Preview Newsletter

AM ACC Clips Report - January 31, 2019

Industry and Association News

(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Chemical Production Rose in December, ACC Says
Jan 31, 2019 | ChemEngOnline
By Scott Jenkins

According to the American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com), the U.S. Chemical Production Regional Index (U.S. CPRI) rose by 0.6 percent in December, following a 0.3 percent gain in November and a 0.4 percent decline in October. During December, chemical output rose across all regions, with the largest gains in the Ohio Valley and Southeast regions.
(ACC Mentioned) Trump Tax Cuts Fail to Boost Investment or Employment but Pile on Debt
Jan 30, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Chris Tomlinson

Americans are still waiting for President Donald Trump’s tax cuts to spur investment and hiring, but sadly, they will be disappointed.
(ACC Mentioned) Trump Administration’s Science Shutdown Endangers Public Health
Jan 31, 2019 | Sierra Magazine
By Jonathan Hahn

President Trump wastes few opportunities to demonstrate that he doesn’t believe in science.
(ACC Mentioned) Carper, Duckworth Introduce Bill to Strengthen EPA Oversight, Promote Transparency
Jan 30, 2019 | Dover Post

Sens. Tom Carper, D-Delaware, and Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, reintroduced legislation to increase transparency associated with Environmental Protection Agency hiring and prevent any future administrator from being able to give their favorite aides large salary increases without disclosing it to the American people.
(ACC Mentioned) Oregon Could Become The 2nd State To Regulate Plastic Straws
Jan 30, 2019 | OPB News
By Dirk VanderHart

Restaurants across Oregon would be forbidden from handing out single-use plastic straws without a customer’s request, under several bills that lawmakers are considering this year.
(ACC Mentioned) Sunshine State Targets Film with Industry Partner
Jan 30, 2019 | Plastics Recycling Update
By Colin Staub

A statewide campaign will seek to increase plastic film recovery throughout Florida.
(ACC Mentioned) Builders, Trade Group Fight Local Vinyl Siding Bans
Jan 30, 2019 | Plastics News
By Catherine Kavanaugh

A vinyl siding ban in Carrollton, Ga., recently was overturned after local builders and the industry's trade group raised concerns about its effect on private property rights, affordable housing and free market economics.

TSCA News

NGOs See 'Tremendous Opportunities’ Following US Midterms
Jan 31, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins

NGOs are cautiously optimistic for the year ahead, saying the Democrats’ control of the US House of Representatives will allow for more oversight of the EPA’s activities.
Pentagon Approach to OEL for Trichlorethylene Set to Be Scrutinised
Jan 31, 2019 | Chemical Watch

A proposed approach put forward by the US defence department for developing an occupational exposure level for trichlorethylene (TCE) is set to come under scrutiny.

Chemical Management News

(ACC Mentioned) OECD Report Proposes Global Restricted Substances List for Plastics
Jan 31, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer

A report by the OECD is proposing the creation of a global manufacturing restricted substances list (MRSL) for plastics.
EPA Faces New State Pressure To Tighten Assessment Of PFAS Risks
Jan 30, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad

EPA is facing pressure from states and water utilities to tighten its assessment of the risks posed by a pair of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) substances, known as GenX and PFBS, intensifying pressure on the agency to step up its oversight of the broad class of chemicals in part as a way to harmonize state standards.
EPA’s Inaction Puts Drinking Water at Risk, Complaint Says
Jan 30, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Daniel Seiden and David Schultz

The EPA’s failure to enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act has put the public at an unacceptable risk, three environmental groups assert in a new complaint.
Environmentalists Sue EPA Over SDWA Delays
Jan 30, 2019 | Inside EPA

Environmentalists have followed through on their threat to sue EPA over the agency's failure to meet statutory deadlines to review and revise existing drinking water standards for a dozen chemical and biological contaminants as well as its failure to develop new standards, charging the violations creates substantial risk of harm.
EPA's Reported PFAS Decision Raises GOP Senator's Concerns
Jan 30, 2019 | Inside EPA

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), a member of the Senate environment committee, is expressing concern about Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler's reported decision to refrain from setting enforceable drinking water standards for perfluorinated compounds, raising doubts that Wheeler's nomination will clear the closely divided panel.
PFAS Chemicals Pass Through the Placenta to Fetal Tissues Throughout Pregnancy
Jan 30, 2019 | News-Medical.net
By Felicia Lindberg

In a study published in Environment International researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden show how PFAS industrial chemicals, which are used in many consumer products, pass through the placenta throughout pregnancy to accumulate in fetal tissue.
Erin Brockovich’s Town Is Still Toxic—and Nearly Abandoned
Jan 31, 2019 | Grist (In Mother Jones)
By Max Genecov

It was a sweltering, 117-degree July day in Hinkley, California. The surface of the 13-mile highway east to Barstow had become an asphalt skillet, and the town’s lone recreational feature, a children’s playscape, stood shining and unused like a monument to the lofty melting point of low-density polyethylene.
Vermont Considering Changes to Children's Products Rule
Jan 31, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin

Vermont is considering changes to its children’s products reporting scheme, including expanding the list of reportable substances and establishing a process by which a chemical might be banned from products.
Alleged Scientific Misconduct Allowed in Roundup Cancer Trials
Jan 30, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Adam Allington

A federal court in California will allow disputed evidence relevant to hundreds of lawsuits over Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.
Industry Welcomes MPs Backing of Amendment Rejecting No-Deal Brexit
Jan 30, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton

The UK chemicals industry has given a mixed response to the broad backing by British MPs of a parliamentary amendment that rejects the possibility of the country leaving the EU without a deal on 29 March.

Energy News

(ACC Mentioned) US Petrochemical Market Grapples with Tariffs
Jan 30, 2019 | JOC.com
By Janet Nodar

Thanks to cheap shale gas, the US Gulf Coast has seen a surge in new and expanded petrochemical plants, pipelines, liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities, and other capital construction projects that have kept engineering, procurement, and construction companies (EPCs) and project cargo forwarders and service providers busy for several years.
N.J. Governor Pushes for Broader Ban in Delaware River Basin
Jan 31, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee

Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is urging his fellow governors in Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware to support a complete ban on hydraulic fracturing and associated activities in the watershed their states share.
New Jersey Governor Calls for Frack Ban in Marcellus Outskirts
Jan 31, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Adams-Heard

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) is voicing support for a full ban on fracking in part of America’s biggest shale gas play. It just so happens to be a part that no one wants to drill.
Methane-Based Metal Substitute Could Slash CO2 Emissions
Jan 31, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Jenny Mandel

What if heavy, energy-intensive materials like steel and aluminum could be replaced by a new material, manufactured from natural gas, that was lighter and stronger than the metals it replaced?
Grijalva Wants to Combine Offshore Drilling Proposals into a Single Bill
Jan 30, 2019 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna

House Natural Resources Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said he wants to introduce an omnibus bill to restrict offshore drilling that would combine various Democratic proposals on the topic.

Chemical Security News

Grid Regulator Hits Utility with Record $10M Fine
Jan 31, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak

Grid authorities have issued a record $10 million fine to an unidentified utility over more than 120 security violations spanning four years.
Special Report-The Toxic Legacy of a California Naval Base
Jan 31, 2019 | Reuters (In the New York Times)
By Robin Respaut and Reade Levinson

It seemed like the ideal redevelopment play. The Treasure Island Naval Station, erected on a picturesque strip of land in the middle of San Francisco Bay in 1942, was closed by the U.S. Navy in 1997.

Transportation and Infrastructure News

Oil Trains Make Comeback as Pipeline Bottlenecks Worsen
Jan 31, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Rebecca Elliott and Paul Ziobro

The use of trains to carry crude is surging after dropping in recent years amid concerns about safety, as drillers in parts of North America produce more oil than area pipelines can accommodate.

Environment News

EPA Makes Pitch for Tweaks to Hydrochloric Acid Standards
Jan 30, 2019 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly

EPA is seeking only slight changes to its air toxics standards for hydrochloric acid manufacturers in a proposed rule that has caught the attention of Illinois lawmakers.
Wheeler's Minimal Answers To Senators Offer Few Hints On EPA's Plans
Jan 30, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey and Dave Reynolds

Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler's answers to environment panel senators' questions ahead of his confirmation vote adopt a minimal approach offering few hints on EPA's pending regulatory agenda, evading specific responses or commitments on a host of major policies including rollbacks of Obama-era rules.
House Panel’s Democrats Reject GOP Climate-Change Proposal
Jan 31, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern

House Natural Resources Committee Democrats blocked a Republican attempt to change the panel’s rules to require all bills to quantify how much the legislation would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and potential sea-level rise.
Second Panel Sets Hearing for Hectic Week on Climate
Jan 31, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Nick Sobczyk

Democrats have been chomping at the bit to take on climate change since they won the House in November, and after a brief delay due to the partial government shutdown, they will finally get their chance next week.
New Mexico Joins State Climate Alliance, Sets 2030 GHG Target
Jan 30, 2019 | Inside EPA

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) is joining a coalition of states that is committed to achieving the goals of the Paris climate agreement in response to President Donald Trump's rejection of the pact, setting a target for the state to nearly halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Ocasio-Cortez, Markey to Unveil ‘Green New Deal’ Legislation
Jan 30, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By John Bowden

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) are reportedly planning to unveil legislation for a Green New Deal in the coming days.

Industry and Association News

(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Chemical Production Rose in December, ACC Says

Jan 31, 2019 | ChemEngOnline

By Scott Jenkins

According to the American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com), the U.S. Chemical Production Regional Index (U.S. CPRI) rose by 0.6 percent in December, following a 0.3 percent gain in November and a 0.4 percent decline in October. During December, chemical output rose across all regions, with the largest gains in the Ohio Valley and Southeast regions.
Chemical production was mixed over the three-month period. There were gains in the production three-month moving average output trend in plastic resins, organic chemicals, synthetic rubber, coatings, adhesives, pesticides, other specialty chemicals, consumer products and manufactured fibers. These gains were offset by declines in the output of fertilizers, inorganic chemicals, and synthetic dyes and pigments.
Nearly all manufactured goods are produced using chemistry in some form or another. Thus, manufacturing activity is an important indicator for chemical production. On a three-month-moving average basis, manufacturing activity rose by 0.3 percent in December, following a 0.1 percent gain in November. Output expanded in several chemistry-intensive manufacturing industries, including aerospace, machinery, fabricated metal products, computers and electronics, semiconductors, petroleum refining, iron and steel products, foundries, oil and gas extraction, plastic products, and furniture.
Compared with December 2017, U.S. chemical production rose 2.5 percent on a year-over-year basis. Chemical production was higher than a year ago in all regions, with the largest gains in the Gulf Coast.
https://www.chemengonline.com/u-s-chemical-production-rose-in-december-acc-says/

Return to headline | Return to top
(ACC Mentioned) Trump Tax Cuts Fail to Boost Investment or Employment but Pile on Debt

Jan 30, 2019 | Houston Chronicle

By Chris Tomlinson

Americans are still waiting for President Donald Trump’s tax cuts to spur investment and hiring, but sadly, they will be disappointed.
Executives at four out of five companies say the tax cuts did not change their plans, according to a survey by the straight-laced National Association of Business Economists. And there is no indication spending or hiring will pick up in 2019.
“After a year of robust capital spending, business investment has cooled a bit, and expectations for the next three months slackened similarly,” said NABE President Kevin Swift, who is also chief economist at the American Chemistry Council. “A large majority of respondents — 84 percent — indicate that one year after its passage, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has not caused their firms to change hiring or investment plans.”
Chief financial officers and economists at 106 companies said that while they do not expect a recession in 2019, neither do they expect robust economic growth. Half report slowing sales, and a quarter expect lower profit margins.
“Materials input costs are rising at respondents’ firms, especially goods-producing firms,” said Sam Kyei, who led the survey for NABE. “Fifty-three percent of survey respondents report shortages of skilled labor at their firms and the current tight labor market conditions continue to push firms to raise wages, increase training, and consider additional automation.”
Since NABE members expect the U.S. economy to grow only 2 percent in 2019, none of the companies plan extraordinary investment or hiring this year. The sugar rush created by Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut has worn off.
The NABE report is consistent with every other analysis of the Trump tax cuts. The decision to cut the nominal corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent boosted profits and benefited wealthy shareholders, but it also added trillions to the federal deficit while doing little for middle-class Americans.
The Congressional Budget Office said the tax cuts would add about 0.3 percent to annual GDP growth. But last week White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said the government shutdown will likely shave 0.6 percent off GDP growth for 2019.
Meanwhile, executives spent $1 trillion in tax savings on stock buybacks, according to investment bank Goldman Sachs. The purchases not only drove up stock prices for shareholders, but boosted stock options for the executives who authorized the purchases. Management teams spent nearly another $1 trillion on higher stock dividends.
What did not significantly change was capital expenditures on new factories or equipment, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Analysts at Merrill Lynch call it “The investment boom that wasn’t.”
More disappointment awaits 80 percent of American taxpayers who will see no reduction in their income taxes, according to Brookings, a Washington think tank. But the wealthiest Americans will enjoy a 20 percent income tax cut, the elimination of the estate and alternative minimum taxes and new tax breaks for private school tuition.
To pay for this, we’re pushing the tab on to our grandchildren who will see publicly-held debt rising from $16.1 trillion today to $28.7 trillion in 2029. The Congressional Budget Office reported Monday that debt as a percentage of gross domestic product will increase from 78 percent this year to 93 percent in 2029 under the current law.
“CBO’s annual report is a reminder that the situation is getting worse, not better,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the conservative Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “Lawmakers need to stop the digging, but even that will keep debt growing. They should come up with a plan now while the economy is strong to put our debt on a downward path and phase it in to avoid the much more disruptive choices that procrastination will bring.”
When Trump was elected, I mistakenly did not include the federal debt as one of my key performance indicators for his annual report card. After all, as a reader reminded me, Trump said he could eliminate the federal debt in eight years. Instead, the president is using the tried-and-true strategy of borrow and spend to juice the economy.
I will repeat for the umpteenth time that governments should focus less on cutting taxes and more on providing the services that businesses need to build a thriving economy. High-quality roads and bridges, a highly skilled workforce and reasonable regulations do far more to spur commerce than borrowing money to pay for tax cuts.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Trump-tax-cuts-fail-to-boost-investment-or-13571027.php

Return to headline | Return to top
(ACC Mentioned) Trump Administration’s Science Shutdown Endangers Public Health

Jan 31, 2019 | Sierra Magazine

By Jonathan Hahn

President Trump wastes few opportunities to demonstrate that he doesn’t believe in science. Most recently, he confused weather with climate by suggesting (not for the first time) that a short-term cold weather event—the polar vortex plunging the Midwest and East Coast into frigid temperatures this week—invalidates the long-term climate phenomenon of global warming. “In the beautiful Midwest,” he wrote on Twitter on January 28, “windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!”
This disregard for basic scientific facts might be less damaging if it were only relegated to tweets with sentence fragments and misspelled words. But a study just published by the Union of Concerned Scientists highlights how disdain for science has permeated the federal government.
In its first two years, the Trump administration has waged an all-out campaign to shutdown scientific funding and research and sideline science-based policymaking at federal agencies, according to a report just published by the Union of Concerned Scientists. In “The State of Science in the Trump Era,” analysts document 80 cases of abuse, censorship, and cover-up at multiple agencies across federal government that, all told, demonstrate a pattern of hostility towards scientific inquiry and fact-finding on a scale and scope that is without precedent—with destructive consequences to the environment and public health.
“We know now for certain that there is a pattern by this administration to undermine science in the policy process,” Jacob Carter, the lead author of the report, said in an interview. “The question now is why, and it seems the answer is that, when science is not part of the policy process, that makes it easier for this administration to craft policies that favor politically connected industries, like oil and coal companies, at the expense of our public health and safety.”
The report exposes a rampant practice of corporate favor and influence in government policies at multiple federal agencies, whether involving conflicts of interest, suppression of scientific studies, interfering with scientific input from outside experts, or efforts to rollback environmental and public health regulations, rules, and standards.  Some examples include the rollback of the Clean Car standards and methane standards to benefit the auto and oil and gas industries, the suppression of an important report on the cancer risks of formaldehyde to benefit the chemical industry, and attempts to roll back regulations on coal mine dust to favor the mining industry even though scientific research makes clear exposure to such dust can lead to black lung disease.
The administration has squashed a number of scientific studies when the findings of those studies didn’t align with its agenda. For example, when studies showed that Trump’s proposed border wall would threaten endangered species like the ocelot, political appointees who now hold key scientific positions dismissed those studies in order to support the administration’s contention that building the border wall would not negatively harm those species. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly waived federal laws that play a key role in protecting the nation’s environment and cultural heritage in order to clear the way for the administration to build sections of the border wall in ecologically vulnerable areas.
Not only are scientific studies being dismissed, a number are not taking place at all. The federal scientific workforce is chronically understaffed—over half of the scientific leadership appointments in the federal government have not been confirmed. That number is dramatically low compared to the Bush and Obama administrations, which had filled all those positions before their two-year mark.
The Trump administration has also conducted far fewer environmental reviews compared to the prior four administrations—only 237 environmental impact statements to date. That is the fewest conducted since before the George H.W. Bush administration, which conducted 311 in its first two years.
A culture of scientific censorship has taken hold at agencies across the administration, whether it be restricting scientists’ ability to speak to the media about their research, or outright banning of  certain kinds of speech, or even words. Last June, the Centers for Disease Control issued a ban on the words “vulnerable,” “transgender,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based” in budgetary reports. The Department of Energy prevented climate scientists from using “emissions reductions” or “Paris Agreement” in communications. Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke even called in Joshua Tree National Park superintendent David Smith to reprimand him in-person for a Twitter thread about climate change on the park’s official Twitter account.
In a survey UCS published last year, a CDC scientist told UCS that “banning certain words, even if only for budgetary reasons, is a slippery slope and has resulted in scientists with integrity self-censoring their work.”
The administration has also disbanded panels that provide independent scientific expertise on issues that affect public health. Two scientific advisory panels on the impacts of air pollution, which has been linked to cardiovascular and lung diseases, were nixed.
The vast majority of each of these “attacks” on science bear out the same narrative: a determined effort to favor the interests of industry, whether it be of fossil fuels, chemical, or mining. For example, Nancy Beck, a former executive with the American Chemistry Council who is now a political appointee at the Environmental Protection Agency, amended the EPA’s implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act in an attempt to weaken regulations on asbestos. Some of Beck’s amendments used adopted language the chemical industry suggested.
Meanwhile, the administration has continued to dismiss the science of climate change, even when its own National Climate Assessment, released last November, made clear that the United States is rapidly heading towards an environmental, economic, and public health catastrophe if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels.
“We really need to be mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, and yet we have an administration that is rolling back regulations and sidelining science at the federal agencies, which will not allow us to mitigate those emissions,” Carter says. “So instead of helping to lessen the affects and impacts of climate change, we have an administration that is making it worse.”
While the study paints a grim picture of a kind of systemic war on science, it also details how scientists and environmental and public health advocates have successfully pushed back on the administration’s efforts. In July 2017 for example, Trump nominated Michael Dourson to be assistant administrator of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention at EPA. Dourson is a toxicologist who has conducted industry-sponsored research that minimizes the health risks of chemicals. After a coalition of scientists, activists, and environmental and public health groups waged a fierce campaign opposing the nomination, Dourson was  forced to withdraw from consideration.
In another case, outgoing administrator Scott Pruitt, who resigned after numerous scandals emerged that he was abusing his office, pushed through an exemption for polluting “glider trucks” from penalties under the Clean Air Act just before leaving office. Environmental and public health groups like the American Lung Association, UCS, the Environmental Defense Fund, and others forced acting EPA administrator Scott Wheeler to reverse Pruitt’s decision.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is calling on Congress to pass a Scientific Integrity Act to codify and protect the scientific integrity policies that are already in place at a number of science agencies. The Act would provide more protections to scientists to make sure they can speak to the media about their science-based work, insure that there is no political interference in their work and that scientific advisory committees are made up of a fair number of actual scientists, not just industry lobbyists, and prohibit political appointees and communications staffs from editing scientific documents, among other things.
“One of the most egregious things about this pattern is that it’s not just about a series of isolated attacks on science or scientists, or a rollback of a science-based safeguard,” Carter says. “In some cases, it’s fully changing the process of how science is or is not used in the policy process at agencies. That’s particularly scary. Science continues to be our best knowledge-based system. We rely on it to provide the public with the best safeguards for public health and safety. By changing the process by which science is used, it may be more difficult in the future to get that scientific evidence into the policy process. That really does equate to a lot less safety for environment and the public in the future.”
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/trump-administration-s-science-shutdown-endangers-public-health

Return to headline | Return to top
(ACC Mentioned) Carper, Duckworth Introduce Bill to Strengthen EPA Oversight, Promote Transparency

Jan 30, 2019 | Dover Post

Sens. Tom Carper, D-Delaware, and Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, reintroduced legislation to increase transparency associated with Environmental Protection Agency hiring and prevent any future administrator from being able to give their favorite aides large salary increases without disclosing it to the American people.
The EPA Special Hiring Authority Transparency Act would require the administrator to notify Congress within 30 days of any appointment under the Safe Drinking Water Act special hiring authority.
The EPA would be required to disclose the appointee’s name, title, salary and a detailed written justification explaining why the administrator determined the appointment was necessary to carry out the requirements of the SDWA.
“Among the many scandals that defined Scott Pruitt’s tenure at EPA were his efforts to evade proper channels so he could provide ridiculous pay raises to favored staff,” said Carper. “Mr. Pruitt set a dangerous precedent by abusing a provision designed to help EPA bring in outside experts to advance the agency’s mission of protecting public health and environmental quality. As both the agency and the American people recover from Mr. Pruitt’s repeated violations of public trust, this bill will help to ensure that future EPA administrators — regardless of party — use this special hiring authority responsibly and transparently.”
“Congress gave EPA the authority to appoint experts under the Safe Drinking Water Act because access to clean drinking water is critical to all Americans, but the Trump Administration has abused this authority far too many times. This bill will help restore the public’s trust in the EPA and encourage government transparency and accountability,” said Duckworth. “I look forward to working with Senator Carper to pass this bill and prevent any future EPA Administrator from following Scott Pruitt’s playbook and abusing this loophole.”
The Senators first introduced this legislation in May 2018, after reports that former administrator Scott Pruitt violated the trust Congress conferred on him when he abused the Safe Drinking Water Act’s special hiring authority to secretly reward his top aides with dramatic salary raises over White House objections. Pruitt also used the SDWA provision to hire ex-lobbyists, including Nancy Beck, a former executive at the American Chemistry Council. In August 2018, Acting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler agreed to work with Duckworth on this legislation at an EPW Committee Hearing.
The Safe Drinking Water Act protects public drinking water supplies. Under SDWA, the EPA sets rules for drinking water quality and implements various programs to ensure utilities across the country are able to comply with our federal drinking water standards. The law also provides the administrator with the authority to appoint up to 30 people without regard to civil service laws.
https://www.doverpost.com/news/20190130/carper-duckworth-introduce-bill-to-strengthen-epa-oversight-promote-transparency

Return to headline | Return to top
(ACC Mentioned) Oregon Could Become The 2nd State To Regulate Plastic Straws

Jan 30, 2019 | OPB News

By Dirk VanderHart

Restaurants across Oregon would be forbidden from handing out single-use plastic straws without a customer’s request, under several bills that lawmakers are considering this year.
If passed, the policy could make Oregon just the second state in the nation to regulate plastic straws statewide, after California passed a law last year. But lawmakers first need to answer some big questions.
As Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, put it during a committee hearing on Tuesday: “Who do we follow, California or Portland?”
A bill currently before the Senate Environmental and Natural Resources Committee would make it illegal for any restaurant to give customers a plastic straw without first being asked — a policy that resembles a wider-ranging ordinancepassed by Portland City Council late last year. Breaking the law would be punishable by $25, with a $300 yearly limit on penalties.
But an amendment to the bill introduced by state Sen. Arnie Roblan, D-Coos Bay, would pare the law down, ensuring it applies only to full-service restaurants — not fast food. That’s akin to California’s law.
And in a twist that concerns environmental groups and Portland city officials, the amendment would pre-empt any city in the state from enacting its own rules for drinking straws. That would take precedence over Portland’s policy, sharply decreasing the number of restaurants regulated in the city.
“We would hate for this bill to undermine all the work that’s been done in Portland, as well as work that’s being done on the coast right now,” said Charlie Plybon, the Oregon policy manager for the Surfrider Foundation, which helped craft Portland’s law.
Regulations on single-use straws have flourished since a 2015 video of biologists removing a straw from a sea turtle’s nostril went viral, drawing widespread attention to the hazards plastic waste presents for wildlife.
“Coastal rehabilitation centers regularly get in seabirds that are starving to death because their digestive tracts are literally clogged with plastic,” Bob Sallinger, conservation director at the Audubon Society of Portland, told lawmakers Tuesday. “To a bird that eats plankton, plastic looks like food and they’ll gobble it up.”
Seattle became the first major city to ban plastic straws in food service in July 2018. California passed a statewide law for full-service restaurants months later but declined to ban straws outright, opting instead to require that customers request them. Portland approved a similar law in December 2018 but applied it to all restaurants and folded in plastic utensils and other items that customers will have to ask for in July when the law takes effect.
While Portland initially considered an outright ban on plastic straws, Plybon and other advocates say the request-only policy makes sense. It forces consumers to think about their use of disposable straws, but it doesn’t pose an inconvenience for people with disabilities who require them. Plybon said participating restaurants during a pilot program in Portland saw straw usage decline 40 to 60 percent.
But Plybon and others are also skeptical of any policy that would stop cities from enacting their own, stricter rules. That’s an approach favored by the Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association and the American Chemistry Council, which sent representatives to testify in favor of pre-emption.
“Having a patchwork of bills or laws across the state makes it very difficult and challenging for our members that are in different jurisdictions,” said Greg Astley, of the restaurant association.
Those concerns, Roblan said, prompted him to file the proposed amendments, which have yet to receive a vote in committee. If they passed, the senate bill would be nearly identical to a bill introduced in the House by a bipartisan group of 11 lawmakers.
The proposal faced skepticism from some Republicans on the senate committee taking up the bill Tuesday. Sen. Alan Olsen, R-Canby, suggested the law could make drivers unsafe by encouraging use of metal or glass straws that would be dangerous in a crash. Sen. Cliff Bentz, R- Ontario, pointed out that an Oregon law wouldn’t make much difference on a global scale.
While Roblan said Tuesday he would consider tweaks to his proposal, he stood by the concept of a pre-emption on local policies regulating straws.
“If you really want to send a message, [telling] everyone they have to do this kind of stuff forces a constant message around the state,” he said. “The more people who think about their actions, the more likely we are to have changes.”
https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-plastic-straws-proposed-regulations/

Return to headline | Return to top
(ACC Mentioned) Sunshine State Targets Film with Industry Partner

Jan 30, 2019 | Plastics Recycling Update

By Colin Staub

A statewide campaign will seek to increase plastic film recovery throughout Florida.
Numerous Florida recycling stakeholders have joined the Wrap Recycling Action Program (WRAP) campaign managed by the American Chemistry Council (ACC)’s Flexible Film Recycling Group.
The campaign helps provide outreach materials to increase public awareness of film recycling options, such as drop-off sites at retail locations. It also seeks to cut down on film in curbside recycling programs.
Officials from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, as well as private sector partners including the Florida Recycling Partnership, Florida Retail Federation, Publix Super Markets, Waste Management and others, announced the move in a release last week.
“Initial campaign activities are expected to reach more than eight million people in 10 counties and municipalities,” the group said in the release.
WRAP has been cited by municipal leaders as a beneficial resource to help communities shift film into proper recycling streams. In a U.S. EPA webinar last year, WRAP was also lauded as a way to push for higher diversion with minimal public sector costs.
https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2019/01/30/sunshine-state-targets-film-with-industry-partner/

Return to headline | Return to top
(ACC Mentioned) Builders, Trade Group Fight Local Vinyl Siding Bans

Jan 30, 2019 | Plastics News

By Catherine Kavanaugh

A vinyl siding ban in Carrollton, Ga., recently was overturned after local builders and the industry's trade group raised concerns about its effect on private property rights, affordable housing and free market economics.
That's one jurisdiction down for vinyl siding supporters and at least 17 to go in Georgia, where five other cities and 12 counties have ordinances that limit or ban vinyl siding.
These places, mostly in metro Atlanta, have imposed a variety of architectural standards on new housing that dictate exterior building color; type or style of exterior cladding materials, roofs or porches; architectural ornamentation; or location and style of windows and doors, including garage doors, according to Alex Fernandez, government affairs director for the Vinyl Siding Institute Inc.
To address all the jurisdictions with restrictions, VSI, a Washington-based trade group, and some Georgia builders are pushing for a statewide remedy in the form of a law that would prohibit local residential building design ordinances for one- and two-family dwellings.
A Georgia state representative is expected to introduce such a bill any day now.
There's cause for optimism for VSI and the builders. They had a similar victory in North Carolina in 2015, when the state's General Assembly passed a law that says local governments can't enact ordinances that control design and aesthetics of one- and two-family houses, including what type of siding can be used.
Four years later, the work of vinyl siding advocates is gaining traction in Georgia — Realtors have come on board, too — and ramping up in Tennessee as a coalition forms to level the playing field for the most popular cladding in the United States.
Durable, low-cost and maintenance-free, vinyl siding has been installed on more newly built single-family houses than any material since 1994, peaking at 40 percent in 2002 before a slow decline. About 27 percent, or 213,000 of the 795,000 houses completed in 2017, had vinyl siding as the primary exterior wall material, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Vinyl siding's benefits and place in U.S. neighborhoods was first evident in the Midwest and Northeast, where it offers a tidy look free of care despite harsh climates. It can be cleaned with mild soap and a garden hose, and it never needs to be painted or caulked.
The cladding's popularity extended south during the housing boom of 1997-2006, much to the chagrin of the region's powerful brick industry and some local planners and officials. Vinyl siding critics called for more regulations, and ordinances were amended.
"I think it's a reflection that vinyl siding isn't as popular in the South," Fernandez said in a phone interview. "During the housing boom, it became more accepted as an inexpensive way to build houses. But there were some bad installations, and when it's installed wrong, it doesn't hold up well. It can get wavy. So some developers in these states have a bad taste for vinyl. That's one component, but it's not the only one."Convincing Carrollton
Vinyl siding opposition in Carrollton, a city of 26,500 about 45 miles west of Atlanta, was mostly about the aesthetics, Fernandez said. VSI representatives and some builders convinced local officials to overturn their ban on vinyl cladding on Jan. 7.
"We showed the benefits of our siding, but at the end of the day, this is a private property issue," Fernandez said. "We argued that as long as a product is deemed safe and there are no contractual concerns, as with a homeowners association, the city or county has no basis to tell you how to build your house or how it can look. Private citizens should be able to side their houses as they see fit."
In a 4-1 vote, the Carrollton City Council amended its design standards for single-family houses and townhouses to allow vinyl siding, reversing a ban that had been quietly adopted in 2017, according to Georgia builder John Denney, who spoke at one of the meetings.
"My largest concern is that a decision was made with no actual evidence considered," Denney said in an email. "I think that if a government entity is taking away a person's right to use a product, there should be empirical evidence demonstrating that the product is causing harm to their constituents."
Denney said he and others demonstrated that all siding products can have problems related to poor quality materials or sloppy installation.
"We could also credibly explain that vinyl siding was easier to install correctly than most alternatives," he said. "I've been building for over 40 years and have seen many good and bad products, including cement fiber board, brick and stucco. Vinyl is certainly far superior to most wood and Masonite, both of which are allowed in Carrollton."Getting to this point
Why is the most popular home cladding for the last 25 years the subject of so many restrictive ordinance provisions?
Matt Dobson, VSI's vice president of regulatory and advocacy, traces vinyl's bad rap to the smart growth codes promoted in the 1990s by the American Planning Association. The goal was to implement smarter planning practices as suburban sprawl moved an era of building away from city centers and suburbs to rural areas, Dobson said in a phone interview.
"Then, the planners started building in architectural requirements," he said, pointing to limits on vinyl siding that prohibited its use on the fronts of houses while requiring brick or banned it outright.
"In my view, vinyl siding had a negative perception with planners because they associated it with sprawl," Dobson said. "It had nothing to do with sprawl except that it was a popular at the time. In the sprawl era, people saw cornfields filled with vinyl-sided houses and they associated that with a bad architectural feel."Success in North Carolina
In North Carolina, the planning requirements for housing went far beyond banning or limiting vinyl siding. Dobson said builders were required to have three-car garages, a certain number of front windows and specific landscaping, shutters and porch sizes.
"We estimated that it added $10,000 to $20,000, maybe more, to the cost of housing," Dobson said. "The homebuilders got upset because local government is now dictating what the market should be dictating."
Vinyl siding advocates shot back with information about the cladding's innovations, such as multiple attachment points to create wind resistance that exceeds 110 mph and advanced UV coatings that resist fading and help dark colors stay vibrant.
Still, in places such as Holly Springs and Apex, Dobson said vinyl siding wasn't allowed in certain conditional zoning areas, where growth that could boost the tax base was expected and the perception of vinyl siding was negative.
"We'd try to educate planners," Dobson said. "We showed them a design guide about how the product can be applied correctly. We told them how its life has increased dramatically over the years due to coextrusion. We told them about product improvements to hold color, even darker colors, which are guaranteed through a product certification program."
Overall, it took about three years of meetings and presentations before North Carolina passed a bill that clarified the state's existing law and rolled back design requirements expensive to homebuilders and buyers. The bill cleared the Senate 43-7 and House 98-17 with bipartisan support.Opposition in Georgia
Dobson and Fernandez expect a tougher challenge in Georgia, where restrictions are more widespread and home rule is a bigger consideration than it was in North Carolina.
Fernandez said the Carrollton ordinance provision was similar to what other Georgia communities have in place.
"They don't hide it," Fernandez said. "When I tell you it's a ban, literally it says we are banning vinyl siding and that's the end of the discussion."
At the state level, VSI is ready to discuss all issues related to vinyl siding, some of which is manufactured in Georgia but can't be used everywhere there.
Like in North Carolina, the proposed bill for Georgia carves out exceptions for historic districts, manufactured homes, the national flood insurance program, and covenants between property owners and homeowner's associations.
"We feel fairly confident the legislation will pass it this year," Dobson said. "We have good allies with the homebuilders and Realtors and the American Chemistry Council is giving us a hand."
Vinyl siding withstands precipitation, wind and severe temperatures in mountain climates without warping, rotting or needing to be painted. Photo courtesy of the Vinyl Siding Institute Inc.
https://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20190130/NEWS/190139984/builders-trade-group-fight-local-vinyl-siding-bans

Return to headline | Return to top

TSCA News

NGOs See 'Tremendous Opportunities’ Following US Midterms

Jan 31, 2019 | Chemical Watch

By Lisa Martine Jenkins

NGOs are cautiously optimistic for the year ahead, saying the Democrats’ control of the US House of Representatives will allow for more oversight of the EPA’s activities.
In several interviews with Chemical Watch, environmental advocacy groups said that TSCA implementation has been swayed in industry’s favour since the Trump administration began in January 2017 and the Republicans took control of both chambers of Congress.
But, following the midterm elections, power in the House has changed hands, meaning that the Energy and Commerce Committee (E&C) will have the chance to monitor and inquire into the EPA’s activities.
"I think that there are some tremendous opportunities in the House of Representatives for oversight over the agency," said Liz Hitchcock, acting director for Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families (SCHF). "I think the new leadership of E&C will certainly spend time on [this]."TSCA implementation concerns
Over the past two years, NGOs have loudly protested how the EPA is implementing changes to TSCA, brought about by passage of the 2016 Lautenberg Act.
TSCA implementation has "gone off the rails", wrote Richard Denison, lead senior scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), in a blogpost this month. The EPA’s current approach is not what was intended or required by Congress’ 2016 compromise, he added.
But the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) Daniel Rosenberg, said that political shifts could help change the course: "It’s valuable to have members of Congress in the majority who share our views on how to interpret the law and who don’t prioritise protecting whatever anti-regulatory and anti-science agenda that the chemical industry is pushing."
Whether new toxics office head Alexandra Dunn will have a bearing on the way chemicals are reviewed is also an open question, added Mr Rosenberg. Ms Dunn, who was unanimously confirmed in the last Congress, said at her nomination hearing that she was committed to bringing TSCA to "full effect".
Mr Rosenberg pointed out, however, that it remains to be seen if her ideas of implementation align with those of the environmental NGO community.
Meanwhile, Ms Hitchcock and others expressed concern over what information is being reviewed in the reformed law’s first ten risk assessments, which are due to be finalised by December.
For instance, she said, the draft risk evaluation for pigment violet 29 excluded certain forms of land, water and air discharge from its exposure calculations, which SCHF believes led to artificially low conclusions of the substance’s risk.
And SCHF is concerned that the narrowed scope of these early draft evaluations will set a precedent that will be carried into the next 20 high-priority chemicals, which will be assessed beginning in 2020.
Mr Rosenberg and Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group (EWG), largely concur with Ms Hitchcock.
"It’s time for Congress to stop the Trump team from ‘cooking the books’ to underestimate the threat posed by chemicals," said Mr Faber.Chemicals of concern
The NGO community is also focused on specific chemicals of concern, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and paint strippers containing methylene chloride. The EPA has delayed a rule restricting the use of the latter, prompting public health advocates to file a lawsuit against the agency.
However, despite concerns with the trajectory of the EPA under the Trump administration, Mr Rosenberg retains some optimism: "The tide of support for policies that protect the public will continue to rise in 2019 and into 2020 as well."
https://chemicalwatch.com/73739/ngos-see-tremendous-opportunities-following-us-midterms

Return to headline | Return to top
Pentagon Approach to OEL for Trichlorethylene Set to Be Scrutinised

Jan 31, 2019 | Chemical Watch

A proposed approach put forward by the US defence department for developing an occupational exposure level for trichlorethylene (TCE) is set to come under scrutiny.
The National Academies of Sciences (NAS) has appointed a provisional committee to examine the proposal, which also includes developing a TCE cancer slope factor, to estimate the risk of cancer for situations in which vapour intrusion is the exposure pathway.
A NAS statement says important elements of the committee’s review will include:the data selection process;evidence synthesis;dose-response assessments;the use of physiologically based pharmacokinetic models; andother factors associated with calculating an OEL.
The eight member committee is provisional, pending a 20-day consultation that ends on 14 February.
TCE is included in the first ten existing chemicals that are undergoing risk evaluation under the TSCA.
Until recently it had also been the subject of two proposed TSCA section 6 rules. Section 6 gives the EPA power to ban or restrict a chemical if it finds it presents an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment.
The rules had been issued in the final days of the Obama administration, with the intention of banning the substance’s use in vapour degreasing, as an aerosol degreaser and as a spot cleaner. However last December the EPA signalled it was shelving the TCE proposals.
https://chemicalwatch.com/73843/pentagon-approach-to-oel-for-trichlorethylene-set-to-be-scrutinised

Return to headline | Return to top

Chemical Management News

(ACC Mentioned) OECD Report Proposes Global Restricted Substances List for Plastics

Jan 31, 2019 | Chemical Watch

By Leigh Stringer

A report by the OECD is proposing the creation of a global manufacturing restricted substances list (MRSL) for plastics.
The report, Considerations and criteria for sustainable plastics from a chemicals perspective, says such a list could "support quality and consistency in recycling".
Primarily aimed at product designers, it sets out the discussions, outcomes and recommendations of a recent international workshop looking at the sustainable design of plastics.
Organised by the OECD and the Danish government, the 'Global Forum on Environment focusing on plastics in the circular economy – sustainable design of plastics from a chemicals perspective' took place in Denmark last year.
The report says the use of recycled plastic feedstock depends in part on the availability of its "known and appropriate quality".
"An effective system is needed to define the purity of recycled plastics, including grades, and to facilitate communication in the supply chain," the report adds.
In response to Chemicals Watch's request for more details on the proposal, the OECD said the idea has "not been further developed than what is in the report". This does not offer suggestions on who could lead on the development of the list.Feasibility
Commenting on the proposal, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) said the recycling of durable goods can be challenging due to a lack of collection and inefficiencies in separating plastics from other materials.
"With respect to MRSLs, there are examples of useful approaches to reporting substances in certain industries, particularly the Global Automotive Declarable Substances List (Gadsl), on which ACC collaborates with global OEMs [original equipment manufacturers]," the ACC said.
Europe's chemicals industry association, Cefic, said it is still developing its position on the idea.
"All known constituents of plastic products should be disclosed in order to ensure informed decisions by manufacturers, consumers, authorities and other stakeholders along the supply chain, including waste managers and, in particular, recyclers," said Dolores Romano of NGO the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).
Ms Romano told Chemical Watch a global RSL for plastics substances would help "companies producing and marketing plastic articles avoid the most toxic chemicals, improving the safety for consumers and the environment".
Furthermore, she said, all known constituents of plastic products should be disclosed in order to ensure informed decisions by manufacturers, consumers, authorities and other stakeholders along the supply chain, including waste managers and, in particular, recyclers.
"We do believe it is feasible for the plastic industry to establish a global MRSL, the same as the textiles industry has done [through the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) programme], despite also having a very complex supply chain," Ms Romano added.
She said avoiding the presence of toxic chemicals in plastic articles will also increase the quality and safety of recycled plastic materials, and therefore the confidence of companies and consumers in them.Next steps
The idea of a global list is among other 'recommended next steps', presented in the OECD's report, that aim to encourage product designers, as well as brand owners and policy makers, to increase the use of sustainable plastics. These include:addressing global products and geographic differences;understanding how considerations and criteria for sustainable plastics relate to the intended longevity and durability of different plastic materials and products; andmore information on the quality, composition and recyclability of plastics.
The OECD’s report says that databases and tools, such as product passports, are needed to provide information on constituents in recycled plastics.
However, each country "should not set up different databases", it says.
The report highlights the automotive industry's Gadsl list as "a good model for supply chain information that could be adopted for plastic products and constituents". This lists substances that are expected to be present in a material or part that remains in a vehicle at the point of sale. It was developed to create a "single, globally harmonised list" for the sector.
The report says that the OECD could help with the identification, development and improvement of tools for assessing the toxicity of plastic materials.
It suggests the report's recommendations are turned into a guidance document and that taskforces or small working groups could start the process.
https://chemicalwatch.com/73839/oecd-report-proposes-global-restricted-substances-list-for-plastics

Return to headline | Return to top
EPA Faces New State Pressure To Tighten Assessment Of PFAS Risks

Jan 30, 2019 | Inside EPA

By Maria Hegstad

EPA is facing pressure from states and water utilities to tighten its assessment of the risks posed by a pair of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) substances, known as GenX and PFBS, intensifying pressure on the agency to step up its oversight of the broad class of chemicals in part as a way to harmonize state standards.
In recent comments, states including Michigan and Minnesota questioned aspects of EPA's draft assessments of the two substances and urged the agency to provide better explanations for decisions that made the assessments less strict than EPA could have been.
“These two documents come at a critical time for environmental and epidemiological [PFAS] investigations, not only in Michigan where 37 sites of PFAS contamination have been identified, but across the nation,” states Jan. 22 comments from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ).
Michigan, as well as Minnesota also questioned some of the methodological and other choices that EPA made in the draft analyses that make the resulting risk estimates less stringent.
As one example, Michigan questions EPA's use of uncertainty factors (UFs), default factors used to address known areas of uncertainty in chemical analyses, generally for non-cancer effects.
Such comments come as EPA is facing a firestorm of criticism over its apparent decision to refrain from setting an enforceable drinking water standard for perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), two of the most ubiquitous PFAS substances, though as Inside EPA has reported, the agency is weighing a series of other steps.
For example, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), a member of the Senate environment committee, has voiced concerns about EPA's decision, raising doubts that acting EPA Administration Andrew Wheeler's nomination will clear the closely divided panel.
EPA's draft assessments for the two substances, released last year, appeared to continue a patchwork approach that has developed as states have crafted their own risk and regulatory standards in the absence of EPA action. For example, EPA's GenX assessment adopted stricter values that North Carolina recently adopted while its values for PFBS were weaker than those Minnesota adopted.
House Democrats have already signaled they plan to conduct vigorous oversight of how EPA approved GenX and other second generation PFAS.
But now states are urging EPA to strengthen its assessment of the two substances as a way to harmonize approaches.
“It is understood that the PFAS family of emerging chemical contaminants of public health concern have not been fully studied. … Federal PFAS toxicity benchmarks can facilitate a more harmonized national risk assessment standard, reducing inconsistencies that have been established by multiple agencies with different priorities,” Michigan says in its comments.
Michigan also urges EPA to fund or conduct further research into the chemicals' toxicity, arguing that EPA has only limited data available, and much of it is proprietary, conducted by its manufacturers. “The majority of [the GenX] data was submitted to EPA by DuPont under the Toxic Substances Control Act [TSCA]. As such, these studies and data therein did not undergo the robust scientific peer review typical of studies in the published literature,” the state says.
MDEQ writes that the draft documents “identified multiple data needs for these two PFAS,” and suggests that EPA conduct “a focused literature review in the likelihood that studies that address these data gaps are newly available before finalization of the toxicity value documents.”
Drinking Water Standards
Michigan, like many states and lawmakers, also calls on EPA to address uncertainty and variation in jurisdictions' drinking water standards by setting national standards based on the assessments, as well as conducting assessments and setting standards for other members of the PFAS family.
“MDEQ also encourages the EPA to take the next appropriate steps and use these GenX and PFBS toxicity values to conduct comprehensive risk assessments and apply this information in establishing national drinking water standards protective of all users of this resource. In addition, the MDEQ supports the EPA in the development of toxicity values for additional members of the PFAS chemical family commonly used and found in the environment. Adoption of the final GenX and PFBS toxicity values by the EPA [IRIS] and the subsequent development of any appropriate Regional Screening Levels (RSLs) would also facilitate addressing environmental releases of these chemicals.”
Drinking water utilities also say EPA is not doing enough to assess and address PFAS risks. The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority (CFPUA), a water utility in southeastern North Carolina that utilizes the Cape Fear River, which in recent years has been found to contain GenX, welcomes the draft assessments but says in its comments that drinking water providers need testing capabilities, regulatory guidance, and treatment goals for comprehensive PFAS reduction. Focusing on GenX, PFBS, PFOA, and PFOS, without considering other PFAS, is not sufficient to protect drinking water supplies and the environment. This information would allow utilities to assess their current treatment capabilities and design effective upgrades.”
CFPUA calls on EPA to make “draft toxicity assessments ... available for all additional PFAS that have been found in the Cape Fear River. Existing toxicity assessments must be updated to include the impact of exposure to multiple PFAS compounds at once. ... EPA should continue its risk assessments for a much wider range of PFAS compounds, and work to quickly and effectively turn that information into a regulatory framework protective of public health and the environment.”
The Association of State Drinking Water Administrators (ASDWA) makes similar recommendations in its Jan. 22 comments, before adding that EPA could better choose PFAS chemicals for assessment that are more commonly found across the country before beginning future assessments. The group urges EPA to “move forward in a timely manner to assess the health risks from additional PFAS ... and that any future toxicity assessments for PFAS and/or unregulated compounds be prioritized through a stakeholder process.”
The groups recommends that such a prioritization process “should be based on criteria that consider the prevalence of the compounds throughout the entire U.S., and potential health impacts, and that includes stakeholder engagement. ASDWA believes that the occurrence and prevalence of GenX and PFBS are not likely to be significant from a public health perspective for many states and water systems across the nation, and that perhaps it may have been more helpful if EPA had instead conducted these toxicity assessments for other PFAS compounds such as PFNA, PFHxS, and PFHpA.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-faces-new-state-pressure-tighten-assessment-pfas-risks

Return to headline | Return to top
EPA’s Inaction Puts Drinking Water at Risk, Complaint Says

Jan 30, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Daniel Seiden and David Schultz

The EPA’s failure to enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act has put the public at an unacceptable risk, three environmental groups assert in a new complaint.
The Environmental Protection Agency has continually missed the deadlines to revise regulations on drinking water contaminants as they were laid out by Congress in the 1990s, the environmentalists told the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
These contaminants include everything from dry cleaning chemicals that can cause cancer to bacteria such as legionella or giardia.
The Safe Drinking Water Act requires the agency to review and update its regulations for these contaminants every six years, but the environmentalists said it is “perpetually behind schedule in virtually all phases” of its implementation of this law.
The plaintiffs in this case, who are represented by the Super Law Group LLC, are asking the court to force the EPA to make definitive yes-or-no determinations as to whether it should tighten its regulations on these contaminants and whether it should establish new regulations for other currently unregulated substances.
The costs of complying with any new drinking water regulations would fall squarely on water utilities and their customers, Tracy Mehan, head of government affairs with the American Water Works Association, said, and even if the plaintiffs in this suit are successful it may not result in new regulations.
He said courts in these types of deadline lawsuits typically don’t force EPA to take a specific action, they “just set a time in which the agency has to make a decision.”
The plaintiffs in the case are Waterkeeper Alliance Inc., Waterkeepers Chesapeake Inc., and California Coastkeeper Alliance—organizations that focus on keeping bodies of water “swimmable, fishable, and drinkable,” the complaint says.
The EPA declined to comment, citing pending litigation, EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones said.
The case is Waterkeeper All. Inc. v. EPA, S.D.N.Y., No. 19-00899, 1/30/19.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epas-inaction-puts-drinking-water-at-risk-complaint-says-1

Return to headline | Return to top
Environmentalists Sue EPA Over SDWA Delays

Jan 30, 2019 | Inside EPA

Environmentalists have followed through on their threat to sue EPA over the agency's failure to meet statutory deadlines to review and revise existing drinking water standards for a dozen chemical and biological contaminants as well as its failure to develop new standards, charging the violations creates substantial risk of harm.
The groups filed their suit, Waterkeeper Alliance, et al. v. EPA, Jan. 30 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, making claims under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) and the Administrative Procedure Act. The complaint follows a notice of intent to sue the groups sent EPA in November.
“EPA’s failure to implement the SDWA as envisioned by Congress -- by reviewing and revising drinking water regulations, and identifying and regulating contaminants of emerging concern, within statutorily-mandated time frames -- threatens water quality, water safety, and human health, and puts Plaintiffs’ members and millions of others at substantial risk of harm,” the complaint says.
The suit asks the court to declare that EPA has “ unlawfully failed to revise” the drinking water regulations for strontium, tetrachloroethylene (PCE), trichloroethylene (TCE), chlorite, cryptosporidium, haloacetic acids, heterotrophic bacteria, Giardia lamblia, Legionella, total trihalomethanes and viruses, as well as to make a revise/no revise determination for the contaminants.
Additionally, the groups ask the court to declare EPA has failed to review and revise the drinking water standard for chromium to address known risk from hexavalent chromium (Cr6), as well as to declare that EPA's decision that total chromium regulation is not appropriate for revision “at this time” is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and otherwise not in accordance with law.
The litigation also asks the court to find EPA has unlawfully missed deadline to complete its fourth regulatory determination of which currently unregulated contaminants may need regulation and has unlawfully missed the deadline to issue the fifth contaminant candidate list (CCL).
SDWA requires EPA to publish a CCL every five years and then determine whether or not to regulate at least five contaminants from the CCL in a separate process called regulatory determinations. The environmentalists say that if EPA was meeting the every-five-years timeline in SDWA, the fifth CCL should have been published by Feb. 6, 2018. EPA announced Oct. 5 that it was requesting nominations of chemicals, microbes, or other materials for consideration on the CCL5, with a deadline of Dec. 4, meaning it would be 2019 before the agency even proposed the CCL5
Similarly, the groups say the agency should have been through four regulatory determination cycles by now but has only made three determination decisions, with the most recent occurring in December 2016, violating the timeline laid out in SDWA.
“EPA’s pattern of non-compliance with the SDWA demonstrates that the agency lacks effective internal governance mechanisms to ensure that the mandatory statutory deadlines imposed by this important health and safety legislation are met,” the complaint says before asking the court to set new deadlines for all of the mandatory actions.
Absent court intervention, EPA's revision of the total chromium national primary drinking water regulation may be delayed until 2039 or later, which would be almost 50 years after the regulation was promulgated, more than 40 years after the agency revised its health risk assessment in 1998, and more than 35 years after EPA stated that revision of the chromium regulation “'may be appropriate,' all while millions of people consume highly toxic hexavalent chromium in their drinking water on a daily basis,” the groups say.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/environmentalists-sue-epa-over-sdwa-delays

Return to headline | Return to top
EPA's Reported PFAS Decision Raises GOP Senator's Concerns

Jan 30, 2019 | Inside EPA

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), a member of the Senate environment committee, is expressing concern about Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler's reported decision to refrain from setting enforceable drinking water standards for perfluorinated compounds, raising doubts that Wheeler's nomination will clear the closely divided panel.
“I'm concerned about what he thinks the reasoning is for how we're going to get to a safer water standard if that's not the direction they go. I think I need a fuller explanation from him,” she told Politico.
Capito, whose home state faces contamination from per- and polyflouroalkyl substances (PFAS), could be a critical vote for Wheeler's pending nomination in the Senate environment committee, where Republicans enjoy an 11-10 majority. As such, any GOP vote against Wheeler in committee would kill the nomination.
Capito's comments come in the wake of a report that EPA has decided not to set enforceable drinking water standards for perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), two of the most ubiquitous PFAS substances, though as Inside EPA has reported, the agency is weighing a series of other steps.
While EPA water chief David Ross in a statement released Jan. 29 tried to dissuade any speculation over an as-of-yet unannounced decision over whether EPA will go forward with the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) standards, he did not deny the report. Any information speculating on EPA's forthcoming plan for PFAS is “premature,” he said, noting its draft national plan on PFAS is currently in interagency review. “The agency is committed to following the [SDWA] process for evaluating new drinking water standards, which is just one of many components of the draft plan."
Capito has long been viewed as playing a key role on EPA nominees because of a high-profile release of PFAS from a DuPont manufacturing facility in West Virginia, a factor that may have contributed to the eventual withdrawal of the Trump administration's first nominee to lead EPA's toxics office.
Her concerns in the context of Wheeler's nomination could force the agency to reconsider any decision or offer additional commitments to address Capito's concerns.
The report that EPA has decided not to set SDWA maximum contaminant levels for the two substances is also drawing concerns from Democrats. Leaders on the House Energy & Commerce Committee wrote Wheeler Jan. 29renewing a request they made to his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, for additional information on the role of EPA political appointees in hampering the release of a toxicological profile conducted by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR) on several PFAS.
ATSDR eventually released the profile, which set minimum risk levels for several substances at levels more conservative than those EPA had used when setting its drinking water advisory levels for the same chemicals.
In the letter, House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), along with subcommittee chairmen Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Paul Tonko (D-NY), say EPA never provided documents or substantive answers to a previous May 21 request asking for EPA's role in blocking the ATSDR study.
“EPA documents released appear to show that political appointees engaged with political staff at the White House to impede plans” by ATSDR to release the toxicological profile, they write, referencing an email chain that included a warning from an unknown official saying DOD and EPA cannot seem to convince ATSDR of the “public relations nightmare” that would come from the release of its assessment.
“We are deeply concerned that these actions appear to indicate that politics, and potentially industry interests, are being placed before public health, particularly in light of reports that EPA has decided to not set a drinking water limit for several toxic chemicals,” the lawmakers write.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epas-reported-pfas-decision-raises-gop-senators-concerns

Return to headline | Return to top
PFAS Chemicals Pass Through the Placenta to Fetal Tissues Throughout Pregnancy

Jan 30, 2019 | News-Medical.net

By Felicia Lindberg

In a study published in Environment International researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden show how PFAS industrial chemicals, which are used in many consumer products, pass through the placenta throughout pregnancy to accumulate in fetal tissue. Further research is now needed to ascertain the effect that highly persistent PFAS chemicals have on the fetus.
The PFAS (perfluoroalkyl substances) group comprises thousands of human-made chemicals, which, thanks to their water- and grease-resistant properties, are used in everything from frying pans and food packaging to clothes, cleaning agents and firefighting foams.
"We've focused on six of these PFAS substances and found that all appear to the same extent in fetal tissue as in the placenta," says Richelle Duque Björvang, doctoral student at the Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology, Karolinska Institutet. "So when the baby is born, it already has a build-up of these chemicals in the lungs, liver, brain, and elsewhere in the body."
PFAS levels were highest in the lung and liver tissue, in some cases as high as in adults, and lowest in the brain. The study included tissue samples from 78 embryos and fetuses aged 7 to 42 weeks, sourced from biobanks in Sweden and Denmark.
Amongst the six PFAS substances studied were PFOS and PFOA, which are the best known. PFOS was banned by the EU in 2008, and at the start of the year the European Food Safety Authority sharpened its appraisal of PFOS and PFOA and lowered the tolerable daily intake thousandfold.
"This shows how important it is for more research to be done on the health effects of different chemicals, especially in the longer term," says Pauliina Damdimopoulou, senior researcher at the Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology. "Today's threshold values are based on an adult population rather than fetuses, which are much more susceptible."
The accumulation of PFAS substances was also higher in male fetuses than female.
"We know that there are slight differences in the function of the placenta depending on the sex of the fetus, which is something we need to do more studies on in relation to impact on fetal chemical exposures," says Dr Damdimopoulou. "We also need to find out what effects these substances have on different fetal organs."
PFAS substances have been used since the early 1900s and are ubiquitous in our environment.
"The main source of PFAS substances today is food, in the form of fish, milk, meat and eggs, or in the drinking water, if you happen to live in a polluted area," continues Dr Damdimopoulou. "We ingest them as a cocktail of substances that can also interact with each other. It would be in line with the precautionary principle in the restriction of chemical substances to make sure that all PFAS substances disappear from our society."
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20190130/PFAS-chemicals-pass-through-the-placenta-to-fetal-tissues-throughout-pregnancy.aspx

Return to headline | Return to top
Erin Brockovich’s Town Is Still Toxic—and Nearly Abandoned

Jan 31, 2019 | Grist (In Mother Jones)

By Max Genecov

It was a sweltering, 117-degree July day in Hinkley, California. The surface of the 13-mile highway east to Barstow had become an asphalt skillet, and the town’s lone recreational feature, a children’s playscape, stood shining and unused like a monument to the lofty melting point of low-density polyethylene. Residents here appreciate the dry, desert landscape—that’s why many moved to Hinkley in the first place—but on days like this everyone takes refuge indoors, curtains drawn against the view of empty lots where neighbors’ houses once stood. Along the empty roads, thousands of pipe stubs—groundwater monitoring wells installed by Pacific Gas and Electric—began to look like air vents to some underground bunker where most everyone in town had retreated.
Despite the oppressive weather, a small group of residents had gathered at the community center for a workshop on bioremediation, basically how to remove chemical contamination from their land and water. These workshops are a regular occurrence here and broach topics like isotope analysis, well testing techniques, and the best ways to navigate the political machinations between oversight organizations. Hinkley-dwellers’ interest in these subjects is more based on survival than scientific curiosity; they want to make sure no one can pull the wool over their eyes again.
Hinkley is still best known as the “Erin Brockovich town.” In 1996 a group of residents famously won a massive direct-action arbitration against Pacific Gas and Electric with the help of Brockovich, a savvy single mom and Los Angeles legal clerk. The utility company was found liable for dumping hexavalent chromium (aka chromium-6), a carcinogen used to suppress rust formation at the Hinkley gas compressor station, into an unlined pond in the ’50s and ’60s. The chemical seeped into the town’s groundwater. PG&E hid the crisis and misled the community on the effects of that specific type of chromium and its possible connection to health problems in the town.
At the time it was settled, the Hinkley case was the largest payout ever awarded for a direct action lawsuit. Environmental advocates lauded the decision. And of course, the story became an Oscar-winning movie starring Julia Roberts.
For many people, that’s where the town’s story ends. They probably imagine that Hinkley is now peppered with big houses paid for by the plaintiffs’ hefty award. In reality, all that remains in town today is a few clusters of homes, a scrapyard, a community center, a dairy, and the infamous PG&E station that connects to the vast natural gas pipeline system.
To call Hinkley a ghost town would be misleading; ghost towns have abandoned buildings. But PG&E bought most of the homes in Hinkley on contaminated land and bulldozed them to avoid squatters. Successive rounds of real estate buyouts have reduced the population to less than half of what it was in 2012. Even with ongoing cleanup efforts, hexavalent chromium haunts the town—potential new residents know Hinkley’s history, and those still there fear the ever-present threat of further deception or mismanagement in the remediation process.
For those remaining in Hinkley, either by choice or by circumstance, to continue on, they need to know what’s going on with their water.Just when you thought it was safe
Penny Harper moved part-time to Hinkley from Los Angeles in 1974, buying 10 acres of land as a “weekend retreat where there was no smog or traffic or people.” She would bring gallons of water back to LA from the well on her land. She was told the water didn’t have to be cleaned with the scores of various chemicals used at big city water treatment facilities. Once she found a decent job in the Hinkley area, she moved there full-time.
That was 1995 — a year before the settlement with PG&E.
“I had no idea that the water was contaminated,” said Harper.
Many of her neighbors were part of the class in the famous PG&E lawsuit. After the lawyers took their half or so of the $330 million arbitration settlement, the remaining money was distributed haphazardly among the 633 plaintiffs, who represented only about 30 percent of Hinkley’s residents at the time. However triumphant that judgment felt to the plaintiffs or, later on, for movie audiences, the money went to individuals, not the town. There was no certainty that Hinkley itself would survive.
Harper was studying nursing when she moved to Hinkley, and she says she is still interested in “health and body cleansing.” Now, that means she eats lots of leafy green vegetables and drinks water that she distills herself after running it through two reverse-osmosis machines.
Harper doesn’t live near Hinkley’s compressor station, but she has good reason to be cautious. Around 2010, another resident, Carmela Gonzalez, found an increase in chromium-6 in her water during a routine test. Subsequent scientific detective work led her to conclude that the original, underground chromium-6 plume had grown in the roughly 15 years after the PG&E settlement. The new plume stretched several miles from the original contamination site, affecting more than 100 additional property owners.
That discovery initiated a second round of fights with the utility, which launched additional cleanup efforts and offered buyouts to residents living within the new plume. Again, the town’s population shrunk.
The settlement might have worked out for some people, but it didn’t help the town. Sure, some people who received enough to offset the loss of their property values and pay for their chromium-related medical bills were able to move. Everyone else had to deal with the buyouts and the slow drain of the town where life is not just tenuous but vanishing.
As Hinkley resident Roberta Walker put it, “it gets to where you don’t even want to replace your freaking toilet seat because you might be selling it tomorrow. You just let everything go. We put everything on hold.”The high price of staying put
Deciding whether to wait out the cleanup or take a buyout is a numbers game — residents have to weigh how much they have left on their mortgage, how much PG&E is offering, and whether they think the cleanup will take longer than their own lifetimes.
A PG&E feasibility study in 2014 found that eliminating nearly all the chromium from some of the hardest hit areas of Hinkley could take anywhere between 11 and 50 years. The 2015 Cleanup and Abatement Order—in which the local Lahontan Water Board laid out orders for PG&E after the discovery that the chromium plume had grown—said 80 percent of the cleanup should be completed by 2032. None of the residents or experts in Hinkley dared to mention concrete timelines for the cleanup. In the meantime, their property is deemed uninsurable wasteland.
PG&E offered to buy every house within and on the edge of the plume. The offers varied, but many took the utility’s deal, opting to cut their losses and move. As it stands, PG&E currently owns about two-thirds of all the property in town. The buyouts further sapped Hinkley of its future vitality, adding insult to the injury of the chromium-6 contamination.
“A lot of people sold in a panic,” said Barbara Ray, a Hinkley resident who commutes to Barstow for her job as a teacher. Some of Ray’s former neighbors tell her that they regret selling their homes; that they miss the small-town feel of Hinkley’s former community. Ray says PG&E offered her less than the cost of her mortgage for her home, so she declined—not that she entirely minds staying. “I love getting out of the city. My traffic sometimes is getting stuck behind a hay-wagon.”
Beyond the secondary plume’s radius, much of the water in Hinkley is clean of chromium-6 (though other naturally occurring contaminants like lead and uranium remain a concern). The chromium-6 plume only extends so far from the PG&E station, drifting north with flows coming off of the underground Mojave River. The current plume map represents the progression of 60 years of seepage—and more than 25 years of residents rallying to push it back.
The people of Hinkley have been instrumental in holding PG&E accountable for the cleanup, with neighbors acting as their own political agents and scientific experts. “I was the one who went door to door, knocking door to door telling people this is what I found,” said Roberta Walker. In the ’90s she collected much of the nuts-and-bolts information about the chromium-6 leak that was attributed to Erin Brockovich in the movie adaptation of the town’s story. (Walker figured so prominently in the story of Hinkley that, in its dramatization, she says her actions were spread over five characters.)
Residents don’t know when the town will get back to having healthy chromium-6 levels, or if it’ll ever become economically stable again. The county tax assessor has devalued property wholesale throughout the town. For instance, Walker’s property went from $800,000 in 2012 to $32,000.
But one thing is certain: For Hinkley to endure, the people who remain must navigate a complex network of stakeholders—including working with the company who poisoned their water in the first place.Bad blood and good water
When it comes to the ongoing water cleanup, Raudel Sanchez is the man in the middle. As the project manager of Project Navigator, the environmental management and consulting firm hired to act as the remediation plan’s independent review panel, Sanchez’s job was originally to interface with community members and the now-defunct community advisory committee, made up of residents and PG&E representatives. Sanchez arrived in 2012, but it was the 2015 Cleanup and Abatement Order—made in response to the plume’s growth—that formalized Project Navigator. Sanchez’s remit is to facilitate clarity more than sympathy.
After all, people in Hinkley don’t need a shoulder to cry on; they need resources.
Sanchez and his team write bimonthly informational newsletters for residents and hold quarterly meetings and ad hoc one-on-ones with community members. They analyze, present, and organize the community’s response to the Water Board’s orders, PG&E reports, U.S. Geological Survey analyses, and other technical materials related to the chromium-6 remediation. In short, there’s a lot for Project Navigator to navigate.
Prior to the introduction of Sanchez’s group, PG&E had its own representative that dealt with Hinkley residents. According to Daron Banks, Roberta Walker’s son, the PG&E rep was “a nice guy,” but his niceness seemed like a tactic to stymie complaints about the remediation’s progress.
As for Sanchez and his associates, their independent role is key to their success in town.
“I believe them when they tell me something—that’s not the way it is with everybody,” Penny Harper said of Project Navigator. “I think they made the lying and the two-facedness of PG&E more obvious.”
Years of bad blood between PG&E and Hinkley residents have nurtured a healthy cache of conspiracy theories, making combating misinformation and distrust a part of Sanchez’s job. At the July community workshop, Sanchez gently rebuked a resident who claimed that PG&E had been putting something into his well to attenuate chromium-6 levels.
Sanchez lives in Los Angeles but makes trips out to Hinkley multiple times a week, often with other team members. They operate out of a house given to them by a community advisory committee member who moved out of Hinkley. What used to be the living room is filled with scientific explanatory charts and dioramas used to illustrate answers to residents’ technical questions during Project Navigator’s office hours.
In July, Sanchez showed me a new diorama—a map showing the age of water in various wells at two depths—to determine the spread of the chromium-6 plume. The map showed that unusual radioactive isotopes of elements, which were created by nuclear tests in the 1940s, could be used as markers to determine whether water at various sites came from the same source. Since rare isotopes didn’t enter the atmosphere until the 1950s—coinciding with the beginning of the chromium-6 seepage—water and therefore chromium in those areas without them would have predated PG&E’s pollution. Other chemical tracers were able to date other water samples to more recent decades.
It sounds technical, but residents want the same information that scientists working in the area would have. The Water Board established the independent review panel “to effectively participate in evaluating and understanding the technical aspects of cleanup actions.” Sanchez says his explanations of the science are necessary to keep Hinkley residents informed.
PG&E has held information sessions and tours of cleanup facilities for Hinkley residents, but it is notoriously tight-lipped with outsiders. PG&E declined inquiries for interviews and information requests for this article, responding only with the following emailed statement:
“We are committed to cleaning up the environment, protecting public health and safety, and working with the community to restore the land and water quality in Hinkley. We are working under the direction of the Lahontan Water Board (Water Board) to investigate and clean up groundwater affected by hexavalent chromium from historical operations at our Hinkley facility, and we are committed to completing the cleanup at Hinkley as quickly as possible. We have made significant progress and continue to work under the Water Board’s oversight to better define, manage and clean up the plume. We will remain focused on these efforts until the job is done.”Putting things right
Getting the job done, as PG&E puts it, isn’t easy. Here’s how the cleanup works: Pumps dot the low-concentration outskirts of the chromium-6 plume, taking water from these areas to drip irrigate the fields of distractingly green alfalfa that make up a large portion of what used to be Hinkley. Via natural biochemical processes, the alfalfa plants convert chromium-6 to the nutrient chromium-3. This agricultural technique keeps the chromium-6 plume from spreading or migrating.
At higher chromium-6 concentrations, so-called “in situ reactive zones” (IRZ) do the work. The IRZ pumps a mild water-ethanol mixture into the ground to feed naturally occurring microbes in the groundwater that consume the ethanol, lower the pH of the water, and allow chromium-6 to become the nutrient chromium-3 via a reduction reaction. No chromium-6 is actually removed from the water.
Found around the world, IRZ has been used full-scale in Hinkley since 2006. There are hundreds of wells around the compressor station, where chromium-6 levels still peak at over one thousand parts per billion, 100 times the state’s maximum contaminant level for the chemical compound.
Though the scale of the contamination is unprecedented for its type, the actual remediation technology that PG&E employs is pretty standard. It’s been effective at confining the plume to its current area and, over several decades, aims to reduce much of the chromium-6 to natural levels.
But there’s some debate as to what constitutes “natural levels” for the area. A PG&E study estimated Hinkley’s background level of chromium-6 (had the town not been contaminated by the compressor plant) to be 3.1 ppb. But many residents and some independent scientists disputed that number. They felt the study was too minor in scope to apply to a survey of several square miles. One scientist described the assessment as “the equivalent of what you would do for a gas station.”
But even a 3.1 ppb target could be a best-case scenario. The Water Board could also instruct PG&E to keep cleaning until they hit California’s former standard for chromium-6, a much higher 10 ppb. (That state standard was removed in 2017 after a judge ruled that the Department of Public Health had not considered whether it would be economically possible for local water agencies to comply.) Either way, residents have serious questions about the effort that they say the utility is either unable or unwilling to answer.
And there is another concern, though one that seems far off, at the moment: No one is sure what will happen once the requirements the Water Board sets are met, and the IRZ pumps are turned off. Once the incredibly high concentrations of chromium-6 found near the compressor station are converted into chromium-3, it’s not clear they’ll stay that way. Once the pH settles, it could revert to its toxic state.
When Hinkley residents went looking for answers, they were told the science existed to find out, but no one had done those experiments yet. So the townspeople set out to find a scientist.We won’t take no for an answer
If Hollywood ever makes a sequel to Erin Brockovich, it might be about how the town of Hinkley recruited a world-renowned United States Geological Survey hydrologist to its side.
To keep the town alive, Hinkley residents needed to find answers—to the timeline of the remediation, to the effectiveness of the chromium-6 to chromium-3 conversion, to the town’s survival. So they scoured relevant scientific papers and came upon the work of John Izbicki.
Izbicki was the perfect person to answer their questions—he had worked on chromium levels in groundwater throughout the Mojave Desert. Daron Banks heard someone at a community board meeting call him “the God of water.” So Hinkley residents began contacting him at “six-month, eight-month intervals,” he says, asking him questions about chromium. After a couple years of such correspondence, Izbicki offered to come out himself to explain “a few things that should be done.”
He’s been on board to help ever since.
By Izbicki’s visit in 2012, he says it was already clear that PG&E’s background study—the one that had determined the background levels of chromium-6 to be 3.1 ppb — “had been a failure.” While he noted that the data taken by the utility’s scientists was top quality, Izbicki disagreed with the company’s interpretation of the results.
PG&E is not “always happy when I tell them that [their work] is not correct,” he said.
In the residents’ eyes, Izbicki has one primary goal: to put a definitive number on the natural, “baseline” state of chromium-6 in the Hinkley Valley. They hope that number will be unimpeachable, not just to them, but to the Water Board.
With so much riding on Izbicki’s research, he’s become a kind of local celebrity. “Next to my dad, I don’t think there’s another man I admire more,” Banks said.
The final report, which may restart and reorient the sociopolitical conversation about Hinkley, could come out as soon as summer 2019. The baseline concentration Izbicki arrives at will certainly be released by early 2020.
Izbicki recognizes Hinkley residents’ knowledge of water science and investment in their cause. “I never cease to be amazed at the competence of the questions that they ask,” he said. “Many of them are quite insightful and reflect years of what would be self-taught learning and dealing with issues like this.”
Still, no matter what Izbicki finds, there is fear that it is too late for Hinkley. The population is aging. Few people are moving in, and those who do chalk it up to financial necessity. Clear paths to stability are scarce.
For as much hope as Daron Banks has in Izbicki, he is extremely pessimistic about Hinkley. He figures the town will never get back to what it was. But he still holds out for justice. If PG&E isn’t held accountable, “all that will be left is the dairy and the alfalfa field,” he said.
Others aren’t ready to give up just yet. They feel they’ve worked too hard and beaten too many odds already. Even if the water is contaminated, their optimism is not. They rest their hopes on potential upgrades, like the still-functional-but-shuttered elementary school becoming an agricultural school, or a gas service station opening up on the newly renovated exit on the highway southwest to Lancaster.
All the uncertainty surrounding the cleanup — what baseline target the cleanup should use, how many years it will take to get there—is part of what many residents feel has prevented Hinkley from recovering. And now that PG&E has declared bankruptcy over last year’s California wildfires, it is unclear how that might also affect the terms of the Cleanup and Abatement Order in Hinkley. (A legal team pushing to keep PG&E from being allowed to declare bankruptcy includes Erin Brockovich.)
Izbicki doesn’t have all the answers, but he believes that providing at least some concrete details about the scope of the remediation “may be enough to revive parts of the community,” he said.
Assuming Izbicki’s work is accepted by PG&E and a concrete goal and timeline are set for the cleanup efforts, loyalists here think they can drum up local interest in the town. Maybe new folks will move in, they say. Or land values will be reassessed and their property will be worth something again.
It wouldn’t exactly be a Hollywood ending, but it would be better than no ending at all.
No matter what happens, Penny Harper is planning to ride out the remediation, even if it lasts the rest of her life. She says she will keep growing her vegetables for herself and for others, selling them at the monthly community breakfasts. She’s excited about the new pastor at the church.
“I figure I really like it where I am,” Harper said.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/01/erin-brockovichs-town-is-still-toxic-and-nearly-abandoned/

Return to headline | Return to top
Vermont Considering Changes to Children's Products Rule

Jan 31, 2019 | Chemical Watch

By Kelly Franklin

Vermont is considering changes to its children’s products reporting scheme, including expanding the list of reportable substances and establishing a process by which a chemical might be banned from products.
The state’s Chemicals of High Concern in Children's Products Rule – like similar schemes in Washington, Oregon and Maine – requires companies to disclose information biennially about products containing any of 66 substances of concern to the Vermont Department of Health.
Last week, the department notified stakeholders of a proposal, issued last autumn, to expand the list of reportable substances to include substances Washington added to its scheme in late 2017.
Unlike in Washington, though, Vermont is also seeking to add lead, and require reporting of "any chemical that is added [to a product] for a specific function (not a contaminant), which degrades to or releases" a listed chemical. And it has not called for the removal from its list of three substances that Washington deleted:phthalic anhydride;octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (D4); andmolybdenum.
These changes would bring the state’s list of reportable substances to 86.
The proposal also aims to establish a process under which the Commissioner can adopt a rule to regulate the sale or distribution of a children’s product, when "there is a probability" that exposure to a chemical of concern in it could could cause, or contribute to certain adverse health impacts. Creation of such a mechanism was called for in Act 188 – the 2014 law which authorised the programme.
Another significant amendment under consideration is to require only post-market reporting. Industry has said such a change is needed to ensure manufacturers do not need to continually report as new products are launched. However, concerns have been raised that such a change could result in products being on the market for as long as two years before consumers could determine what substances of concern they contain.
Meanwhile, the state is also looking to make clarifying changes around the unique – and controversial – requirement to report at a product-specific level.
In the programme’s first reporting period, it received more than a million reports. But consumer advocacy groups raised concern at the time that the use of product codes (UPCs) made it difficult for consumers to have a "meaningful way of getting the specific information they need" from the data.
Comments on the proposal will be accepted until 8 February. A public hearing is scheduled for 1 February.
https://chemicalwatch.com/73834/vermont-considering-changes-to-childrens-products-rule

Return to headline | Return to top
Alleged Scientific Misconduct Allowed in Roundup Cancer Trials

Jan 30, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Adam Allington

A federal court in California will allow disputed evidence relevant to hundreds of lawsuits over Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.
At a Jan. 28 hearing, Judge Vince Chhabria decided to permit evidence of Monsanto’s alleged attempts to “ghostwrite” scientific studies supporting the company’s claims that its glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide does not cause cancer.
Ghostwriting is the practice of writing scientific studies and paying outside scientists to list their names as authors on the final publication.
The evidentiary ruling relates to the first three roundup cases under a sprawling multidistrict litigation (MDL) of more than 600 cases overseen by Chhabria. Monsanto is now owned by Germany’s Bayer AG.
In a statement provided to Bloomberg Environment, the company said the plaintiff’s lawyers were “cherry-picking isolated emails out of a million pages of documents produced during discovery to attempt to distort the scientific record and Monsanto’s role.”
“The emails highlighted by plaintiffs are related to secondary literature review articles sponsored by Monsanto, not original studies or science. The Company’s sponsorship or participation is disclosed in each article,” it said.
A Bellwether Trial
The first case scheduled for trial is Edward Hardeman v. Monsanto Co., on Feb. 25, the plaintiff alleges his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma resulted from years of using Roundup on his property.
As this case is tried under the MDL, it could “send a signal to cases that follow as to the strength and weaknesses of cases to follow,” said Holly Froum, a litigation analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence.
The news that the court would allow evidence of ghostwriting comes after a Jan. 3 order in which Chhabria granted Monsanto’s request to split the case, with the first phase limited to facts relating to the cause of Hardeman’s cancer.
“A significant portion of the plaintiffs’ case involves attacks on Monsanto for attempting to influence regulatory agencies and manipulate public opinion regarding glyphosate,” Chhabria wrote in his decision.
“These issues are relevant to punitive damages and some liability questions. But when it comes to whether glyphosate caused a plaintiff’s NHL, these issues are mostly a distraction, and a significant one at that.”
Chhabria said a second phase of the litigation would address Bayer’s remaining liability and damage issues.
Email Evidence
In August, a jury in a California state court awarded $289 million (later reduced to $78 million) to Dewayne Lee Johnson, a school groundskeeper who claimed Roundup was a substantial factor in causing his terminal cancer.
Among the documents released in that trail were dozens of emails between Monsanto employees discussing, among other things, plans to have outside scientists sign their names to studies they hadn’t written, as well as emails discussing what journals might be open to publishing ghostwritten papers.
In federal court documents, attorneys for the plaintiffs said the Environmental Protection Agency’s own registration of glyphosate might be flawed as it relied heavily on several studies ghostwritten by Monsanto staff.
EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment about glyphosate’s safety.
Widely Studied Pesticide
Despite the allegations, glyphosate has long been one of the most common ingredients in herbicides used around the world, and approved for weed control on more than 100 crops in the U.S alone, according to Bayer.
Following its 2017 investigation, the European Food Safety Authority concluded that even if some allegations of ghostwriting did occur, it likely wouldn’t have changed the authority’s overall decision that glyphosate is safe for use.
“At no stage were EU experts assessing scientific studies produced, funded, or facilitated by industry without being aware of this connection,” according to a May 2017 statement.
Health Canada on Jan. 11 released its own statement following an investigation into the ghostwriting concerns, writing that, “No pesticide regulatory authority in the world currently considers glyphosate to be a cancer risk to humans at the levels at which humans are currently exposed.”
The first case is Hardeman v. Monsanto Co. et al, N.D. Cal., No. 3:16-cv-00525, 1/28/19.
The second case is Stevick et al v. Monsanto Co., N.D. Cal., No. 3:16-cv-02341, 1/28/19.
The third case is Gebeyehou v. Monsanto Co., N.D. Cal., No. 3:16-cv-05813, 1/28/19.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/alleged-scientific-misconduct-allowed-in-roundup-cancer-trials-1

Return to headline | Return to top
Industry Welcomes MPs Backing of Amendment Rejecting No-Deal Brexit

Jan 30, 2019 | Chemical Watch

By Luke Buxton

The UK chemicals industry has given a mixed response to the broad backing by British MPs of a parliamentary amendment that rejects the possibility of the country leaving the EU without a deal on 29 March.
The amendment was one of several debated on prime minister Theresa May’s EU withdrawal deal. The 29 January vote came just two weeks after that had been shot down.
However, it is not legally binding and means the UK crashing out of the single market and customs union is still a possibility.
Its success depends on Mrs May being able to win changes to the so-called ‘backstop’ – which prevents a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Meanwhile Brussels has said it will not renegotiate the deal.Industry reaction
Peter Newport, chief executive of the Chemical Business Association, said that following the vote the UK is no closer to achieving a solution to the Brexit process. "We welcome the fact that no deal, the worst possible outcome, has been rejected by Parliament." Though not binding, he added it does "indicate" a majority are against it.
"Despite the fact that we have been told by the EU that the withdrawal agreement is a closed book and cannot be renegotiated, Parliament has nevertheless voted to send the prime minister back to Brussels to re-open negotiations."
This, he said, looks like "the triumph of hope over experience". But, he added, the UK chemical supply chain is still facing commercial and regulatory uncertainty. "We can only continue to hope that any Brexit solution includes continued access to EU markets and the regulatory alignment that this requires."
Steve Elliott, chief executive of the Chemical Industries Association, struck a more optimistic tone, saying that Parliament has now "set a route to a workable trading future".
While there are still "different opinions", he said the majority of MPs has now delivered a view "on the sort of deal that the UK could accept. I welcome this and am pleased to see that the prospect of a no-deal outcome to our leaving the EU has significantly reduced, if not disappeared altogether. There is still a lot of work to do both in the UK and then with the EU. We and others will continue helping to get to an agreed deal."
But Kate Young, Brexit and chemicals campaigner at NGO CHEM Trust, said she is "alarmed at the continued lack of clarity" over the government’s position on Brexit. CHEM Trust has "severe concerns about the catastrophe of a no-deal scenario, particularly given the problems we see with the UK government’s plans for chemical regulation".
She reiterated that the "only way" to "properly" protect the environment and public health from hazardous chemicals is for the UK to stay in REACH, either by agreement in a trade deal or by remaining within the EU.
https://chemicalwatch.com/73841/industry-welcomes-mps-backing-of-amendment-rejecting-no-deal-brexit

Return to headline | Return to top

Energy News

(ACC Mentioned) US Petrochemical Market Grapples with Tariffs

Jan 30, 2019 | JOC.com

By Janet Nodar

Thanks to cheap shale gas, the US Gulf Coast has seen a surge in new and expanded petrochemical plants, pipelines, liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities, and other capital construction projects that have kept engineering, procurement, and construction companies (EPCs) and project cargo forwarders and service providers busy for several years.
The building spree, much of it in Louisiana and south Texas, should continue, all other things being equal. However, because imported steel and components are crucial to these construction projects, and because China is a key market for the LNG and plastic resins that this new capacity will produce, US and Chinese tariffs and trade wars are complicating the region’s project outlook.
The petrochemical buildout is driven by the availability of cheap ethane, a natural gas liquid that is a byproduct of oil and gas production and abundant in the US now thanks to the shale boom. Polyethylene, the world’s most common plastic, is made from ethane.
Back in the day, ethane was burned off or lost in the transmission of crude oil and natural gas (methane). How things have changed. It’s now the feedstock of half of all US plastics currently manufactured. Some 2 million barrels a day of ethane is expected to be in production by 2020, according to a series on shale and the petrochemical boom by the Houston Chronicle. The American Chemistry Council (ACC) expects shale-related exports to reach $30 billion annually by 2025.Tariffs cloud forecast
However, dueling US-China tariffs are distorting the outlook for resin sales. If they do stay in place, “long term, it’s a big deal for future investment,” said Joel Morales, executive director Polyolefins Americas with IHS Markit, during a presentation at the Harris County International Trade & Transportation Conference in Houston in December. IHS Markit, a research and consulting firm, is the parent company of JOC.com.
The US petrochemical industry has been counting on the Chinese market, Morales said. Pre-tariff estimates were that approximately 3.6 million metric tons (4 million tons) of US resins would flow to China during 2019 alone — but with the current tariffs, “it’ll be half of that.”
An initial $34 billion in US tariffs did not affect plastics, Morales said. The second round of tariffs included a little-used plastic, so the effect on US exporters was minor. However, the Chinese government then targeted two high-volume resins that hit US resin exports hard, and US resin exports have already been forced away from China and into western Europe, South America, and the Indian subcontinent.
These markets are more difficult to serve than simply selling into China, Morales said, where producers can sell “50 million pounds” of the same product into one market at one price at the same time. Lose the Chinese market, and sellers must make different products “in onesey-twosies” for a range of buyers and prices.
Thus, US resin producers have taken a margin hit, Morales said. They are discounting to find new markets in Europe and South America, and they are encouraging the other large global resin producer, the Middle East, to take up the slack in the Chinese market, even though Chinese prices have fallen. The Middle East has a cost advantage, Morales said, while US producers have probably lost two to three cents per pound on average as a result of the tariff-induced trade war. “It’s been very bad for the global market,” Morales said. Global economic confidence is “a little nervous.”US polyethylene growth seen
From 2018 to 2023, Morales expects US net exports of polyethylene to increase from 6.3 million metric tons annually to 10.4 million metric tons annually. The Middle East is the only comparable producer, but added production capacity there is expected to stay flat over the period, increasing only from 13.6 million metric tons annually to 13.8 million metric tons annually. Meanwhile, Chinese demand is expected to jump from its current 11.6 million metric tons annually to 13.8 million metric tons annually.From 2018 to 2023, Morales expects US production of polyethylene to increase from 6.3 million metric tons annually to 10.4 million metric tons annually. The Middle East is the only comparable producer, but added production capacity there is expected to stay flat over the period, increasing only from 13.6 million metric tons annually to 13.8 million metric tons annually. Meanwhile, Chinese demand is expected to jump from its current 11.6 million metric tons annually to 13.8 million metric tons annually.
The petrochemical buildout in the US Gulf is not geared to produce for the US market. These investments are designed “to monetize ethane and to supply the world,” Morales said. Despite the present retaliatory tariffs, he expects resin investment to continue through the mid-20s.
Where will all the US product go? In the past, local producers supplied the US and South American market; in the future, almost 30 percent of what will be produced in the Americas will have to leave the region. China is “inevitable,” he said. “China is the most competitive market in the world. It’s the worst price, always. But going forward, it’s inevitable.” Even if US product isn’t going there directly, Chinese demand will drive commodity exports, Morales said.
If US exports to China are hampered by tariffs, then Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and other growing regions will pick up the slack. “We will see some rebalancing while the trade tariffs are in place,” Morales said. “Optionality, you have to have it. And markets will ebb and flow … [they] will continue to find their outlets.”
Resin exports will continue to ramp up in the US, he said. “It [the expected surge] is here, and it’s hard to envision any scenario, regardless of trade tariffs, that [doesn't] let this happen. It would take a global recession and economic collapse of the world for product to not flow, because of the competitive cost position in PE [polyethylene] that we have in in North America … Even though near time you can’t depend on Asia, [producers are] finding other markets. Optionality is key, and we have it.”US petrochemical projects mount
On the project construction side, 333 shale-fed petrochemical projects valued at $202 billion were announced in the US between 2010 and September 2018, according to the ACC. About 22 percent were under construction, 41 percent planned, 6 percent delayed or unknown, and the remainder completed. In a positive sign for the construction boom, several more US Gulf petrochemical projects, including a $1.7 billion project announced for Baytown, Texas, by Covestro, were added to the roster before year-end, according toChemical Week, a sister publication of JOC.com within IHS Markit.
Wood Group, a Scotland-based EPC, announced a five-year reimbursable contract for work on a massive Gulf Coast plastics manufacturing project in December. Although the announcement did not name Wood’s client, industry analysts believe this project is the long-discussed $8 billion ExxonMobil-SABIC plant planned for construction near the Port of Corpus Christi, Texas. If so, it is already included in ACC’s total.
The US’s trade quotas for South Korea, Brazil, and Argentina, and the Section 232 steel tariffs, are making it difficult to buy competitively priced steel to build plants or maintain existing ones, Ed Brzytwa, director for international trade for the ACC, said during a Houston supply chain conference in November. As reported by Petrochemical Update, he said that planned investments are at risk of being put on hold or canceled, even with the huge advantage of cheap ethane feedstock. Noting that a typical ethylene cracker requires approximately 18.5 tons (16.8 metric tons) of steel, Brzytwa estimates that tariffs and quotas could increase building costs for the petrochemical industry by as much as $1.8 billion overall, given projected construction.
Importing modules and fabricated project components for these projects has also become cumbersome in many cases, project shippers have told JOC.com. Thanks to newly strict applications of trade regulations, items may be assessed based on their component “ingredients” rather than as a constructed or manufactured item, making imports vulnerable to various duties and increasing construction costs considerably.
Morales said that “anti-plastic” sentiments could also have an effect on the production of virgin plastics in the future. If recycle rates do increase from 15 to 40 percent, as some predict, that will affect the number of plants needed. “Too many brand owners have made big pledges,” he said. Products will not sell for more, and anti-pollution and sustainability issues could have a real effect on the industry in the long term.
At least for now, the advantages of an abundant and fantastically cheap feedstock outweigh the (hopefully short-term) risks of tariff- and quota-driven bumps in US construction costs and complications selling into China.
Fortunately for the project transport industry, there is enough money to be made that investing billions in petrochemical manufacturing is still making sense.
https://www.joc.com/breakbulk/us-petrochemical-market-grapples-tariffs_20190130.html

Return to headline | Return to top
N.J. Governor Pushes for Broader Ban in Delaware River Basin

Jan 31, 2019 | E&E Energywire

By Mike Lee

Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is urging his fellow governors in Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware to support a complete ban on hydraulic fracturing and associated activities in the watershed their states share.
The Delaware River Basin Commission, which is governed by the four governors and the Army Corps of Engineers, has been working since 2010 on regulations to govern fracking in the 13,500-square-mile watershed. The most recent proposal, written in 2017, would ban hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, but allow companies to dispose of fracking wastewater within the basin (Energywire, April 6, 2018).
Fracking waste can contain drilling chemicals and naturally occurring hazardous materials, Murphy said in a letter. And an EPA study in 2016 said that there isn't evidence to tell how much pollution fracking causes because so much of the information on fracturing chemicals is confidential.
"Therefore, prohibiting all fracking activity in the Basin is vital to avoid injury and preserve the waters of the Basin and protect public health," Murphy wrote.
The commission isn't scheduled to discuss the fracking regulations at either of its next two meetings in February or March, a spokeswoman said.
Fracking, the process of breaking up rock formations with water and chemicals, has allowed companies to produce oil and gas from formations like the Marcellus Shale, which extends into the Delaware River Basin in parts of Pennsylvania and New York.
It's unclear how the other members of the commission will respond. The Trump administration, which controls the Army Corps, has embraced fracking as part of its "America First" energy policy. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) has tried to crack down on the gas industry's side effects but hasn't banned the industry.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) banned high-volume fracking in 2014 but voted in favor of the DRBC's current proposal, including allowing waste disposal in the basin. Delaware Gov. John Carney (D) also voted for the current proposal.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/01/31/stories/1060119065

Return to headline | Return to top
New Jersey Governor Calls for Frack Ban in Marcellus Outskirts

Jan 31, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Rachel Adams-Heard

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) is voicing support for a full ban on fracking in part of America’s biggest shale gas play. It just so happens to be a part that no one wants to drill.
Murphy this week wrote a letter to the head of the Delaware River Basin Commission in support of expanding current rules banning fracking in the expansive watershed. In addition to barring hydraulic fracturing, he also wants to prevent drillers from extracting freshwater and treating the water that comes up with oil and natural gas when a well is fracked.
The Delaware River Basin—spread across parts of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware—intersects with just the very northeastern tip of the heart of the Marcellus Shale. Still, environmental groups lauded the move and turned their focus to governors in the other three states.
“Banning fracking, only to extract and use freshwater for fracking elsewhere, both allows this dangerous practice to continue in other nearby areas while also depriving basin states of use of that water for more beneficial uses, such as drinking water and crop irrigation,” the Natural Resources Defense Council said in a statement.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/new-jersey-governor-calls-for-frack-ban-in-marcellus-outskirts

Return to headline | Return to top
Methane-Based Metal Substitute Could Slash CO2 Emissions

Jan 31, 2019 | E&E Energywire

By Jenny Mandel

What if heavy, energy-intensive materials like steel and aluminum could be replaced by a new material, manufactured from natural gas, that was lighter and stronger than the metals it replaced?
That's been a goal of researchers at Rice University who won $3.3 million in federal Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) funding aimed at advancing methane technologies. They're working to make natural gas into carbon nanotube fibers that would outperform common metals.
Matteo Pasquali, the chemical and biomolecular engineering professor behind the project, has been working for years on a way to make a threadlike fiber out of bundles of carbon nanotubes — long, hollow cylinders of carbon atoms that are strong and electrically conductive.
His next move is pushing them toward mass-scale manufacturing, in partnership with the energy and petrochemical giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC.
Labs have already shown that carbon nanotube fibers could be used in place of metals in myriad ways: incorporated into electronics in place of thicker wiring; spun into ropes for lightweight structural cabling; or blended with polymers to make stiff columns or sheets for bridge pilings or car parts.
"Based on their properties, these materials can displace metals while providing major weight savings," Pasquali said of the nanotube fibers.
That could have significant energy implications: Pasquali quotes a statistic that 10 percent of the world's annual energy use and carbon dioxide emissions are associated with the mining and manufacturing of metals. Steel manufacturing alone accounts for between 7 and 9 percent of global fossil fuel emissions, according to the World Steel Institute.
The team's work with ARPA-E will focus on transforming what is currently a labor-intensive manufacturing process to make the carbon nanotube fibers into something that could be done at a large scale.
"There's a history of this pattern where a material starts off as a novelty, and then a process is found that completely changes the economics, and it becomes commonplace," Pasquali said in an interview. Plastics, for example, were used for decades in jewelry and novelty items before a process was developed to make them inexpensive and, ultimately, ubiquitous.
"We've shown that you can get that strength and conductivity, but it's all been done on a small scale with associated high costs," Pasquali said. The next push is to get high performance in a process that translates to mass production.
Even if nanotube fibers are successfully developed, it could be decades before supply chains, manufacturing processes and product designs bring them into wide use. But that's just another reason to keep pushing the technology forward, Pasquali says.Partnership with Shell
Developing a new use for natural gas that mimics metals is interesting to researchers in its own right. But Pasquali aims to unlock another benefit by capturing hydrogen that is broken off from the carbon molecules in methane, either to power the manufacturing process or to market separately for energy.
Theoretical limits dictate that the process of making carbon nanotubes could release up to six times as much energy as they take to produce. Inefficiencies in the real world will pull that ratio down, but the new work on industrial manufacturing pathways will seek to maximize the hydrogen output.
"Natural gas is extremely abundant and inexpensive," Pasquali said. "Right now, almost all natural gas is burned to make energy" for electricity and heating. "The opportunity here is that you could split the natural gas, break it into carbon and hydrogen, the carbon goes into this new material and the hydrogen is available for clean energy."
Pasquali said the process addresses all aspects of carbon capture, use and sequestration, a term that energy stakeholders use in talking about ways to avoid or capture carbon emissions from fossil fuels.
The ARPA-E work is a partnership with Shell, which will contribute expertise on natural gas processing and on the commercialization side.
"Shell and companies like Shell have a history, and a very large knowledge base, on the transformation of hydrocarbons from one form to another. And they know how to design and run very large processes based on hydrocarbons," Pasquali said.
"Almost every proposal I've seen about carbon dioxide emissions is associated with restricting use of oil and gas, which means we will leave more of our valuable resource in the ground, and many of them are really not consistent with economic growth. Many of these ideas could lead to a slowdown of the economy," he added. Using natural gas to make carbon nanotubes is different, he says. "If it works, it's going to be an economic driver."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/01/31/stories/1060119061

Return to headline | Return to top
Grijalva Wants to Combine Offshore Drilling Proposals into a Single Bill

Jan 30, 2019 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard

By Anthony Adragna

House Natural Resources Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said he wants to introduce an omnibus bill to restrict offshore drilling that would combine various Democratic proposals on the topic.
Democrats wasted little time this Congress unveiling a host of bills to limit oil and gas production in federal waters. Grijalva said he plans to convene a hearing that would consider those ideas before deciding what makes it into a final bill.
"I think that they all merit a hearing and they should have it," he said. "From there, if it’s possible, work with all the parties to cobble one bill together that represents all those interests.... I think the best way to do this is a single piece of legislation."
Those bills included one, H.R. 286 (116), from a bipartisan group of Florida lawmakers that would make permanent an offshore drilling moratorium in the state and another, H.R. 341 (116), from Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) that would bar Interior from permitting drilling in any of the offshore planning areas off the Atlantic coast or the Straits of Florida.
Grijalva did not say how soon a hearing would be scheduled.
Separately, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), chairman of the Water, Power and Oceans Subcommittee, told reporters he wants an administration official to testify about its offshore drilling plans as soon as possible.
"We're going to be asking about the leasing plan," Huffman said. "Where is it? What's in it? Of course we want to ask about that."
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard

Return to headline | Return to top

Chemical Security News

Grid Regulator Hits Utility with Record $10M Fine

Jan 31, 2019 | E&E Energywire

By Blake Sobczak

Grid authorities have issued a record $10 million fine to an unidentified utility over more than 120 security violations spanning four years.
The North American Electric Reliability Corp., which sets and enforces cyber and physical security standards for the bulk U.S. power grid, said the series of lapses "collectively posed a serious risk to the security and reliability of the bulk power system," even though they aren't known to have triggered any blackouts.
"Many of the violations involved long durations, multiple instances of noncompliance, and repeated failures to implement physical and cyber security protections," NERC concluded in a partially redacted notice of proposed penalty posted Friday.
The bulk of the violations took place between 2015 and 2018, though some cybersecurity vulnerabilities have yet to be fixed, according to NERC. The nonprofit grid overseer declined to identify the recipient of the fine, citing ongoing security concerns.
"This is huge," said former NERC executive and independent consultant Earl Shockley, adding that the notice has already shaken the industry.
Shockley pointed out that critical infrastructure protection (CIP) standards are the most frequently violated of all the voluminous grid reliability rules, which cover everything from pruning trees to modeling power system flows. The CIP standards are laser-focused on cyber and physical security safeguards and date back to 2008. They lay out requirements for controlling access to sensitive buildings like substations, while also setting baseline protections for "critical cyber assets" like the specialized computers in grid control centers.
The 127 violations listed in the penalty represent an "ad hoc, informal, inconsistent, chaotic" approach to NERC CIP, according to Shockley.
"I'm really surprised to see an organization fail at this magnitude, this deep into the NERC [CIP] program," he said. "It's obvious to me as an ex-regulator: This is a culture problem."Who was it?
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. held the previous record for the largest public NERC CIP-related fine, according to multiple sources. That firm was hit with a $2.7 million penalty last year for leaving sensitive utility data accessible online over nearly three months in 2016 (Energywire, April 17, 2018).
PG&E has since filed for bankruptcy protection over its exposure to up to $30 billion in legal damages from several deadly California wildfires.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gets the last word on NERC security standards and related fines. That agency has until late February to formally sign off on the $10 million settlement reached between NERC and the "unidentified registered entity" in the penalty, a spokesman confirmed. FERC has only rarely tweaked such penalties in the past.
The structure of the NERC filing points to a large utility holding company with subsidiaries based across multiple parts of the country.
"It's got to be a huge company that has assets all over the place — and not just generation," said independent utility consultant Tom Alrich.
The anonymous company has agreed to overhaul its program for complying with NERC's CIP standards, according to the filing.
Most of the alleged violations outlined in the document were "self reported" to NERC, but more than a dozen of them were found only through audits of the utility's security program.
The 765-page penalty notice reads like a highlight reel of grid security mishaps, from improperly vetting software updates to bungling firewall settings to potentially allow hackers to patch into critical computer networks.
In one case, a company manager fired an employee but neglected to notify the IT help desk so it could revoke their access to a sensitive computer system. Three days elapsed before anyone caught the oversight and blocked the former worker from being able to access the networks.
In another episode, a "security specialist" disconnected a network cable from the back of a critical cyber asset and plugged it into his laptop, which hadn't been vetted for potential malware.'Substantial damage'
The timing of these security violations overlapped with some of the most aggressive cyber espionage campaigns ever directed against U.S. utilities, including a series of 2017 intrusions that targeted multiple companies that own nuclear power plants (Energywire, June 27, 2017).
For instance, on July 26, 2017, three technicians reported to an unidentified site to change passwords on some relay systems. Protective relay devices are designed to keep an eye out for faults on power grid systems, quickly severing the flow of electricity if something goes wrong.
"The technicians then began work at 1:40PM with their [redacted] issued laptops; not the dedicated CIP [transient cyber asset] laptop located at the site," a heavily redacted report from the utility said. "Technicians overlooked the label on the corporate issued laptops stating 'Not permitted for communication with CIP Cyber Devices.'"
The threats from such oversights aren't theoretical, although hackers aren't known to have ever caused a power outage in the United States.
In 2015, suspected Russian hackers remotely logged into the control networks at three distribution utilities in Ukraine, tripping breakers and shutting off the lights to more than a quarter-million people for several hours. The hackers struck again in 2016, cutting off power at a transmission substation outside Kiev for several hours by using specialized malware.
On Tuesday, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned in congressional testimony that hostile nation-states like Russia and China have similarly penetrated U.S. critical infrastructure systems, including gas pipelines and power utilities (Energywire, Jan. 30).
"Russia has the ability to execute cyber attacks in the United States that generate localized, temporary disruptive effects on critical infrastructure — such as disrupting an electrical distribution network for at least a few hours — similar to those demonstrated in Ukraine in 2015 and 2016," Coats said. "Moscow is mapping our critical infrastructure with the long-term goal of being able to cause substantial damage."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/01/31/stories/1060119091

Return to headline | Return to top
Special Report-The Toxic Legacy of a California Naval Base

Jan 31, 2019 | Reuters (In the New York Times)

By Robin Respaut and Reade Levinson

It seemed like the ideal redevelopment play. The Treasure Island Naval Station, erected on a picturesque strip of land in the middle of San Francisco Bay in 1942, was closed by the U.S. Navy in 1997. The city of San Francisco eyed the property as the centrepiece of a plan for easing the technology hub’s housing crisis.
It looked like a win for all, except for one neglected detail: the toxic legacy the Navy left behind.
Twenty-two years later, hundreds of families have rented old military homes here – and contaminants are still turning up. To date, the Navy’s $285.1 million Treasure Island cleanup has unearthed concentrations of lead, dioxins, petroleum and more than 1,000 radioactive items. Among other activities, the Navy had used the island to repair ships with deck markers painted with radium.
The upshot, public health specialists say, is that the Navy unnecessarily exposed families to radioactive and toxic materials for decades. Since the military pulled out, the island has become home to some 1,800 people, many living in subsidized housing.
“They never should have allowed anyone to live there,” said health physicist Gaetano Taibi, a radiation safety officer on Treasure Island before joining California’s Department of Public Health.
Across the country, the U.S. military has shuttered hundreds of bases under a plan to consolidate operations and save money. Often, a legacy of environmental harm festers long after the armed forces depart: Nationwide, more than 1 of every 10 of the country’s top-priority toxic-cleanup sites belong to the Department of Defense. The Treasure Island cleanup, conducted under yet another federal toxic remediation programme, shows the problems that can resurface.
What went wrong in San Francisco Bay? A Reuters examination – built from nonpublic meeting recordings, interviews with former regulators, and thousands of pages of public documents including engineering reports and state correspondence – shows that, year after year, the Navy understated the extent of contamination. The Navy kept limiting its scope of remediation, only to expand it again and again as regulators and residents raised alarms.
“I don’t think you have a clue what is buried under the ground,” a state health physicist told the Navy in 2010.
The Navy insists there was never unacceptable risk to residents’ health, citing the depth and concentration of buried contaminants. It has been removing pollutants “out of an abundance of caution,” said Reginald Paulding, Navy Base Realignment and Closure environmental coordinator.
The effects of this exposure aren’t known. Scores of people who lived on the island have banded together on Facebook complaining of mysterious maladies. Public records obtained by Reuters show residents for years have complained to state authorities of asthma, rashes, lumps, children’s hair loss and cancers. But there have been no epidemiological studies that demonstrate a link between these complaints and the pollutants on Treasure Island.
The contamination has had clear social and economic consequences, though: It has delayed a city blueprint to provide quality housing. On Treasure Island, San Francisco plans up to 8,000 new residences, hotels, shops and offices. Transfer of the property to San Francisco, nearly 20 years behind schedule, won't finish until the end of 2021.
The city’s Treasure Island Development Authority also cites litigation for delaying construction, and notes San Francisco didn’t adopt a development plan until 2011. Housing construction won’t break ground for another year.
“It’s hard to trust the Navy at this point,” said San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who was part of an unsuccessful 2011 lawsuit that tried to halt development, citing concerns over the Navy’s environmental evaluation.
FROM 'MAGIC ISLE' TO TOXIC WASTE
At birth, Treasure Island was a marvel of ingenuity. The 400-acre island, constructed by the U.S. government in the 1930s from millions of tons of sand, opened just in time for a World’s Fair. Its name: “Magic Isle.”
After the expo closed, the Navy took control of the island just as the country entered World War II. Naval Station Treasure Island supported air operations, managed a major communication centre and processed over 12,000 men daily for Pacific assignments.
After the war, the Navy established a training centre for radiological decontamination on site, where the mock ship USS Pandemonium helped Navy students prepare for radiological warfare. The land-based vessel contained sealed pouches of cesium-137, a radioactive isotope. Students practiced decontamination by scrubbing the ship clean.
Over the next 30 years, the Navy dumped radioactive material and other contaminants in large rubbish pits. Starting in the 1960s, Navy families lived in housing on base.
On the corner of Avenue E and 11th Street, the Navy discarded used equipment and vessels in the “South Storage Yard.” That dumping ground later became an elementary schoolyard. On the corner of Avenue D and 11th Street, where the island’s daycare centre is now located, the Navy buried trash and “burned debris,” a Navy survey found. Elsewhere, the Navy repaired ships containing glow-in-the-dark gauges covered with radioluminescent paint. The gauges were tossed in pits.
Reuters spoke with over a dozen former military families, none of whom were aware at the time they were living atop hazardous disposal pits.
“It was really kind of a neat place for a kid,” said Bo Ross, now 46, whose father was stationed on the island in the mid-1980s. Ross recalls digging in his backyard at 1249 Exposition Drive, finding pieces of rusted, flaky metal. “We could dig so far down.”
When the military shuttered the base in the 1990s, San Francisco was eager to develop. Until redevelopment started, city residents could rent the old military homes. Under a redevelopment law, one-third of homes would be offered to San Francisco’s homeless.
In a field sampling report, Navy officials described the decades-old waste as innocuous “rubbish, bottles, wire, rope, paper, steel drums, etc.” and promised to remediate. A city advisory panel concluded, “there are no serious toxic remediation issues.”
Others were more concerned. In 1993, the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board wrote the Navy about possible 1950s-era “disposal of radium dials,” public records show. The board wanted assurances the radiation had been investigated. The Navy told Reuters it was unable to locate a specific response to the water board.
BURIED WORRIES
In the late 1990s, just as city residents began moving in, the Navy started testing the soil. Right away, results showed elevated levels of lead, dioxins, DDT – an insecticide that disrupts the human endocrine system – and other contaminants beneath the schoolyard, daycare centre and yards of some homes.
The Navy said its landlord disclosed the contamination and maintained there was no health threat. Still, residents were advised not to garden or otherwise disturb the soil.
In 2000, the Navy sent California regulators a soil analysis that showed “chemicals of concern” in some backyards. The state warned residents to avoid tracking dirt inside. “If you have children or pets we strongly advise you not to allow them to enter the backyard,” the state wrote.
Beneath the elementary schoolyard, which operated until 2005, the Navy found high levels of lead, dioxins, motor oil pollutants and benzo(a)anthracene, a carcinogenic chemical.
In one sample, the lead concentration was measured at levels 22 times above field screening guidelines. Another sample showed concentrations of DDT 31 times above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s limit.
A series of investigations of the soil beneath the daycare centre – used by military families from 1985-1997 – measured levels of lead, DDT, arsenic, vanadium and dioxins above EPA limits. The Navy capped the ground with asphalt and re-opened the centre in March 2003, writing, “Dioxins in the soil do not present an unacceptable health risk.”
A Navy survey in August 2003 found chemical and heavy metal contamination throughout the neighbourhood. Workers detected elevated radioactivity near Bo Ross’s old home on Expedition Drive and a cluster near apartments at 1413 Flounder Court.
Shelby Hall, who lived at 1413 Flounder, remembered construction crews in hazmat suits. The Navy never mentioned radiation, she said, but “they didn’t want you to be in the grass.”
LIMITED CLEANUP
In 2006, the Navy published a lengthy report that would shape the cleanup of Treasure Island. The Navy identified a handful of places to check for radiation, including the yards of homes thought to be above old rubbish pits. Checking elsewhere “would be purely speculative,” the Navy told state regulators.
The 2006 report – based on information collected prior to June 30, 2003 – did not disclose the radiation found in August 2003 near homes on Expedition and Flounder. Nor was there mention of a historical engineering report warning of “radioactive and poisonous wastes” near housing.
“At that time, there was no information that the debris in the [pits] presented a radiological risk,” the Navy’s Pauling said.
Children played in the dirt while testing continued, and residents kept moving in.
Kathryn Towne moved to Treasure Island in 2005 with her husband and three kids. The island offered an uninterrupted view of San Francisco’s skyline and endless adventure. Sometimes her kids came home with small items they’d found in the dirt: beads, metal buttons, rusted disks. The girls, 5 and 7, stored their findings in a small jewellery box.
“They called them their treasures,” said Towne. “You know, treasures from Treasure Island.”
In January 2014, the Navy unearthed a round piece of metal with low-level radioactivity next to their home. Towne recalls her daughters suffering rashes, asthma, thyroid issues. At 10, one daughter was diagnosed with ovarian cysts. There is no telling whether these conditions were related to the nearby pollutants.
Towne, herself a Navy daughter, said she trusted the military. “My kids played all over every inch of that island,” she said. “Had I been informed, I could have made a decision to not move there.”
Violet Andry, then a 22-year-old art student, moved into an apartment at 1325 Westside Drive in 2006. A few months later, she found a notice on the front door saying workers would be digging nearby and would place tarps over windows and doors. Andry could exit her lease or stay and pay reduced rent. She stayed.
Robert McLean, a radiation technician who worked for Naval contractor New World Environmental, said he uncovered radiological debris during his first day onsite in 2007. “I found the first piece at the playground,” he said.
Workers piled the radioactive debris in bins next to the administrative building. Later, when the pieces were inventoried, one scrap of foil measured so radioactive that standing a foot away would be the equivalent of receiving one chest x-ray every 10 minutes.
Some radiation health experts say such levels are unlikely to cause lasting health impacts so long as residents aren’t in direct contact with the materials. “Being just a little bit away from these objects, the exposure rate is quite low,” said John Gough, Swedish Health Services’ radiation safety director.
Yet some working on the site said the Navy was slow to inform the community of its discoveries. “They would tell them everything was going fine and everything was getting cleaned up,” said McLean, who attended the island’s community meetings. “They weren’t telling the truth.”
In April 2008, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission flagged serious radiological concerns, telling California’s health department a Navy contractor “recovered 40 to 50 buried radioactive sources.” One of those sources emitted radiation levels that “would represent a public health issue if not handled appropriately.”
TENSIONS RISING
The report marked the beginning of a years-long struggle by the state to get the Navy to share its cleanup details. By 2010, the state’s frustration boiled over, according to communications and recorded calls reviewed by Reuters.
That December, state health physicist Victor Anderson berated the Navy, which had given the state a 13-page list of radioactive items found – gauges, buttons, and bits of metal – but did not provide the levels.
“We see a lack of technical expertise that frankly is appalling,” Anderson said, according to a meeting recording. “How do you know the extent of this problem?”
Laurie Lowman, an engineering program manager for the Navy’s radiological agency, replied: “Have we determined the extent of this? No.” She said her agency was seeking more information. Lowman did not reply to interview requests.
Problems were popping up across Treasure Island. In February 2011, the Navy found radioactive items beneath the schoolyard, an area it had vowed had no contaminants.
The state soon conducted its own scan and discovered more radiological contamination, including some near the old apartment of former art student Violet Andry on Westside Drive. “It’s terrible that people are living there and walking their dogs while this is happening,” she said.
For California’s public health department, this was the last straw. Days later, the department warned against the Navy’s first transfer of land to San Francisco, citing “high levels of radioactive contamination.”
Later in 2011, the state health department slapped the Navy’s lead contractor, Shaw Environmental, with 16 violations, including failing to survey excavated soil for radiation. “I’m just waiting for some little kid to find it in his backyard and walk around in his pocket and then show mom this cool thing he found,” state health physicist Gene Forrer told the Navy.
The contractor told the public not to worry. In August 2012, a Shaw radiation safety officer told residents, “I could drape myself in that amount of material ... dribble it all over myself, and I’d be okay.”
Aptim Holdings, which owns Shaw, did not respond to interview requests. Previously, Shaw said it was following Navy guidance.
CHANGING ITS TUNE
In 2013, after the state uncovered a radioactive object near a bus stop with potential to cause burns, hair loss and ulceration, the Navy overhauled its assessment. Now, it classified the entire housing neighbourhood as “radiologically impacted.”
The next year, San Francisco approved transferring parts of the island from Navy control to the city. The housing area is slated to transfer to San Francisco last in 2021, a year after new residential construction groundbreaking, allowing the Navy more time for cleanup.
To date, Navy contractors have uncovered 1,289 low-level radioactive items under the streets and sidewalks, playgrounds and yards. More than 50 objects, if held one foot away for less than a day, would expose residents to more radiation than the annual public limit.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/01/31/us/31reuters-usa-military-legacy-specialreport.html

Return to headline | Return to top

Transportation and Infrastructure News

Oil Trains Make Comeback as Pipeline Bottlenecks Worsen

Jan 31, 2019 | Wall Street Journal

By Rebecca Elliott and Paul Ziobro

The use of trains to carry crude is surging after dropping in recent years amid concerns about safety, as drillers in parts of North America produce more oil than area pipelines can accommodate.
An average of 718,000 barrels of crude a day traversed America’s railways as of October, the latest data available, an 88% increase from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That compares with a peak average of about 1.1 million barrels in October 2014.
Much of the recent oil train growth is due to record shipments from Canada, where pipeline expansion projects, including Keystone XL and Trans Mountain, have stalled amid environmental opposition and legal delays. Crude-by-rail shipments also have ticked up from North Dakota’s Bakken region and the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico, according to energy-monitoring firm Genscape Inc.
The crude-by-rail comeback is expected to last through late this year in the Permian, and longer in North Dakota and Canada, as companies struggle to lay new pipe as quickly as drillers are getting oil out of the ground.
Shipping oil by train is more expensive than sending it through a pipeline, so producers often avoid making long-term commitments to rail companies. It costs about $20 a barrel to send oil by rail from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast, compared with about $12.50 by pipeline, according to energy investment bank Tudor Pickering Holt & Co.
But pipeline projects typically lag behind growth in oil and gas production, and the gap has lengthened in many parts of the country in recent years as local activism has made it increasingly difficult to complete projects. Meantime, North American oil production topped 15.6 million barrels daily in August, a 17% annual increase, according to the EIA.
Bottlenecks have grown particularly severe in Canada. Heavy crude there was selling locally for more than $50 a barrel below U.S. benchmark prices last fall, reflecting producers’ inability to get it to market due to pipeline problems. U.S. oil prices have since fallen about 24%, closing at $54.23 a barrel on Wednesday.
The congestion in Canada spurred companies including Houston-based ConocoPhillipsCOP 0.60% and Calgary-based Cenovus Energy Inc. CVE 2.03% to ink rail deals.
“The intention is to bridge us over to the next major pipeline expansion, so a few years,” ConocoPhillips finance chief Don Wallette, Jr. said last fall.
Cenovus’s three-year agreements will allow it to transport about 100,000 barrels of oil daily to the U.S. Gulf Coast, where refiners mix it with lighter crudes to produce fuel.
In October, about half of the oil the U.S. imported by rail from its northern neighbor went to the Gulf Coast, EIA data show, helping to offset a 30% decline in crude purchases from Venezuela over the past two years. Roughly a quarter went to the Midwest, while smaller amounts went to the East and West coasts.
Derailments, notably one in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people in 2013, have raised concerns about the safety of transporting oil by trains on a large scale. That prompted federal regulators to impose tougher safety requirements for railcars, though opposition remains in some communities.
The heightened demand for oil train transportation has benefited railroads including Union Pacific Corp. UNP 0.41% , whose petroleum shipments rose 30% last year to 228,470 carloads as the company handled more crude oil. But Chief Executive Lance Fritz said the Omaha, Neb.-based railroad isn’t investing heavily to support crude-by-rail shipping because the demand could evaporate once major pipeline projects come online.
“We’re careful to make these commitments because it’s a short-lived phenomenon,” Mr. Fritz said in a recent interview. “It’s just not going to be around for long-term returns.”
Since shipping oil by rail is generally more expensive, pipelines remain a more attractive option when available, analysts say.
“People would love to have the optionality to move onto crude by rail whenever they want to, but nobody wants to be signing a check for it,” RBN Energy analyst John Zanner said.
Mr. Zanner said because of limited supply of railcars and other infrastructure he doesn’t expect oil train shipments from Canada to increase significantly as a result of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned oil company.
Oil companies often use trains on an ad hoc basis, and rail provides geographic and financial alternatives for producers wary of committing to new pipes. Pipeline companies typically won’t proceed with a project unless drillers sign multiyear contracts guaranteeing payment regardless of whether they have oil to ship.
Whiting Petroleum Corp. WLL 4.99% is weighing those trade-offs in North Dakota, where it is evaluating whether to support an additional pipeline or rely on costlier, but more flexible, crude-by-rail transportation. Crude production in the state, once the heart of oil-train transportation, has swelled about 38% since the Dakota Access Pipeline opened in 2017, federal data show, testing the limits of existing pipelines.
In November, oil sold in Minnesota fetched as much as $19 a barrel less than it would have at the main U.S. trading hub in Cushing, Okla., reflecting the bottleneck, according to price-reporting agency S&P Global Platts.
“You’re always balancing between getting the infrastructure in place versus flexibility,” said Peter Hagist, a senior vice president for Whiting.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/oil-trains-make-comeback-as-pipeline-bottlenecks-worsen-11548930600

Return to headline | Return to top

Environment News

EPA Makes Pitch for Tweaks to Hydrochloric Acid Standards

Jan 30, 2019 | E&E News PM

By Sean Reilly

EPA is seeking only slight changes to its air toxics standards for hydrochloric acid manufacturers in a proposed rule that has caught the attention of Illinois lawmakers.
The proposal, which would apply to an estimated 19 plants around the country, finds that existing 2003 standards "provide an ample margin of safety to protect public health," according to an agency summary. The proposal follows a legally required "residual risk and technology review" and now awaits publication in the Federal Register after acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler signed it last month.
In keeping with a 2008 court decision, the draft rule would eliminate regulatory exemptions for excess emissions that occur during plant startups, shutdowns and malfunction; it would also require electronic reporting of performance test results. The Trump administration has adopted a similar approach in final air toxics rules for seven other industrial sources signed by Wheeler last month (Greenwire, Jan. 21).
But because the latest proposal requests public comment on the use of "risk value" of ethylene oxide for regulatory purposes, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and five other Democratic members of the Illinois congressional delegation yesterday wrote Wheeler to protest that EPA seemed to be trying to weaken safeguards for that carcinogenic chemical (E&E Daily, Jan. 30).
Hydrochloric acid, used in fertilizers and dyes, can cause short-term eye and nose inflammation. Workplace exposure over longer periods of time can lead to chronic bronchitis and gastritis, according to EPA. Under the Clean Air Act, the agency is supposed to conduct the reviews within eight years after initially setting the standards. The assessments should explore whether emissions controls have since improved and whether risk remains to public health that would warrant tighter pollution limits.
In reality, EPA has repeatedly missed those deadlines by spectacular margins, leading environmental groups to sue to force action. Under a 2017 order by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan of the District of Columbia, the hydrochloric acid industry is one of 20 sources for which EPA is supposed to belatedly finish reviews by March 2020 (Greenwire, March 15, 2017).
So far, the Trump administration has not released draft rules for the other 19, according to postings on a central website, although one 2016 Obama-era proposal is pending.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2019/01/30/stories/1060119047

Return to headline | Return to top
Wheeler's Minimal Answers To Senators Offer Few Hints On EPA's Plans

Jan 30, 2019 | Inside EPA

By Doug Obey and Dave Reynolds

Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler's answers to environment panel senators' questions ahead of his confirmation vote adopt a minimal approach offering few hints on EPA's pending regulatory agenda, evading specific responses or commitments on a host of major policies including rollbacks of Obama-era rules.
Drinking water is among the only topics where the acting agency chief offers a greater level of detail in his responses, and there he is suggesting the 35 day government shutdown will further delay rules seeking to bolster drinking water protections, including a long-awaited update to the agency’s 1991 lead and copper rule (LCR) and a proposed drinking water standard for the common drinking water contaminant perchlorate.
The Senate Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW) held its confirmation hearing on Jan. 16 for Wheeler's nomination to head the agency permanently. At the hearing, he similarly avoided sweeping statements or pledges on pending rules such as rollbacks of Obama EPA climate and water policies.
As part of the confirmation process senators send nominees questions for the record on a host of topics, and EPW ranking member Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) late Jan. 29 released Wheeler's responses to his questions.
The answers point to the difficulties Democrats in the House and Senate are likely to have in extracting details on key deregulatory initiatives. But they give EPW Democrats the chance to state for the record numerous concerns over the Trump EPA's agenda, offering potential hints at future political and legal fights over those initiatives.
“We will be developing responses to the issue you raise here as part of our joint effort to finalize this important rule,” Wheeler says in what becomes a typical response to one of numerous Carper queries on a pending EPA and Department of Transportation (DOT) plan to freeze vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards.
Carper had sought explanation of internal EPA staff concern, outlined in an already public document in EPA's rulemaking docket, including that a corporate average fuel economy model DOT has used in support of the Trump administration's proposed freeze is “unusable in its current form for policy analysis.”
“As work on this rule is ongoing, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on whether, as you put it 'each of these flaws were fully remedied before the rules were proposed,'” Wheeler said.
Wheeler uses similar or functionally identical language in response to over half a dozen other Carper queries related to EPA staff concerns that DOT's modeling improperly generates assumed benefits from a standards freeze, including from overly pessimistic assumptions on technology cost; unjustifiable changes in projections of miles driven under fuel economy standards that generate projections of lives saved under the proposed freeze, and other cited flaws.
In one response on the alleged safety benefits of the regulation, Wheeler replaces an earlier comment he made during his nomination hearing before the panel -- in which he touted a thousand lives saved annually under the vehicle plan -- with a more generic comment that DOT is “taking the lead with respect to the safety implications at issue.”
Vague Responses
Wheeler's vague responses come amid every sign that EPA's policies are at odds with both those of the Obama administration and Hill Democrats on a range of issues, including mercury pollution. EPA has proposed to undo the cost-benefit finding underpinning the Obama-era mercury and air toxics standards for power plants, a move environmentalists fear could help a legal fight to undo the entire regulation.
“[T]he agency’s leadership isn’t denying that mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin or that more kids won’t be harmed -- they just don’t seem to care,” former EPA chief Gina McCarthy wrote in a Jan. 29 opinion piece for The Hill. “That’s a failure of political and moral leadership that puts partisanship ahead of governing for the benefit of all Americans.”
Carper in his written queries had sought several answers related to the agency's proposed determination that mercury controls on utilities are no longer “appropriate or necessary” -- including whether the plan would ultimately cause utilities to remove existing emissions control if the underlying policy rationale for the controls disappears.
“EPA is not proposing to rescind or weaken the [mercury and air toxics] standards that control mercury emissions,” writes Wheeler, while at multiple points referring Carper to supporting documentation for its pending plan without opining on their details.
Wheeler at another point appears more guarded in his written answers to Carper than during his answer to Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) during Wheeler's nomination hearing on the same topic.
At the EPW hearing, the acting agency chief said on the mercury issue, “I honestly do not believe that that equipment will be turned off or removed under our [mercury] proposal,” as referenced in a Carper query.
Wheeler in the written response says EPA’s proposal would not rescind or weaken the [mercury air toxics] standards. Otherwise, EPA has not established a position on the speculative issue your question raises.”
The issue of whether the United States will ratify the Kigali treaty on control of hydrofluorocarbons -- and the projected benefits of such controls -- is another issue on which Wheeler keeps his options open, in response to a query from Carper on when EPA will release an internal cost-benefit analysis on the issue. Any analysis of costs and benefits by EPA is still undergoing review and includes information that relates to a pending or contemplated executive action and is therefore deliberative and pre-decisional.
Regulatory Delays
One of the only sections of the response document where Wheeler offers greater specifics is on drinking water rules, and his answers largely detail delays for several pending policies.
In response to questions from Carper, Wheeler says EPA intends to send proposed revisions to the LCR for White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) review this Spring and to finalize a rule on use of lead-free piping for drinking water this year. “The EPA intends to maintain these rulemaking schedules; however, the agency will continue to evaluate the schedules in light of the government shutdown and make necessary adjustments,” Wheeler writes.
Nonetheless, Wheeler’s most recent proclamations in response to Carper’s questions appear to further delay the LCR, calling it “a complicated rulemaking,” as well as other drinking water rules.
Prior to the shutdown, Wheeler told a Dec. 19 news conference announcing an agency plan for reducing children’s exposures to lead that the agency planned to propose the LCR revisions, expected last summer, this spring. But the response to Carper suggests a longer delay as OMB review of the proposal takes roughly 90 days.
The delay announced late last year came after Wheeler said at a Nov. 28 Washington Post live event that EPA would propose the LCR update in early in 2019. While the agency had planned to propose changes last year, Wheeler said the delay would allow the agency to better prioritize replacing the leakiest lead pipes first.
While EPA had planned to finalize the rule on lead-free piping in June 2019, Wheeler tells Carper that rule should be finished sometime in 2019.
Wheeler also suggests the shutdown may delay a proposed drinking water standard for the rocket fuel contaminant perchlorate, despite an April 30 court-ordered deadline for proposing the standard.
A federal district judge in December granted EPA's request for an additional six months -- until April 2019 -- to propose a drinking water standard for perchlorate to consider peer reviewers’ recommendations and improve scientific tools that the agency is using to support the rulemaking.
The order in Natural Resources Defense Council v. EPA reiterated environmentalists' grudging agreement that EPA is not prepared to develop the proposed perchlorate rule, based on a series of delays in developing and peer reviewing a complicated model that is a central component of EPA's analysis for the rule.
While the court said it expected EPA to work diligently to meet its revised deadline, Wheeler suggests in his response to Carper that the shutdown allows for further delay.
“The consent decree includes a provision that automatically extends deadlines in the event of certain circumstances outside the reasonable control of the EPA, such as lapses in government funding,” he adds.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/wheelers-minimal-answers-senators-offer-few-hints-epas-plans

Return to headline | Return to top
House Panel’s Democrats Reject GOP Climate-Change Proposal

Jan 31, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Rebecca Kern

House Natural Resources Committee Democrats blocked a Republican attempt to change the panel’s rules to require all bills to quantify how much the legislation would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and potential sea-level rise.
Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) introduced the amendment during the committee’s Jan. 30 meeting to adopt rules for the new Congress, but Democrats expressed suspicion about Graves’ intentions.
The amendment would have required a quantification of the environmental impacts directly resulting from new legislation, including the amount of greenhouse gas emission directly reduced by a bill; its effect on sea level rise; the acres of wildlife habitat preserved in its current state; the reduction of global temperature; and potential cost savings from pre-disaster mitigation.
“I think the motivation is to slow us down,” Natural Resources Chairman Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), told Bloomberg Environment after the meeting. “I think the motivation is to burden us with all of these reporting requirements to the point that all that we do is argue about that. The substance needs to be argued.”
‘Balanced Decisions’ or ‘Gratuitous Hoops’?
But Graves said the amendment was an attempt to help the committee “make truly informed, balanced decisions moving forward.”
“I represent south Louisiana—we are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to sea rise and coastal sustainability challenges,” he said.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), chairman of the Water, Oceans and Wildlife Subcommittee, countered that the amendment “included gratuitous hoops that you would have to jump through to ever change the status quo.”
Graves’ amendment to the committee rules failed along a party-line voice vote. But Grijalva said he has committed to make climate change a priority, with the committee’s first hearing—scheduled for Feb. 6—focusing on the topic.
New Subcommittee Ranking Slots
Also at the organizing meeting, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), the committee’s ranking member, announced Republican committee leadership and ranking members of subcommittees.
They included Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) as the full committee’s deputy Republican leader, and nonvoting member Rep. Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon (R-Puerto Rico) as its Republican leader of insular affairs.
Bishop also announced as subcommittee ranking members Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) for Energy and Mineral Resources; Rep. Paul Cook (R-Calif.) for Indigenous Peoples of the United States; Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) for the National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands; Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) for Oversight and Investigations; and Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) for Water, Oceans, and Wildlife.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/house-panels-democrats-reject-gop-climate-change-proposal

Return to headline | Return to top
Second Panel Sets Hearing for Hectic Week on Climate

Jan 31, 2019 | E&E Daily

By Nick Sobczyk

Democrats have been chomping at the bit to take on climate change since they won the House in November, and after a brief delay due to the partial government shutdown, they will finally get their chance next week.
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change will hold its first hearing on the topic Feb. 6, subcommittee Chairman Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) and full committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) announced in a joint statement last night.
The Natural Resources Committee is planning its own climate hearing the same day — just about 24 hours after the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is scheduled to vote on the nomination of acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.
The House hearings have been in the works for weeks, and they will likely mark the first formal shots in the long-brewing battle between Democrats and the Trump administration, which has eagerly pulled back climate regulations and openly denied climate science.
The two House panels will soon have help from Select Committee on the Climate Crisis Chairwoman Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has been talking over strategy with Pallone and Tonko.
"It is long past time for this Committee to begin seriously examining how climate change is affecting our communities, environment and economy, and take action to reduce its harmful effects," Pallone and Tonko said in the statement. "The science has been indisputably clear for years now — climate change is real and caused by human activity including burning fossil fuels."
E&C Democrats say the hearing, titled "Time for Action: Addressing the Environmental & Economic Effects of Climate Change," will be the first to specifically address the topic on the committee since 2013. Republicans largely ignored the issue when they controlled the panel.
This month the committee hired an attorney to deal with climate and air issues. Dustin Maghamfar joins the panel from the Justice Department, where he spent more than eight years in the Environment and Natural Resources Division.
Maghamfar, who did not respond to questions last night about his new role, worked in the division's environmental defense and appellate sections, representing federal agencies in dozens of cases involving the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and other laws.
Most recently, he represented the Army Corps of Engineers in litigation over an electric transmission project near historical sites in Virginia. He also defended an Obama-era EPA rule designed to phase out the use of planet-warming hydrofluorocarbons.
A hearing witness list and more information are due in the coming days, but Castor, who sits on Energy and Commerce, said Tonko wants to zero in on "the cost of inaction."
"Over past decades, the dirty fuel folks have created this narrative that climate is too expensive for us to tackle, that the average working person is going to pay a lot more," Castor told reporters yesterday. "But see, they're already paying an enormous amount — air conditioning bills for longer summers, hotter summers, property insurance bills going up, flood insurance, here in the Congress trying to get emergency bills through."
Castor is expecting to get the Democratic roster for the climate change select committee any day now, but she said she's already had meetings with Tonko and Pallone to work out a path forward on climate legislation.
"We're starting to put together that plan: What can we bring to the floor, how we press and work other committees, getting ready for appropriations," she said. "Things like that."
Progressive lawmakers have been helping lead the push for strong action on climate this year. Last night, Axios reported that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) would unveil legislation related to the "Green New Deal."
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2019/01/31/stories/1060119099

Return to headline | Return to top
New Mexico Joins State Climate Alliance, Sets 2030 GHG Target

Jan 30, 2019 | Inside EPA

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) is joining a coalition of states that is committed to achieving the goals of the Paris climate agreement in response to President Donald Trump's rejection of the pact, setting a target for the state to nearly halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Grisham, sworn in as governor Jan. 1, announced that her state would be the latest to join the U.S. Climate Alliance in a Jan. 29 executive order, which also set a statewide greenhouse gas target of 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
The governor's order also directs state agencies to help craft legislation boosting the state's renewable and energy efficiency mandates.
She also is creating a new climate task force that will, among other things, evaluate policies such as a “comprehensive market-based program” with emission limits to cut GHGs; light-duty GHG rules and zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) standards; building codes; and enhanced power transmission lines to enable higher levels of renewables.
She is also ordering state energy and environment regulators to issue rules “as soon as practicable” to limit emissions of the potent GHG methane from new and existing sources in the oil and gas sector -- a key step given that New Mexico covers part of the Permian Basin that has significantly ramped up oil and gas production in recent years.
Just weeks after she was elected in the Nov. 6 midterms, Lujan Grisham signaled an aggressive approach to energy and climate issues, saying she wants replicate Colorado's groundbreaking methane rules but to do it “even better.”
She also pledged that the state would “fight” Trump administration efforts to expand oil and gas drilling on federal land.
The U.S. Climate Alliance now includes 18 states and Puerto Rico, including another Democratic gubernatorial pickup in the midterms, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D).
While some observers have touted climate mitigation by states and other “sub-national” entities in the Trump era, a report from last fall found that such efforts would likely fall short of meeting Obama officials' 2025 GHG target under the Paris deal, with experts saying that federal engagement on the issue will eventually be necessary to hit medium- and long-term climate goals.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/new-mexico-joins-state-climate-alliance-sets-2030-ghg-target

Return to headline | Return to top
Ocasio-Cortez, Markey to Unveil ‘Green New Deal’ Legislation

Jan 30, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire

By John Bowden

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) are reportedly planning to unveil legislation for a Green New Deal in the coming days.
Markey's office confirmed to The Hill that the senator was working with the freshman New York representative on a plan, adding that an announcement regarding the bill's contents is coming soon.ADVERTISEMENT
Language in the bill was not yet final, the spokesperson said, nor was a timeline for when the bill would be unveiled. A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez did not respond immediately to The Hill's request for comment.
A spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement, a group of climate change activists that organized a protest attended by Ocasio-Cortez in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) office over the issue last year, told Axios — which first reported news of the legislation — that it was involved in the bill's discussions. The group added that an announcement was planned for as soon as the end of next week.
Several top Democratic candidates who have announced 2020 presidential candidacies have shown some level of support for a 'Green New Deal,' including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, considered a potential 2020 Democratic primary candidate, called for Democrats to define the policy in a speech this week at St. Anselm College.
"It's time as a party that we started putting some meat on the bone and laying out exactly what a Green New Deal should include, and I believe that that plan should be bold and ambitious and, most importantly, achievable," Bloomberg said, while adding that it was "great to see so many fellow Democrats embrace the idea of a Green New Deal."
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/427783-ocasio-cortez-markey-to-unveil-green-new-deal-legislation-next-week

Return to headline | Return to top

Add recipients

Suggested