Nov. 30, 2018).
Gordon, in other words, will have plenty to do.
5. New Mexico's Michelle Lujan Grisham (D)
New Mexico Gov.-elect Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) speaking as a member of Congress last year. Erin Schaff/UPI/Newscom
The sharpest turn on climate this year may be in the Land of Enchantment, where a renewable booster takes over from a fossil fuel ally.
Susana Martinez, the outgoing Republican governor, frustrated greens throughout her tenure in Santa Fe by supporting the oil and gas industry.
Now she's being replaced by Lujan Grisham, a congresswoman who campaigned on a pledge to generate half the state's power from renewables by 2030 (Climatewire, Nov. 7, 2018).
The climate impacts could be considerable. Half of the state's energy-related carbon emissions came from its coal-heavy power sector in 2015, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
But a major shift is underway. State regulators recently approved a plan by the Public Service Company of New Mexico to eliminate coal by 2031. And Lujan Grisham will have solid majorities in the state House and Senate to help her pursue her renewable goals.
Still, that might not be the biggest climate issue in New Mexico, which has witnessed an oil boom in the Permian Basin. The surge in oil production has led to an increase in methane emissions.
Lujan Grisham has committed to curbing emissions from new and old wells, saying methane leaks are not only bad for the atmosphere but are a hit to the state's coffers (Climatewire, Nov. 26, 2018).
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/01/02/stories/1060110675
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