Preview Newsletter
PM ACC 1/7/2019
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(ACC Mentioned) Demand for Basic and Specialty Chemicals Continues to Grow
Jan 7, 2019 | Material Handling & Logistics
By David Sparkman
Following growth throughout 2018, the chemical industry is expected to see continued healthy demand for basic chemicals throughout this year, with most specialty segments predicted to benefit from growing demand as well... -
House Sets Vote to Reopen Interior, EPA
Jan 7, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Geof Koss
The House will vote this week to reopen agencies shuttered by the standoff over border wall funding, as the new Democratic majority looks to ratchet up pressure on the White House and the Senate over growing public frustration... -
(ACC Mentioned) ACC Appeals Against California Spray Foam Priority Product Designation
Jan 7, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The American Chemistry Council has filed a formal appeal to get California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to withdraw its designation of spray polyurethane foam (SPF) systems as a priority product under the Safer... -
(ACC Mentioned) US Chemical Safety Office Finally Gets a New Director
Jan 7, 2019 | Chemistry World
By Rebecca Trager
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) chemical safety office, which oversees the Toxic Substances Control Act (Tsca) that governs the country’s chemicals, finally has a new director – one endorsed by both environmental... -
Wheeler Pledges More ‘Sunshine’ on Chemical Oversight
Jan 7, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s pledge to make public more information about chemical safety decisions is consistent with the nation’s primary chemicals law, but will add to the agency’s heavy post-shutdown workload. -
Air Force’s Firefighting Foam Linked to Contaminated Water
Jan 7, 2019 | AP (in Connecting Vets)
The Air Force is wrestling with the toxic legacy of a firefighting foam it used for decades in training exercises that residents on and near bases across the country fear has contaminated their drinking water. -
Fear Groundwater near GA Military Bases Toxic
Jan 7, 2019 | AP (in Valdosta Today)
There are current fears that groundwater near Georgia military bases remains contaminated from a toxic firefighting foam the U.S. Air Force used for decades. As a result residents are concerned about contamination. -
Cefic Announces New Product Stewardship Director
Jan 7, 2019 | Chemical Watch
Cefic has appointed Sylvie Lemoine, senior government affairs manager with Dow, as its new executive director of product stewardship. She replaces Peter Smith, who has retired after seven years at the council. -
(ACC Mentioned) Plastic Recycling to Hit Oil Producers
Jan 7, 2019 | Petroleum Economist
By Bill Barnes
Reaction against the environmentally damaging effect of plastic packaging is fuelling the development of plants in Europe and elsewhere that can recycle it as liquid feedstock or fuel in a trend that is likely to reduce refineries' demand... -
Why the U.S. Imports LNG Despite Its Gas-Export Boom: QuickTake
Jan 3, 2019 | Bloomberg (in the Washington Post)
By Naureen S. Malik
More than a decade in and the U.S. shale boom keeps breaking output records, with fields from Pennsylvania to Texas producing more natural gas than the country needs. That has triggered billions of dollars of investments to ship... -
Georgia Train Derailment: Town Evacuated After Hydrochloric Acid Spills from Tanks
Jan 7, 2019 | Newsweek
By Ewan Palmer
An entire town in Georgia was evacuated as a precaution after a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed nearby. The residents of Bartow in Jefferson County were forced to leave their homes after the train came off the tracks along -
NCTD Completes Full Implementation of Positive Train Control
Jan 7, 2019 | Global Railway Review
North County Transit District (NCTD) has achieved full implementation of the federally-mandated Positive Train Control (PTC) safety system for 58.5 miles of track within the San Diego County portion of the Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis... -
Bartow Train Derailment Happens Exactly 14 Years After Deadly Graniteville Derailment
Jan 7, 2019 | WRDW-TV News 12
By Allyson Burger
A train derailment in Bartow, Georgia, caused people in the small town to panic as they evacuated late Sunday night into Monday morning. 38 train cars derailed, spilling hydrogen peroxide. For people who have lived... -
Amtrak Opts to Keep Vermont Lines Operating
Jan 7, 2019 | The St. Albans Messenger
By Mike Frett
As of 2019, the Vermonter will continue its run from Rail City. After rumors that Amtrak would shut down its Vermont services at the end of 2018 and substitute those services with bussing, Amtrak announced recently that it would... -
Grijalva’s Moment Arrives as He Takes Natural Resources Gavel
Jan 7, 2019 | Roll Call
By Jacob Holzman
As climate change and immigration lead priorities for the new House Democratic majority, Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva may just be the man for the moment. The question however is: Did Grijalva find this moment or did the moment finally... -
Agencies Agree to Policy Changes After Confirmations
Jan 7, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
The Trump administration has committed to a variety of environmental policies as part of a deal to win eleventh-hour Senate confirmations last week of nominees for top environmental posts. The policies include getting an outside... -
Trump Administration Says Mercury Regulations Not Appropriate or Necessary
Jan 7, 2019 | The Chemical Engineer
By Amanda Doyle
US President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed to change the way that the health benefits from reducing mercury emissions from coal- and oil-fired plants are calculated, saying that it is not... -
Supreme Court Rejects Exxon Mobil Appeal in Climate Case
Jan 7, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to take up a case in which Exxon Mobil Corp. is trying to stop Massachusetts’s demand for documents from it in a climate change investigation. The announcement in the case, Exxon Mobil Corp... -
Can Sputtering Recycling Market Find a Second Life?
Jan 3, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Andrea Leinfelder
Oceans choked with discarded plastics. Beached whales found with hundreds of pieces of plastics in their stomachs. Soil contaminated by tiny fragments of plastics. As environmentalists, corporations and the public increasingly focus...
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(ACC Mentioned) Demand for Basic and Specialty Chemicals Continues to Grow
Jan 7, 2019 | Material Handling & Logistics
By David Sparkman
Following growth throughout 2018, the chemical industry is expected to see continued healthy demand for basic chemicals throughout this year, with most specialty segments predicted to benefit from growing demand as well, especially in construction markets.
Expansion across a broad band of industrial sectors is supporting American economic growth, observes Kevin Swift, chief economist at American Chemistry Council (ACC) and co-author of the council’s Year-End 2018 Chemical Industry Situation and Outlook.
“Housing, business investment and their supply chains have momentum. Light vehicle sales have likely peaked for this cycle, but remain at elevated levels,” Swift points out. “In 2019, industrial activity will expand, but the slowdown overseas is likely to affect the United States, and rising trade tensions present a risk of economic disruption.”
U.S.-based chemical manufacturing remains advantaged in global markets due to abundant energy and feedstock supplies. Since 2010, a total of 333 projects cumulatively that are valued at $202 billion have been announced. As this investment comes online, production is growing.
Total chemical production volume (excluding pharmaceuticals) rose by 3.1% in 2018 and is expected to grow by 3.6% in 2019 before easing to 3.1% in 2020 and to 2.2% in 2021. Basic chemicals production is expected to increase by 2.1% in 2018, 4.8% in 2019 and 4.3% in 2020.
Stronger export markets and gains in business investment spending have boosted demand in key end-use markets for chemistry, such as light vehicles and housing, according to the ACC report. Light vehicle sales have declined from the robust pace of 2015-16, but the council predicts they will remain elevated at 17.1 million in 2018 and 16.8 million in 2019.
Housing activity is seen improving by ACC, with 1.27 million starts in 2018 and 1.34 million in 2019 before the level returns to its long-term underlying demand pace of 1.5 million units per year by 2023.
Demand for specialty chemicals is expected to grow in line with industrial and construction sector gains in the years ahead, ACC predicts. In the specialties chemicals segment, production will pick up by 3.7% in 2018, and another 2.2% in 2019. Gains in specialty chemicals were led by oilfield and electronic chemicals, coatings, adhesives, cosmetic chemicals, and flavors and fragrances.
The U.S. chemical industry will post a $39 billion trade surplus in chemicals for 2018 as exports rise 10% to $143 billion and imports rise 7.8% to $105 billion, ACC says. Some sectors of competitively advantaged chemicals trade are expanding faster.
Two-way trade between the U.S. and foreign partners will reach $248 billion this year, a 9.1% increase from 2017. Assuming no major trade disruptions, there will be a $69 billion trade surplus in chemicals by 2023. Access to export markets will be critical since export growth will drive industry gains over the next decade, the council stresses.
“American chemistry is set for significant growth in output as new production capacity comes online and demand strengthens in key end-use markets,” predicts Martha Moore, ACC senior director of policy analysis and economics and another co-author of the council report. “In fact, growth rates in U.S. chemistry over the next five years are expected to surpass average growth over the previous 20 years. Provided that access to export markets remains open to our producers, expanding global demand will be met by shale-advantaged chemistry sourced from the U.S.”
Chemistry is a $526 billion business segment and one of America’s most significant manufacturing industries, accounting for more than 10% of all U.S. exports and 12% of the world’s chemicals. ACC notes that more than 96% of all manufactured goods are touched by products of chemistry.
https://www.mhlnews.com/global-supply-chain/demand-basic-and-specialty-chemicals-continues-grow
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House Sets Vote to Reopen Interior, EPA
Jan 7, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Geof Koss
The House will vote this week to reopen agencies shuttered by the standoff over border wall funding, as the new Democratic majority looks to ratchet up pressure on the White House and the Senate over growing public frustration as the partial government shutdown enters its third week.
While the House last week passed a six-bill omnibus package that would reopen closed agencies, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced over the weekend that the chamber will vote individually this week on four of the bills, which have all passed the Senate by 92-6 margins.
First up will be the Financial Services and General Government measure, which funds the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service, and comes amid growing concerns that the shutdown will delay tax refunds.
"The certainty of the tax returns of hard-working families should no longer be held hostage to the President's reckless demands," Pelosi said in a statement Saturday. "The senseless uncertainty and chaos of the Trump Shutdown must end, now."
The House will then vote on the fiscal 2019 Interior-Environment bill, and the Agriculture, Rural Development, and Food and Drug Administration and the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development measures.
The focus on Interior and EPA follows a series of news reports highlighting the woes of the National Park System, which is always a flashpoint during government shutdowns.
Several visitors have died at national parks since the shutdown started Dec. 22, while trash and human waste have become a major problem without federal employees to perform routine maintenance (see related story).
By advancing bills written and passed by the Senate Republican majority last year, Pelosi is also looking to pressure Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is refusing to allow votes on any proposals to end the shutdown unless the measures are backed by the leaders in both parties and President Trump.
McConnell's decision is causing angst for senators from both parties, including Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who told reporters last week he was frustrated that spending bills that have broad bipartisan support are being held up by the president's demands for more than $5 billion for the border wall with Mexico that was a centerpiece of his campaign (E&E Daily, Jan. 4).
But McConnell and Senate Republicans are defending the move by noting that Trump has said he won't sign any of the bills unless there are sufficient funds for the wall.
The administration also threatened to veto the House-passed bill that would extend current funding for the Department of Homeland Security until Feb. 8, which Democrats say would allow for more time to negotiate on border security funds.Weekend talks
The House's upcoming votes to reopen the government follow a weekend of negotiations led by Vice President Mike Pence, who met Saturday and yesterday with top Capitol Hill staff from both parties.
Returning from a huddle at Camp David with his own staff, Trump said yesterday afternoon that the border wall should now be a steel barrier, rather than concrete.
"It'll be less obtrusive, stronger, and we're able to use our great companies to make it, by using steel," he told reporters.
The president also suggested that a steel wall — which he said would be more expensive — is more palatable to Democrats, who "don't like concrete, so we'll give them steel."
The White House Office of Management and Budget yesterday sent a formal request to Capitol Hill for $5.7 billion for construction of 234 miles of a new steel barrier on the southwest border. That's an increase of $4.1 billion over the $1.6 billion for border security included in the Senate's Department of Homeland Security bill.
The administration is also requesting billions of dollars more to hire additional immigration judges, border patrol agents and law enforcement personnel for the border, as well as more detention beds for immigrants seized attempting to cross illegally.
The White House additionally is seeking $800 million to address the "urgent humanitarian needs" of immigrants taken into custody.
The president signaled yesterday that he was open to negotiating on a legal solution for hundreds of thousands of "dreamers" — undocumented people who came to the country as children — although he said it would "complicate" talks.
The president also said he was considering invoking national emergency powers to bypass Congress and build the wall, although that option would face legal challenges.
Asked about the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who aren't paid during the shutdown, Trump said federal employees will "make an adjustment" because they support his move to partially close the government to win funds for the border wall.
"They love our country, and they want to make sure that we have a strong border," the president said.EPA furloughs
Several federal agencies continue to struggle with the partial government shutdown. EPA has updated its shutdown plan as it closed its doors last week.
At first, the environmental agency stayed open using carryover funds. But as that money ran low, EPA decided to shut down and furlough thousands of employees.
Its latest plan — dated Dec. 31, EPA's first scheduled workday after it decided to close — reflects that reality. A footnote has 53 public health service officers as "exempted" from furlough.
That is a big drop from EPA's initial shutdown plan, dated Dec. 17 last year, which had 13,705 employees working in its headquarters and 10 regional offices as "exempted," meaning the agency used carryover funds to keep them working.
EPA's most current plan also has 812 employees as "excepted," subject to work to protect life and property but without pay.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/01/07/stories/1060111113
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(ACC Mentioned) ACC Appeals Against California Spray Foam Priority Product Designation
Jan 7, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The American Chemistry Council has filed a formal appeal to get California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to withdraw its designation of spray polyurethane foam (SPF) systems as a priority product under the Safer Consumer Products programme.
In a 2 January letter to the director of the DTSC, the ACC initiated the formal appeal process, reiterating an earlier request for the agency to withdraw the designation.
Under the SCP scheme, manufacturers of designated product-substance pairs are required to either complete an alternatives analysis to determine if a safer replacement is available, or reformulate to avoid the substance’s use.
Last year California designated SPF systems containing unreacted methylene diphenyl diisocyanates (MDI) its second priority product. In 2017 it had announced children’s foam-padded sleeping products containing flame retardants TDCPP or TCEP as the first product. However, as the marketplace had already phased the substances' use out, this resulted in no notifications.
The designation of SPF systems has, however, been delayed by industry pushback. Last May, the ACC filed an informal protest regarding the listing. This temporarily halted the original September notification deadline.
The ACC argued that the DTSC should withdraw it because SPF systems do not meet the criteria for inclusion in the programme. And it said the department had not adequately demonstrated the potential for significant or widespread adverse effect from their use.
In a September meeting with them, the ACC proposed the agency enter into an enforceable consent agreement (ECA) instead to address concerns with the product.
The DTSC urged the ACC to 'accept the results of this comprehensive, objective regulatory process, and comply with the requirements'
But in December, the DTSC rejected the request and said it was not permitted under the SCP Regulation to enter into an ECA. In its response it urged the ACC to "accept the results of this comprehensive, objective regulatory process, and comply with the requirements".
This response prompted the ACC into filing their appeal which also reiterated the organisation’s request for the DTSC to withdraw the priority product designation for SPF systems and to reconsider its view that it lacks the authority to enter into an ECA.
Entering an agreement, it said, "would be the most time- and cost-efficient solution, would allow the public an opportunity to participate through public comments and public hearings, and could produce an alternatives analysis as one possible outcome."
The ACC told Chemical Watch it is offering a 'reasonable and responsible path forward that helps the state achieve its public health objectives in a faster, simpler, and more collaborative manner'
A spokesperson for the ACC told Chemical Watch it is offering a "reasonable and responsible path forward that helps the state achieve its public health objectives in a faster, simpler and more collaborative manner."
The requirement for SPF manufacturers to notify the DTSC has been paused during the informal dispute process. The formal process will result in an additional stay, a spokesperson for the agency confirmed to Chemical Watch.Methylene chloride paint strippers
The ACC’s move on SPF came shortly after the state named methylene chloride paint strippers the programme’s third priority product, with their designation taking effect from 1 January. Manufacturers that sell these products in California must notify the state by 4 March, and then either begin the alternatives analysis process or reformulate.
The DTSC said that it took the step, in part, due to the US EPA’s failure to finalise a 2017 TSCA proposal to ban the products, which have been linked to dozens of deaths in recent years. The EPA signalled last May that it would finalise the ban "shortly", but it has yet to do so.
In the meantime, NGOs have been putting pressure on retailers to halt the products’ sales, with many – including Lowe’s, Walmart and Home Depot – committing to do so.
The DTSC has also announced plans to address an alternative product – paint and varnish strippers containing N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) – by naming it a future priority product.
https://chemicalwatch.com/73040/acc-appeals-against-california-spray-foam-priority-product-designation
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(ACC Mentioned) US Chemical Safety Office Finally Gets a New Director
Jan 7, 2019 | Chemistry World
By Rebecca Trager
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) chemical safety office, which oversees the Toxic Substances Control Act (Tsca) that governs the country’s chemicals, finally has a new director – one endorsed by both environmental groups and the chemical industry. The post has been empty since 2017. The Senate has now confirmed that environmental law professor Alexandra Dunn will head the office. The appointment came more than a year after president Trump’s original nominee, Michael Dourson, withdrew his name in the face of mounting opposition over his extensive industry ties and potential conflicts of interest.
Dunn has previously served as executive director and general counsel for the non-profit Environmental Council of the States in Washington DC, which is an association of US state and territorial environmental commissioners. She has also done a stint as executive director and general counsel for the DC-based Association of Clean Water Administrators, and most recently she was an associate professor of environmental justice at American University. Dunn also sat on the board member of the Environmental Law Institute between 2014 and 2017, and has served as counsel to industry group the American Chemistry Council.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/us-chemical-safety-office-finally-gets-a-new-director/3009961.article
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Wheeler Pledges More ‘Sunshine’ on Chemical Oversight
Jan 7, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s pledge to make public more information about chemical safety decisions is consistent with the nation’s primary chemicals law, but will add to the agency’s heavy post-shutdown workload.
Wheeler promised in a recent but undated letter to Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.) to publicly release information the Environmental Protection Agency has not shared documenting its oversight of new chemicals after negotiations with Carper about EPA and White House nominees who had yet to be confirmed.
He also promised to release “specific information and statistics” about the conclusions EPA has reached as it has reviewed corporate claims that information be kept confidential.
And he pledged to have the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine examine the strategy the agency is using to collect and evaluate information about chemical characteristics, their potential to harm, and the extent of their exposure.
The result of the EPA’s evaluation is a decision about whether a chemical poses unreasonable risk of injuring people or the environment. If it does, the revisions Congress made in 2016 to the Toxic Substances Control Act mean the agency must take some kind of regulatory action to reduce that risk.
The EPA’s commitments follow months of discussion Carper held with Wheeler and the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) that led to the Senate’s approval of Alexandra Dunn as EPA’s assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention, “Chad” McIntosh to lead the EPA’s Office of International and Tribal Affairs, and Mary Neumayr to lead the CEQ, Carper’s office confirmed.
“Securing substantive policy wins on matters that affect the health and safety of Americans across this country is what’s most important to me. Over the past few months, I have raised serious concerns regarding many of the administration’s harmful environmental policies,” Carper, the ranking member of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, told Bloomberg Environment by email.
“I intend to hold acting Administrator Wheeler, Chair Neumayr, and the EPA nominees who have been confirmed to those commitments going forward,” he said.
Already RequiredMuch of what Wheeler promised to do already is legally required either by the original 1976 chemicals’ law, the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act which amended TSCA in 2016, or both, Richard Denison, lead senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, told Bloomberg Environment.
The EPA “should have been doing this all along. The fact it’s now saying it will finally start doing that is good,” he said.
Lynn Bergeson, managing partner in the Washington office of Bergeson and Campbell, PC, said, “Mr. Wheeler’s commitment is ambitious and some would argue in keeping with the spirit of Lautenberg.”
Yet, it will add to the heavy workload the chemicals office already faces, “especially in light of the timeline damage caused by the shutdown,” she said.
The EPA’s staff faces more deadlines in 2019 under the Lautenberg Act than it has faced since that statute became law on June 22, 2016.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/wheeler-pledges-more-sunshine-on-chemical-oversight
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Air Force’s Firefighting Foam Linked to Contaminated Water
Jan 7, 2019 | AP (in Connecting Vets)
The Air Force is wrestling with the toxic legacy of a firefighting foam it used for decades in training exercises that residents on and near bases across the country fear has contaminated their drinking water.
While the latest episode involves three bases in Georgia, the Pentagon has noted that groundwater near more than 100 U.S. military bases has been found to contain potentially harmful levels of chemicals tied to cancers and childhood development issues.
In Georgia, Air Force officials have pushed back against a report last week in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that said drinking water could be unsafe for thousands of residents around Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Cobb County, Robins Air Force Base in Houston County and Moody Air Force Base in Lowndes County.
Environmentalists and residents are questioning the Air Force’s findings, saying its review was too limited and failed to test water off the military bases.
It is the water away from the installations, according to local media, that has been tainted by firefighting foam leaking from storage tanks and finding its way into creeks and wetlands used by residences for fishing, swimming and boating.
“No contaminant obeys property lines,” Jamie DeWitt, an associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The foam has been widely used to put out fires when planes crash and in training exercises simulating crashes. Its success relies upon a manufactured chemical, perfluorinated compounds or PFAS, that can be manipulated to make items heat- or water-resistant.
PFAS are used in scores of everyday household items, such as take-out food wrappers. At military bases they are heavily concentrated in the foam used to extinguish jet fuel fires. PFAS also have been linked to cancers and developmental delays for fetuses and infants.
Pentagon officials are working to address the issue; in March, they provided Capitol Hill lawmakers with a report listing the full scope of the problem.
The 61-page report, submitted to the House Armed Services Committee, included details about 25 Army bases, 50 Air Force bases, 49 Navy or Marine Corps bases and two Defense Logistics Agency sites that tested at higher than acceptable levels for PFAS in groundwater sources or drinking water.
At the time, Maureen Sullivan, the Defense Department’s deputy assistant secretary for environment, said safety measures already had been taken at affected bases, including installing filters and providing bottled water to assure all water conformed to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines.
Defense Department officials also are working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study long-term effects of exposure to PFAS.
An additional issue is that the Defense Department does not supervise all local drinking water sources near its bases. Tainted water could occur from contracted vendors or local utilities that fail to assure their water meets federal standards.
“It’s up to the owner of that system to make a decision on what they’re going to do,” Ms. Sullivan said last year. “So we’re on a fine line of trying to provide drinking water to our folks when we’re buying it from somebody else.”
In Georgia, environmentalists and residents are demanding more testing. They point to Moody Air Force Base, in south Georgia, which began life as a flight training facility during World War II and was one of the three installations recently revealed to have contaminated groundwater.
Tests of base water showed no reportable contamination, and officials emphasized that its wells tapped water from a protected aquifer more than 400 feet deep. Local residents countered that the wells they use do not go nearly as deep.
https://connectingvets.radio.com/articles/air-force-s-firefighting-foam-linked-contaminated-water
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Fear Groundwater near GA Military Bases Toxic
Jan 7, 2019 | AP (in Valdosta Today)
There are current fears that groundwater near Georgia military bases remains contaminated from a toxic firefighting foam the U.S. Air Force used for decades.
As a result residents are concerned about contamination.
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 communities to cancer-causing chemicals and a other health problems.
The Air Force has said that Georgia’s drinking water is safe for the thousands of people living around its installations.
Experts and residents feel the USAF might be drawing this conclusion prematurely, as they have not
“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.”
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.
http://valdostatoday.com/news-2/local/2019/01/fear-groundwater-near-ga-military-bases-toxic/
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Cefic Announces New Product Stewardship Director
Jan 7, 2019 | Chemical Watch
Cefic has appointed Sylvie Lemoine, senior government affairs manager with Dow, as its new executive director of product stewardship.
She replaces Peter Smith, who has retired after seven years at the council.
In her new role Ms Lemoine will be responsible for key areas of chemicals legislation, including REACH implementation, an EU framework for endocrine disruptors and the interface between chemicals, products and waste.
She has over a decade of experience in EU government affairs. She was technical and regulatory affairs director at soap and detergents group Aise before joining Dow Corning in 2016.
Ms Lemoine brings a "unique skill set" to the product stewardship team, Cefic's director general Marco Mensink said. "The combination of her advocacy experience in Brussels with an in-depth technical knowledge of EU chemicals legislation makes her a perfect fit for this role."
https://chemicalwatch.com/73112/cefic-announces-new-product-stewardship-director
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(ACC Mentioned) Plastic Recycling to Hit Oil Producers
Jan 7, 2019 | Petroleum Economist
By Bill Barnes
Reaction against the environmentally damaging effect of plastic packaging is fuelling the development of plants in Europe and elsewhere that can recycle it as liquid feedstock or fuel in a trend that is likely to reduce refineries' demand for oil. Many say the chemicals industry will have to undertake a fundamental shift towards recycling if it wants to prevent consumers rejecting plastics—and especially single-use packaging—in a widespread swing against harmful materials.
Coincidentally, public consciousness of the dangers that packaging represents for marine life rose following the release of David Attenborough's Blue Planet II documentary. But further pressure is mounting from major brands that use packaging and are evaluating shifts to alternatives other than plastic.
One of the consequences may be a reduction in demand for oil-based petrochemical feedstock. In recent years it has been a mantra within the oil and chemicals industry and energy watchdogs such as the International Energy Agency (IEA) that demand for oil will be sustained by the growing need for petrochemicals. In its 2018 The Future of Petrochemicals, the IEA estimates that the petrochemicals sector uses up to 13mn bl/d of oil and that demand will grow by an additional 3mn bl/d to 2030. BP's Energy Outlook 2018 comes to similar conclusions.
But recent concern over the proliferation of plastics in the environment is leading large and small companies to study the possibility of recycling plastics as liquid feedstock or fuel. The key impetus for these technologies has come from the EU's 2018 Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy, which aims to ensure that half of all plastics packaging used in the EU is either reusable or cost-effectively recycled by 2025. And by 2030 the target is that all plastics packaging meets the same criteria. Pressure is also being applied in the US. In May 2018, the American Chemistry Council's plastics division announced that its members had agreed that 100pc of plastics packaging in America is recyclable or recoverable by 2030.
Most of the recycling technologies are either still in the pilot plant stage or just leaving it. However the results are encouraging. At opposite ends of the size scale, OMV AG, Austria's national oil company, and Renewlogy, a privately-held company based in Utah, have concentrated on recycling used plastics into liquid feedstocks. Other companies are engaged in recycling plastics back to their chemicals components.
OMV's technology uses thermal cracking at temperatures of about 400C in the presence of a hot liquid solvent to return waste plastics to crude oil. The company says the resulting synthetic product is a sulphur-free, very light crude that can be processed with other oil in a refinery. OMV claims its pilot plant, which is integrated within its 190,000 bl/d Schwechat refinery, can produce 100 litres of synthetic crude from 100 kilograms of plastic feedstock. The feedstock can include common packaging materials made of polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene.
Renewlogy's technology is also based on thermal cracking of inputs, but it is calibrated to produce naphtha, a chemical and gasoline feedstock, or a middle distillate suitable for use as diesel, if blended in a 50–50 ratio with typical refinery diesel. Renewlogy founder and chief executive Priyanka Bakaya points out that "mixed plastics lend themselves well to recycling". Renewlogy is currently supplying product for refiners in Utah and in 2018 delivered a commercial unit to Sustane Technologies in Nova Scotia.
OMV doesn't release the economics of its project, saying it is still in the pilot plant stage, but Bakaya says Renewlogy can produce its diesel-suitable product at an operating cost of $30 a barrel, compared with a sales value of $100 a barrel. Neither have publicly released capital costs. Renewlogy says it doesn't require payment from waste processors-so-called "tipping fees"-in order for the technology to be economic.
Other companies are also exploring similar recycling technologies. In July, OMV affiliate Borealis AG said it had agreed to acquire Ecoplast Kunststoffrecycling, an Austrian plastics recycler which produces low and high-density polyethylene from waste. Another firm, Finland's Neste Corporation, a leader in biofuels, says it expects to achieve commercial-scale production from a plastics-to-liquid-feedstock technology by 2019. Neste has formed a joint venture with UK's ReNew and Austria's Licella to explore the use of mixed-waste plastic as a refinery and chemicals raw material. Neste says its goal is to process over a million tonnes a year of waste plastic by 2030.
Chemicals producers' enthusiasm for recycling also extends to Asia where governments, including China and Indonesia, are implementing recycling programmes to avoid problems such as those that occurred in April when Indonesia's army was deployed to clean up plastic clogging the Citarum river.
The rapid progress being made isn't surprising, given the deadlines the EU and American Chemistry Council have set. "If you need to be prepared by 2025, you've got to tell people it'll work by 2022–23", says Paul Hodges, chairman of International eChem, a chemicals industry consultancy. He adds that the stark alternative could be the plastics packaging sector will fade away as alternative packaging such as paper gains ground at its expense.
In either case he expects crude oil demand to be significantly affected. Hodges thinks that the recycling of polyethylene and polypropylene could lead to a net medium-term loss of a million bl/d of oil demand from today's level, cancelling out all of the growth that many oil companies have been expecting. "If you're an oil company, you're whistling in the wind if you think you'll be selling all that oil into plastics", he says.
Hodges also notes that oil is facing competition from natural gas liquids, particularly in the US where high ethane supplies from wet gas, particularly in the Northeastern Marcellus/Utica shale region, are luring new ethane-based projects such as those by units of Shell and Global Chemical. Many new chemicals developments along the US Gulf are also ethane-based, while in Europe Ineos is importing US ethane for its operations.
Not everyone thinks plastics recycling is the only wave of the future. Many believe product switching also has a role to play. "I don't think it's going to be one or the other. I think it's going to be both", predicts a European oil analyst. An American industry executive points out that waste-to-energy projects have a long history of difficulty in maintaining long-term raw materials supply, particularly in rural areas.
Yet OMV and Renewlogy appear to have cleared this hurdle. OMV's Schwechat refinery is near Vienna. Renewlogy's Bakaya notes that her commercial-scale technology requires that it is based in the vicinity of a city with a population of around a million in order to obtain enough waste for processing. Renewlogy's strategy for larger plants is to partner with waste-processing companies. Smaller Renewlogy plants are being designed for developing countries—these are usually sponsored.
Meantime International eChem's Hodges believes that eventually a distributed waste recycling industry may arise. "The transition will be much faster than people expect. We always underestimate how quickly these things develop", he says.
Meanwhile the challenge from plastics recycling will only grow. When added to the environmental and technological pressures on the automotive industries where electric vehicle output is growing, and to developments in the shipping industry where regulations on emissions are prompting the development of LNG-fuelled ships, current forecasts of oil demand growth may prove well wide of the mark.
http://www.petroleum-economist.com/articles/midstream-downstream/refining-marketing/2019/plastic-recycling-to-hit-oil-producers
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Why the U.S. Imports LNG Despite Its Gas-Export Boom: QuickTake
Jan 3, 2019 | Bloomberg (in the Washington Post)
By Naureen S. Malik
More than a decade in and the U.S. shale boom keeps breaking output records, with fields from Pennsylvania to Texas producing more natural gas than the country needs. That has triggered billions of dollars of investments to ship liquefied natural gas overseas. Yet the U.S. is still importing LNG from places such as Russia and Nigeria. There are two reasons for that: pipeline bottlenecks and the requirements of a 1920 law meant to support a robust U.S. shipping industry.
1. Does the U.S. consume more gas than it produces?
No. Gas production jumped 12 percent in 2018 to a record 89.6 billion cubic feet a day while consumption was 81.7 billion cubic feet per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The problem is getting it to the right places at the right time because of insufficient pipeline capacity near big metropolitan centers. Pipelines historically have been designed to operate at a reduced rate for most of the year so that when a cold snap hits, there’s space for a surge in demand. But with the shale boom, many households, power plants and factories have switched from fuels such as heating oil and coal to take advantage of cheap gas. This added consumption means that some lines are close to full year-round and are thus unable to cope when demand peaks.
2. Where are shortages occurring?
Mostly in the Northeast. The region was the destination of most of the 200 million cubic feet a day of LNG the U.S. imported in the first 10 months of 2018. In January 2018, frigid weather sent New York City spot gas to a whopping $175 per million British thermal units, compared with less than $3 elsewhere in the country, as gas distributors engaged in bidding wars for pipeline space.
3. Why can’t the U.S. buy its own LNG?
There’s certainly lots of it. Surplus U.S. gas supply allowed America’s booming LNG industry to ship 2.8 billion cubic feet a day to overseas markets during the first 10 months of 2018, according to the EIA. But while the U.S. is poised to become the world’s third largest LNG supplier by 2020, with six export facilities, the Jones Act of 1920 mandates that vessels moving between U.S. ports be built and registered in the country, and crewed by Americans. There are currently no U.S.-flagged LNG carriers.
4. Where is imported LNG coming from?
Everett terminal in Massachusetts, by far the most active of the dozen import terminals in the U.S., received about two dozen cargoes in 2018, with all but one apparently coming from Trinidad and Tobago, according to Energy Department and ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. Russian LNG made its debut in the U.S. in January of last year as prices climbed during freezing temperatures. Dominion Energy Inc.’s Cove Point terminal in Maryland imported a cargo from Nigeria in late December.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-the-us-imports-lng-despite-its-gas-export-boom-quicktake/2019/01/03/aebada9e-0f4b-11e9-8f0c-6f878a26288a_story.html?utm_term=.1c8eaaff9a6f
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Georgia Train Derailment: Town Evacuated After Hydrochloric Acid Spills from Tanks
Jan 7, 2019 | Newsweek
By Ewan Palmer
An entire town in Georgia was evacuated as a precaution after a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed nearby.
The residents of Bartow in Jefferson County were forced to leave their homes after the train came off the tracks along Highway 24, causing chemicals, including hydrochloric acid, to leak into the surrounding area.
Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency Director Jim Anderson said no one was injured during the derailment but noted that all of the town’s 280 residents were affected by the evacuation on January 6, reports Fox 5 Atlanta.
The train crew was taken to the Jefferson County Emergency Room to evaluated.
It was originally feared that that derailment had caused choline to spill. Authorities later confirmed that despite the train carrying chlorine tanks, none of them were found to be leaking.
On the same day 14 years ago, a train carrying chlorine derailed in Graniteville in the neighboring state of South Carolina, killing nine people and leaving more than 250 needing treatment for chlorine exposure.
"Norfolk Southern can confirm that a train derailed shortly after 8 p.m. near Bartow, Georgia, in Jefferson County,” Susan Terpay, director of public relations for Norfolk Southern, said in a statement.
“Some of the rail cars on the train were carrying chlorine, and chlorine odors and a cloud have been reported in the area. Our first priority is the safety of local residents, responders, and employees. Local officials have ordered an evacuation of residents in the area.
“Please follow their instructions. We are at the scene working with first responders and environmental contractors.”
The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office has since confirmed the evacuation area has been reduced to three miles from the derailment site and all Bartow residents who live outside the radius can now return to their homes, reports WAGT.
More than 5,000 people were forced to leave their homes for two weeks, following the rail disaster that occurred in Graniteville on January 6, 2004.
Nine people were killed on the day of the crash after two Norfolk Southern trains collided. More than a year later, 51-year-old Leonard Mathis, who was found to have inhaled chlorine that spilled into the air, also died, with officials saying his health deteriorated as a result of the chemical spill.
"We're informed to believe that the upper respiratory problems are directly related to the chlorine spill. His health had simply continued to decline. He had been on a ventilator since the spill," attorney Reginald Simmons told The Associated Press at the time. "He certainly had no upper respiratory problems prior to the spill. In fact, he worked diligently up until that time of being caught in the plume. He had not returned to work since."
https://www.newsweek.com/georgia-train-derailment-town-evacuated-after-hydrochloric-acid-spills-tanks-1281325
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NCTD Completes Full Implementation of Positive Train Control
Jan 7, 2019 | Global Railway Review
North County Transit District (NCTD) has achieved full implementation of the federally-mandated Positive Train Control (PTC) safety system for 58.5 miles of track within the San Diego County portion of the Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo Rail Corridor (LOSSAN).
NCTD is one of only four agencies that completed PTC implementation by the federally-mandated deadline of 31 December 2018.
PTC is designed to prevent train-to-train collisions, derailments caused by excessive train speed, train movements through misaligned track switches and unauthorised train entry into work zones. This system increases the safety of all who use the rails.
In September 2018, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) provided conditional approval of NCTD’s PTC Safety Plan and conditionally certified the system. At that time, NCTD was one of only 10 railroads in the nation to receive this conditional approval. The Safety Plan demonstrated to the FRA that NCTD’s PTC system met federal requirements and worked as designed.
FRA’s conditional approval of this Safety Plan and PTC system enabled NCTD to begin interoperability testing with Metrolink, Amtrak, BNSF and Pacific Sun Railroad to validate successful integration with NCTD’s system. NCTD then notified the FRA that it had achieved full implementation of PTC based on its completion of testing to demonstrate interoperability between the system and all passenger and freight trains operating within the San Diego portion of the LOSSAN rail corridor.
“To finally be able to say that this system is fully implemented is so rewarding. The enhanced safety that it brings to our customers and train crews is unmatched,” said Rebecca Jones, Chair of NCTD’s Board of Directors. “I’m especially pleased to be able to say it was done by the deadline without the need for an extension. The partnership of our staff, contractors and rail partners that was needed to make this happen has been wonderful to see. I would also like to thank our federal and state elected officials for ensuring that NCTD was provided the critical funding needed to implement PTC.”
The Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 requires railroads to install PTC systems on tracks that carry passengers or toxic-by-inhalation materials. Based on a January 2012 final FRA rule, the Association of American Railroads estimates that PTC technology will be deployed on about 63,000 miles of U.S. freight rail lines.
https://www.globalrailwayreview.com/news/76546/nctd-positive-train-control/
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Bartow Train Derailment Happens Exactly 14 Years After Deadly Graniteville Derailment
Jan 7, 2019 | WRDW-TV News 12
By Allyson Burger
A train derailment in Bartow, Georgia, caused people in the small town to panic as they evacuated late Sunday night into Monday morning.
38 train cars derailed, spilling hydrogen peroxide. For people who have lived in the area for a long time, this scene looks all too familiar.
It was exactly 14 years before Sunday night’s crash when a similar accident happened. On January 6, 2005, a derailment and chemical spill turned deadly in Graniteville, South Carolina.
When news of the chemical leak first spread in Bartow, officials believed it might have been chlorine. The evacuation was prompt after that, because they knew how dangerous the chemical could be after that Graniteville accident 14 years ago.
In 2005, a chlorine cloud that took over Graniteville was responsible for the deaths of nine people and injuries to hundreds more. That train, also owned and operated by Virginia-based Norfolk Southern, came across an open switch before slamming into a parked train.
16 train cars were affected in that first accident, compared to the 38 in Bartow.
While the health effects from the chemical leak in Bartow, which has been confirmed as hydrogen peroxide, are uncertain, people are still suffering from health issues today from that chlorine spill over a decade ago.
The derailment and crash in Graniteville cost Norfolk Southern at least $58 million. The company was also expected to pay legal fees for the insurer.
No one has died from this latest crash, but four first responders were sent to the hospital for respiratory issues while working near the spill.
The cleanup efforts in Bartow are expected to last days.
https://www.wrdw.com/content/news/Bartow-train-derailment-happens-exactly-14-years-after-deadly-Graniteville-derailed-503997951.html
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Amtrak Opts to Keep Vermont Lines Operating
Jan 7, 2019 | The St. Albans Messenger
By Mike Frett
As of 2019, the Vermonter will continue its run from Rail City.
After rumors that Amtrak would shut down its Vermont services at the end of 2018 and substitute those services with bussing, Amtrak announced recently that it would continue operation of its Vermont trains, including the St. Albans-to-Washington, D.C. Vermonter.
“Amtrak plans to operate all of our services, as well as tenants that operate over our track, Jan. 1, 2019,” said a press release provided to the Messenger by Amtrak’s Media Center.
An announcement last February by Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson warning the national rail company would suspend service on lines that didn’t operate a safety technology called positive train control (PTC) had stirred fears that Vermont’s two rail lines – the Vermonter and the Ethan Allen Express – wouldn’t continue service into 2019.
PTC is a technological system linking an individual train into a complex, nationwide network of sensors, signals and other trains. The system advises the engineer operating a train on its speed, location and on track conditions.
Should an emergency require the engineer to brake, and should the engineer not brake accordingly, the system will automatically apply brakes to slow the train and avoid possible accidents.
https://www.samessenger.com/amtrak-opts-to-keep-vermont-lines-operating/
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Grijalva’s Moment Arrives as He Takes Natural Resources Gavel
Jan 7, 2019 | Roll Call
By Jacob Holzman
As climate change and immigration lead priorities for the new House Democratic majority, Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva may just be the man for the moment.
The question however is: Did Grijalva find this moment or did the moment finally find him?
“It took time,” the Arizona Democrat said. “I think people have come to the conclusion that one has to look beyond the obvious and understand that [on] environmental issues, particular to climate change, we’re all in the same boat.”
The 70-year-old son of a Mexican immigrant, Grijalva is the new chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. With it comes a platform to focus public attention, and legislation, on public lands and environmental issues with a progressive bent and a consideration of racial justice.
His committee’s first major hearing will be on the effect of climate change on public lands, Grijalva said. He also expects to hold hearings on the environmental complications of President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall and has staked out a big policy fight by vowing to try to reauthorize the nation’s fishery laws, where climate change impacts will be an issue.
Republicans on the often-contentious committee likely will oppose many of Grijalva’s initiatives, and a Republican Senate majority, not to mention Trump, will stand in the way.
But environmental groups are excited about Grijalva.
“Congressman Grijalva is without a doubt one of conservation’s biggest champions on Capitol Hill,” said Alex Taurel, conservation program director for the League of Conservation Voters.
“He’s an authentically progressive American who does not in any way imbibe Beltway values,” Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin said. “He doesn’t speak bureaucratese.”
Rep. Jared Huffman, the California Democrat likely to chair the committee’s Water, Power and Oceans Subcommittee, who is also working on the fishery legislation, said he finds Grijalva “almost like a poet philosopher in his wisdom.”
Grijalva, who co-chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus for 10 years, sits squarely to the left politically of the chairmen of the two other House committees with jurisdiction over climate issues: Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey at House Energy and Commerce, and Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon at Transportation and Infrastructure.
His progressive allies describe him as a “true believer” on environmental issues who can be trusted to advance bold legislation now that the Democrats’ planned select committee on climate change will have no legislative authority.
“I trust Grijalva by a mile over the others,” California Democrat Ro Khanna said. “By far. It’s not even close.”
A political awakening
Grijalva first began to see ties between environmental issues and racial justice in the 1990s when he got involved in the battle over a drinking water contamination issue in Tucson. TCE, a toxic solvent used to clean airplane engines, had leached into groundwater and reached some of the city’s aquifers, tainting the water for communities largely of color.
Grijalva organized public hearings to elevate the drinking water problem, which showed him certain communities could be more susceptible than others to becoming victims of pollution as a result of systemic racial inequality.
That idea is now part of the environmental mainstream but when Grijalva arrived in Congress in 2003, his interest in conservation policy was met with skepticism from environmental groups who didn’t understand why a Latino congressman would care.
“I think some people, some in the leadership of the big green organizations, didn’t see me as a prototype to lend a voice or lead on some of these issues, and I think that’s just a function of stereotypes, about what should interest me and what shouldn’t,” Grijalva said.
“Environmental issues — especially public land issues — were seen as separate from those other issues and that while I could lend leadership to [some issues], maybe I didn’t have the track record to lend leadership to those other ones,” he said.
Grijalva said he “grinded” through work on the Natural Resources Committee, and eventually he said the environmental groups “began to trust not only my instincts but the fact that I knew what I was talking about.”
One sign things had changed came in 2012, when his name was floated by some to replace Ken Salazar as President Barack Obama’s Interior secretary. Yet it was only after he won the ranking member spot on the Natural Resources panel in 2014 that he felt he had the environmental movement’s trust.
“I think a lot of time the [Natural] Resources Committee for members is a starting point, not an ending point. I think at some point when people realized that this was my starting point and ending point, it was like, OK,” he said.
Grijalva almost didn’t get the position. California Rep. Jim Costa had the seniority but couldn’t secure the votes for the job.
Another Californian, Grace F. Napolitano, was next in line, but she wanted to give Grijalva the job because she thought he could do it “with the same zeal he had as a member.”
“It was just natural,” Napolitano said.Environment and the wall
The environmental movement now more closely resembles Grijalva’s views, as groups become more entwined with immigration and civil rights groups on issues like the border wall.
In Congress he has opposed the Homeland Security Department’s ability to waive environmental laws for building barriers on the southern U.S. border.
Last year his office filed a lawsuit against the department over its use of the authority, and while it failed, similar challenges from environmental groups are still working their way through appeals processes, efforts also supported by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Grijalva plans to hold hearings on the environmental impacts of the wall and DHS’s waiver authority. He refuses to support any comprehensive immigration package that does not include elimination of the waivers, which would likely be a nonstarter for Republicans.
He said he tells environmental groups the only way to succeed in the future is to keep America’s diversity in mind, looking at how environmental issues can connect with people of color.
“The constituency for the things you care about is a different constituency. It’s diverse. It’s urban. It’s younger. The sooner they become part of that loyal constituency like they are, that’s our protection for these lands and waters. And that requires diversity, period,” he said.A very public spat
Grijalva’s latest moment in the sun became a controversial one sparked by a Nov. 30 op-ed he wrote for USA Today calling on Ryan Zinke, the Interior secretary at the time, to resign over ethical questions and policy decisions.
Zinke shot back on Twitter suggesting Grijalva had a drinking problem and claiming he improperly paid a former staffer to hide allegations of workplace misconduct, including excessive drinking.
“It’s hard for him to think straight from the bottom of the bottle,” Zinke tweeted. “He should resign and pay back the taxpayers for the hush money and the tens of thousands of dollars he forced my department to spend investigating unfounded allegations.”
In 2015, Grijalva did pay $48,000 to a former staffer after she had worked there for three months over claims he created a hostile workplace environment and was intoxicated at work. Last month, the House Ethics Committee notified him it had cleared him of wrongdoing associated with the payment. Grijalva has publicly admitted he had a problem with alcohol years ago but got professional help and no longer has an issue.
Grijalva said he expects to call Zinke to testify next year about the role he played in reducing the size of national monuments, saying he “at some point has to answer for” the “decisions he made.”
However, he doesn’t want to give their conflict “any more attention than it has.” While the tweet made him “really, really angry” and he wanted to rebut with a similar potshot, he said he realized “there’s bigger fish to fry.”
Natural Resources ranking member Rob Bishop of Utah, who swapped places with Grijalva, said he wouldn’t have any issues with the new chairman calling Zinke to testify but expects the Montana Republican to turn the offer down.
“I guess you can invite anybody you want to. I mean, we’ve invited people to testify and they just told us, ‘Hell no.’ I think that may be what Mr. Zinke’s response would be too,” Bishop said.
Grijalva’s supporters in Congress want to move on from the Zinke story and say the Arizona congressman is too focused to let oversight turn into mudslinging.
“Certainly, we would like to question [Zinke], but I think we’ve got to look forward more than look backward and try to rectify the things that need to be rectified,” Napolitano said.
The Interior Department has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/grijalvas-moment-arrives-as-he-takes-natural-resources-gavel
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Agencies Agree to Policy Changes After Confirmations
Jan 7, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
The Trump administration has committed to a variety of environmental policies as part of a deal to win eleventh-hour Senate confirmations last week of nominees for top environmental posts.
The policies include getting an outside review of EPA's methods for evaluating the safety of individual chemicals and improving climate-related federal resilience efforts, according to letters released today by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.).
The letters' release follows the Senate confirmation last week of three nominees for senior positions at EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). In a statement, Carper said he had raised "serious concerns" in recent months about the administration's "harmful environmental policies."
As a result, he said, "EPA and CEQ have made specific commitments to me with respect to some of the most egregious ones."
The letters are from acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler; Mary Neumayr, who was confirmed last week to chair CEQ; and William "Chad" McIntosh, also confirmed last week to be assistant EPA administrator for international and tribal affairs.
In his statement, Carper, the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said he would hold all three to the commitments. Also winning Senate confirmation in the waning hours of the 115th Congress was Alexandra Dunn, to head EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. The administration's commitments were first reported by The Hill.
In August, for example, Neumayr told Carper that, if confirmed, she would work with him on "improving the nation's preparedness and resilience to future risks, including climate-related risks, as well as on matters involving federal sustainability." Wheeler, in an undated letter, said EPA will "promptly submit" the agency's new methodology for deciding how to collect and evaluate research related to a chemical's safety to the National Academy of Sciences for "peer review and feedback."
Among steps to bolster EPA's work with American Indian tribes, McIntosh had previously pledged to hire a member of a federally recognized tribe to head the American Indian Environmental Office if confirmed to lead the agency's Office of International and Tribal Affairs.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/01/07/stories/1060111133
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Trump Administration Says Mercury Regulations Not Appropriate or Necessary
Jan 7, 2019 | The Chemical Engineer
By Amanda Doyle
US President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed to change the way that the health benefits from reducing mercury emissions from coal- and oil-fired plants are calculated, saying that it is not “appropriate and necessary” to regulate hazardous air pollutants.
The Mercury and Air Toxic Standards (MATS) were created by the EPA under the Obama administration in 2011 and came into effect in 2012. The regulations required plants to reduce mercury and other pollutants by over 90% in five years and since the rule was created, mercury emissions have dropped by 80–90%. The calculated cost to coal and oil plants for implementing pollution controls was US$7.4bn–9.6bn/y. Mercury is a neurotoxin that can damage the nervous system and is particularly harmful to young children as it can cause developmental problems. Coal-fired plants are the biggest emitter of mercury in the US and accounted for 48% of mercury emissions in 2015.
The health benefits from cutting mercury alone were calculated at US$4m–6m/y and the saving from co-benefits was estimated at US$37bn–90bn/y. The co-benefits are the reductions in heart and lung problems due to cutting the emissions of other hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), such as soot and nitrogen dioxide, which comes as a side effect of reducing mercury. The EPA calculated that each year this would prevent between 4,200–11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks, and 130,000 asthma attacks.
The EPA under the Trump administration proposed changes to MATS on 28 December that would recalculate the cost of the health benefits. The revised health estimates don’t include co-benefits and therefore conclude that the rules imposed by the Obama administration are too costly to industry. The EPA said in a statement that “this action proposes to correct flaws in [earlier EPA documentation] and proposes to make a revised determination that it is not appropriate and necessary to regulate HAP emissions from coal- and oil-fired power plants.”
Harold Wimmer, national president and CEO of the American Lung Association, said: “EPA's proposal to undermine the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards is one of its most dangerous efforts yet. The MATS are already fully implemented, with significant health benefits including preventing up to 11,000 premature deaths each year and a dramatic reduction of mercury pollution, a potent neurotoxin that causes brain damage in babies. Additionally, the MATS have been extremely effective in limiting emissions of known carcinogens such as arsenic, chromium and nickel, as well as toxic acid gases that form particle pollution, which causes asthma attacks, heart attacks and premature death.”Economic benefits
The majority of utilities companies have already made the changes required by MATS by investing in equipment such as scrubbers. An open letter by trade groups and unions to the EPA in July 2018 stated that any change in the rules would be of no benefit because they have already spent an estimated US$18bn to comply since 2012.
In the 2018 proposal, the EPA quotes figures of US$4m–6m/y in health benefits from just cutting mercury emissions (and not including the co-benefits), which are the same as those given in the 2011 MATS text. However, research performed since 2011 has shown that there are more pathways of mercury exposure and additional health effects than previously thought, and that the economic health benefits of controlling mercury emissions are in the order of billions rather than millions.
In supplementary findings to the MATS rule in 2016, the EPA itself said that “the EPA acknowledges the submission of new research … that further corroborates the EPA's conclusion that the HAP benefits are underestimated in the MATS regulatory impact analysis.” In 2017, researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan school of public health and the University of Southern Denmark published work detailing how the costs of exposure to mercury in the US are actually US$4.8bn/y.
Hal Quinn, president and CEO of the National Mining Association, welcomed the EPA’s revised cost estimates. “We welcome the agency’s proposal to revisit what stands as perhaps the largest regulatory accounting fraud perpetrated on American consumers. By suppressing the real costs while double-counting potential benefits, the last administration made American households and businesses pay US$960 in exchange for 60 cents in potential benefits. Surely the EPA will now understand that no rational person would voluntarily agree to such a massively unbalanced arrangement.”A dangerous precedent
The EPA’s proposal will leave the current mercury restrictions in place but will evaluate if the regulations are needed. According to The New York Times, revising the justifications will allow coal mining companies to challenge the rules in court. If the EPA deems that the mercury regulations aren’t needed, it will be a victory for the coal industry, in particular Robert Murray, CEO of coal mining company Murray Energy. Murray Energy sued the EPA over the Obama-era regulations, and after Trump’s inauguration, Murray requested that the Trump administration roll back the rule along with other environmental protection laws.
Acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist who previously represented Murray, told The Washington Post in October: “I just think it’s a little fuzzy math when you say, ‘Reduce mercury and we have all these other benefits over here,’ as the shiny object."
According to Kathleen Rest, executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, revising the rules will set a dangerous precedent that could undermine future public health and environment protections.
Fred Krupp, president of non-profit environmental group Environmental Defense Fund, said: “Trump’s EPA claims they aren’t undermining the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards themselves, they’re just reconsidering the basis for them. No one can truthfully claim they are demolishing the foundation of a building but they still expect the building to stand.”
Tom Carper, democrat senator for Delaware, said: “With this action, the EPA is also setting a dangerous precedent that a federal agency – charged with protecting the environment and public health – will no longer factor in all the clear health, environmental, and economics benefits of clean air polices, such as reducing cancer and birth defects. With this proposal, the EPA has decided to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and all Americans will suffer as a result.”
https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/trump-administration-says-mercury-regulations-not-appropriate-or-necessary/
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Supreme Court Rejects Exxon Mobil Appeal in Climate Case
Jan 7, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to take up a case in which Exxon Mobil Corp. is trying to stop Massachusetts’s demand for documents from it in a climate change investigation.
The announcement in the case, Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Healey, came without explanation, as is the court’s usual practice. Four of the high court’s nine judges would have had to vote in favor of taking the case for it to be put in the docket.
Exxon Mobil, the nation’s largest oil company by production volume, wanted the court to stop Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D) from compelling it to produce decades of records about how it has dealt with the threat of climate change to the world and to its businesses.
The Supreme Court’s rejection appears to be the last step Exxon Mobil could take to stop the investigation, and the company now must likely comply with the civil investigative demand, a document akin to a subpoena.
Healey is probing whether the company lied to the public or investors about how much it knew about the threat of climate change, the role of its fossil fuel products and how climate policies would hurt its businesses.
The probe, launched in 2016, is part of a larger move by Democrats and environmentalists to hold Exxon Mobil accountable for allegedly sowing doubt about climate science while internally knowing the true extent of the problem. Exxon Mobil has denied the allegations.
Massachusetts’s top court ruled for Healey in April, after which Exxon Mobil asked the Supreme Court to step in.
“The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court compelled compliance with sweeping investigatory requests by the state’s attorney general for decades’ worth of documents concerning petitioner’s knowledge of, and the relationship of petitioner’s products to, climate change,” Exxon Mobil wrote in its September 2018 petition to the high court.
“The question presented is whether a court can exercise personal jurisdiction over a nonresident corporation to compel its compliance with an investigatory document request where jurisdiction is based principally on third-party contacts that are unrelated to the subject matter being investigated,” the oil giant said, calling the state court’s ruling “misguided.”
Exxon Mobil was backed in its petition by the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers.
Healey responded Massachusetts law lets her go after Exxon Mobil because of its presence in the state, like advertising and selling products.
“Hundreds of ‘Exxon’ and ‘Mobil’ retail service stations operate in Massachusetts. Exxon Mobil Corporation (Exxon) has entered into franchise agreements that give it the right to control, and a share of the profits from, the marketing and sale of its products at these service stations. And Exxon admits it has itself advertised its products and sold securities in Massachusetts,” her office told the high court.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/424133-supreme-court-rejects-exxon-appeal-in-climate-case
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Can Sputtering Recycling Market Find a Second Life?
Jan 3, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Andrea Leinfelder
Oceans choked with discarded plastics. Beached whales found with hundreds of pieces of plastics in their stomachs. Soil contaminated by tiny fragments of plastics.
As environmentalists, corporations and the public increasingly focus on the mass of plastics discarded every day, they are running into a stubborn problem that has yet to be solved. The recycling market continues to sputter, most recently from weak demand and low prices. Waste Management, the Houston trash collection and disposal company, expects its earnings from recycling to shrink by about $100 million last year compared to 2017.
A robust recycling market is critical not only to reducing plastics in the environment — a key focus now as coffee shops ban plastic straws and consumers bring reusable bags to supermarkets — but also to the Gulf Coast’s booming petrochemical industry, to which growing concerns about plastic waste pose a threat to its business.Unlimited Digital Access as little as $0.99Read more articles like this by subscribing to the Houston Chronicle SUBSCRIBE
“Bans (on plastic products) that are being announced, and not just in the U.S. but around the world, are proliferating,” said Nick Vafiadis, vice president of plastics for IHS Markit. “They’re not going away. This is a real fact of life for the industry now.”
Americans are recycling more than ever — some 35 percent of consumer trash was recycled or composted in 2015, according to the most recent government data — and scrap recycling, which includes used appliances, manufacturing leftovers and some items from curbside bins, was a $117 billion industry in 2017. But big price swings continue to challenge the industry. The price of mixed scrap paper, for example, has plummeted from $75 a ton in 2017 to basically zero, said Joe Pickard, chief economist at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a trade group.
Much of the plunge is due to China, once the world’s biggest importer of recyclable materials. China has stopped accepting a variety of mixed paper and plastic scrap, citing efforts to clean up the environment, and plans to add other scrap products to its banned import list.
Recyclable products that China didn’t ban have stricter rules regarding contamination. The amount of trash accidentally mixed in with most recycled products can’t exceed a half-percent. For comparison, trash makes up 25 percent of what arrives at Waste Management’s facilities that sort and bale recyclables. That’s 500 pounds of contaminants for every ton of recyclables.
Other buyers, meanwhile, are following China’s lead and adopting stricter contamination standards. Waste Management, for example, sells mixed paper to paper mills. The mills, which reuse the fiber to make cardboard boxes, cereal boxes, cartons, etc., are tightening their standards.
“All the other paper mills that we deal with took that same message back to us saying, ‘Hey, we need better quality materials,’” said Brent Bell, vice president of recycling for Waste Management.
First step
Reducing contamination is largely considered the starting point for creating a more stable U.S. recycling market. And that means teaching consumers what they can and cannot put in recycling bins.
For example, a triangle with a number on the bottom of a plastic container does not automatically mean it’s recyclable. Nos. 1, 2 and 5 are widely accepted in recycling programs across the country. Garden hoses and plastic bags, which can get tangled in sorting equipment, are always prohibited. Food-stained cardboard boxes are considered contamination, too.
“If our customers are saying, ‘Hey, how can I help out the economics of my current program?’ The No. 1 thing they can do is get the contamination rate down lower,” Bell said.
Waste Management is investing in machinery to better reduce contamination. Optical sorters, for instance, can identify a specific material and then use gusts of air to separate that material from the pack.
In Houston, FCC Environmental Services, a Spanish company with U.S. headquarters in The Woodlands, will take over the city’s recycling contract in 2019. Better sorting equipment and a $25 million facility slated to open in March were key in winning the Houston contract.
For instance, if soda cans arrive in a plastic bag — which shouldn’t happen in curbside pickup, but does — the machinery will open the bag and empty its contents. In older facilities, that bag could end up in the landfill.
FCC Environmental also will have optical sorting equipment that addresses the “Amazon effect,” caused by customers receiving small cardboard boxes and not flattening them before recycling. Older machines may not recognize the 3D item as cardboard, instead discarding the box as trash.
“If you invest in new technology, you can be more efficient and you can be more competitive because the percentage of the material that you’re recovering is higher,” said Iñigo Sanz, CEO of the U.S. business. “The quality of this material is also higher.”
Making markets
Once the sorting process is improved, the materials will need more places to go.
Large household brands are helping create these markets. PepsiCo, for instance, announced in October that it’s seeking to use 25 percent recycled content in its plastic packaging by 2025. This goal builds upon previously announced goals such as designing 100 percent of its packaging to be recyclable, compostable or biodegradable.
Such policies pressure suppliers to incorporate recycled materials if they want to keep or win that company’s business. But more brands need to take similar steps if the United States is to find uses for all the materials recycled by neighborhoods, job sites and businesses.
“There is a lot of supply and there’s not a lot of demand for the material,” said Bell of Waste Management. “We’ve got to make sure the materials that people intend to recycle every day, that we’ve got a demand for that.”
The demand for plastic pellets made from recycled materials already is robust, said Robin Waters, director of plastics planning and analysis for the research firm IHS Markit. But equipment for collecting and sorting waste needs extensive upgrades to provide the high-quality used plastic fit for making plastic resins.
Other countries are addressing this, in part, with a policy called Extended Producer Responsibility. This policy requires companies creating consumer products to pay fees for the plastic products and packaging they produce. The money collected from companies goes toward things such as upgrading recycling equipment and processing plants.
Ultimately, the fees provide incentives for companies to use less plastic, different materials or more recycled materials.
“It’s a concept that hasn’t really hit the U.S.,” Waters said, “but it will be here in five to 10 years.”
Meanwhile, several Chinese companies, seeking more control over supply chains following import restrictions, are opening recycling facilities in the United States, which could boost domestic demand for recyclables. These facilities will turn curbside pickup into plastic pellets and recycled pulp to be sent to China as manufacturing feedstock.
“The next year or so will be challenging for recycling in the United States,” said David Biderman, executive director of Solid Waste Association of North America, an organization of industry professionals, “but I do believe that we are seeing changes that are occurring that make me more optimistic about the future of recycling.”
New approaches
Scientists, researchers and chemical makers are rethinking plastics recycling. Today, the most common form is cutting up a plastic product, melting it and then reshaping it into something new. But this creates a product less durable than new plastic.
One particularly promising alternative is chemical recycling. This turns plastic back into into its building-block molecules, which can be recombined into new plastics without degrading properties as melting does.
Megan Robertson, an associate professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Houston, and her team of researchers are using chemical recycling to break down plastic materials that traditionally can’t be recycled. They’re investigating breaking such plastics into smaller molecules that might be used to make new plastic products or even composted.
“What’s needed are big technological innovations that can address these challenges,” Robertson said.
In addition to chemical recycling, Jeannette Garcia, a chemist at IBM Research, is looking at turning commonly recycled plastic into high-performing plastic. Garcia, for example, has successfully turned CDs into engineering thermoplastic that could be used for medical equipment.
Other researchers are examining plastics that would decompose in the ocean, said Marc Hillmyer, director of the Center for Sustainable Polymers at the University of Minnesota.
“Plastics do have liabilities that come along with them and we have to address those,” he said. “I think companies that take a longer term vision on that will be more successful.”
Jumping in
Chemical companies already are investing in new recycling technologies. The British oil major BP, for instance, will purchase products such as diesel fuel from RES Polyflow, an Ohio company that turns mixed plastic into a crude-like oil.
The Woodlands company AmSty manufactures the polymer used to make expanded polystyrene, known commercially as Styrofoam. It is working with Agilyx, an Oregon firm that converts used polystyrene into a liquid form that can be used to make fresh polystyrene products.
“We don’t have to ban these products,” said Kim Holmes, vice president of sustainability for the Plastics Industry Association, a trade group. “We need to create meaningful recovery opportunities, and this is a direct example of how industry is involved in doing that.”
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/Can-sputtering-recycling-market-find-a-second-13505492.php
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