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(ACC Mentioned) H1 Outlook: Trade War Lingering for US Petrochemicals
Jan 4, 2019 | Platts
By Kristen Hays and Phillipe Craig
A 90-day pause on the Trump administration's plan to hike tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods in January may delay higher consumer costs for everything from tires to galoshes, but the US petrochemical industry remains among the top targets of tariffs already in place and there is no obvious end in sight. -
(ACC Mentioned) Earth Matters: Get With the Plastic Bag Ban!
Jan 4, 2019 | The Island Now
This new year brings the effective dates of single-use plastic bag bans in many places around the country, including the city of Boston and even closer to home, 19 New Jersey municipalities. -
(ACC Mentioned) SAVE NOW: Seven Smart Strategies to Reduce Your Food Budget
Jan 5, 2019 | St. Louis Post-Dispatch
(Metro) Food is a necessity and an expense that simply cannot be avoided. -
The EPA Has Backed Off Enforcement Under Trump. Here Are the Numbers.
Jan 4, 2019 | Truthout
By Marianne Sullivan, Chris Sellers, Leif Fredrickson and Sarah Lamdan
The Trump administration has sought to weaken the Environmental Protection Agency in a number of ways, from staff and proposed budget cuts to attempts to undermine the use of science in policymaking. -
White House Vows to Veto Democrats' Bill to Reopen EPA
Jan 4, 2019 | Inside EPA
The White House has formally threatened to veto House Democrats' freshly passed bills that would restore funding to EPA and other agencies subject to the ongoing government shutdown, citing in part the fact that the bill -- which provides level funding to EPA -- provides “excessive” funds that the administration did not request. -
EPA Denies Section 21 Petition Seeking Increased Asbestos Reporting
Jan 4, 2019 | National Law Review
By Lynn L. Bergeson
On December 21, 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) Nancy B. Beck, Ph.D., signed a Federal Registerdocument denying a Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Section 21 petition requesting that EPA amend the Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule to increase asbestos reporting, exclude asbestos from certain exemptions, and lift Confidential Business Information (CBI) claims on asbestos information reported under the CDR rule. -
(ACC Mentioned) Trump’s EPA Is Undermining New Law to Regulate Chemicals
Jan 5, 2019 | Truthout
By Daniel Ross
Modern life is awash with chemicals. -
(ACC Mentioned) Firefighters, Child Health Advocates Applaud Bill to Ban Potentially Toxic Flame Retardants
Jan 4, 2019 | Boston Globe
By Kay Lazar
To environmentalists, it was a no-brainer bill that would ban furniture, bedding, and children’s products containing potentially toxic flame-retardant chemicals from being made or sold in Massachusetts. -
Laws Intended To Protect Firefighters Who Get Cancer Often Lack Teeth
Jan 7, 2019 | WPRL
By Lauren Bavis
Doctors told Steve Dillman the throat cancer he was diagnosed with in 2008 came from smoking. -
'EPA Failed Franklin': Families, Environmental Group Demand Investigation Into Contamination
Jan 7, 2019 | Indianapolis Star
By Sarah Bowman
Two groups concerned about a cluster of childhood cancers in Franklin are demanding an investigation in a letter sent to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Inspector General last week. -
Some Fear Groundwater Near Georgia Military Bases Is Toxic
Jan 5, 2019 | AP (In The New York Times)
Groundwater near Georgia military bases remains contaminated from a toxic firefighting foam used for decades by the U.S. Air Force, prompting fears among residents about their exposure to the chemicals. -
There’s a Toxic Weed Killer on the Menu in K-12 Schools Across the US
Jan 7, 2019 | Truthout
By Caroline Cox
Many parents cheered about 10 years ago when Michelle Obama took on the important task of improving school meals. -
Carper Extracts Policy Concessions in Deal on EPA, CEQ Nominees
Jan 4, 2019 | PoliticoPro
By Anthony Andragna
Senate Environment and Public Works Ranking Member Tom Carper said he received some significant policy commitments on chemical safety, pesticides and possible changes to a landmark environmental law from the Trump administration in exchange for allowing confirmation of three executive branch nominees in the waning hours of the 115th Congress. -
U.S. Liquefied Natural Gas Hits Record Highs Again
Jan 6, 2019 | Forbes
By Jude Clemente
Over the final week of 2018, U.S. feedgas for LNG exports surpassed 5 billion cubic feet per day for the first time ever This is an increase of over 60% for the same time in 2017. -
LNG-Related Approvals by FERC Signaling More U.S. Exports in 2019
Jan 4, 2019 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Leticia Gonzales
Federal authorities started off the new year with approvals for a pair of liquefied natural gas (LNG)-related projects that indicate more U.S. exports this year. -
New Year, New Hurdles for Alaska LNG Megaproject
Jan 7, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
Alaska's multibillion-dollar LNG export project faces serious hurdles in the New Year as negotiations drag on with its potential Chinese partners and state officials struggle to complete environmental studies required by federal regulators. -
Elections Embolden Coloradans’ Push for New Drilling Restrictions
Jan 5, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tripp Baltz
The shifting political winds in Colorado that swept more Democrats into statewide offices have emboldened community and environmental activists who want the governor-elect to halt new oil and gas wells. -
Feds Give Cheniere Green Light to Start Production at Corpus Christi Second Unit
Jan 7, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Sergio Chapa
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gave Cheniere Energy permission to begin the startup process for the second production unit at the company's Corpus Christi LNG facility. -
FERC Seen Punting on Gas Projects Till McIntyre Seat is Filled
Jan 4, 2019 | PoliticoPro
By Eric Wolff
The death of FERC Commissioner Kevin McIntyre this week is likely to keep any controversial gas pipeline and LNG terminal approvals off the regulators' agenda for the near future. -
Lujan Grisham's Admin Holds New Hearing in Oil and Gas Case
Jan 7, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
New Mexico's new Democratic administration is acting to reverse a regulatory move that could double the number of oil and gas wells in the northwestern corner of the state. -
Derailed Train Leaks Hazardous Materials in Jefferson Co.
Jan 7, 2019 | Fox24 WGXA
By Amaris Jenkins
A town is being evacuated after a train derailed releasing hazardous materials. -
Blumenthal: Railroads Should Not Get Extension to Install PTC
Jan 7, 2019 | Digital Journal
By Karen Graham
Dozens of railroads, including Metro-North, missed the December 31st deadline to install "positive train control," which can prevent collisions and derailments. -
Pelosi Says House to Revisit Climate Legislation
Jan 4, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter and Anna Edgerton
The House will take up climate legislation, including a measure based on a bill the body approved last time Democrats were in the majority, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said. -
Benefits of Limiting Toxins Obviously Outweigh Cost — Except at Trump's EPA
Jan 5, 2019 | The Hill - Opinion
By Michael Mikulka
When they thought no one was looking on the Friday before the New Year, Trump's EPA decided to cheat the American public in favor of polluters, by exaggerating the price tag of environmental regulations while minimizing their benefit. -
States Demand EPA Scrap Methane Rule Delay
Jan 4, 2019 | E&E News PM
By Niina Heikkinen
Nine attorneys general and the California Air Resources Board are calling for EPA to rescind its plan to delay controls on methane emissions from municipal landfills. -
$16 Million in Energy Grants Could Improve Climate Models
Jan 4, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
The Energy Department will offer $16 million in grant funds for research to improve climate and Earth system models, a move scientists are welcoming amid largely stagnant or declining federal climate science funding. -
HFC Deal Goes Live Without U.S. Support
Jan 7, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick
A global agreement on heat-trapping super pollutants took effect last Tuesday without the United States.
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(ACC Mentioned) H1 Outlook: Trade War Lingering for US Petrochemicals
Jan 4, 2019 | Platts
By Kristen Hays and Phillipe Craig
A 90-day pause on the Trump administration's plan to hike tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods in January may delay higher consumer costs for everything from tires to galoshes, but the US petrochemical industry remains among the top targets of tariffs already in place and there is no obvious end in sight.
"We know that things are not going to change for 90 days -- that's all we know," a US market source said in December.
Petrochemical-heavy 25% tariffs the US imposed on Chinese goods in August are not part of the temporary trade detente reached by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in early December at the G-20 Summit in Argentina.
The two leaders agreed the US would hold off on raising 10% tariffs to 25% on Chinese goods -- many of which involve finished plastics products -- to allow the two largest global economies to negotiate a trade deal.
Trump told reporters it was an "incredible deal," and that China would buy a "tremendous amount of agriculture and other products" from the US.
State Councillor Wang Yi, China's top diplomat, told reporters the agreement prevented "the expansion of economic frictions" between the US and China. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 288 points on news of the agreement.REQUEST A FREE TRIAL OFPetrochemicalscan
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Then, on December 4, Trump tweeted "I am a Tariff Man," saying tariffs would "always be the best way to max out our economic power." The Dow fell nearly 800 points.
Two days later, Canadian law enforcement officials, at the request of the US, arrested Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications behemoth Huawei Technologies, on charges that could stem from violating US sanctions on Iran, sparking outrage in Beijing.
By December 7, the Dow had fallen 1,150 points, or 4.5%. For all of 2018, the Dow fell 5.6% in the worst year for stocks since 2008, the year of the global financial crisis.
Stock prices are likely to rise and fall again as more tweets and negotiation nuggets emerge, but uncertainty will remain for the US petrochemical industry, stuck in the center of the $250 billion in tariffs the US has imposed on Chinese goods and the $110 billion in levies China slapped on US goods in response.
"My crystal ball has gotten a big old crack," another petrochemical market source said, noting the only constant in the tumult for market players and chemical companies is uncertainty about how long the trade tensions will last.
On January 2, Apple CEO Tim Cook told investors the company had cut its revenue guidance for the fourth quarter of 2018 amid China's slowing economy, which he said had been impacted by ongoing trade tensions.
The market source said China was "kind of a catalyst" for global growth.
"When the Chinese show optimism, and come out and buy at a decent price, then Southeast Asia and India jump in. If they're actively buying, the rest of the world will follow," the source said.
But without those big Asian economies, "there's not much juice left," the source added. "And China is not going to buy when they feel that their economy will be impacted by the US, which is one of the biggest consumers of their goods."
The first round of tariffs the countries imposed on each other in July involved largely agricultural products and vehicles. Round Two in August involved hundreds of petrochemicals, from feedstocks China sources from the US to make plastics and rubber to machinery, pipes, tubes and other products China routinely exports to US buyers.
China's August tariffs target two grades of polyethylene that make up more than 90% of largely export-bound new production that is online, under construction or planned along the US Gulf Coast, in Pennsylvania and potentially Ohio. That new infrastructure makes up the bulk of more than $200 billion in projects fueled by cheap ethane amid the US natural gas boom, and has prompted the American Chemistry Council to argue vehemently for petrochemicals to be left out of the trade war.
"The success of the US chemicals industry hinges on our ability to engage with global markets," Ed Brzytwa, director of international trade for the American Chemistry Council, said in December testimony before the US Office of the Trade Representative (USTR) regarding a potential trade deal with Japan.
US International Trade Commission data show US October exports of polyethylene rose for a third consecutive month to reach an all-time record high of 441,232.1 mt, up 13.2% month on month and 70.9% year on year, reflecting a 19.7% rise in US PE capacity since early 2017.
However, US PE exports to China fell for a fourth straight month in October to 22,564.3 mt, while Latin America saw its share of imports from the US rise in tandem with the overall increases, reaching 192,073.4 mt for all grades combined -- the highest total since July 2016, when the US sent 199,289.8 mt.
So trade flows are showing shifts in light of the August tariffs as China buys less, "and producers don't want to lower prices so they can pay the tariff price," the first market source noted.
Global producers can circumvent the trade war by supplying China from other operations. DowDupont, for example, can ship products to Asia from its operations in Saudi Arabia, Canada, Argentina and Europe, CFO Howard Ungerleider told a conference in late November. The company's new US PE operations, however, can supply other markets, such as Latin America.
"We're going to have to be agile," he said.
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/petrochemicals/010419-h1-outlook-trade-war-lingering-for-us-petrochemicals
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(ACC Mentioned) Earth Matters: Get With the Plastic Bag Ban!
Jan 4, 2019 | The Island Now
This new year brings the effective dates of single-use plastic bag bans in many places around the country, including the city of Boston and even closer to home, 19 New Jersey municipalities.
But Nassau County is still arguing about banning these ubiquitous polluters. In fact, I was present at a press conference in Mineola last year where proponents of a new plastic bag law were extolling its importance and urgency.
A legislator I did not know came up to me and told me that the bill was “going nowhere.” He was right.
It is amazing to me that Nassau County did not pass this legislation, as the scourge of plastic waste is impacting every living thing on this planet and banning single-use plastic bags is, well, the very least we can do.
I have personally watched bag bans go into effect with virtually seamless integration into the world of retail. Suffolk County did it, and now shoppers in our neighboring county either buy a bag at the checkout or bring their own reusable bag.
Simple. Whole Foods Market stopped using plastic bags years ago and switched to paper only, which they don’t even charge for, and people like me are getting used to bringing their own bags made from canvas, nylon or recycled reusable plastic.
This year South Korea will join dozens of other countries that have imposed bans or taxes on single-use plastic bags. Their effort will affect approximately 13,000 grocery stores by banning the bags except for wet produce or meat. If you live in Kenya and violate their plastic bag ban, you could face four years in prison or a fine up to $39,000.
Here is some shocking insight into the impact of our plastic bag habits:
• Americans use 100 billion plastic bags a year, requiring 12 million barrels of oil in the manufacturing process.
• Single-use plastic bags are used for an average of 12 minutes.
• The average American family takes home about 1,500 plastic bags a year.
• Shoppers in the United States use an average of one single use plastic bag a day, while shoppers in Denmark use only four single-use plastic bags a year.
• 100,000 marine animals are killed by plastic bags every year.
• Research shows there will be more plastic than fish by weight in the world’s oceans by 2050.
Years ago I created a program for 6th graders call “I’ll Have the Plastic Fish Special, Please,” an environmental education program to teach kids about plastic, from cradle to grave. I usually end my presentation by telling them about some studies from our gyres (vast plastic debris islands in our oceans) where scientists are finding micro-plastics in the bodies of seabirds, fish and marine mammals. Hence the title of my program.
When it comes to plastic waste moving into our environment, there is no happy ending. It either gets incinerated where it creates highly toxic air pollution, winds up in landfills where it doesn’t degrade for hundreds of years, or gets dumped or washed into our oceans, lakes and rivers, where it presents a risk to all marine life.
So, Nassau County, can we make this ban on single-use plastic bags a non-political call to action? Democrats and Republicans alike want plastic-free beaches and oceans and a cleaner planet for their children and grandchildren. I know the American Chemistry Council representing the plastics industry tries to defeat every attempt to make our planet plastic-free (it’s called “product preservation”), but it’s about time we stop worrying about “the economy” suffering if we take actions to protect our planet.
Frankly, banning fossil fuel-derived plastics will help us in many positive ways, and eventually, the industry will make new products that are renewable, compostable and sustainable. And a final thought — right now, producers of plastic bags aren’t taking any responsibility for the environmental impact of their product. Plastic bags are cheap to produce but very expensive to clean up.
I recommend that Nassau enact a single-use plastic bag ban modeled on the one that was just passed in New Castle, a neighboring town to our north in Westchester. It simply states that no retail establishment shall provide a single-use plastic carryout bag to a customer, instead of providing a reusable bag or recycled paper bag to a customer for a minimal fee.
Wouldn’t it be nice to see our trees without torn plastic bag “flags” adorning their branches? Let’s help clean up our little corner of this earth. Maybe we’ll get the chance in 2019.
https://theislandnow.com/opinions-100/earth-matters-get-with-the-plastic-bag-ban/
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(ACC Mentioned) SAVE NOW: Seven Smart Strategies to Reduce Your Food Budget
Jan 5, 2019 | St. Louis Post-Dispatch
(Metro) Food is a necessity and an expense that simply cannot be avoided.
A Gallup poll found Americans reported spending $151 on food per week. Around one in 10 said they spent $300 or more per week and those with higher incomes tend to spend more on weekly food bills than people who earn less.
Compounding high food bills is the fact people tend to waste food. According to the American Chemistry Council, roughly 80 billion pounds of food are thrown out every year in the United States.
Saving money on food may seem challenging, but it doesn't have to be. With some smart strategies, individuals can reduce their food budgets and still have enough to eat.
1. Store food properly. Pay attention to the correct ways to store food, including promptly refrigerating or freezing items to prevent spoiling.
2. Do your own work. Prepackaged, presliced or preportioned foods take longer for manufacturers to prepare and those costs are passed on to consumers. Separating foods yourself and putting them into manageable portions may take a little time, but the savings for consumers could be considerable.PauseCurrent Time0:00/Duration Time0:00Stream TypeLIVELoaded: 0%Progress: 0%0:00Fullscreen00:00Mute
3. Buy in bulk when it makes sense. Bulk warehouse stores can make it easier to stock up on essentials. But, they also can entice people to buy items they really do not need. Consumers should only purchase items that make fiscal sense or ones that cannot be purchased elsewhere for less. Always compare the price per weight or per unit when shopping.
4. Stock up on staples. Be on the lookout for sales on items used frequently, particularly staples that can be stored away. Watch for low prices on coffee, oils and canned goods, stocking up when such items go on sale.
5. Embrace dried and canned beans. Beans offer filling fiber and protein for relatively little cost. They also can be added to meat or vegetable recipes to bulk up dishes.
6. Plan ahead. Planning ahead can save big bucks. Peruse sales before leaving the house and spend time visiting a few different stores to save more money. Make use of store coupon apps to preload savings that can be used at checkout.
7. Explore frugal recipes. Skipping meat or other expensive items once in a while can help reduce food bills. Save expensive items for treats, which can make you appreciate them that much more. The same concept can be used for dining out.
It is relatively easy to save money on the cost of food when consumers make a commitment to being more frugal.
https://www.stltoday.com/suburban-journals/save-now-seven-smart-strategies-to-reduce-your-food-budget/article_27af75e1-9209-589d-b8c0-497f2c33f1e3.html
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The EPA Has Backed Off Enforcement Under Trump. Here Are the Numbers.
Jan 4, 2019 | Truthout
By Marianne Sullivan, Chris Sellers, Leif Fredrickson and Sarah Lamdan
The Trump administration has sought to weaken the Environmental Protection Agency in a number of ways, from staff and proposed budget cuts to attempts to undermine the use of science in policymaking.
Now, our new research finds that one of the EPA’s most important functions – enforcement – has also fallen off dramatically.
Since its founding, the EPA has been the nation’s environmental enforcer of last resort. Enforcing environmental laws is a fundamental role of the EPA. William Ruckelshaus, the agency’s first administrator, famously described its role in environmental enforcement as that of a “gorilla in the closet” – muscular, dexterous, smart and formidable – not omnipresent, but ready to take decisive action to enforce laws if need be.
But the data we have collected show that EPA enforcement under Trump is more accurately characterized as sheep-like – meek and mild, often following the lead of regulated industry rather than acting as an independent, scientifically and statutorily driven regulator. The report is based on interviews with EPA staff and recent retirees and analysis of the EPA’s own data and internal documents. In this article we’ve also used recently updated data and included an expanded analysis of regional and statutory declines.
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Our analysis of the EPA’s preliminary data – the raw data that forms the basis of the final numbers that will be published in the agency’s annual report – shows the agency’s enforcement of federal environmental laws has decreased dramatically under the Trump administration. There have been steep drops in civil and criminal enforcement, and across environmental programs under major environmental laws like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, and in nearly all regions of the U.S.
Enforcement, in general, takes many forms. Various statutes direct the EPA to ensure compliance with environmental laws in different ways. Polluters may have to clean up their pollution, stop doing an environmentally harmful activity, or pay fines for violating an environmental law.
For example, in 2016, the EPA found that CITGO Petroleum Corporation’s refineries were in violation of the Clean Air Act regulations on benzene emissions and flare operations. Benzene is known to cause cancer. The EPA and CITGO settled before going to court, with CITGO required, among other things, to pay almost US$2 million in civil penalties, install technologies to reduce benzene emissions and flares, and put benzene monitors around its facility.
Some violations of environmental law are criminal, and can result in criminal fines and jail sentences. However, most enforcement actions are civil, and rich data on criminal enforcement is not yet publicly available for 2018, so we have focused on the civil side.
Civil enforcement actions in fiscal year 2018 were the lowest they have been in at least 10 years. EPA orders requiring industry to comply with environmental regulations, reimburse the agency for cleaning up hazardous waste, and pay fines for illegally polluting the air, water and land have steadily declined under the Trump administration. Enforcement of every major statute – from the Clean Air Act to the Toxic Substances Control Act – has fallen since the previous fiscal year. And these drops have occurred in every EPA region.
The EPA is also imposing fewer fines on environmental law breakers. The EPA imposed civil penalties of $58 million in fiscal year 2018, the lowest since at least 2006 by a wide margin. The average for the period from 2006 to 2017 was $846 million, and the next lowest year (2009) still had $109 million in fines.
Costs for regulated entities to comply with environmental regulations, such as upgrading pollution control equipment, were the lowest they have been in at least 12 years. Compliance costs in 2018 were $3.8 billion, down 81 percent from the previous year, and well below the average of $10.9 billion from 2006 to 2017.
Finally, inspections are also down, which means that the EPA does not know if many facilities are complying with the law, and, further, that next year’s enforcement actions will also be low.Extreme Deference to States
In interviews with EDGI researchers, EPA staff discussed how these significant changes to EPA enforcement have happened so quickly. They reported a process where Trump’s political appointees appear to be using under-the-radar shifts in agency policy and procedures to weaken enforcement.
The best example of this is past EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and current Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s embrace of “cooperative federalism,” which the agency describes as “working collaboratively with states, local government, and tribes.” But staff told us that in practice it means extreme deference to states.
Since the EPA was established, its role has been to collaborate with states to enforce environmental laws. Most enforcement happens at the state level. The EPA’s role is to provide oversight and funding, address interstate pollution, make technical assistance and inspection equipment available, and step in when cases are large and/or complex or the state is not doing the job.
One example of this is EPA’s role in cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, a critical ecosystem which suffers from a large number of environmental impacts originating in multiple states. The EPA works with six states on programs to reduce pollution to the bay and watershed.
We found what has changed under the Trump administration is that under the guise of cooperative federalism, staff are getting the message from management to leave states alone, rather than act as strong backup to their efforts. “If a state government decides enforcement isn’t important, in the past EPA might step up its efforts in that state. Now we’re really not allowed to unless there is some justification,” one staffer told us.Budget Impact
State environmental programs are also vulnerable to funding cuts and may lack equipment and highly trained staff for complex inspections. When industries operate in multiple states, the EPA brings an important national perspective on compliance issues that can increase the efficiency of inspection and enforcement.
A good example of this is a national enforcement program focused on addressing environmental problems caused by oil and gas extraction that have occurred in multiple states. The EPA brings lessons learned on how to address these problems to all affected states. However, under the Trump administration, it appears that this initiative is being phased out.
The EPA can also typically impose fines on industries that violate environmental laws and can turn egregious cases over to the Department of Justice for further action. The threat of the EPA taking action against a polluter can serve as a strong incentive for compliance.
Combined with regulatory rollbacks and structural weakening of the EPA, the steep declines in enforcement nearly across the board show that Trump’s EPA is on what we consider a dangerous path – one that is at risk of failing in its mission to protect public health and the environment from a wide range of threats such as climate change, air and water pollution, and exposure to toxic chemicals.
https://truthout.org/articles/the-epa-has-backed-off-enforcement-under-trump-here-are-the-numbers/
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White House Vows to Veto Democrats' Bill to Reopen EPA
Jan 4, 2019 | Inside EPA
The White House has formally threatened to veto House Democrats' freshly passed bills that would restore funding to EPA and other agencies subject to the ongoing government shutdown, citing in part the fact that the bill -- which provides level funding to EPA -- provides “excessive” funds that the administration did not request.
The veto threat, contained in a Jan. 3 statement of administration policy (SAP), provides a fresh signal that the two sides are far from reaching a deal on fiscal year 2019 spending that can pass the newly divided Congress and re-open the government.
It also suggests that the Trump administration's forthcoming budget request for FY20 is unlikely to seek a significant increase in funds for EPA compared to prior years' requests.
The SAP was aimed at H.R. 21, which cleared the House in a 241-190 vote, with 234 Democrats and 7 Republicans voting for passage.
The bill would maintain level funding most agencies subject to the shutdown, including EPA, for the remainder of fiscal year 2019.
H.J. Res. 1, which passed by a narrower 239-192 margin with only five Republicans joining all 234 Democrats voting, is a continuing resolution (CR) that would restore operations at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through Feb. 8, a timeframe intended to allow fresh negotiations on President Donald Trump's demand for a wall.
Each bill won unanimous support from House Democrats as well as the votes of a small group of Republicans, which could be an early indication of GOP lawmakers willing to break with Trump on at least some issues now that their party has lost control of the chamber.
That list includes GOP Reps. Will Hurd (TX), John Katko (NY), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA) and Elise Stefanik (NY), who backed both bills; Reps. Peter King (NY), Fred Upton (WI) and Greg Walden (OR), voted for the broader spending bill but against the DHS-specific resolution; and Rep. Chris Smith (NJ), supported only H.J. Res. 1.
But the SAP says both measures are unacceptable because they do not meet the president's demand for $5 billion to fund construction of a border wall, and because funding for agencies including EPA is well above the White House's most recent budget request.
“For FY 2019, the Administration has made it clear that the Government needs an investment of at least $5 billion for border security, along with the flexibility necessary to utilize these funds efficiently. The appropriations bill, H.R. 21, and the corresponding H.J. Res. 1, does not come close to providing these necessary investments and authorities,” the SAP says.
Beyond the wall fight, however, the new SAP also takes aim at the Democrats' bid to maintain EPA's funding level of $8.1 billion, which is well above than the $6.1 billion the White House sought in its FY19 budget request last year, though the level funding the bill provides had won support from both House and Senate lawmakers in the past.
“H.R. 21 includes approximately $2 billion in excessive Environmental Protection Agency funding, providing funds beyond the Agency’s core mission and including funding for programs that can and should be executed at the local level. . . . These and other excessive spending items makes the lack of adequate border funding in the combined package all the more unacceptable,” the SAP says.
Even the GOP-led House balked at the administration's preferred spending cuts, instead passing a bill that would cut EPA's budget by between $100 million and $500 million depending on how various programs are accounted for. However, the Senate sought to maintain the current $8.1 billion, and the two chambers were unable to agree on a consensus bill, instead passing a series of CRs that expired Dec. 21.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is now calling any spending bill that does not meet Trump's demand for wall funding a “non-starter” in the upper chamber, fueling expectations that there will be no quick end to the shutdown.
McConnell himself has predicted that it will be “weeks” before government operations resume.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/white-house-vows-veto-democrats-bill-reopen-epa
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EPA Denies Section 21 Petition Seeking Increased Asbestos Reporting
Jan 4, 2019 | National Law Review
By Lynn L. Bergeson
On December 21, 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) Nancy B. Beck, Ph.D., signed a Federal Registerdocument denying a Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Section 21 petition requesting that EPA amend the Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule to increase asbestos reporting, exclude asbestos from certain exemptions, and lift Confidential Business Information (CBI) claims on asbestos information reported under the CDR rule. Due to the government shutdown, the notice has not yet been published in the Federal Register, but EPA has posted a prepublication version. EPA’s carefully reasoned response to the request is set forth in the notice.
The petition was filed on September 27, 2018, by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, American Public Health Association, Center for Environmental Health, Environmental Working Group, Environmental Health Strategy Center, and Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families (Petitioners). According to EPA, Petitioners requested the following specific amendments to the existing CDR rule to collect information for the ongoing asbestos risk evaluation being conducted under TSCA Section 6(b) (required to be completed by December 22, 2019), and, if necessary, any subsequent risk management decisions under TSCA Section 6(a):Amend the CDR rule to require immediate submission, “from January 1, 2019, to April [30], 2019,” of reports on asbestos for the 2016 reporting cycle. Amend the naturally occurring chemical substance exemption at 40 C.F.R. § 711.6(a)(3) to make the exemption inapplicable to asbestos;Amend the articles exemption at 40 C.F.R. § 711.10(b) to require reporting pursuant to the CDR rule for all imported articles in which asbestos is present at detectable levels;Amend the CDR rule to exclude asbestos from the exemption at 40 C.F.R. § 711.10(c) to require the reporting of asbestos as a byproduct or impurity;Amend the reporting threshold for CDR at 40 C.F.R. § 711.8(b) to set a reporting threshold of ten pounds for asbestos; andAmend 40 C.F.R. § 711.8 to add processors of asbestos and asbestos-containing articles as persons required to report under the CDR rule.
In addition to the above requests, Petitioners also requested that EPA use its authority under TSCA Sections 14(d)(3) and 14(d)(7) to lift CBI claims on asbestos information reported under the CDR rule. EPA responds in detail as to why it is denying each of these requests. A short summary is below.2016 Reporting Cycle: EPA states that based on the extensive research and data gathering already conducted during the asbestos risk evaluation process, EPA believes that “the requested amendments to the CDR rule would not lead to the reporting of new information that would contribute to EPA’s ongoing asbestos risk evaluation or, if needed, subsequent risk management decision(s)” and Petitioners have “failed to set forth sufficient facts to establish that it is necessary to issue the requested amendment to require immediate past reporting of the manufacturing and use of asbestos under the CDR rule for the 2016 reporting cycle.”Naturally Occurring Substances Exemption: EPA states that removing the exemption for reporting on naturally occurring substances for asbestos would not provide any additional data to EPA “given that the purpose of domestic manufacturing or importing of raw asbestos is to make asbestos diaphragms, for which EPA already has use and exposure information” and Petitioners have “failed to set forth sufficient facts to establish that it is necessary to issue the requested amendment to lift the naturally occurring chemical substances exemption for asbestos under the CDR rule.”Articles Exemption: EPA states that it believes that lifting the articles exemption for the reporting of asbestos under the CDR rule “would not provide any new use information that would inform the ongoing risk evaluation or any subsequent risk management decisions, if needed” and that Petitioners “have failed to set forth sufficient facts to establish that it is necessary to issue the requested amendment to lift the articles exemption for asbestos under the CDR rule.”Reporting as a Byproduct or Impurity: EPA states that it does not believe that making the requested amendment to the CDR rule would result in “reporting of asbestos as an impurity or a byproduct, for uses that are known or reasonably ascertainable,” that Petitioners “have not provided evidence that there are such known uses that are ongoing but remain outside the scope of the asbestos risk evaluation,” and “have failed to set forth sufficient facts to establish that it is necessary to issue the requested amendment to lift the byproducts and impurities exemptions for asbestos under the CDR rule.”Reporting Threshold of Ten Pounds: EPA states that Petitioners “fail to show that lowering the reporting threshold would provide any new information to EPA” and, therefore, finds that the Petitioners “have failed to set sufficient facts to establish that it is necessary to issue the requested amendment to lower the CDR reporting threshold for asbestos.”Adding Processors to CDR: EPA states that it does not believe that “requiring processors of asbestos under the CDR rule will provide useful information not already in its possession,” Petitioners “have failed to indicate what additional information EPA would collect by requiring asbestos processors to report under the CDR rule” and, therefore, EPA finds that the Petitioners “have failed to set forth sufficient facts to establish that it is necessary to issue the requested amendment to require processors of asbestos to report under the CDR rule.”Lifting CBI Claims: EPA states that Petitioners’ request to lift CBI claims on asbestos information reported under the CDR rule is "not appropriate for a TSCA Section 21 petition, as a TSCA Section 21 only pertains to the “issuance, amendment, or repeal of a rule under TSCA sections 4, 6, or 8, or an order under TSCA sections 4 or 5(e) or (f),” therefore, a TSCA Section 21 petition “is not a vehicle to petition EPA to initiate an action under TSCA section 14.” Further, EPA states that it believes that “disclosure of CBI would have no practical relevance to the risk evaluation or risk determination as the CBI claims are limited and EPA retains the ability to characterize the information without revealing the actual protected data.”
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/epa-denies-section-21-petition-seeking-increased-asbestos-reporting
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(ACC Mentioned) Trump’s EPA Is Undermining New Law to Regulate Chemicals
Jan 5, 2019 | Truthout
By Daniel Ross
Modern life is awash with chemicals. They’re in our work places, our homes, our bedrooms, the clothes we wear, the water we drink, the paint on our walls, the products we clean with. They’re all around us. Indeed, roughly 30,000 pounds of chemicals are produced per person, per year in the US. The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is a federal safety net that ensures these chemicals don’t cause harm to humans or the environment.
At least it’s supposed to.
This act is the centerpiece of the nation’s table-display of chemical regulations, which include different laws governing food, drugs, cosmetics and pesticides. For decades, however, TSCA was widely criticized by many environmental and consumer advocacy groups for being toothless—that it achieved very little in regulating the nation’s chemicals. This led to a major overhaul two years ago, and a revised TSCA signed into law near the end of the Obama administration, shepherding in a number of “important improvements.”
But as the new law, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, continues to be rolled out under the Trump administration, critics point to recent modifications made by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the way it evaluates and regulates chemicals, prioritizing industry concerns over human health and the environment. Sen. Tom Udall, ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee overseeing EPA’s budget, has called implementation of the law a “remarkable disaster.”
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Robert Sussman, a former EPA official and now a counsel for chemical reform organization Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, agrees. “I’d be hard-pressed to say that the actions of the EPA under the new law are more effective than its actions under the old law,” Sussman told Truthout. “Not much has improved, and we seem to be going backwards in a couple important areas.”
In a statement provided by the EPA on background, the agency denied the new TSCA has been diluted, and that any subsequent changes have followed the “original intent” of the Lautenberg Act.“Significantly Narrowed”
A landmark legislation passed a little over 42 years ago, TSCA grandfathered in roughly 62,000 chemicals already in use without a proper framework for evaluating their potential risks. Over the subsequent years, thousands more chemicals were added to the inventory, which comprises all chemicals used in the US, whether they were manufactured in the US or shipped in from abroad. There are currently more than 85,000 listed on the inventory, though the EPA has identified about 37,000 in active use.
Central to the original law’s many flaws was the fundamental premise that it wasn’t up to chemical manufacturers to prove their chemicals were safe before they entered the market — it was up to regulators to prove that chemicals were unsafe. Indeed, up until 2016, the EPA had successfully restricted the use of only five chemicals during a 40-year period. One of the law’s most high-profile losses came in 1991, when the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the EPA’s asbestos rule, which had banned its use in most products.Up until 2016, the EPA had successfully restricted the use of only five chemicals during a 40-year period.
The Lautenberg Act was seen as a brave new world in chemical regulations—a fresh opportunity for the EPA to systematically review existing chemicals already in the marketplace, as well as all new chemicals joining them. The new law has triggered a flurry of action over the last two-plus years, with tight deadlines delineating its rollout.
Nevertheless, during the rollout, the EPA has taken a number of steps that “undermine almost everything” the Lautenberg Act was intended to achieve, said Jennifer Sass, senior scientist with the environmental not-for-profit Natural Resources Defense Council. One such action concerns the way the EPA prioritizes and then evaluates existing chemicals.
Broadly put, the Lautenberg Act requires the EPA to prioritize these chemicals by the risks they pose to human health and the environment, and then to fully evaluate the most dangerous ones. The agency is required to exclude cost considerations—as was a feature of the original law—from the process, and to factor in possible impacts on highly vulnerable populations. If the chemical is deemed to pose an “unreasonable risk,” then the EPA must regulate it, or even ban it, if necessary.
Nevertheless, the rules outlining these prioritization and risk evaluation processes have been “significantly narrowed” under the Trump administration, excluding important “pathways of exposure” that leave vulnerable populations like pregnant women and children especially susceptible to harm, according to Eve Gartner, a litigator in the Healthy Communities Program at Earthjustice, an environmental organization currently litigating the TSCA roll-backs.
Gartner calls the new risk evaluation process “a parody” of what it should be, under the Lautenberg Act. It no longer accounts for a chemical’s accumulated exposure in the real-world, for example. Nor does it consider the separate risks from each independent use of a chemical. It also excludes the use and disposal of “legacy” chemicals, like asbestos, which linger in the environment for years after use. As finalized, “the rules could result in very significant harm to the environment and to public health,” Gartner warned.
Many of the rule changes are currently tied up in litigation; and so, in an effort to handcuff TSCA through other means, the EPA is similarly narrowing the scope of the scientific data it uses to risk-evaluate chemicals, critics argue. “Now what they’re doing is chipping away at the foundations, which is frankly a much more dangerous strategy, and one that will be less visible,” said Gina McCarthy, former head of the EPA, at a recent Harvard forum.
At the heart of the EPA’s scientific approach is its Systematic Reviewdocument, which outlines the process the agency uses to select what data it includes and excludes to evaluate chemicals. The document, which didn’t undergo peer review, shuns important human health and toxicological studies in favor of industry-backed reports, which is why it has been likened to the widely derided science transparency act passed in April 2018.
According to Veena Singla, associate director of Science and Policy in the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the systematic review process will toss out “many high-quality studies that should be the basis for chemical assessments.”
The systematic review document is currently used in the evaluation process for the first 10 priority chemicals, chosen for the threats they pose to human health and the environment. The Obama administration had already started the process of banning certain uses of three chemicals on this list—trichloroethylene, N-methylpyrrolidone and methylene chloride. Since 1980, 64 deaths have been linked to acute exposure to methylene chloride, a chemical used in many products such as paint stripper.
Tellingly for these first 10 priority chemicals, the EPA decided not to evaluate the potential human health and environmental risks caused by the presence of these substances in the air, soil and water, according to agency documents reviewed by The New York Times. By calculating the risk this way, the EPA fails to account for 68 million pounds of toxic emissions a year, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.The EPA fails to account for 68 million pounds of toxic emissions a year.
“It all comes down to the risk assessment,” said Tracey Woodruff, director of the UCSF’s Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment. “And right now, the method the EPA has for doing it is so far away from reflecting the real risk to the public, they’re inevitably going to underestimate the risk compared to what people are truly experiencing.”
In a background statement, the EPA wrote that the Systematic Review document does not intentionally exclude any studies from the risk evaluation process. “If a study is evaluated and determined to be low quality, EPA will give it a lesser weight than any available higher quality studies. All available and relevant studies will be considered and evaluated for their quality and relevance to a risk evaluation,” the agency wrote.
It’s not just the review process for existing chemicals that concerns many experts—the current administration has also narrowed or ignored certain aspects of the Lautenberg Act’s rules concerning new chemicals entering the market.
Under the old TSCA rules, for example, the EPA couldn’t order manufacturers to conduct new tests on a chemical without pursuing a lengthy rule-making process. The revised rules give the EPA expanded muscle to demand chemical companies run additional tests, if deemed necessary. The EPA, however, has yet to flex this muscle, said Sussman. According to the EPA, 1,823 new chemical reviews have been completed since the new law’s enactment.
Indeed, the first draft risk evaluation under the Lautenberg Act was released in November for Pigment Violet 29—a chemical used in a host of commercial products like paints and carpeting. Only 24 studies were included in the evaluation. Some risk assessments can reference hundreds or thousands of studies. Even more tellingly, the EPA chose not to require additional tests to better understand the chemical’s potential to cause cancer and neurological problems, among other health issues, according to the UCSF.
What the Lautenberg Act failed to tackle in any meaningful way, however, are the loopholes that chemical manufacturers use to introduce potentially toxic chemicals into the marketplace without a standard safety review.
Journalist Sharon Lerner has chronicled the unfolding story behind potentially toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) compounds that are ubiquitous throughout the nation’s water sources. In a recent story, Lerner explains how PFAS chemical companies have exploited these exemptions over the years, like that for chemicals manufactured in volumes lower than 10,000 kilograms per year. What’s more, of the new chemicals allowed onto the market since the Lautenberg Act was signed, “more have bypassed the safety review the law put in place than have undergone it,” Lerner wrote.
According to Eve Gartner, these exemptions that chemical manufacturers exploit, coupled with the sorts of information that industry is permitted to keep confidential from the public—such as details concerning the full composition of a chemical mixture—add an additional layer of risk. “It’s definitely an area that’s rife with abuse,” Gartner said, looking specifically at the way the EPA approaches trade secrets.Injury to the Developing Brain
This isn’t the first time the EPA has come under fire for its data selection process. Decades ago, many companies used Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT) to conduct toxicology tests for them. These reports were then sent to EPA for registration. It later transpired that flaws in many IBT tests rendered them invalid, even after the reports had received approval from the EPA. In some instances, the decomposed bodies of test mice were left to ooze through their wire cages, for example.
In 1978, senior EPA and Canadian health officials met with chemical industry executives in secret at a Howard Johnston Motor Inn to discuss how to continue using IBT data, despite less than 10 percent of it proving scientifically valid. (A transcript of the meeting can be read here, and is part of a massive trove of agency documents called the Poison Papers.) A subsequent federal grand jury trial saw three IBT officials go to prison.
This episode illustrates the way the EPA has always been susceptible to regulatory capture by industry interests, said Evaggelos Vallianatos, an official within the EPA for 25 years, and author of the book, Poison Spring. “The agency proceeds to do what it has been doing for decades,” he told Truthout. “They’ve paid a price, of course, in terms of disease, death and pollution.”What the Lautenberg Act failed to tackle in any meaningful way are the loopholes that chemical manufacturers use to introduce potentially toxic chemicals into the marketplace without a standard safety review.
Just recently, a former Koch Industries executive was tapped to head the scientific research arm of the EPA. Nancy Beck hopscotched from the American Chemistry Council (ACC)—an industry organization with powerful political clout—to a top deputy position in the agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. According to The New York Times, Beck subsequently weakened rules designed to track the health consequences of legacy chemicals. The research-oriented Silent Spring Institute has noted key changes to the final risk evaluation rule that mirror industry comments made during the formal public comment period.
When asked about these ties between industry and the EPA, Jon Corley, director of communications for the ACC, wrote in an email that “not only are we fully supportive of the efficient and effective implementation of the 2016 amendments to TSCA, it’s also the top priority for ACC and our member companies.”
According to Philip Landrigan, director of the Global Public Health program at Boston College, the recent modifications to TSCA are going to have real-world implications, and especially on vulnerable populations like babies and developing children.
“We’ve now made very strong connections between a number of chemicals and disease outcomes,” said Landrigan. “One category of diseases that we’ve really nailed the connection between is pre-natal exposures and injury to the developing brain.”
This is just one important reason why the teeth given to TSCA under the Lautenberg Act must be preserved, at the very least, said Bob Sussman. “This is the critical law that protects us from hazardous chemicals,” he said. “I think we all just want peace of mind, and unless this law works effectively, we can’t have that.”
Note: This article has been amended to better clarify the working relationship between IBT Laboratories and the EPA.
https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-epa-is-undermining-new-law-to-regulate-chemicals/
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Jan 4, 2019 | Boston Globe
By Kay Lazar
To environmentalists, it was a no-brainer bill that would ban furniture, bedding, and children’s products containing potentially toxic flame-retardant chemicals from being made or sold in Massachusetts.
But the state’s largest business trade group is objecting, not just because its leaders believe the measure would hurt manufacturers and retailers, but because it was passed on New Year’s Day, during an informal, sparsely attended legislative session.
“It is puzzling why the Legislature would do such a bill in an informal session with no opportunity for stakeholder input,” said Robert Rio, a senior vice president of Associated Industries of Massachusetts, which represents thousands of manufacturers and retailers.ADVERTISEMENT
Health advocates and fire safety officials are urging Governor Charlie Baker to sign the bill, which they say will help reduce children’s and firefighters’ exposure to chemicals linked to serious health problems.Get Metro Headlines in your inbox:The 10 top local news stories from metro Boston and around New England delivered daily.Sign Up
The bill exempts products that were manufactured before June 1.
Furniture makers have slowly phased out many of these chemicals, but it is not unusual to still find them in children’s products, especially car seats and nap mats that are often used in day care, said Elizabeth Saunders, Massachusetts director of Clean Water Action & Clean Water Fund, one of several groups that promoted the bill’s passage.
Last month, the Ecology Center, a Michigan environmental research organization, released a study that showed that 83 percent of children’s car seats tested contain toxic chemicals used as flame retardants. The authors noted the toxic burden tends to fall hardest on low-income families that cannot afford car seats made without the chemicals.
Researchers who study the health effects of flame retardants say the chemicals typically migrate out of products and mingle with dust in homes.ADVERTISEMENT
“Kids, just because of their activities, spend time on the floor and put things in their mouth, so they have higher exposure,” said Robin Dodson, a research scientist at Silent Spring Institute in Newton.
Researchers from University of California Berkeley in 2012 found that children exposed as babies to PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, were more likely to have a lower IQ and learning problems. PBDEs are among the 11 chemicals banned in the new Massachusetts bill.
Dodson and other health advocates said manufacturers can use safer alternatives to flame retardants, such as less flammable materials and fabrics with tighter weaves.
Thomas Webster, a professor of environmental health at Boston University School of Public Health, said children are particularly vulnerable to PBDEs and similar chemicals because their brains are still forming. Evidence of ill effects is strong for some, but not all, of the newly banned 11 chemicals, Webster said. But he said it’s reasonable to suspect they, too, might be problematic.
Too often, he said, chemicals are removed from products after they are found to be toxic, only to be replaced by other substances that are also later discovered to be hazardous.ADVERTISEMENT
“Stuff is manufactured and put in products and we don’t know much about the health effects until later, and that seems crazy,” Webster said.
Rio of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts said state lawmakers failed to sufficiently study the potential effects on Massachusetts companies. He said the legislation will create a bureaucratic nightmare for distributors and sellers trying to comply with the law, while competing with products sold online and in nearby states.
Massachusetts “companies that make any of these components will no longer be able to sell these products anywhere, even in places where they are legal, since the manufacturing is prohibited,” Rio said.
The American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical companies, also objects to the legislation.
“Forcing through bills that remove an important layer of fire protection with little input and no debate does not support public safety and endangers the integrity of the legislative process,” it said in a statement.
The bill spells out penalties for manufacturers and retailers that violate the regulation: $100 for the first product, with a maximum of $5,000. A second violation is a fine of up to $250 per product and a maximum of $25,000. Subsequent violations are a fine of $1,000 per product and a maximum of $50,000.
But the bill leaves it up to the state Department of Environmental Protection to write rules for enforcing the regulations.
A spokesman for the governor said the bill is among several pieces of legislation passed in the last few days and still under review. If Baker signs the bill, Massachusetts will join 13 other states that have already banned one or more flame retardants, according to health advocates.
Firefighters, meanwhile, are ecstatic that after six years of pushing for the measure, lawmakers finally gave the bill a thumbs-up.
“These so-called fire retardants they put in these fabrics don’t add up to any type of protection in fire at all,” said Richard MacKinnon, president of the Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts. “We are seeing the reverse, that contents and rooms are burning up at a higher rate of speed and increasing the risk to our firefighters in this toxic soup.”
Several studies have found firefighters were more likely than civilians to develop several types of cancers, and some firefighter organizations say they fear that certain chemicals, such as flame retardants, increase that risk.
The issue was first championed in the Legislature by former longtime Lexington firefighter Kenneth J. Donnelly, who went on to become a state senator. But Donnelly didn’t live to see the bill finally passed. He died in 2017 of brain cancer.
Correction: An earlier version of this article provided an incorrect date for exempted products under the bill.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/01/04/firefighters-child-health-advocates-applaud-bill-ban-potentially-toxic-flame-retardants/wGWvqWAiSt2Le69hmFFWnK/story.html
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Laws Intended To Protect Firefighters Who Get Cancer Often Lack Teeth
Jan 7, 2019 | WPRL
By Lauren Bavis
Doctors told Steve Dillman the throat cancer he was diagnosed with in 2008 came from smoking. He knew it didn't.
"I thought it had to be job-related because I've never smoked a day in my life. I don't chew. I don't drink excessively ... and that's the three main criterias," he says.
But Dillman did spend 38 years as an Indianapolis firefighter — and that included running into burning buildings.
Dillman, who's now retired, recalls one fire on Aug. 1, 1985. That day, his fire station responded to a call at the American Fletcher National Bank warehouse in downtown Indianapolis.
Firefighters noticed something strange and painful after they put out the flames. Everywhere they sweated – under their arms, around their groins – their skin peeled, like it had been sunburned.
Dillman later learned the warehouse was filled with boxes treated with a flame-retardant chemical that sent toxic gases into the air – including formaldehyde, a known carcinogen.
Dillman was diagnosed with prostate cancer 16 years later, and throat cancer seven years after that.
"It's just an evil thing that we have to deal with," 74-year-old Dillman says.
Research from National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) published in 2013 shows that firefighters are diagnosed with and die from cancer at higher rates than the general population. It confirmed earlier research finding elevated risk for the profession for certain cancers.
The correlation between firefighters' on-the-job exposure to carcinogens and their subsequent illnesses is concerning enough to policy makers that a growing number of states have passed laws — 42 states and Washington, D.C. — designed to help firefighters who develop cancer, according to the non-profit Firefighter Cancer Support Network.
Generally, these laws say that firefighters diagnosed with cancer while on the job or within a certain time after retirement are presumed to have become ill because of their work. And that should make it easier for them to get workers' compensation, disability benefits or death benefits for their families.
But firefighters say those protections often fall short.
Leaders of organizations that work with firefighters say, despite these laws, firefighters are often denied workers' compensation claims after a cancer diagnosis. Firefighters have challenged denials in a number of states, including California, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington.
"Presumptive laws aren't the golden ticket that people think they are," says Jim Brinkley, director of occupational health and safety for the International Association of Fire Fighters, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying organization. "Our detractors are the ones who will say it's not connected to the job because they don't want to pay the benefits."
It's difficult to estimate how many firefighters have been denied benefits, says Keith Tyson, vice president for education and research for the Firefighter Cancer Support Network. He's a prostate cancer survivor who spent 34 years on the job in Florida, where there is no presumptive law.
Tyson doesn't know of any organization that tracks such workers compensation claims nationwide. And other than his organization's analysis of state laws, there isn't a comprehensive listing of the states offering protection.
"That's the problem. Nobody is consistent on any of this," Tyson says. "It's unfortunate that there couldn't be a one-standard-fits-all [law]. That would make it so much easier."
Exposed to contaminants
Heart disease was the leading cause of firefighter deaths until the mid-1990s, when "the burden of cancer significantly surpassed heart disease," according to a paper on firefighters and cancer published last year in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.
That study surveyed 2,818 Indiana firefighters who died between 1985 and 2013, and found that they had a 20 percent greater likelihood of dying due to cancer than non-firefighters.
This builds on the findings of the 2013 NIOSH study, which included nearly 30,000 firefighters from Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco. It found that firefighters are exposed to contaminants that are known or suspected to cause cancer — everything from asbestos in old buildings to the diesel exhaust from fire trucks — and they are more likely to develop respiratory, digestive and urinary system cancers than the general public.
For one rare cancer, mesothelioma, which is linked to asbestos exposure, the rate is two times greater in firefighters than the general U.S. population.
In July 2018, President Trump signed the Firefighter Cancer Registry Act directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to collect national data about the issue. Fire stations can send information on cancer rates among their staff to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
NIOSH will look for trends in how cancer affects male and female firefighters, firefighters of different races and those in urban and rural areas.
Brinkley hopes this data will make it "very clear to the legislators and those controlling the purse strings that we need better protection for firefighters."
Presumptive laws in action
State presumptive laws vary in many ways. Some cover only certain cancers. Some states limit how long after retirement a cancer diagnosis is covered. And in some states, a diagnosis alone isn't enough to trigger protections such as disability benefits.
Of the states with presumptive cancer laws, the Firefighter Cancer Support Network found one that extends coverage up to three months after retirement. Six states, including Indiana, provide coverage up to five years. One state allows seven years, one state allows 600 weeks and three cover up to 20 years.
This reflects a misunderstanding of science, says Dr. Jefferey Burgess, an environmental health researcher at the University of Arizona College of Public Health. He says cancer can develop "anywhere from less than five years to over 30 years" after exposure to carcinogens.
Burgess, who has researched firefighters and cancer for more than 25 years, says the evidence shows firefighters are regularly exposed to carcinogens in the field, and that firefighters are diagnosed with cancer more than the general public.
"From my perspective, I believe we've clearly demonstrated that firefighting is associated with cancer," he says.
Future research is needed, Burgess says, to determine more specific links between those exposures and a firefighter's cancer diagnosis. At this point, it's not possible to prove that a single exposure to a carcinogen caused a specific cancer. In fact, there isn't definitive research that shows even a career of exposure causes a specific cancer diagnosis.
Instead of demanding documentation of possible exposures from fires long ago, Burgess says fire departments should understand that firefighters' health is affected by their work.
"To tell you whether it was an individual fire or was a lifetime exposure, I don't know we have that particular information right now," Burgess says. "Every fire tends to have these chemicals, and therefore it should just, from my mind, be a question of whether you're a firefighter and you've gone to fires rather than documenting that a specific fire was a problem."
Even with presumptive laws in place, municipalities across the country often fight firefighter's cancer-related workers' comp claims. And firefighters are pushing back.
In Texas, the Houston Chronicle found that in the past six years, nine in 10 Texas firefighters with cancer have had their workers compensation claims denied.
In Philadelphia, the city denied a firefighter's claim in 2012, leading to a lengthy process of appeals. Ultimately, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in 2018 in favor of the firefighter, arguing that firefighters diagnosed with cancer must only show that their cancer could be caused by exposure to a known carcinogen. It's up to their employers to prove it was not work-related.
Brinkley says the International Association of Fire Fighters has tried to develop more information about these claims nationwide. It has asked municipalities for data on workplace injury claims related to cancer — and how often they're denied. The requests have been refused.
The National Council on Compensation Insurance, which gathers and analyzes data related to states' workers compensation systems, released a report in 2016 on the impact of presumptive laws.
The report noted that firefighters are typically employed by state and local governments, which are often self-insured. Self-insured entities aren't required to report claims to the council. Still, the NCCI stated in the report that it "expects that the enactment of such presumptions will result in increases in workers compensation costs."
'A moment of weakness'
In Indiana, as in some other states with presumptive laws, when a firefighter makes a cancer-related claim, the city wants to know the specific fire that led to the cancer diagnosis.
But firefighters traditionally haven't kept records of chemical exposures, Brinkley says.
"To ask a member who is fighting a horrific disease that could end their life to then find that one call that they were exposed to one chemical that causes that one cancer is just a way of holding on to the money and not paying the claim," he says. "That's not taking care of your firefighter, who risks their life every day."
Indianapolis Fire Department division chief for health and safety Kevan Crawley advocates for firefighters' benefits. He says he spends months arguing with city officials and Broadspire, the company that manages workplace injury claims.
Asked about the issue, a Broadspire spokeswoman said the company won't comment on how it manages its clients' claims.
Brett Wineinger, risk manager for Indianapolis, oversees the city's insurance policies. He says that few of the claims have dealt with cancer.
"We're going to monitor any claim that's filed with us against [Indiana's presumptive law]," Wineinger says. "If it's something that is linked to a fire instance that's clearly something they've gotten through an exposure, obviously we're going to take that as a workplace injury because that should be the first line of defense."
Crawley says he understands that the city is trying to protect its budget. And he doesn't believe that the insurers who deny claims are "bad people."
But he says they don't understand what it's like to sit down with a newly-diagnosed firefighter and explain that the city won't help with cancer-related costs.
"Guys you've looked up to in your career, and you don't ever expect to see them in a moment of weakness," Crawley says.
Growing a culture of safety
Firefighters at the Indianapolis Fire Department say they can't rely on the state's presumptive law for protection, so they're focusing on what is in their control: preventing exposure to carcinogens.
Firefighters can wear a protective mask that filters out gases and particles. Otherwise, they breathe in a lot of smoke.
In the old days, firefighters were called "smoke-eaters," recalls retired firefighter Dillman, and they wore their charred, soot-covered gear as a badge of honor.
At fires, Dillman didn't wear hisprotective mask.No one did. If you did you were a "sissy," he says.
"It was just the way the job was," Dillman recalls.
Procedures during fires have changed since Dillman retired in 2005. It's now standard practice for firefighters to wearthese masks at a fire.
Dillman now travels to fire departments around Indiana to urge firefighters to use masks and practice other preventive cancer measures.
To make his point, Dillman brings a couple of props.
"The last thing I tell them, 'You can either wear your [protective] air mask ... '" he says, holding one up for emphasis.
Then he shows the oxygen mask he needed to breathe when his cancer was at its worst.
And he says, "Or you can wear this mask. And trust me, you don't want to wear this mask."
This story was produced by Side Effects Public Media, a news collaborative covering public health.
https://www.wprl.org/post/laws-intended-protect-firefighters-who-get-cancer-often-lack-teeth
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'EPA Failed Franklin': Families, Environmental Group Demand Investigation Into Contamination
Jan 7, 2019 | Indianapolis Star
By Sarah Bowman
Two groups concerned about a cluster of childhood cancers in Franklin are demanding an investigation in a letter sent to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Inspector General last week.
The community group If It Was Your Child and the environmental nonprofit Edison Wetlands Association want to know why toxic contamination persists in Franklin decades after it was first discovered.
In the letter, the group says the EPA’s handling of the site formerly used by Amphenol, an electronics manufacturer, involved “serious mismanagement” and “significant delays.” The EPA Inspector General is the same government watchdog that looked into the government’s slow response to Flint, Michigan’s water crisis.
What happened in Franklin?Contamination in Johnson County known for decades
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While some progress is being made in Franklin, said Stacie Davidson, co-founder of If It Was Your Child, it hasn’t been fast enough.
“We’ve been patient and we’re trying to be as patient as possible, but we’re also on the ground and we’re seeing people get sick,” Davidson said. “We just want a broader investigation and we want it now.”
The claims in the letter are echoed by those revealed in an IndyStar analysis of thousands of pages of documents.
Among the findings: The first sampling of the Amphenol site, conducted in 1984, revealed serious levels of contamination, but a system to contain and treat it was not installed until 11 years later. A 1995 EPA memo said that the effect of the contamination could be significant and more testing was needed, but it's unclear what data was collected since then.
As recently as 2010, two additional remediation technologies were proposed to improve and advance the cleanup efforts, but it appears the suggested systems were never implemented.
The treatment system that Amphenol and EPA did have at the site "had literally no impact at all because it wasn't strong enough," according to John Mundell, president and senior environmental at Mundell & Associates who is working with Edison and If It Was With Your Child.Buy Photo
Kari Rhinehart, left, Stacie Davidson, center, and Zane Davidson, right, during a ring the bell party Zane who survived acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 2014. Davidson at his family home in Morgantown Ind. on Saturday, Sept. 30, 2017. Kari Rhinehart who's daughter passed away from cancer, and Stacie Davidson are working together to link environmental causes with childhood cancers in Johnson County. (Photo: Michelle Pemberton/IndyStar)
The main contaminants in question are trichloroethylene, or TCE, and Tetrachloroethylene, or PCE — both of which the Centers for Disease Control and Protection say are cancer-causing to humans.
That said, it is unknown what is causing children in Johnson County and Franklin to get cancer, or if any specific environmental cause can be identified at all. If It Was Your Child has documented at least 58 childhood cancer cases since 2008.
Still, the ineffective treatment and lack of oversight allowed the toxic contamination to spread far and wide. But it wasn't known until just about one month ago — more than 30 years after it was first discovered — how far the plume had moved.
A map shows that concentrations at least several times above legal limits are stretching south of the Amphenol site near dozens of residents' homes. That is the same neighborhood where tests by Indianapolis-based environmental firm EnviroForensics found levels of TCE, that were more than 252 times the safe limit set by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. Another nearby sewer sample showed levels nearly 150 times that limit.
Still, the contamination currently poses no serious health risks, according to the EPA. Buy Photo
Belinda Velasquez keeps a sign in her front yard reading #WhatIfItWasYourChild, which is a group of parents hoping to raise awareness of contaminants caused by an industrial site in Franklin, Ind. Many in the community have raised concerns if the high rates of childhood cancer in Johnson County are being caused by contamination. Velasquez's freshman daughter is in remission after a more than two year battle with leukemia. (Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar)
Around 37 homes have been tested in that area, none of which tested over the safe limits established by the agency, according to Franklin Mayor Steve Barnett. There were about five to seven homes that tested near the limit where remediation systems have been put in place, he added.
"It was kind of a sense of relief that we finally do know the extent of the contamination coming off the site," he told IndyStar, adding that he is working with Amphenol and the agency to begin creating plans for clean up.
He said that likely will involve digging up and replacing the sewer down the street with highest concentrations. For decades, a company at the site before Amphenol directly discharged its wastewater into the sewer, which is believed to be a main source of the contamination.
Barnett said he supports the letter the groups sent to the Inspector General.
"I just think that there should have been more oversight," he said, "and I hope this letter in the future means there can be more oversight for other sites going forward."
Shannon Lisa, executive director of Edison Wetlands, said she hopes an investigation by the EPA's Inspector General — an independent body that oversees the agency — will address what she says are systemic issues in how sites such as Franklin are handled.
"We should realize that so many of us across the country are members of a Franklin community because no one is exempt from these uncleaned toxic sites," Lisa said. "The real threat is from the failure of our government to protect families from the poisoning of people."
Attempts to reach the EPA and the Office of Inspector General were unsuccessful, given the ongoing federal government shutdown. Lisa and Davidson said they were aware of the shutdown when submitting the letter, but they wanted to keep the process moving.
Athena Velasquez of Franklin, Ind. undergoes her last chemotherapy treatment during her more than two year battle with leukemia. Velasquez was diagnosed when she was 11, but entered into remission in May and began her freshman year of high school on Wednesday. Many in the community have raised concerns if the high rates of childhood cancer in Johnson County are being cause by contamination in the community. (Photo: Belinda Velasquez)
They also hope an investigation raises questions about the Trump administration's efforts to weaken restrictions on TCE. The Obama administration worked to restrict uses of the chemical and was considering banning it upon further review. Those plans, however, have been postponed and the review stalled.
Mundell said he believes that decision is putting the environment and public health at risk.
"It's a blind and ignorant policy to remove regulations on a chemical without consideration to human health risk," he told IndyStar. "Cutting back regulations for TCE is a wrong-minded idea."
Barnett is also against the rollbacks, adding another Franklin could happen again.
Emma Grace Findley died in 2014 of a brain tumor. Today, her mom, Kari Rhinehart, advocates for more study of a potential cancer cluster in Johnson County (Photo: Provided by Kari Rhinehart)
Davidson said it shouldn't take parents going to the federal level to get things done. But she and If It Was Your Child co-founder Kari Rhinehart are too stubborn to quit. Both have had children with cancer — Davidson's stepson Zane, 14, is now in remission after a three-year battle with a rare form of leukemia. Rhinehart lost her 13-year-old daughter, Emma Grace Findley, in 2014 from a rare brain tumor.
"This is so important for Franklin, but this is not just an Amphenol problem or a Franklin problem, it's happening everywhere," Davidson said. "This is about small communities all over the country who can't fight for themselves."
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/environment/2019/01/07/franklin-group-accuses-epa-failing-protect-families-toxic-chemicals/2481388002/
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Some Fear Groundwater Near Georgia Military Bases Is Toxic
Jan 5, 2019 | AP (In The New York Times)
Groundwater near Georgia military bases remains contaminated from a toxic firefighting foam used for decades by the U.S. Air Force, prompting fears among residents about their exposure to the chemicals.
Recent tests at Georgia's three air bases show extensive environmental contamination of groundwater, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Environmentalists say that contamination from the foam exposed Georgia communities to chemicals linked to cancer and a variety of other health problems.
The Air Force has said that Georgia's drinking water is safe for the thousands of people living around its installations.
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But experts and nearby residents question those findings, saying the military's review was too narrow and failed to test water off-base.
"Given that there are concentrations of these compounds on site, over time they're going to move off of the site. That's just common sense," said Jamie DeWitt, an associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University. "No contaminant obeys property lines."
Nationwide, the Air Force has acknowledged contaminating drinking water in communities close to its bases in more than a dozen other states.
In Georgia, Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Cobb County, Robins Air Force Base in Houston County and Moody Air Force Base in Lowndes County used the firefighting foam in training exercises and to put out fires when planes crashed.
The foam also sometimes leaked out of its storage tanks, the Journal-Constitution reported. Thousands of gallons of foam soaked into the ground or washed into creeks and wetlands, killing fish and imperiling those who use the affected waterways for fishing, swimming and boating, the newspaper reported.Editors’ Picks100 Notable Books of 2018Welcome to Брайтон Бич, Brooklyn$3,700 Generators and $666 Sinks: FEMA Contractors Charged Steep Markups on Puerto Rico Repairs
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The contamination, which is linked to a class of chemicals known collectively as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, was laid out in a series of site inspection reports completed by the Air Force last year.
Those reports concluded that despite high levels of groundwater pollution, there was no immediate risk to human health through contamination of drinking water.
That claim was met with skepticism, particularly in rural areas where many people rely on wells for drinking and irrigation.
"Everything in this area depends on groundwater," said John Quarterman, the Suwannee Riverkeeper in Lowndes County, where Moody is located.
In a statement, the Air Force said its response is constrained by a lack of regulation for PFAS chemicals. The two that are the focus of most testing are known as PFOS and PFOA.
"Because PFOS/PFOA are unregulated and Georgia or federal entities have not established standards for non-drinking water sources, we cannot expend government resources on those water sources," the Air Force said.
Moody Air Force Base in south Georgia recorded the highest levels of groundwater contamination out of the three Georgia installations — more than 5,000 times the screening level.Sign Up for On Politics With Lisa Lerer
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The base, which started as a flight training facility during World War II, sits 14 miles (23 kilometers) northeast of Valdosta. It's bisected by Beatty Branch creek, which ultimately flows into the Withlacoochee River. Surface water from the base runs south into Grand Bay Swamp, a protected wildlife refuge and the state's second largest blackwater wetland after the Okefenokee Swamp, home to fish, alligators and migrating birds.
Tests of Moody's drinking wells showed no reportable contamination. In a news release published last May, the base celebrated the fact that its drinking water had been deemed safe, emphasizing that its wells plunge down more than 400 feet into a protected aquifer.
But local residents say their wells don't go nearly as deep, and the Lowndes County public water system has not been tested for the chemicals.
"I'm very concerned, because I live practically adjacent to the base," said Debra Tann.
Tann, an educator married to a retired Navy veteran with family ties to the area, lives less than a mile from Moody. Her well only goes down 230 feet (70 meters), which could make it more vulnerable to contamination.
Tann added that her husband often fishes from local creeks and rivers that could have been polluted with cancer-causing chemicals.
In response to questions, a spokesperson for the Air Force wrote that "since results showed no drinking water impacts on base and indicated there was not a pathway or proximity to off-base drinking water supplies, we did not sample outside the installations."
Site inspections of Dobbins and Robins also found groundwater contamination and pollution of creeks that flow from the bases into the Chattahoochee and Ocmulgee Rivers.
But, as was the case at Moody, the Air Force said it was only authorized to address drinking water, and it did not detect contamination in its own drinking water. Therefore, it did not test any water off-base.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/01/05/us/ap-us-military-bases-contaminated-groundwater.html
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There’s a Toxic Weed Killer on the Menu in K-12 Schools Across the US
Jan 7, 2019 | Truthout
By Caroline Cox
Many parents cheered about 10 years ago when Michelle Obama took on the important task of improving school meals. Of course, every child should have a healthy lunch and breakfast. Most of us have school cafeteria stories; I still remember the feeling of failure I had decades ago when I realized my daughters never had time to eat more than their dessert before joining the stampede for recess.
Ms. Obama’s work — and the work of many other concerned parents, teachers and staff — sparked significant improvements in school menus, some of which are now being undone by the current administration (allowing children to eat food with more salt and less whole grain). Schools must once again take another step forward.
If you haven’t met glyphosate (Roundup) yet, allow me to introduce you. Glyphosate is the most widely used pesticide in the US. Its use has skyrocketed during the last 20 years because of the popularity of genetically-modified crops that are tolerant of this weed killer. Health concerns about glyphosate have also skyrocketed since 2015, when the World Health Organization evaluated its ability to cause cancer.
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Glyphosate’s evaluation as a probable carcinogen is scary and was recently validated by a jury that awarded a school groundskeeper a multimillion-dollar judgment against Monsanto/Bayer because he had developed cancer after years of Roundup use. The decision has paved the way for thousands of other cancer patients and families to seek justice and compensation in court.
Glyphosate is now in most of us: Recent biomonitoring studies have detected it in the urine samples of 70 to 93 percent of the US population.
Even scarier, recent research has demonstrated that glyphosate can disrupt our body’s hormones, those vital molecules that manage growth, development, behavior, sex and more.
Exposing children, with their developing bodies, to a chemical that can cause cancer and hormone dysfunction is wrong. It’s especially wrong for children simply eating breakfast at school, who often are from low-income families. This fact has spurred the nonprofit Center for Environmental Health (CEH), where I serve as the senior scientist, to measure glyphosate contamination in breakfast cereals and bars served at schools. Although our study was small, the results were striking.
We found significant contamination in 70 percent of the products we tested, including big name brands like Quaker, whose glyphosate contamination was more than six times the safety threshold developed by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Cheerios, whose glyphosate contamination was more than five times the EWG safety threshold.
Our findings corroborate a growing list of recent studies demonstrating the presence of glyphosate in children’s foods, including preliminary findings by CEH in August, as well as those by the EWG, Moms Across America, Food Democracy Now and the Food and Drug Administration.
Because our study was small, and there is not much government testing of glyphosate contamination in popular grocery items, there may be other contaminated products at your school or grocery store. We just don’t know. We did recently find glyphosate contamination in King Arthur bread flour. King Arthur is the fourth-largest seller of flour in the country, consumed by approximately 16.61 million Americans this year. King Arthur bread flour is used for more than just baking bread, the company also claims “it strengthens whole-grain pastries, makes cookies crispier, and when combined with all-purpose flour, creates chewier pizza crusts and more tender muffins.” If we found it in commonly sold wheat flour, where else might it be?
Fortunately, there is a straightforward way to reduce the amount of glyphosate that our students consume. Certified organic foods are grown without glyphosate and the ones that we have tested are uncontaminated. Thus, we are asking schools to buy these organic cereals and bars. Some organic food is more expensive than conventionally grown food, but even a partial switch reduces the amount of this pesticide that students are eating and increases the market for organics, setting up the economies of scale that will lower prices.
Further, switching to organic cereals in the short term and advocating for stronger chemical regulation in the long term is beneficial to all eaters, especially people who are exposed to the highest levels of pesticides because of their work, such as groundskeepers and farmworkers.
What can parents do? Here are three steps to help protect you and your family:Buy organic cereals for your family whenever they are affordable and available for you.Ask your children’s schools to add organic cereals to their menus. For advice about effective ways to do this, contact us at food@ceh.org.Tell the CEO of General Mills to get rid of glyphosate in Cheerios and other cereal products by switching to organic oats. Children aren’t test subjects and parents deserve warning labels.
Monsanto (now Bayer) made hundreds of millions of dollars in 2017 from herbicide sales. We need to demand a change. Cancer-causing chemicals do not belong in children’s meals, whether served at home, at school or a child care center.
This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
https://truthout.org/articles/theres-a-toxic-weed-killer-on-the-menu-in-k-12-schools-across-the-us/
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Carper Extracts Policy Concessions in Deal on EPA, CEQ Nominees
Jan 4, 2019 | PoliticoPro
By Anthony Andragna
Senate Environment and Public Works Ranking Member Tom Carper said he received some significant policy commitments on chemical safety, pesticides and possible changes to a landmark environmental law from the Trump administration in exchange for allowing confirmation of three executive branch nominees in the waning hours of the 115th Congress.
The commitments, which cover issues ranging from implementation of a 2016 chemical safety law and worker protections from pesticides to potential changes to the National Environmental Policy Act, helped smooth approval on Tuesday of Alexandra Dunn to helm EPA’s chemicals office, Mary Neumayr to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality and Chad McIntosh to be assistant EPA administrator for the Office of International and Tribal Affairs.
“Securing substantive policy wins on matters that affect the health and safety of Americans across this country is what’s most important to me,” Carper, D-Del., told POLITICO in a statement. “Over the past few months, I have raised serious concerns regarding many of the Administration’s harmful environmental policies, and, as a result, EPA and CEQ have made specific commitments to me with respect to some of the most egregious ones.”
Any opposition from Carper — or any other senator — would have effectively killed the nominations as time ran down on the 115th Congress before it adjourned for the year.
In an undated letter, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler committed to providing “additional public information” about its review of new chemicals under the 2016 update to the Toxic Substances Control Act. That includes starting to post pre-manufacturing notices for new chemical products online by the end of May. EPA also agreed to issue a report detailing how it was implementing provisions of the law dealing with confidential business information and to submit its methodology for considering scientific research in chemical safety reviews to National Academy of Sciences for review.
“I appreciate your continued interest in the implementation of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act for the 21st Century,” Wheeler wrote. “I want to assure you it is a mutual interest.”
In addition, Wheeler said the agency would withdraw pending proposals — made by former Administrator Scott Pruitt — to reconsider worker protections from pesticides. More than two dozen Democratic senators raised concerns with the proposals in March 2018. Wheeler also pledged to issue a new proposed rule restricting some uses of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
Neumayr committed in a series of letters to hold additional public meetings on any potential National Environmental Policy Act changes, to increase efforts to improve federal government sustainability and to support more resilient infrastructure along with expanded preparation for extreme weather events.
“CEQ will continue to work with you and your staff to improve the nation’s preparedness and resilience to future risks, including climate-related risks, as well as matters involving Federal sustainability, including energy and environmental performance across Federal government agencies,” Neumayr wrote.
McIntosh committed in an undated letter to Carper and EPW Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) to hiring a member of a federally-recognized tribe to be Director of the American Indian Environmental Office, and he outlined his plans for tribal consultation in his role.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2019/01/carper-extracts-policy-concessions-in-deal-on-epa-ceq-nominees-1061193
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U.S. Liquefied Natural Gas Hits Record Highs Again
Jan 6, 2019 | Forbes
By Jude Clemente
Over the final week of 2018, U.S. feedgas for LNG exports surpassed 5 billion cubic feet per day for the first time ever This is an increase of over 60% for the same time in 2017. LNG is now 4% of total U.S. gas needs and remains our largest incremental market going forward.
Bolstered by an easing of the trade war with China, the largest new gas user in the world (with nearly 15 regasification terminals scheduled to come on line 2020-2023), 2019 will be the "biggest year ever" for U.S. LNG. China was the third-largest buyer of U.S. LNG last year after Mexico and South Korea, despite having no off take agreements.
There are now three U.S. LNG export facilities: Sabine Pass (LA), Cove Point (MD), and Corpus Christi (TX), with the latter just recently began commissioning liquefaction trains in November. There will be six such sites by the end of 2019.
The first half of 2019 will a busy one for the U.S. LNG business. Green lighted final investment decisions for projects over the next six months could eventually inject $20-25 billion into the Gulf Coast region alone over the next four years. And over the next seven years, it is easy to see U.S. LNG gas export capacity exploding to 20-25 Bcf/d. That would be around a quarter of current U.S. gas output.
Truth be told, however, while U.S. gas prices have been their most volatile in around decade over the past 10 weeks, more and more LNG exports to meet growing needs abroad would mean more ups and downs in domestic prices. We know that as the most bullish domestic demand factor, U.S. LNG exports will put a floor under our own market. LNG exports will increasingly become a baseload demand market and are not going to be easy to simply shut off if our own prices rise.YOU MAY ALSO LIKEDassault Systèmes BRANDVOICEWhat’s The Future Of Manufacturing? An Expert View
The Industrial Energy Consumers of America has long worried about the potential for huge amounts of gas leaving the country to increase domestic prices, namely since low gas prices are a critical competitive advantage for U.S. manufacturing. "U.S. chemical investments linked to affordable gas surpass $200 billion," and we just reported the best manufacturing jobs growth in the past 30 years.
Yet, we have a load of shale gas (and oil) to produce, with more affirmation reported in December: "Feds Discover Largest Oil, Natural Gas Reserve in History." Moreover, LNG exports actually incentivize new domestic gas production especially since our own demand is growing but sometimes not at levels to help producers expand operations.
I must say that I see overregulation over exports as having the biggest potential to increase domestic gas prices. Listening to the rhetoric out there today, I remained convinced that some new and completely unnecessary regulation on gas production and/or transport in the name of "combating climate change" will inevitably be unleashed and increase U.S. gas prices.
This would be a major mistake that would play right into Russia's gas exporting plans and actually reverse a huge amount of environmental progress that we have already made.
I therefore implore the new Congress to educate themselves, to be fully cognizant of a simple fact: thanks to fracking and the shale gas that it yields, U.S. CO2 emissions are dropping faster than any other nation. For example, the mighty Marcellus shale gas play in Pennsylvania - now responsible for ~30% of all U.S. gas output - has cut the state's CO2 emissions by a whopping 30% in a decade.
And importantly, we are making such climate improvement without the crippling regulations that Europe has relied upon - with very little result.
As for the global LNG market, 2019 will see a rejuvenated boom after a slowdown in 2018. Buyers are now more willing to sign the long-term contracts that help export projects secure financing. LNG supply should surge 15% this year, with most of that coming from the U.S.
Some 70-80% of new gas demand in the world will be in Asia. There is an ongoing gasification push in the region that will increasingly mean more LNG imports. Sales into Northeast Asia hit a record in December, up 15% from November.
Now, however, uncertainty over global economic growth along with sunken oil prices (which lower prices for indexed LNG sellers) could delay or cancel final investment decisions for new LNG export projects around the world. This could potentially exacerbate a global LNG supply shortage already expected to occur within five years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2019/01/06/u-s-liquefied-natural-gas-hits-record-highs-again/#69d7ed33141e
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LNG-Related Approvals by FERC Signaling More U.S. Exports in 2019
Jan 4, 2019 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Leticia Gonzales
Federal authorities started off the new year with approvals for a pair of liquefied natural gas (LNG)-related projects that indicate more U.S. exports this year...
Access to full text unavailable – subscription required.
Story can be found here:
https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/116970-lng-related-approvals-by-ferc-signaling-more-us-exports-in-2019
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New Year, New Hurdles for Alaska LNG Megaproject
Jan 7, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
Alaska's multibillion-dollar LNG export project faces serious hurdles in the New Year as negotiations drag on with its potential Chinese partners and state officials struggle to complete environmental studies required by federal regulators.
Those setbacks come at a time when Alaska's newly elected Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) may propose changes to the $44 billion state project in the coming weeks.
Dunleavy has questioned the economic viability of having the state run the Alaska LNG project, suggesting instead that private oil firms should handle the venture. The new governor has also been reluctant to provide additional state funding to the costly project (Energywire, Dec. 17, 2018).
After he was elected in November, Dunleavy asked former Gov. Sean Parnell (R) to help review the proposed Alaska LNG project and the operations of the Alaska Gasline Development Corp. (AGDC), which is managing the export venture.
Parnell, an Anchorage-based attorney with the Denver law firm of Holland & Hart, completed a report on the gasline project after spending what AGDC officials said was more than "100 volunteer hours" getting up to speed on the agency's plans.
Since then, AGDC contracted with Holland & Hart's Anchorage office to provide "strategic counsel in connection with AGDC's Alaska gas projects," according to AGDC communications manager Jesse Carlstrom. As a result, Parnell is now consulting for the state agency.
At the time, Holland & Hart's Washington, D.C., office had been providing legal services for AGDC on the federal level for the last three years.
Meanwhile, Dunleavy is also due to appoint two new members to the AGDC board of directors. The seven-member board consists of two state department heads and five other directors appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Legislature.
Before former Gov. Bill Walker (I) left office on Dec. 3, the two state department heads that he had appointed resigned from the AGDC board. Now five members remain on the board, with terms due to expire over the next four years.
But Dunleavy could ask those appointees to also bow out, which would allow him to reshape policy at AGDC.
As currently envisioned, the Alaska LNG megaproject would ship gas from the state's North Slope oil fields down a 42-inch, 800-mile pipeline to a liquefaction and export facility in Nikiski on the state's southern shore. The project is expected to produce up to 20 million tons of LNG per year for shipment to Asia.Financing delay
For more than a year, AGDC has been negotiating with three major Chinese firms that have tentatively agreed to help finance and build Alaska's ambitious natural gas venture. State officials had predicted those talks would conclude by the end of 2018.
But as New Year's Eve passed without an agreement, AGDC officials extended the deadline to June 30, 2019.
Under a joint development agreement signed in late 2017, Bank of China, CIC Capital Corp. and China Petrochemical Corp. (Sinopec) are proposing to provide 75 percent of the funding for the Alaska project in return for 75 percent of the LNG capacity of the gas pipeline for the length of the loan.
Despite those delays, AGDC's Carlstrom said the state and Chinese companies are still "actively engaged and working toward reaching definitive agreements."
"All of the parties agreed an extension is desired to keep working toward definitive commercial agreements and are planning to extend the negotiation period by six months," he said.
Also in late 2018, AGDC conceded that it needs an additional nine months to answer at least 20 of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's environmental data requests.
FERC and the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration are seeking detailed information on Alaska's proposal to run 27 miles of pipeline across the bed of the Cook Inlet to Nikiski.
AGDC said it needs to conduct summer field work to determine how the Cook Inlet's intense tidal currents would affect the stability of the pipeline system. That data won't be available until Sept. 27, the agency said.
But Carlson said FERC is holding firm to its promise to issue a draft environmental impact statement on the project sometime next month.
"FERC indicated they have received all of the responses from AGDC that are necessary for the commission to issue the draft EIS for Alaska LNG in February 2019," he said.
Under that timeline, the final EIS is due in November 2019, with the government's official record of decision expected in February 2020.
But as delays continue on the Alaska LNG project, some are questioning whether the state's expensive gas export venture will ever see the light of day, noted Larry Persily, former federal director of Alaska natural gas transportation projects under the Obama administration.
"I believe most Alaskans, certainly most state legislators, have accepted the reality that the state-led Alaska LNG project is not going to see a final investment this year, next year, or anytime soon," said Persily, who closely tracks the state project.
"Most state lawmakers, however, see value in completing the FERC process, especially the environmental impact [report], in hopes that someday it would be used for a project," he said. "The question will be how much more money the state spends to complete the FERC-led EIS."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/01/07/stories/1060111027
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Elections Embolden Coloradans’ Push for New Drilling Restrictions
Jan 5, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tripp Baltz
The shifting political winds in Colorado that swept more Democrats into statewide offices have emboldened community and environmental activists who want the governor-elect to halt new oil and gas wells.
“The future of Colorado is on the line and we are committed to protecting it for our children and all living things,” Colorado Rising, one of the groups seeking to block more drilling, said in a Jan. 4 letter to Democratic Gov.-elect Jared Polis.
The letter was supported by members of seven other environmental and community organizations, several of which staged an anti-drilling demonstration in front of the State Capitol Building in Denver Jan. 4, the first day of the 2019 regular session of Colorado’s General Assembly.
The letter, the demonstration, and calls for new drilling restrictions by the state legislature show renewed energy among opponents of the oil and gas industry after Democrats won majorities in both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s office in the November 2018 elections.
Polis is viewed as more sympathetic to environmentalists than outgoing Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper, who was term-limited. Polis will be sworn into office on Jan. 8.
Ballot Measure
Polis, however, refused to support Proposition 112, a citizens’ initiative that was on the ballot in November 2018 but which was defeated by voters.
Colorado Rising led the charge for Proposition 112, which sought to impose a 2,500-foot statewide setback—the minimum distance between wells and occupied buildings such as homes, schools and hospitals. The current setback is 500 feet from homes and 1,000 feet from higher-occupancy buildings.
When running for governor in 2018, Polis said the measure contributed to “divisiveness” and would “all but ban fracking in Colorado.”
Polis, a former U.S. House member, was a chief financial backer of a 2014 citizens’ initiative that would have increased setbacks to 2,000 feet but that was pulled before going to the ballot.
Despite its defeat, the proposition captured more than 1.1 million votes, the group said. The letter urges Polis to enact a moratorium on all new drilling and permitting until rulemaking “based on a comprehensive assessment of existing health and safety data can be put into place.”
The letter referenced a similar health assessment conducted in New York that later led to a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the high-pressure injection of water, sand and chemicals deep underground to released natural gas and oil trapped in tight shale formations.
‘Tired of These Dramatics’
The Colorado Oil and Gas Association criticized environmentalists’ efforts.
Coloradans are “tired of these dramatics,” Dan Haley, the association’s president and CEO, told Bloomberg Environment Jan. 4. “Activists and out-of-state interests can rally outside the state Capitol, but the hard-working men and women in Colorado’s oil and natural gas industry are committed to going inside and engaging in a civil dialogue that benefits Coloradans.”
Energy companies, school districts, and environmental groups—including the League of Oil and Gas Impacted Citizens—worked together recently to address school setback issues, “and now those groundbreaking, nation-leading rules are being enacted,” he said. “Calls for bans and open-ended moratoria have no basis in reality and no business in Colorado.”
The actions of Colorado Rising and other groups are counterproductive, Tracee Bentley, executive director of the Colorado Petroleum Council, told Bloomberg Environment Jan. 4.
“Out-of-state interests continue to ignore the will of voters and lawmakers by funding this quest to destroy an industry that supports 232,900 Colorado jobs and contributes $31.4 billion in annual economic impact to the state,” she said.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/elections-embolden-coloradans-push-for-new-drilling-restrictions
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Feds Give Cheniere Green Light to Start Production at Corpus Christi Second Unit
Jan 7, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Sergio Chapa
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gave Cheniere Energy permission to begin the startup process for the second production unit at the company's Corpus Christi LNG facility.
In a Thursday morning order, FERC officials gave the Houston-based company permission to begin introducing natural gas into a production unit named Train 2.Recommended Video
00:2501:59
The introduction of natural gas into the unit allows Cheniere to begin testing and a startup process known in liquefied natural gas industry as commissioning.
Forecast: Early 2019 will see flurry of LNG activity
"Train 2 is progressing on an accelerated schedule and we expect substantial completion in the second half of this year," a company spokesman said.
Houston-based Cheniere holds federal permits for three production units at its Port of Corpus Christi facility and five more units at its Sabine Pass facility in Louisiana.
Cheniere began shipping LNG from its Sabine Pass facility in February 2016.
Greece or Bust: Corpus Christi LNG's first shipment headed to new market in Europe
The first production unit at Cheniere's Port of Corpus Christi facility was brought into service in November and sent its first shipment in December.
Train 1 at Corpus Christi LNG is expected to be in full commercial service during the first quarter while Train 2 is expected to be in full service during the second half of the year.
Cheniere's long-term goal is for its Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi plants to produce a combined 50 million metric tons of LNG per year, which is touted as enough energy to power 195 million U.S. homes for a single day.
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Feds-give-Cheniere-green-light-to-start-13505857.php
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FERC Seen Punting on Gas Projects Till McIntyre Seat is Filled
Jan 4, 2019 | PoliticoPro
By Eric Wolff
The death of FERC Commissioner Kevin McIntyre this week is likely to keep any controversial gas pipeline and LNG terminal approvals off the regulators' agenda for the near future.
Without McIntyre, the commission is split with the two Republicans, Chairman Neil Chatterjee and Commissioner Bernard McNamee, who joined last month, in a potential standoff with the two Democrats, Commissioners Richard Glick and Cheryl LaFleur. Glick has so far occupied the left flank of the commission, rejecting multiple pipelines for their failure to consider climate change impacts, while LaFleur has often voted yes on those pipelines, but has also complained that the commission was overlooking climate change concerns, and she has regularly included her own greenhouse gas calculations to her decisions.
It's not clear how close the White House is to naming a successor to McIntyre, or whether President Donald Trump will again look for someone deemed sympathetic to his goal of helping the coal industry. Democrats and many green groups had complained that McNamee would unfairly favor the coal industry, since he helped author the Energy Department's failed 2017 proposal to support struggling coal and nuclear power plants and has criticized renewable energy.
Green groups fear Trump and Senate Republicans will push any new candidates through the confirmation process quickly to prevent delays in approvals to gas projects. Though FERC languished without a quorum for months before Chatterjee and former Commissioner Rob Powelson were brought on, McNamee zipped through the process in about eight weeks from start to finish.
"If you thought the McNamee process looked expedited, this is going to be even faster," said an environmentalist source. "Once they have a name it’s going to race through [confirmation] because, as it stands they’re deadlocked 2-2 and there’s a number of incredibly important dockets and proceedings that are at a standstill until this logjam is resolved."
But one energy industry source worried the nomination process could get bogged down, pushing back the timelines for gas projects.
"I know it's huge priority for the administration," the industry source said. "It is and will be a huge priority for the Senate, but I think it’s going to be a while before a nomination is cleared."
McIntyre's illness had already prompted Chatterjee to delay votes on Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass LNG terminal and Dominion's Sweden Valley pipeline project, since neither looked likely to clear the commission at its December meeting.
Energy industry sources said they had anticipated several pipelines and LNG project votes at either the January or February meetings, but without clear support at the commission, delays could pile up, raising costs for pipeline builders and putting LNG exporters at a competitive disadvantage.
"I have great concern over pending projects that need final certification and there not being the votes to certify them," the industry source said.
FERC also has two major power market decisions in its queue, one related to PJM Interconnection's capacity market and another for ISO-New England's markets. These market rule changes could have far-reaching consequences for how renewables are integrated in the two power markets.
FERC watchers also said it wasn't clear how the end of LaFleur's term in June would complicate the issue. It's typical for presidents to pair Democratic and Republican nominees to help smooth the nomination process, though there has been no indication yet from the White House about whether it planned to put LaFleur up for a third term or bring in a different Democrat.
Some observers speculated the administration, exploiting its control of the Senate, could opt to advance a new commissioner without a Democrat at all. A 3-1 majority would give Republicans control of FERC even if another Republican leaves, or past the end of McNamee's term in 2020.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2019/01/ferc-seen-punting-on-gas-projects-till-mcintyre-seat-is-filled-1059529
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Lujan Grisham's Admin Holds New Hearing in Oil and Gas Case
Jan 7, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
New Mexico's new Democratic administration is acting to reverse a regulatory move that could double the number of oil and gas wells in the northwestern corner of the state.
Environmentalists said the November decision by the state Oil Conservation Commission was a giveaway to the industry. The move allowed Texas-based Hilcorp Energy Co. to drill new wells on 1.3 million acres it owns in the San Juan Basin gas field without having to seek permission for each individual well (Energywire, Nov. 27, 2018).
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) was sworn in last week and her appointee, Sarah Cottrell Propst, took over as secretary of the state Department of Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources. As secretary, Propst will indirectly oversee the oil commission.
State Land Office Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard, also a Democrat, asked Propst to rehear the Hilcorp case, saying the original decision was flawed.
The governor, the land commissioner and the energy secretary appoint the three members of the Oil Conservation Commission.
The hearing is scheduled for tomorrow.
Environmentalists and at least one landowner from northwestern New Mexico said they were barred from participating in a hearing on the original decision. Allowing more wells in the area would have a greater impact on surrounding farmers and ranchers.
Hilcorp said the OCC made the right decision when it decided the case in November.
"We are prepared to defend our position and the OCC's decision again at the upcoming hearing," company spokesman Justin Furnace said in an email. "We are excited about the new jobs and millions of dollars of investment in the community the new pool rule will allow."
Overturning the previous decision would set a bad precedent, the New Mexico Oil & Gas Association said.
"An abrupt reversal would send a discouraging message to the public that something other than facts and law will be driving regulatory decisions moving forward," association President Ryan Flynn said in a statement.
The move could be the first test of the pledges from Lujan Grisham and Garcia Richard to move the state away from its reliance on oil and gas production. Former Gov. Susana Martinez, a two-term Republican, appointed an oil and gas executive to oversee the energy and mineral department and cut the budgets for her state's environmental regulators.
Lujan Grisham has said she plans to regulate methane emissions from the oil and gas industry as a way to combat climate change. Garcia Richard plans to promote wind and solar power on state-owned land (Energywire, Jan. 2).
Propst came to Lujan Grisham's administration after serving as executive director of the Interwest Energy Alliance, a trade group for renewable energy companies, according to her LinkedIn profile. She previously worked for Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson as an energy adviser.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/01/07/stories/1060111031
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Derailed Train Leaks Hazardous Materials in Jefferson Co.
Jan 7, 2019 | Fox24 WGXA
By Amaris Jenkins
A town is being evacuated after a train derailed releasing hazardous materials.
According to the Associated Press, a derailed train in Bartow, G.A. Sunday night. The train spilled a number of chemicals, including Hydrogen Peroxide.
Bartow Mayor, Robert Morris says about 280 people have been impacted by the evacuation. The evacuation has been reduced to areas within three miles of the derailment.
The Director of the Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency, Jim Anderson confirms the train involved was a Norfolk Southern train. Anderson says it's unclear how much of the chemicals were spilled.
Norfolk Southern says in a tweet the derailment is under investigation.
Norfolk Southern@nscorp
Update on Bartow, Ga., train derailment: it has been confirmed that Hydrogen Peroxide was released. There is no indication of a chlorine leak at this time. The investigation is ongoing.2011:02 AM - Jan 7, 2019Twitter
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the acid is a corrosive material that can cause respiratory and skin irritations.
HAZMAT crews were on the scene of the spill. No injuries have been reported.
The Georgia Department of Transportation is allowing people out of Bartow, but no one is allowed in right now.
A local church is helping shelter evacuees who have no where to go.
https://wgxa.tv/news/local/jefferson-county-town-evacuated-after-hazardous-materials-release-from-train
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Blumenthal: Railroads Should Not Get Extension to Install PTC
Jan 7, 2019 | Digital Journal
By Karen Graham
Dozens of railroads, including Metro-North, missed the December 31st deadline to install "positive train control," which can prevent collisions and derailments. The rail systems quickly applied for a 2-year extension to 2020 which Congress approved.On January 2, Digital Journal reported that as of Dec. 31, only four of the nation's railroads had fully implemented positive train control (PTC) systems to prevent train accidents, according to the U.S. Transportation Department.The technology - called positive train control - can prevent collisions and derailment - and involves installing the equipment on locomotives and the tracks. The system then communicates information about the train's speed as well as the position of the train and track switches.Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal.CHIP SOMODEVILLA, Getty/AFP/FileNo more extensionsConnecticut Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal, who sits on the Senate Transportation Committee, is saying enough is enough.“I absolutely despise and oppose that two-year extension because it is another—probably second or third for most of those railroads—and it puts a passenger's safety at severe risk,” Blumenthal told WCBS 880.Blumenthal feels that the railroads have had enough time and extensions to install the life-saving technology. After being introduced in September 2008, Congress had to give the railroads their first extension, setting December 31, 2015, as the first extension deadline for installation.However the railroads needed another extension, and 2018 was granted. After dozens of railroads failed to install the braking system by December 31, 2018, it has been extended once more to 2020.“The Federal Railway Administration has to hold these railroads accountable, shorten the extension and impose fines of $28,000 a day if necessary to compel them to meet those deadlines,” Blumenthal said.On Friday, Blumenthal called on Congress to deny any further extensions to the 37 railroads that missed the 2018 target. Perhaps no one has given it much thought, but the partial federal government shutdown could have some severe implications for the railroads' financial situations. And this raises real concerns over safety.“The Trump shutdown has vast far-reaching consequences, one of them is to hamper and handicap the Federal Railroad Administration in imposing deadlines for positive train control which is very deeply unfortunate but the delays in implementing this system should not be excused by the shutdown,” Blumenthal said.“These railroads had years, literally years, to implement this life-saving technology, there's nothing novel or new about it.”Amtrak has not played fairBack in October 2015, with the December 31 deadline for installation of the Positive Train Control technology coming up fast, Amtrak Chairman Joseph Boardman sent a letter to the Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D.Rescuers gather around a derailed carriage of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 13, 2015Jewel Samad, AFPIn the letter, Boardman warns lawmakers Amtrak would suspend parts of its national service in December if Congress does not extend a year-end deadline on the installation of advanced safety technology. The letter also outlined the company's efforts to install Positive Train Control (PTC) that would improve rail safety.Interestingly, in October 2015, only three railroads had submitted required safety plans to the government, a step before PTC is operational. The three railroads include BNSF Railway, the nation’s second largest freight railroad, and two commuter railroads — Metrolink in the Los Angeles area, and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority in the Philadelphia area.It was unfortunate that on May 12, 2015, an Amtrak crash killed eight people and injured about 200 others. Investigators determined that if PTC had been operational, the crash could have been avoided. This is one possible reason Amtrak decided to use threats to get its extension, which, by the way, it did get.This is what Boardman's letter said:"Should Congress fail to pass legislation to extend the PTC deadline beyond December 31, 2015, there will be significant impacts to our service and on our customers and tenant railroads. The potential impacts would also be substantial since a vast majority of our network would be inoperable without an extension of the deadline."
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/politics/blumenthal-railroads-should-not-get-extension-to-install-ptc/article/540280#ixzz5bvW5817n -
Pelosi Says House to Revisit Climate Legislation
Jan 4, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter and Anna Edgerton
The House will take up climate legislation, including a measure based on a bill the body approved last time Democrats were in the majority, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said.
“We couldn’t pass in the Senate our climate bill, and we’ll be returning to that,” Pelosi said Jan. 4 at a Trinity Washington University event for MSNBC’s “The Speaker” town hall broadcast.
While Pelosi didn’t elaborate, the measure that fits this description is the 2009 cap-and-trade legislation that narrowly passed by the House but died in the Senate and would have imposed the nation’s first limits on greenhouse-gas emissions linked to global warming.
It also would have created a market for trading pollution permits to curb emissions, with the goal of reducing global warming greenhouse-gas emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. It was panned at the time by business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as an unrealistic approach that would harm the economy and kill jobs.
In her remarks Jan. 4, Pelosi didn’t specify the approach the House would take this time around, and her office didn’t immediately respond to a request for more information—including whether she intended to resurrect the cap-and-trade provision.
Consensus has been building over the past decade around an alternative approach: a tax on carbon with revenue distributed back to taxpayers. One approach advocated by lawmakers, including Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), would apply a $15-per-metric-ton carbon fee to the U.S. oil, gas, and coal industries, but rebate all of the revenue as a dividend to households to shield them from increased fossil fuel costs related to the carbon fee.
“When I was speaker the first time, my flagship issue was climate,” Pelosi said during the event at her alma mater, citing legislation that passed and enabled higher emissions standards to be put into effect by prior presidents.
On Jan. 3, Pelosi used her opening address as House speaker to put climate back on the agenda after eight years of Republican control. She called global warming “the existential threat of our time,” and has already resurrected a special committee to cast a spotlight on climate change. That gives Democrats a platform to explore an issue on which opinion polls show President Donald Trump is out of step with the public.
The urgency for Democrats is bolstered by record-breaking wildfires in the western U.S., a string of devastating hurricanes, and a landmark report released in November by the Trump administration that projected climate change will end up costing the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
But it also comes with risks: Pelosi’s party lost control of the chamber after passing the landmark bill, and her party remains divided on how strongly to respond to global warming.
“We need to start fresh,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio). “This is a new Congress.”
—With assistance from Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Erik Wasson.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/pelosi-says-house-to-revisit-climate-legislation
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Benefits of Limiting Toxins Obviously Outweigh Cost — Except at Trump's EPA
Jan 5, 2019 | The Hill - Opinion
By Michael Mikulka
When they thought no one was looking on the Friday before the New Year, Trump's EPA decided to cheat the American public in favor of polluters, by exaggerating the price tag of environmental regulations while minimizing their benefit.
In rolling back the tight Mercury and Air Toxics Standards finalized under President Obama, the Trump administration created a fundamental shift in the federal regulatory framework as it seeks to undo each building block of environmental regulation developed over EPA’s 49-year history.
This move would only consider countervailing risks while disregarding the full benefits of adopting pollution controls, especially in considering ancillary or “co-benefits.” Co-benefits are the indirect benefits of a rule, or the added gains that EPA’s rule was not designed to create.
Numerous Obama administration rules relied on reductions of other pollutants, calculated as co-benefits, even when those emissions weren't being regulated. This previous, relatively uncontroversial corner of federal regulatory cost-benefit analysis has now been targeted by industry.
Since the 1980s, federal agencies — including EPA — have calculated the financial costs and benefits of proposed regulations. Showing that benefits outweigh the costs isn't up for debate, but Trump’s EPA is now abandoning one crucial, long-standing and widely accepted part of the process. Since 2004, in a mandate added by Republican President George W. Bush, all federal regulatory agencies — not just EPA —have been required to include co-benefits in their cost-benefit analyses.
The Office of Management and Budget explicitly tells agencies: "Your analysis should look beyond the direct benefits and direct costs of your rule and consider any important ancillary benefits and countervailing risks."
EPA complied with this directive by including co-benefits in cost-benefit calculations. For example, in 1985, EPA proposed reducing the amount of lead allowed in gasoline. Lead is a neurotoxin, but the EPA also consideredthat lowering lead levels would have the co-benefit of reducing nitrogen oxides and smog, which cause other health problems.
Another instance comes from 1987, when EPA regulated chlorofluorocarbons that were depleting the Earth’s ozone layer. In that case, EPA estimated the significant, direct health benefits from exposure to less UV radiation because of a more robust ozone layer. And EPA determined that keeping the ozone layer intact helps minimize exposure to ground-level ozone. Because of this two-pronged analysis, EPA ordered the phase-out of a whole class of CFC compounds.
But today’s EPA wants to abandon all that. It has prepared us for the turnaround by criticizing the use of co-benefits in a series of actions it has taken over the past two years. If the consideration of co-benefits is abandoned in EPA rule promulgation, it would affect the analysis of regulations by every U.S. government agency.
It would, in effect, be an attack not just on environmental regulations, but also on all rules that protect people at the expense of profit-makers and could be employed to undermine all rational cost-benefit calculations by the federal government.
Co-benefits are an important by-product for all federal regulations. In a surprising contradiction to Trump’s anti-regulatory agenda, the most recent OMB report found that the annual benefits of major federal regulations from 2006 to 2016 were between $219 billion and $695 billion, while the annual costs were between $59 billion and $88 billion. Most of the benefits cited are due to EPA's Clean Air Act rules and are calculated from co-benefits.
For many rules, co-benefits are larger than the benefits of the rule itself. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS) has emerged as a test case in the fight over co-benefits, because sky-high co-benefits were the reason the rules passed muster under Obama. By reducing mercury — a devastating neurotoxin — industry will simultaneously cut the amount of other toxic pollutants that escape from its stacks. Installing mercury pollution control will also prevent 11,000 premature deaths and 130,000 asthma attacks each year, adding up to total annual health benefits of $90 billion.
By looking at just the direct benefits of complying with MATS, EPA found that MATS can cost power producers upward of $9.6 billion per year. The direct benefits were calculated as only up to $6 million. Trump’s EPA analysis argues that it should not include co-benefits in the MATS rule. Company officials (especially coal companies) contend that adding co-benefits is a form of double counting. But EPA is only counting co-benefits when they would not be generated by other regulations. So, these benefits are counted once, and only once.
But now EPA will not count co-benefits — period. This is wrong. It departs from long-standing non-partisan federal cost-benefit analysis. Federal policymakers should consider all the benefits and costs of each protective rule it proposes. Counting co-benefits is common sense because it treats both sides of the ledger equally. Removing co-benefit calculations is putting your thumb on one side of the scale.
The changes in the Supreme Court will determine whether this rollback is legal. Justice Brett Kavanaugh sat on the D.C. Circuit panel that heard the recent challenge to the MATS rule. His 2014 dissent argued that the Obama EPA did not justify the MATS rule because it downplayed costs and used co-benefits in determining whether to regulate. One more vote against co-benefits may sink one of the bedrock principles of federal regulation.
“Co-benefits” should not be a partisan issue. In federal policymaking, ancillary benefits have been counted in cost-benefit analysis for the last 30 years. Trump has allowed industry to completely influence the federal decision-making process, opening areas of attack once believed off-limits. We, the scientists and workers of the EPA, fear for the safeguards that protect the American public. Congress must draft rules that stop this administration from kowtowing to industry and instead serve the American people. Then EPA can get back to doing what it does best — protecting human health and the environment.
Michael Mikulka is president of AFGE Local 704, representing EPA Region 5 workers protecting IL, IN, MI, MN, OH and WI and is spokesman for Save the U.S. EPA Campaign.
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/423983-benefits-of-limiting-toxins-obviously-outweigh-cost-except-at
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States Demand EPA Scrap Methane Rule Delay
Jan 4, 2019 | E&E News PM
By Niina Heikkinen
Nine attorneys general and the California Air Resources Board are calling for EPA to rescind its plan to delay controls on methane emissions from municipal landfills.
The coalition of states, led by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and CARB, are warning in new public comments that the agency's actions are unlawful.
In August 2016, EPA passed a rule to control methane emissions from solid waste municipal landfills, the third largest man-made source of the greenhouse gas in the United States. The rule went into effect in October of that year.
Instead of moving forward with implementation, the Trump administration last October proposed giving states until late August of this year to submit plans for cutting the potent greenhouse gas.
EPA also extended its timeline to review those plans from four months to one year. The agency would then have two years to develop a federal plan if it rejects the one provided by the states (Greenwire, Oct. 29, 2018).
"This outrageous proposal flies in the face of the mission of the EPA to protect public health and the environment," said Becerra in a press release.
CARB and the attorneys general from California, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont maintain the agency's actions violate the Clean Air Act's requirement to control pollutants that are dangerous to public health and welfare. They also warn the agency did not provide a justification for its rule change, or a cost-benefit analysis.
"Had EPA complied with its mandatory duties to implement the Landfill Emission Guidelines, every state would have had an approved state or federal plan to reduce emissions from existing municipal solid waste landfills by November 30, 2017," the comments read.
"Now already one year overdue, EPA here proposes to further delay implementing the Guidelines by an additional four years," the letter continued.
The comments follow a federal court ruling late last month denying EPA's effort to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the same coalition of states over the agency's failure to enforce the rule (Greenwire, Dec. 26, 2018).
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2019/01/04/stories/1060111009
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$16 Million in Energy Grants Could Improve Climate Models
Jan 4, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
The Energy Department will offer $16 million in grant funds for research to improve climate and Earth system models, a move scientists are welcoming amid largely stagnant or declining federal climate science funding.
The funds will be divided between two research efforts, the Energy Department announced Jan. 4.
Most of the funds, $11 million, will be directed toward atmospheric research aiming to gather more detail on the role of clouds and aerosols, or fine particles or droplets in the air, in changes to the Earth’s atmosphere. The remaining $5 million will focuson research on terrestrial processes, including how nutrients, carbon, and water cycle through soils.
The goal is to integrate the data collected from the grant projects into climate and Earth system models, the Energy Department said.
“News like this is welcome,” Brenda Ekwurzel, director of climate science for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Bloomberg Environment.
The Trump administration has proposed sharp cuts in climate science research at agencies like the Energy Department that, for the most part, Congress hasn’t approved. But there haven’t been increases in funding for federal climate science, either.
“We need to have a real climate service,” Ekwurzel said.
Improving Climate ModelsThe new grants could help improve climate models because the research topics are areas where the science needs more information, Ekwurzel said. For example, better data on soil moisture is critical to projecting risks of heat waves and droughts in a warming climate, she said.
The Energy Department has issued at least one other set of grants for climate research. In June 2018, it announced $15 million in funds for 27 projects aiming to improve climate and weather models.
“For decades, DOE has been a leading contributor in advancing our knowledge of both atmospheric and terrestrial processes,” Paul Dabbar, the department’s undersecretary for science, said in a statement. “This research will result in a better grasp of critical factors affecting the Earth system.”
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/16-million-in-energy-grants-could-improve-climate-models
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HFC Deal Goes Live Without U.S. Support
Jan 7, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick
A global agreement on heat-trapping super pollutants took effect last Tuesday without the United States.
The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, an ozone treaty, began overseeing emissions from heating and cooling equipment on New Year's Day after it was ratified by 65 nations. The United States was not among them, and the Trump administration has not said whether it will send the deal to the Senate for a two-thirds vote. A former official expected the White House to decide one way or the other this winter or spring.
The Kigali Amendment, named for the Rwandan capital where it was agreed on, aims to cut global production and use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) by more than 80 percent by the 2040s, avoiding nearly half a degree Celsius of warming by the end of this century.
U.S. manufacturers ranging from Honeywell International Inc. to Carrier Corp., both of Indiana, lobbied hard for ratification because they say it could deliver 100,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs. U.S. companies developed many of the alternative chemicals that would replace HFCs on the world market, and some of them worry about losing market share if the United States stays out of Kigali.
"The risk is China," said Kevin Fay, executive director for the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy.
The United States and China are the two largest producers and users of HFCs, and China is expected to ratify the deal.
If it does and the United States doesn't, said Fay, Chinese manufacturers could gain access to markets from India to Africa to sell chemicals that were developed by U.S. firms.
"The market in these technologies is projected to double in the next decade," said Fay. "This transition is underway and will take place, but if it's seen as taking place without U.S. support, then China will use that to continue to try to take away the U.S. leadership in this space and use that to curry favor with countries around the world."
Nonratification could be seen as a lack of confidence in U.S.-developed alternatives, he said. "There will be like a little black cloud following us around."
Fay said his group sent the White House, State Department and EPA its most recent economic analyses in support of Kigali before the holidays.
The Kigali Amendment would require the United States and other rich countries to cut HFCs by 10 percent this year and 40 percent in 2024, finally phasing them down to 15 percent of 2011-13 levels by 2036.
The U.S. market has already achieved its 2019 target, but manufacturers say a federal policy would help them meet the 2024 goal. Even if the Senate does not ratify Kigali, enacting domestic legislation that keeps the United States on track to meet Kigali's phase-down schedule would go a long way toward restoring international confidence in U.S. replacement products for HFCs, Fay said.
Kigali ratification would require 67 supportive votes in the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans. Thirteen Republican senators asked the White House in June to submit the amendment for a vote.
"I think if the president supports ratification, it's going to happen," said George David Banks, President Trump's former international energy adviser and a supporter of the Kigali Amendment. He said he was "bullish" that Trump would make that choice.
"I think if the president is presented the facts and objective assessment of the benefits and costs, I think the president supports it, more likely than not," he said.
While the Democratic-controlled House has no role in ratification, it could help grease the skids for Senate approval. That's because a court decision last year did away with EPA's implementing regulations that would have allowed the United States to comply with Kigali, and Congress would need to give the agency new authority to require the HFC phasedown. The chances of that legislation moving under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would seem stronger than under former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
The midterm elections also resulted in more Democratic-controlled governorships and state legislatures. Kigali's industry supporters worry that could lead to a patchwork of regulations across the country. They're advocating instead for a federal standard. California moved last year to ban HFCs in new air conditioning and refrigeration systems.
"Having one schedule that all must abide by makes manufacturer planning easier — everyone knows when the stepdowns will occur and thus can sufficiently plan to ensure they will have the proper equipment available to meet demand," said Francis Dietz, vice president of public affairs at the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute.
If other states follow California's lead and try to regulate HFCs by mandating global warming performance standards, that could make compliance difficult, he said.
Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, said that as long as U.S. industry continues to phase down HFCs, it will be a win for the climate.
"Yes, we ultimately need ratification, but as long as the market keeps marching forward for alternatives, the planet will benefit," he said.
But the United States might lose its commercial advantage, he said.
"If we fall behind, the market is going to be taken away by others — Japan, Europeans, China — and we'll lose out," he said. "That's the strongest rationale for ratifying right now."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/01/07/stories/1060111043
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