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PM ACC Clips Report - February 14, 2018

Industry and Association News

(ACC Mentioned) 'He's Created a Culture of Fear': How Trump Has Politicized Science in an Unprecedented Way
Feb 14, 2019 | Pacific Standard
By Sharon Zhang

During last week's State of the Union address, President Donald Trump took time to celebrate the United States' production of fossil fuels. "We have unleashed a revolution in American energy," Trump said, noting that "the United...
Congress Bucks White House on Environmental Spending
Feb 14, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Kevin Bogardus

Congressional appropriators dismissed President Trump's drive to slash EPA's budget, opting instead for the status quo. Negotiators released legislation late last night to fund several agencies like the Department of the Interior and...
Plastic Bag Bills Make It Further Than Past Attempts
Feb 14, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greenwire)
By Tom James

A ban on single-use plastic bags advanced in the Washington Legislature, the second of a pair of bills on the subject to move past initial hearings.The bill would ban retail stores from giving out single-use plastic bags, including...

TSCA News

US EPA Round-Up
Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

The US EPA issued TSCA 5(a)(3)(c) findings for four substances subject to pre-manufacture notices (PMNs). These "not likely to cause unreasonable risk" determinations will allow the substances to come to market without restriction.

Chemical Management News

(ACC Mentioned) US-UK Trade Talks a Chance for Greater Regulatory ‘Efficiencies’ – ACC
Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton

Post-Brexit trade talks between the UK and the US provide an opportunity to "create greater efficiencies within and between" both regulatory systems, the American Chemistry Council said. Britain is expected to leave the European...
(ACC Mentioned) E.P.A. Will Study Limits on Cancer-Linked Chemicals. Critics Say the Plan Delays Action.
Feb 14, 2019 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday said it will start work by the end of the year on a long-awaited plan to set national drinking-water limits for two harmful chemicals linked to cancer, low infant birth weight and other...
(ACC Mentioned) The Trump EPA’s Actions on Formaldehyde Can Be Summed up in One Word: Corrupt
Feb 14, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison

Today, Heidi Vogt at the Wall Street Journal reported on the systematic efforts by the Trump Administration to derail chemical assessments under the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS).
(ACC Mentioned) Industry Review of PFHxA Recommends Environmental Monitoring
Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Dr. Emma Davies

An industry-funded review of perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA) recommends "continued environmental monitoring to confirm that levels do not rise over time" as well as further study of children's exposure to the chemical.
EPA Vows National Action on Toxic ‘Forever’ Chemicals
Feb 14, 2019 | Washington Post
By Brady Dennis

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced what officials called a historic effort to rein in a class of long-lasting chemicals that scientists say pose serious health risks. But environmental and public health groups, some...
US EPA Announces PFAs Action Plan
Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins and Kelly Franklin

The US EPA has published its long-awaited federal plan to manage the risks posed by per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals (PFASs). Announced simultaneously at ten press conferences across the US, the plan outlines short- and...
Ewire: EPA Unveils PFAs 'Action Plan' with Eye on Potential Rules
Feb 14, 2019 | Inside EPA

EPA has unveiled an “action plan” with a host of short- and long-term efforts to address widespread concern over contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that includes enforcement and research, though the...
Barrasso Pans EPA Fluorochemicals Plan, Promises Senate Hearings
Feb 14, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan

The EPA’s new plan for tackling a family of ubiquitous chemicals contaminating drinking water across the country lacks teeth, the head of the Senate’s environment panel said Feb. 14. The Environmental Protection Agency needs...
OECD Proposal Would Identify Countries Regulating Industrial Chemicals
Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer

The OECD is proposing to develop an indicator that identifies the number of countries that have legislation in place to manage industrial and consumer chemicals. The indicator will be added to a number of others (see box) that...
US Retailer to Phase out Methylene Chloride, NMP Paint Strippers
Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin

Midwestern US home improvement retailer Menards has joined the growing list of stores that say they will no longer sell paint strippers containing the solvents methylene chloride and N-Methylpyrrolidone (NMP). Retailers across the...
Action Needed to Protect Americans from Toxic EtO Pollution
Feb 14, 2019 | Natural Resource Defense Council
By Dan West

Ethylene oxide (EtO) is a common, highly hazardous industrial chemical linked to breast cancer and immune system cancers like non-Hodgkin lymphoma and lymphocytic leukemia (see EPA IRIS Exec Summary, Dec 2016). Concerned...
Antimony Trade Group Raises Concerns over Proposed Threshold Limit
Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer

The International Antimony Association (i2a) has said a recent proposal to lower the threshold limit value (TLV) for the substance antimony trioxide would cause production challenges and increased costs for many users.
Echa Round-Up
Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

This registry aims to make interested parties aware of the substances for which there is a plan to submit an SVHC dossier to Echa. Updates this week include several substances submitted for accordance checks, including...

Energy News

The Trade War is Creating Uncertainty and Threatening US Economic Growth
Feb 14, 2019 | Real Clear Energy
By Aaron Padilla

The back-and-forth trade disputes initiated by the United States, against our allies Canada and the EU and other global powers like China, might seem like a far-off concept for many people. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has dismissed...
More Ships to Rely on LNG as Pollution Rules Tighten
Feb 14, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Marissa Luck

Liquefied natural gas is already poised to power the world's biggest economies as Asian countries increase their reliance on the cleaner-burning fuel, but there is yet another source that could drum up demand for LNG: the shipping industry.
Oil, Biofuels Groups Add to Lengthy List of RFS 2019 Challengers
Feb 14, 2019 | Inside EPA

Oil and biofuels groups are adding to the lengthy list of organizations filing suit over EPA’s 2019 renewable fuel standard, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is consolidating the fresh challenges with...

Chemical Security News

CSB Opines That “Thermal Fatigue” Caused 2016 Plant Blast
Feb 14, 2019 | Powder & Bulk Solids

Chemical industry watchdog The U.S. Chemical Safety Board released a final report this week positing that “thermal fatigue” was the probable cause of an explosion and fire at the Enterprise Products Pascagoula Gas Plant in...

Transportation and Infrastructure News

Spending Bill Would Provide $17B
Feb 14, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Maxine Joselow

Infrastructure is a winner in the bipartisan border security and spending package released last night. The legislation would provide $17 billion in funding "for new infrastructure investments to improve our roads, bridges, highways...
Oil, Gas Industry Joins Pipeline Safety Groups in Backing Proposed PHMSA Rule
Feb 13, 2019 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut

Trade associations representing the energy industry have joined pipeline safety groups in support of a natural gas transmission pipeline safety rule that has been under consideration by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety...

Environment News

The Energy 202: House Science Committee Turns New Leaf on Climate Change with Democrats in Charge
Feb 14, 2019 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni

For years, the Republican-led House Science Committee has tried to put global warming research on ice. It tried to slash government research into the warming globe and even launched investigations into scientists who produced...
Castor Letter Offers Clues on Committee's Direction
Feb 14, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jeremy Dillon

The newly minted head of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis is looking to bring some of the "Green New Deal" resolution's climate momentum to her home state of Florida. In a letter sent yesterday, Rep. Kathy Castor...
McConnell Green New Deal Ploy Is Why Congress Is Hated: Schumer
Feb 14, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Catherine Dodge

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plan to hold a vote on Democrats’ Green New Deal amounts to a “cheap, cynical ploy” and is “what the American people hate about Congress,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said.
Schumer on 'Green New Deal' Vote: 'Bring It On'
Feb 14, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jeremy Dillon

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) took to the floor this morning to challenge his Republican counterpart to admit the realities of climate change in the latest rhetorical shot in the chamber's "Green New Deal" fight.
Some GOP Lawmakers Are Thawing on Climate Change
Feb 14, 2019 | Roll Call
By Jacob Holzman

Congressional Republicans seem to be thawing on climate. Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who has denied the science behind climate change, told reporters Wednesday he was open...
Millennial Socialists Want to Shake up the Economy and Save the Climate
Feb 14, 2019 | The Economist

When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, many consigned socialism to the rubble. The end of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union were interpreted as the triumph not just of liberal democracy but of the robust market...

Industry and Association News

(ACC Mentioned) 'He's Created a Culture of Fear': How Trump Has Politicized Science in an Unprecedented Way

Feb 14, 2019 | Pacific Standard

By Sharon Zhang

During last week's State of the Union address, President Donald Trump took time to celebrate the United States' production of fossil fuels. "We have unleashed a revolution in American energy," Trump said, noting that "the United States is now the No. 1 producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world."
Perhaps it should not be surprising that Trump would take pride in presiding over such an astonishing contribution to climate change. Trump has been spouting off against climate science for years, and his administration has been dutifully operating from this grim denialist premise since his inauguration, through actions like barring scientists from advising the Environmental Protection Agency and banning the phrase "climate change" within federal agencies.
This administration has driven a rapid and unprecedented wedge between science and policy—and the damage could prove to be lasting, says Gretchen Goldman, who directs research on the relationship between science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Goldman recently spoke with Pacific Standard about the erosion of scientific integrity in the government, the effects of the government shutdown on federal scientists, and what Congress can do under a climate-skeptical president to save science.
Has the White House's relationship with scientists changed between this presidency and the last?
Up until the Trump administration, we mostly saw presidents have respect for process. They would follow the appropriate process that included being informed by science, but then they would manipulate the science within the process to justify their political positions; examples would be like interfering with a report that's coming out of the Environmental Protection Agency and talking about climate change, editing the report, editing the press release to match the policy goal you have. That's the kind of thing we saw a lot of under the Bush administration. We saw a little bit of that under the Obama administration.
The Trump administration is actually disparaging the process. They're not worrying about whether or not the science backs up their public position at all. A good example of that: The National Climate Assessment is something that we might see get tampered with under a previous administration. But the Trump administration just let it come out completely untouched—which is great. It came out, it's solid science, it's from a whole slew of agencies, and that's great. But then he just disparages it on Twitter and finds other ways to not take seriously the recommendations of the report and then the threat of climate change more broadly.
There's not as much concern about whether or not you're following the appropriate process, or what the optics are of doing that, whereas past administrations would try to make it look like they were following the science or following process. It's a different dimension to the problem.
Has that been having tangible effects?
It's certainly having tangible effects on government scientists, because they're seeing that happen. They're seeing they're working hard on a report, and then seeing the president openly disparage it and not take it seriously. So that's very demoralizing. We did a survey in the summer and showed that federal scientists do feel demoralized. And then, more concerningly, we also saw on that survey that a really high number of scientists had reported censorship around climate change. They were either told directly to not work on climate change or not use the word "climate change" in their work. And then, disturbingly, we saw a lot of scientists that said they weren't directly told, but they had been choosing not to talk about climate change or work on it.
And that's really concerning to me, and one thing that I think is a bigger problem under the Trump administration is that self-censorship. He's created a culture of fear, partially because he can just simply attack things and people on Twitter. So I think that sends a message to people about what they should work on, and what the risks are working on a politically contentious topic like climate change. I think that that's having a tremendous chilling effect on those in the government, and will ultimately have a huge impact on our nation's ability to address climate change.
They're self-censoring for fear of losing their jobs, or for fear of their research not being published, or what?
It's hard to know. We know there is fear of retaliation, so the idea of being targeted by the administration—"If we talk about climate, is Congress going to try to cut our funding, or is the president going to earmark our program to be eliminated?" I think it's fear of that. The thought is sort of, "OK, if we keep our head down, and we just quietly do our work, maybe they won't notice and we can continue to do things."
I should be clear: It's fine, of course, for administrations to have different policy priorities and to redirect stuff. And that's something we would expect under any administration. But what they should not be doing is shutting down projects and programs abruptly and suppressing scientific information that's coming from federal agencies. And that's unfortunately some of what we're seeing under the Trump administration.
It's been hard, recently, to think about federal science without thinking about the harm that the government shutdown has caused. What effect has the shutdown had on the scientific community?
In the long term, it has a huge impact on the morale of federal scientists, and that's going to affect recruitment and retention. We need smart people to go into government service to be working on some of the tough problems that our nation faces, like climate change, like security issues, like agricultural systems. And it's going to be harder for the government to recruit the best and the brightest if there are shutdowns frequently happening, if scientific work is being disparaged by the administration.
I think of the shutdown as adding to several factors under this administration that are hurting the ability of federal scientists to do their job. And that will have long-term impacts on the public health and safety of Americans—because we need these people to be on the inside and working to solve these problems and doing good work.
How does the exclusion of science within federal agencies affect their ability to regulate?
I'm really worried about the impact of corporate capture of federal agencies, because this has a really big impact on the way that policies do or don't happen coming out of the agencies. And we've seen that in the past, even before the Trump administration. The best examples are some of the cases of this happening at the Food and Drug Administration. There's a revolving door of people that go between the agency and the pharmaceutical companies. And that affects how effective the agency can be in regulating drugs. One recent example is the opioid epidemic. Part of the reason for the huge explosion of the opioid prescriptions was due to language that was in what the FDA regulates about the product of Oxycontin. And the personwho signed off on that at the FDA went to go work for a pharmaceutical agency afterwards. That's a recent example of one.
But we've seen this time and again in other cases. Right now, at the EPA, a woman named Nancy Beck—who worked for years for the American Chemistry Council, which is the chemical manufacturer industry lobby—she's now writing the rules about chemicals in consumer products. And so that's going to have a huge impact on how effective that law can be if we allow those with obvious conflicts of interest, with obvious connections to companies that have a direct stake in the outcome of all policy, to be the ones writing the policy. It's very clearly the fox guarding the henhouse, and it's going to hurt people.
Is there a way to undo these long-term effects of the industry-lobby creep into federal agencies?
We periodically survey government scientists. On our 2015 survey, well into the Obama administration, a scientist at the Fish and Wildlife Service wrote that, even though we're in the Obama administration, a lot of our treatment of science is as if we're still in the Bush administration—because there were people that got hired under them that were essentially political people that burrowed into the agency and are now running the show, even though we're not operating under that administration. I thought that was hugely alarming, that, even at the Fish and Wildlife Service, which is somewhere you'd think wouldn't be a place where there was a lot of politicals implanted. Even in 2015, well after the end of the George W. Bush administration, we still heard from scientists that the political influence was the problem. I think that is a bigger problem that we need to shine a light on.
There's actually a specific rule that would address this very problem. It is a proposal that's been proposed in Congress particularly to address this issue of political appointees being given the career staff positions at agencies. There's a lot of legislative solutions to this, and one sort of promising one that's been proposed right now is H.R. 1, the For the People Act. I think it's very promising. It deals with a lot of ethics issues and interference issues with government agencies and Congress. That's a great start.
But broadly, the way that we fix this is transparency and clear ethics rules. We need clear rules about who can deal with what policy issues given any conflicts, or potential conflicts, or recent conflicts they've had. We need more transparency in the process, so that people can watch what agencies are doing and hold administrations accountable for times that they do sideline science.
It's difficult to focus on longer-term, big-picture legislation like that with everything else going on with this administration on a daily basis. What path is there to get this done?
The engagement side has been really incredible to see. At the start of the Trump administration, I would never have predicted that there would be scientists marching in the streets, and there would be that many people following this issue and engaged and willing to step into the political realm. That, to me, was incredibly inspiring to see. It gives me hope for how we can funnel that engagement into getting change, and how we can protect science.
https://psmag.com/ideas/how-trump-has-politicized-science-in-an-unprecedented-way

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Congress Bucks White House on Environmental Spending

Feb 14, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire

By Kevin Bogardus

Congressional appropriators dismissed President Trump's drive to slash EPA's budget, opting instead for the status quo.
Negotiators released legislation late last night to fund several agencies like the Department of the Interior and EPA for the remainder of the fiscal year and avoid another partial government shutdown. Spending authority is set to run out tomorrow, but the House and Senate are expected to vote on the spending package today.
EPA would receive nearly $8.1 billion for fiscal 2019 under the bill — similar funding to what was enacted for the agency in fiscal 2018.
That number is roughly $2 billion more than what Trump requested under his budget plan, which would have slashed various programs and cut thousands of EPA jobs.
Lawmakers would also draw funds from general provisions in other parts of the bill, totaling $791 million, to help with cleanup of toxic waste sites under the Superfund program as well as investments in water infrastructure.
That would give EPA a total of more than $8.8 billion for fiscal 2019 under the legislation, which Democrats said was a $25 million increase over the prior year.
Appropriators also sought to restrict the Trump administration's long-standing efforts to rework EPA's workforce.
In an explanatory statement, lawmakers said the bill would not include any of the funds requested by Trump for "workforce reshaping" at EPA, which took about $31.5 million from various accounts under the president's budget plan. In addition, appropriators do not expect EPA will consolidate or close any regional offices.
EPA is also held to a "reprogramming limitation" of $1 million for reorganizations and downsizing. The agency is pushing forward on a realignment of its 10 regional offices to more closely match headquarters functions and has reworked other offices, as well.
Since the beginning of the Trump administration, hundreds of EPA workers have left the agency through retirement or in agencywide buyouts offered in 2017.
Staff levels at the agency are now just under 14,000 employees. Still, lawmakers expected EPA's fiscal 2019 target for full-time employees will "be no less than the fiscal 2018 year levels."
Also included in the bill's explanatory statement was a reminder of former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's time at EPA.
Lawmakers said they appreciated that EPA had improved transparency for its senior leaders' public calendars. They directed EPA to continue to post those top officials' calendars on a daily basis on its website.
Pruitt, who resigned from EPA in July under a crush of ethics allegations, did release a public calendar but often only weeks later.
Air
In what's become a pattern, lawmakers again ignored White House attempts to slash funding for two popular grant programs and instead awarded them sizeable increases.
The bill, for example, allots $87 million for the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) program, which disburses grants to replace or retool older diesel-powered vehicles and machinery with cleaner models.
Last year, DERA received $75 million; the administration had sought to cut that total to $10 million for fiscal 2019.
Similarly, spending for the targeted airshed grant program, which steers money to areas with pollution problems related to ozone or particulate matter, would increase from $40 million last year to $52 million.
In this instance, the White House had sought to eliminate funding, but the program is a favorite of Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that played a lead role in writing this part of the bill.
In contrast to EPA's overall budget, spending on both programs has soared in recent years. In fiscal 2016, for example, the DERA program received $50 million, while Congress set aside $20 million for targeted airshed grants (E&E News PM, May 1, 2017).
For two other air pollution programs, however, the new bill would keep funding at last year's levels. State and local air quality grants would again get $228.2 million.
Spending on a program geared to helping states and tribes reduce exposure to indoor radon, which has been linked to lung cancer, would remain at about $8.1 million.
In another sign of Murkowski's influence, the policy riders include a continued ban on enforcement of Clean Air Act regulations for certain small incinerators in remote corners of Alaska.
The package also instructs EPA to keep exempting diesel generators used in remote areas of the state from a requirement that recent models have a particulate filter.
Water
The conference report accompanying the spending bill gives EPA two directions related to the Clean Water Act that could prove controversial.
In one, lawmakers "encourage" EPA to complete guidance on states' abilities to block Clean Water Act permits under Section 401 of the law.
The Trump administration is exploring slashing the amount of time states have to approve or deny projects before waiving their right to weigh in on them, with the Army Corps of Engineers working on guidance to limit state reviews to just 60 days (Greenwire, Feb. 6).
States groups like the Western Governors' Association have pushed back on any cuts to Clean Water Act permit review times.
Lawmakers also directed EPA to continue following agency guidance on pollutants that move through groundwater before contaminating surface water.
"The Conferees reiterate that, since enactment in 1972, the Clean Water Act has regulated effects to navigable waters, while regulation of groundwater has remained outside of the Act's jurisdiction," they wrote.
The direction comes at a time when EPA is working on action to clarify its position on which types of pollution discharges require federal permits.
The agency has previously supported a broad interpretation, requiring permits for pollution via groundwater, but could potentially narrow its view in new guidance or regulation. The Supreme Court is also considering whether to take up two lawsuits involving the issue (Greenwire, Feb. 8).
The conference report directs EPA to implement recommendations in a July inspector general report on the Flint, Mich., drinking water crisis. That report recommends EPA revamp the Lead and Copper Rule to improve monitoring and corrosion control techniques.
It also says EPA should establish procedures to ensure states are monitoring utilities' compliance with lead in drinking water standards (E&E News PM, July 19, 2018).
If EPA decides not to implement the IG's recommendations, the agency would have to submit a report explaining the decision to the Senate Environment and Public Works, Appropriations, and House Energy and Commerce committees.
Chemicals and Superfund
Appropriators took a keen interest on the administration's work on regulating dangerous chemicals and cleaning up heavily polluted Superfund sites.
Lawmakers provided almost $127 million for EPA's chemical safety and sustainability research, the same as last year.
But they also directed the agency to focus on "advancement of methods to better separately evaluate chemical hazards and exposures and that take into consideration harm to potentially exposed and susceptible subpopulations," they said in the bill's explanatory statement.
Appropriators were particularly interested in a class of toxic, nonstick chemicals known as per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
They expressed support for EPA's move to potentially set maximum contaminant levels for two types of PFAS and directed the agency to brief the appropriation committees within 60 days of the bill's passage on its PFAS plans, which it announced today (see related story).
On lead, lawmakers ordered the Government Accountability Office to issue a report within 180 days on efforts by EPA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to remove lead-based paint and other hazardous materials.
Under court pressure, EPA last year proposed new lead-dust standards would quarter the acceptable levels for floors and more than halve those for window sills to bring them in line with HUD regulations (Greenwire, June 25, 2018).
The spending bill would provide almost $1.160 billion for the Superfund program, in line with last year's appropriation, and require EPA to report on each "time-critical removal action" that EPA has spent more than $1 million on since Jan. 1, 2017.
Regarding those toxic waste sites, the lawmakers also asked for "information on the Federal cost of clean-up efforts, whether responsible parties have faced criminal charges, and the amount of recovered Federal dollars."
Under the package, EPA is also supposed to spend at least $8 million on development and implementation of a federal permitting program for coal ash regulation.
That's a 33 percent increase over last year, when Congress instructed EPA to set aside at least $6 million on the program to ensure compliance with the agency's 2015 rules governing disposal of the vast amounts of waste produced by coal-fired power plants.
The Chemical Safety Board, meanwhile, would see its budget increase by $1 million to $12 million. Trump has repeatedly sought to eliminate the independent agency tasked with investigating chemical disasters.
Because the spending plan in many ways differs from what the president wanted, including on border security, Senate President Pro Tem Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) this morning opened the Senate by praying for Trump to sign the bill "so the government doesn't shut down."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/02/14/stories/1060121099

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Plastic Bag Bills Make It Further Than Past Attempts

Feb 14, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greenwire)

By Tom James

A ban on single-use plastic bags advanced in the Washington Legislature, the second of a pair of bills on the subject to move past initial hearings.
The bill would ban retail stores from giving out single-use plastic bags, including potentially compostable plastic bags, starting in 2020, and would set requirements for other types of bags and require stores to collect a 10-cent charge for each recycled paper or reusable bag handed out.
The bill is one of a pair of linked measures advancing in the Legislature, both of which have now progressed further than similar proposals in previous years.
The Senate version advanced out of the Environment, Energy and Technology Committee in late January. The House version advanced late Tuesday on a vote by the Environment and Energy committee.
While initial committee approval is an early step for proposed legislation in the state Capitol, it's further than earlier efforts made it: Neither a proposed ban in 2015 nor a proposed tax on single-use bags in 2017 was even put up for a vote in legislative committees then controlled by Republicans.
Seattle Democratic Sen. Reuven Carlyle, co-sponsor of the Senate version, said he thought the bills had a better chance than previous measures, with broader support in the Legislature and the prominence of pollution and environmental issues more broadly.
Only three lawmakers added their names to the 2015 proposal, but both versions introduced this year have 10 signers or more. Carlyle added that environmental groups have made the bill a top priority, and that backers are flexible on the 10-cent charge, a sticking point for paper bag manufacturers.
Republican Rep. Mary Dye, of Pomeroy, voted against the House version Tuesday, and said later that it would stop communities from making their own rules on how to handle plastic pollution.
Either proposal would take effect 90 days after the end of the legislative session, and businesses would have roughly a year to use up their existing supplies of disposable bags before facing a $250 fine for violations.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/02/14/stories/1060121053

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TSCA News

US EPA Round-Up

Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

TSCA ‘not likely’ determinations
The US EPA issued TSCA 5(a)(3)(c) findings for four substances subject to pre-manufacture notices (PMNs). These "not likely to cause unreasonable risk" determinations will allow the substances to come to market without restriction.
They cover:P-19-0006: a diisocyanate polymer blocked with alkoxyamine, intended for use as a rheology modifier and reasonably foreseen to be used as a sealant; P-18-0324: an organic acid dimethyl ester polymer, intended for use as a resin or binder in industrial paints; P-18-0221: a polyglycerol reaction product with acid anhydride, etherified, intended to be used as a binder for wood panels; and P-16-0400: alkanes, C11-16-branched and linear, imported for use as a chemical intermediate and as a solvent in coatings, cleaning fluids and other applications.
EPA formally publishes asbestos petition response, new chemicals delay
The EPA has formally published in the Federal Register:
its determination to deny a TSCA section 21 petition from a group of NGOs which had sought for the agency to expand reporting requirements for asbestos under the Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule; anda notice that it has extended by 33 days TSCA new chemical reviews, due to the government shutdown.
FY2018 enforcement and compliance report
The EPA has released a report on its enforcement and compliance reports for the 2018 fiscal year.
Across the agency, inspections and evaluations dropped to approximately 10,000 occurrences, from peak levels in 2010 of more than 20K. It collected just shy of $70m in federal administrative and civil judicial penalties – its lowest level in the past decade.
TSCA receipt of information
The agency has announced receipt of information submitted pursuant to a rule, order or consent order under TSCA for an industrial manufacturing lubricant: 2-butenedioic acid (2E)-, di-C8-18-alkyl esters (CASRN 68610-90-2).
The EPA received a water solubility analytical report, consistent with testing requirements for a set of high production volume (HPV) chemicals.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74312/us-epa-round-up

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Chemical Management News

(ACC Mentioned) US-UK Trade Talks a Chance for Greater Regulatory ‘Efficiencies’ – ACC

Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

By Luke Buxton

Post-Brexit trade talks between the UK and the US provide an opportunity to "create greater efficiencies within and between" both regulatory systems, the American Chemistry Council said.
Britain is expected to leave the European Union on 29 March and has been negotiating deals with countries outside the trade bloc.
ACC international trade director Ed Brzytwa gave comments at a US trade department public hearing on negotiating objectives for a US-UK trade agreement on 29 January.
He said the ACC is encouraging the US and the UK to "build on progress" made on talks related to regulatory cooperation during the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and the ongoing US-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC).
These have, according to Mr Brzytwa, created a "distinct track" for regulatory cooperation for the chemical sector and are "informative" models.
Non-tariff barriers, he said are "somewhat of a tricky area because we're not advocating for the elimination of regulation in the UK". The ACC, he added, assumes the UK will be part of REACH after it leaves the EU.
Written comments by Eva Hampl, a senior trade director at the United States Council for International Business (USCIB), echoed this. The UK’s continued participation in REACH "should not preclude" the US and Britain from "engaging in efforts to enhance regulatory cooperation in the assessment and management of chemical substances", she said.
Opening trade talks could also bring structured conversations about things that are important to the US chemical sector, Mr Brzytwa said. These include "risk-based approaches, science-based approaches to chemical regulation, how you prioritise certain types of issues, how you create greater alignment, but not necessarily changing the regulations".
Outside of these specific talks, he identified the need for "greater alignment" on the implementation of the UN’s globally harmonized system on chemical classification and labeling (GHS) as "priority number one".
Risk and hazard
Meanwhile, in its written comments specialty chemicals group Socma called for a trade agreement that promotes customs and regulatory cooperation and eliminates technical barriers to trade.
These barriers pose "significant challenges" to the specialty chemical industry because the the US utilises risk-based analysis while the EU system incorporates a precautionary hazard classification system. "An integrated, risk-based approach would greatly reduce regulatory burdens on specialty chemical manufacturers, many of whom are small- and medium-sized enterprises," it said.
The agreement, Socma added, "should promote alignment and efficiencies in the areas of information sharing (while protecting CBI), hazard classification, risk assessment, and the mutual recognition of good manufacturing practices."
Harmonisation
The trade agreement presents "an important opportunity to achieve harmonisation or alignment for these regulations", Nate Herman, senior vice president for supply chain at the American Apparel and Footwear Association said.
The UK and the US maintain an "extensive array" of product safety chemical management and labelling regulations regarding clothes, shoes, travel goods and textiles, he added.
While in "many cases" they intend to achieve the same goal "they often contain different requirements such as testing or certification requirements that greatly add to compliance costs".
He gave the example of the US and Britain both regulating phthalates in child care articles "yet only the US applies the rules, incorrectly in our view, to children's pyjamas".
https://chemicalwatch.com/74344/us-uk-trade-talks-a-chance-for-greater-regulatory-efficiencies-acc?q=%E2%80%9CAmerican+Chemistry+Council%E2%80%9D

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(ACC Mentioned) E.P.A. Will Study Limits on Cancer-Linked Chemicals. Critics Say the Plan Delays Action.

Feb 14, 2019 | New York Times

By Coral Davenport

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday said it will start work by the end of the year on a long-awaited plan to set national drinking-water limits for two harmful chemicals linked to cancer, low infant birth weight and other health issues.
But environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers criticized the plan, saying it in effect delayed desperately needed regulation on a clear public health threat from chemicals that are commonly used in cookware, pizza boxes, stain repellents and fire retardants.
E.P.A. officials described their proposal as the “first-ever nationwide action plan” to address the health effects of human-made chemicals known as poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs. There currently no federal regulations on the production or monitoring of that class of about 5,000 chemicals, which are manufactured and used in a wide variety of industries and products. Studies have shown that they can linger in the human body for years, causing harmful health impacts.
“The PFAS action plan is the most comprehensive action plan for a chemical of concern ever undertaken by the agency,” said Dave Ross, E.P.A.’s assistant administrator for water, in a telephone call with reporters on Thursday. Andrew Wheeler, the E.P.A.’s acting administrator, who is now President Trump’s nominee to head the agency, called the plan a “pivotal moment in the history of the agency.”
The American Chemistry Council, an industry lobbying group, voiced support for the plan. “We continue to support strong national leadership in addressing PFAS and firmly believe that E.P.A. is best positioned to provide the public with a comprehensive strategy informed by a full understanding of the safety and benefits of different PFAS chemistries,” it said in a statement.
Critics called on the agency to move more quickly, citing 2016 action by the Obama administration on two of the chemicals that suggested the urgency of the risk.
“While E.P.A. acts with the utmost urgency to repeal regulations, the agency ambles with complacency when it comes to taking real steps to protect the water we drink and the air we breathe,” said Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment Committee.
After a public outcry over tests showing dangerous levels of PFASs in communities around the United States, particularly around military bases and fire stations, the E.P.A. under the Obama administration in 2016 proposed creating a national standard for limiting the levels in drinking water of two of the most prevalent varieties of PFAS chemicals, known as PFOA and PFOS.
It also issued a health advisory recommending that water utilities and public health officials monitor levels of the two chemicals in public water supplies, and notify the public if the combined levels of those chemicals reached 70 parts per trillion. A draft report released last year by the Department of Health and Human Services recommended that the “minimal risk level” for exposure to those two chemicals should be less than half that amount.
Given the available data on the effect of PFAS chemicals, environmentalists criticized the E.P.A.’s response as inadequate to the threat.
Scott Faber, an expert on chemical policy with the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization, called it a “drinking water crisis facing millions of Americans.” But the E.P.A., he said, is “just not treating the crisis the way it deserves.”
In particular, critics of the E.P.A. have sited the role of Nancy Beck, a former lobbyist with the American Chemistry Council, in a slowdown of the agency’s response to addressing PFASs.
Last May, Scott Pruitt, the previous administrator of the E.P.A., convened a summit aimed at addressing the threat of PFAS chemicals, an announced that, as a first step, the E.P.A. would decide whether to set a national drinking water standard for PFOA and PFOS. Mr. Wheeler said Thursday that the agency intends to act quickly to begin that regulatory process.
“Our goal is to close the gap on the science as quickly as possible,” he said, adding that the agency is also looking into technology to clean or reduce PFAS chemicals from drinking water.
But Mr. Wheeler did not offer a clear timeline of when such a standard might be completed. Such regulatory processes can often take years.
Mr. Carper suggested that the E.P.A.’s failure to provide a clear timeline on completing the standard could influence the outcome of Mr. Wheeler’s Senate confirmation vote to lead the E.P.A., although given the Republican majority in the Senate, his confirmation is still likely assured.
“I urge Mr. Wheeler to reverse course and treat this public health threat with the urgency it deserves,” Mr. Carper said. “And I ask my colleagues in the Senate to take note of Mr. Wheeler’s lack of urgency in addressing this threat as they consider his nomination to be E.P.A.’s permanent administrator.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/climate/epa-chemical-plan-pfas.html

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(ACC Mentioned) The Trump EPA’s Actions on Formaldehyde Can Be Summed up in One Word: Corrupt

Feb 14, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund

By Richard Denison

Today, Heidi Vogt at the Wall Street Journal reported on the systematic efforts by the Trump Administration to derail chemical assessments under the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS).
The WSJ article cites an upcoming report by Congress’ Government Accountability Office (GAO) that notes “EPA leadership in October directed the heads of the agency’s various programs to limit the number of chemicals they wanted IRIS to study or continue researching. Nine of 16 assessments were then dropped, including one that looked at whether exposure to formaldehyde increases the risk of leukemia that “has been drafted and is ready to be released for public comment.” The chemical industry has long sought to undermine the findings of numerous governmental authorities that have identified the dangers posed by formaldehyde, one of the industry’s biggest cash cows.
IRIS itself has also long been a target of the chemical and allied industries, including those well represented by EPA political appointees who are now able to drive the assault on IRIS from inside the agency.
This post will provide more of the backstory to the WSJ’s excellent reporting. It reveals additional decisions being made as I write by conflicted political appointees, not only to derail the beleaguered IRIS assessment for formaldehyde, a known human carcinogen, but to transfer any further assessment of the chemical to be under the control of those same political appointees. What is happening here we believe is ripe for further investigation.
A brief history of IRIS and its formaldehyde assessment
IRIS, established in 1985, is situated within the science branch of EPA, the Office of Research and Development (ORD). That placement is intentional: ORD is not a regulatory branch, and placing IRIS there was intended to create an arms-length separation and a degree of independence from the EPA program offices that make regulatory decisions, decisions that necessarily consider more than science and can get caught up in political battles. As stated on EPA’s website:
The placement of the IRIS Program in ORD is intentional. It ensures that IRIS can develop impartial toxicity information independent of its use by EPA’s program and regional offices to set national standards and clean up hazardous sites.
The science IRIS does serves all parts of EPA – all of its program offices and its 10 EPA regions – where it is used to inform air and water pollution limits, waste site cleanup standards and other risk levels and regulatory actions. IRIS chemical hazard characterizations are also widely relied on by other federal agencies and other countries, as well as state and local governments (see this letter of support for IRIS from the Environmental Council of the States).
The IRIS assessment of formaldehyde has a long, convoluted, and contentious history that I will only touch on here before focusing on the latest chapter of this saga.
-In 2011, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) reviewed the assessment and issued a report quite critical of the assessment’s structure and its presentation and analysis of evidence, though not of its conclusions regarding formaldehyde’s hazards. The report made numerous recommendations for improving the assessment and the IRIS process. That report led EPA to undertake a major overhaul of IRIS, in addition to redoing its formaldehyde assessment.
-In 2014, the NAS reviewed IRIS’ progress in implementing its recommendations, and issued a new report that gave the program high marks, noting it had made more progress at a faster pace than had been expected.
-Also in 2014, the NAS affirmed a separate finding by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) that formaldehyde is a known human carcinogen and linked to nasopharyngeal cancer, sinonasal cancer, and myeloid leukemia. In response to that finding, ACC issued a press release smearing the NTP.
-In 2017, EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) also reviewed IRIS’ progress and issued a highly favorable report.
-In April 2018, the NAS conducted yet another review of IRIS and again specifically assessed the extent to which EPA had made progress in responding to its earlier 2011 and 2014 recommendations, yielding yet another positive report. In response, ACC issued a press release claiming it knows better than the nation’s most august scientific body.
-In January 2018, EPA’s IRIS report to Congress indicated that “IRIS plans to deliver an External Review of its Formaldehyde Assessment for public comment and peer review in FY18.”
Enter the Trump EPA
First let me introduce the main EPA players in this latest chapter, in addition to the Office of the Administrator:
-Nancy Beck, Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for the EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), which administers the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Beck came to EPA in April 2017 directly from a senior position at the American Chemistry Council (ACC), many of whose member companies are major producers and users of formaldehyde. While at ACC, one of Dr. Beck’s main activities was a sustained assault on the IRIS program on behalf of ACC members; e.g, see here and here.
-David Dunlap, Deputy Assistant Administrator of ORD, who came to EPA in September 2018 directly from Koch Industries. Among other polluting companies, Koch owns the pulp and paper giant Georgia-Pacific, which is a major producer and user of formaldehyde.
Despite the fact that IRIS resides in ORD, Beck in OCSPP has been extensively involved in agency activities involving the IRIS program. As one measure of this, consider Dr. Beck’s calendar for the first 10 months she was at EPA, which was recently released in response to an EDF FOIA request. During that short time, Beck’s calendar shows 19 call or meeting entries involving IRIS.
Efforts last year by the Administration and EPA political appointees to defund IRIS (see last entry on p. 19), followed by a Senate majority appropriations bill that included language to dismantle IRIS entirely and relocate parts of it to OCSPP, were thwarted. The enacted FY18 appropriations bill continues to fund the IRIS program at FY17 levels and mandates that the program stay within ORD (see page 578).
Bear in mind that a draft of the revised IRIS formaldehyde assessment itself has been ready for review since the fall of 2017. In anticipation of its release for review, both chambers of Congress in reports accompanying the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017 directed EPA to contract with the NAS to conduct an external peer review of the revised IRIS assessment and they appropriated the needed funding.
Despite all of this, Trump appointees at EPA have steadfastly blocked release of the IRIS assessment.
Killing off the IRIS formaldehyde assessment
Meanwhile, efforts were being ramped up to kill off the assessment entirely. The most recent IRIS multi-year agenda, which was released in December 2015, listed the formaldehyde assessment as in progress. And it remains listed on the IRIS Tracker, with its status noted (optimistically, it turns out) as “Step 4. Public Comment and External Peer Review.” But formaldehyde has now mysteriously disappeared from the most recent IRIS program outlook document (published December 19, 2018). What happened?
In August 2018, ORD initiated a process to identify EPA program office priorities for IRIS assessments (see response to question 117, here). David Dunlap, immediately upon his arrival at EPA from Koch Industries, oversaw the completion of that effort, which led to the December IRIS outlook document from which formaldehyde is absent. Dunlap then issued a prospectively applicable EPA recusal statement that includes a voluntary recusal from any matters related to the IRIS formaldehyde assessment, due to his deep conflicts of interest based on his prior employment. Miraculously, his recusal statement was dated the same day as the IRIS program outlook document.
EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler was asked about the status of the formaldehyde assessment in questions for the record submitted by Senator Ed Markey subsequent to Wheeler’s January 16, 2019, Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee’s hearing on his nomination to become EPA Administrator. In his response, Wheeler wrote (see responses to question 116, emphasis added):
Because IRIS assessments are major investments in both time and resources, in an August 10, 2018 Memorandum to Agency program offices I requested an update of top priorities for IRIS assessments. Formaldehyde was not identified as a top priority.
With this decision, Step 1 of the Trump EPA’s strategy on formaldehyde appears to have been completed. Now it’s onto Step 2.
Formaldehyde is expected to be resurrected as a top agency priority – but now under OCSPP’s control
On January 29, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) posted a public notice of a meeting it will hold on February 20. The meeting notice follows an ACC letter dated January 7, 2019, sent to “formaldehyde stakeholders” announcing the creation of a formaldehyde consortium to plan for the anticipated imminent proposal by EPA to designate formaldehyde as a “high-priority substance” under TSCA:
Importantly, in January 2019, EPA is expected to announce the next 20 chemical substances that will undergo review by its TSCA risk evaluation program. Based on EPA’s guidance for selecting chemicals for risk evaluation, formaldehyde is a prime candidate for selection by EPA as a high priority chemical in this next round of reviews due to its widespread use in the production of consumer products and its inclusion on EPA’s TSCA work plan.
While EPA’s announcement has been delayed in part by the government shutdown, it simply defies credulity that ACC would have scheduled such a meeting unless ACC at least knew about, if not had a hand in, EPA’s plan to propose to designate formaldehyde as a TSCA high-priority chemical.
ACC’s stated purpose for the meeting is to prepare “to engage with EPA on its formaldehyde risk evaluation activities” in order to “to ensure that formaldehyde remains a sustainable chemistry for use in various product applications.”
(Given that the ACC meeting notice was made public and addressed to “formaldehyde stakeholders,” EDF and other NGOs active in TSCA implementation and with high interest in formaldehyde RSVP’d for the meeting, as instructed in the meeting notice. Each of us quickly received an email from ACC indicating we were not welcome to attend the meeting.)
Should EPA finalize its high-priority designation, OCSPP will then initiate a risk evaluation of formaldehyde. Under normal circumstances, OCSPP could be expected to rely heavily on an IRIS assessment of a chemical in preparing its TSCA risk evaluation – rather than reinvent the wheel and waste precious EPA resources in duplicative efforts. But we are not facing normal circumstances.
To summarize, in the span of a few weeks, it appears we will move from EPA’s Acting Administrator declaring formaldehyde not to be a high priority for the agency – and on that basis halting the finalization of the IRIS assessment – to EPA declaring formaldehyde to be a high priority for the agency – thereby resurrecting assessment of the chemical, but now under the direction of political appointees with a long history of antagonism toward IRIS’ science and with conflicts of interests on this chemical.
Now that is a corrupt process.
It doesn’t have to end this way
It would be a shame if this travesty plays out as the first major decision made under the leadership of the newly appointed OCSPP Assistant Administrator Alexandra Dunn, who has suggested she is looking to set a new and more balanced course for TSCA implementation. It’s not too late to remedy the situation:
-IRIS could be allowed to complete the formaldehyde assessment through regular order, promptly releasing the current draft for agency, public and NAS review.
-Beck could step back into her lane at OCSPP and stop interfering with IRIS.
-If OCSPP still decides to designate formaldehyde as a high-priority substance, it should certainly rely on the completed IRIS assessment in conducting its risk evaluation, rather than having conflicted political appointees redo to their own liking the science IRIS has already done.
Might this impending debacle instead be turned into an opportunity for the new EPA leadership to start to demonstrate it is not simply captive to narrow corporate interests and to reaffirm a commitment to the agency’s mission to be science-based and protect human health and the environment?
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2019/02/14/the-trump-epas-actions-on-formaldehyde-can-be-summed-up-in-one-word-corrupt/

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(ACC Mentioned) Industry Review of PFHxA Recommends Environmental Monitoring

Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

By Dr. Emma Davies

An industry-funded review of perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA) recommends "continued environmental monitoring to confirm that levels do not rise over time" as well as further study of children's exposure to the chemical.
The per and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) is an impurity and breakdown product of six-carbon fluorotelomer-based products, used in stain-repellent items and fire-fighting foams.
US firm Integral Consulting analysed data in scientific literature and found that PFHxA is not widely detected or present at high concentrations in ground, surface or drinking water.
But the review confirms that it is a "stable chemical, does not undergo biodegradation and is environmentally persistent". "There are indications that PFHxA may be capable of long-range marine transport as the compound has been detected at low concentrations in snow, sediment, biota, and seawater in remote locations," it adds.
Writing in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, the authors at Integral Consulting say that there is sufficient evidence in scientific literature that it is not carcinogenic, genotoxic or an endocrine disruptor.
Germany recently withdrew its proposal for PFHxA to be considered a substance of very high concern (SVHC), after the UK and Finland raised concerns about interpreting REACH's equivalent level of concern (Eloc) principle for environmental pollutants. The country is instead preparing a restriction proposal, amid concerns over persistence, bioaccumulation and toxicity (PBT).
Meanwhile, industry is moving to PFASs with shorter chains. But "these are as persistent as long-chain representatives and have in addition a high mobility, especially in the aqueous environment," said Germany in its risk management option analysis.
In its hazard assessment document on PFHxA, Germany suggested that the chemical is likely to be as persistent as long-chain PFASs.
It is not registered under REACH. However, related substances that can degrade into it are registered and used in the EU.
Integral Consulting studied scientific literature via online seaches of Google Scholar as well as references cited by regulatory agencies. The American Chemistry Council's FluoroCouncil funded the work.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74323/industry-review-of-pfhxa-recommends-environmental-monitoring?q=%E2%80%9CAmerican+Chemistry+Council%E2%80%9D

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EPA Vows National Action on Toxic ‘Forever’ Chemicals

Feb 14, 2019 | Washington Post

By Brady Dennis

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced what officials called a historic effort to rein in a class of long-lasting chemicals that scientists say pose serious health risks. But environmental and public health groups, some lawmakers and residents of contaminated communities said that the agency’s “action plan” isn’t aggressive enough and that the EPA should move more quickly to regulate the chemicals in the nation’s drinking water.
The EPA promised last spring to devise a plan to address the widespread contamination caused by perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl compounds, or PFAS, which have been detected in the drinking water of millions of Americans. The agency’s leader at the time, Scott Pruitt, called the problem “a national emergency.”
The man-made chemicals have long been used in consumer products including water-repellent fabrics, nonstick cookware and grease-resistant paper products, as well as in firefighting foams used at airports and on military bases. Long-term exposures have been associated with health problems that include thyroid disease, weakened immunity, infertility risks and certain cancers. Because PFAS do not break down in the environment, they have become known as “forever chemicals.”
In its plan Thursday, agency officials vowed by year’s end to begin the long process of setting drinking water limits for two of the most widely detected compounds, which are known as PFOS and PFOA. The EPA also said it will issue new guidance on cleaning up groundwater contaminated by the chemicals, require more testing for PFAS in public water systems around the country, undertake more research on the health effects of less-studied compounds and better communicate the risks to communities nationwide.
“Americans count on EPA every time they turn on their faucet,” EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler said at a news conference in Philadelphia on Thursday. “That’s why communities across the nation have asked us to provide a comprehensive approach to understanding PFAS in drinking water. Our action plan provides just that.
“Through these actions, we are stepping up to provide the leadership the public needs and deserves,” Wheeler said.
But environmental advocacy groups, Democrats in Congress and residents of communities who have existed for months or years on bottled water said the measures fell short of the aggressive action needed to address the problem. They have long urged the agency to finally set a national threshold for PFOS and PFOA in drinking water — something several states have already begun to do in the absence of federal regulation.
“It’s been more and more evident that these chemicals are really bad for human health,” said Michael Hickey, an insurance underwriter who began testing the water in his town of Hoosick Falls, N.Y., after his father died of kidney cancer in 2013. His work brought to light serious PFOA contamination linked to a nearby industrial facility.
“It’s just disheartening,” Hickey said of Thursday’s announcement, adding that he recently implored EPA officials to move more rapidly to regulate the chemicals during a meeting in Washington last month. “These are real illnesses that happen every day. This EPA doesn’t understand the severity and what it actually does to a small town when there’s this kind of contamination.”
Erik Olson, health program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the EPA has not regulated any new contaminant in drinking water for more than two decades, across multiple administrations. But he said that seldom had it been so clear as with PFOS and PFOA about the need for national limits on specific chemicals.
“EPA continues to punt and has failed to even lift a finger to regulate these dangerous contaminants that are in millions of people’s drinking water," Olson said. "If they can’t regulate something like these highly toxic chemicals that are all over the country, what can they regulate?”
But EPA officials on Thursday described their efforts as “groundbreaking,” saying that the proposals represented an agencywide effort to assess the dangers of PFAS chemicals, work to clean them up and begin protecting the nation’s drinking water from future contamination.
David Ross, assistant administrator in the EPA’s water office, told reporters that the agency’s plan is based on input from community meetings nationwide over the past year, as well as 120,000 written comments it received.
Ross dismissed the notion that the EPA does not intend to set a drinking water standard for the contaminants or that it is moving unnecessarily slowly.
“I want to be crystal clear about this — our intent is to establish a [maximum contaminant level] for PFOA and PFOS,” he said. He added that the agency will begin the process by the end of the year but that it must proceed carefully so that any new regulation can be defensible in court. He said any threshold the agency ultimately sets will reflect current research. “We will develop the standard at the level the science dictates.”
Harvard University researchers have reported that public drinking water supplies serving more than 6 million Americans have tested for the chemicals at or above the EPA’s current suggested threshold of 70 parts per trillion — which many experts argue should be significantly lower to safeguard public health. The agency first issued that guideline in 2016.
Scientists have long studied the effects of PFOS and PFOA, which companies phased out years ago amid growing evidence that both were ending up in the blood of nearly every American. But thousands of other PFAS chemicals remain in use.
Politico reported in May that the White House and EPA sought to block publication of a federal health study on the nationwide effects of PFAS contamination after one administration aide warned in an email that it could result in a “public relations nightmare.” The study from the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry eventually was released. It suggested that the EPA’s existing, nonbinding standard is inadequate to protect public health.
Meanwhile, some states have acted on their own. New Jersey became the first to regulate certain types of PFAS chemicals in its drinking water, and others such as Michigan, New York and Vermont have begun to follow suit.
Pressure has continued to mount on the EPA to act. Both houses of Congress last year held hearings about the problem, and lawmakers introduced bills to compel the government to test for PFAS chemicals nationwide and to respond wherever water and soil polluted by them are found.
EPA officials, who held a PFAS “summit” last spring and visited numerous affected communities to meet with residents and local leaders, insisted Thursday that its proposals will help meaningfully reduce the risks of exposure to the chemicals for many Americans.
“We have not slowed down, and we are not going to slow down,” Wheeler said Thursday.
But despite the promises on Thursday, skepticism remained.
"While EPA acts with the utmost urgency to repeal regulations, the agency ambles with complacency when it comes to taking real steps to protect the water we drink and the air we breathe,” Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement. "I urge Mr. Wheeler to reverse course and treat this public health threat with the urgency it deserves. And I ask my colleagues in the Senate to take note of Mr. Wheeler’s lack of urgency in addressing this threat as they consider his nomination to be EPA’s permanent administrator.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/02/14/epa-vows-national-action-toxic-forever-chemicals/?utm_term=.235c791e1688

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US EPA Announces PFAs Action Plan

Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

By Lisa Martine Jenkins and Kelly Franklin

The US EPA has published its long-awaited federal plan to manage the risks posed by per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals (PFASs).
Announced simultaneously at ten press conferences across the US, the plan outlines short- and long-term actions, across various EPA programmes, to address the more than 600 PFAS compounds commercially active in the US.
Acting administrator Andrew Wheeler touted it as a "the most comprehensive cross-agency action plan for a chemical of concern ever undertaken by the agency".
Among the EPA’s priorities is to use the TSCA new chemicals programme as a "gatekeeper" to ensure that new PFASs entering commerce are safe. The plan notes that through section 5 of the law, the EPA continues to impose restrictions and require the generation of data on new fluorinated compounds.
The agency has also pledged to move forward a significant new use rule (Snur) on certain long-chain perfluoroalkyl carboxylate (LCPFAC) chemical substances. Originally proposed in 2015, the rule is designed to complement a voluntary phase-out of PFOA and certain related compounds to ensure that the agency would be notified of – and have the chance to assess – resumed use of these substances.
"The EPA is considering the public comments received as well as the new statutory requirements added by the [Lautenberg Act, which updated TSCA in 2016] as it works to issue a supplemental proposed Snur," the plan says.
Another priority action is the development of toxicity values for several PFASs: PFBA, PFHxA, PFHxS, PFNA, and PFDA. The EPA aims to release drafts on these in 2020, following the finalisation this year of toxicity assessments of PFBS and GenX chemicals.
Other named actions to manage the substances are: continuing the process of setting a maximum contaminant level (MCL) for PFOS and PFOA in drinking water; proposing nationwide drinking water monitoring for PFASs; enhancing PFAS research through improved detection, measurement, treatment and remediation; assisting with state-level enforcement for PFAS exposure via federal tools; and developing a risk communication toolbox for federal, state, tribal and local partners to use with the public.
Focus on PFAS
The EPA’s PFAS management plan comes amid mounting public concern about the impact of the substances, which continue to be identified – at times in concerning concentrations – in drinking water sources nationwide.
Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt pledged last May to address the possible health hazards of PFASs, with a focus on contamination by the legacy chemicals PFOA and PFOS. As part of this effort, he said the agency would release a management plan by autumn 2018, taking into account feedback heard at community engagement events across the country. This, however, was delayed, in part due to the government shutdown.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group in the House of Representatives has launched a PFAS action taskforce to put the issue "front and centre in Washington DC." Legislation (HR 535) has already been introduced to designate the class of substances as hazardous under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (Cercla).
Industry groups and environmental advocates, meanwhile, remain divided over whether newer, short-chain PFASs (like GenX) are as risky as abandoned long-chain chemistries like PFOA and PFOS. However, Mr Wheeler acknowledged the necessity of learning more in his announcement of the action plan.
"Our goal is to close the gap on the science as quickly as possible, especially as it relates to other emerging risks like GenX," he said.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74353/us-epa-announces-pfas-action-plan

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Ewire: EPA Unveils PFAs 'Action Plan' with Eye on Potential Rules

Feb 14, 2019 | Inside EPA

EPA has unveiled an “action plan” with a host of short- and long-term efforts to address widespread concern over contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that includes enforcement and research, though the plan only initiates water and waste regulatory steps and falls short of setting strict policy limits environmentalists sought.
“The PFAS Action Plan is the most comprehensive cross-agency plan to address an emerging chemical of concern ever undertaken by EPA,” said Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler at a Feb. 14 event in Philadelphia. “For the first time in Agency history, we utilized all of our program offices to construct an all-encompassing plan to help states and local communities address PFAS and protect our nation’s drinking water.”
He added, “We are moving forward with several important actions, including the maximum contaminant level process, that will help affected communities better monitor, detect, and address PFAS.”
The plan includes a goal of proposing a Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) regulatory determination on two commonly found PFAS by the end of 2019, which could eventually lead to a maximum contaminant level (MCL) for the chemicals. But critics argue that the substances are dangerous enough that EPA should more quickly pursue an MCL.
Wheeler also announced that under the plan EPA has already begun the regulatory process for listing perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) -- two of the best-known and prevalent PFAS -- as hazardous waste, and will issue interim groundwater cleanup recommendations for sites contaminated by the substances.
In addition, EPA commits to continuing to use enforcement actions, applying unspecified “available enforcement tools” to address PFAS contamination, and will consider, but does not guarantee, requiring PFAS reporting as a listed chemical under the Toxics Release Inventory.
Other steps in the plan include a proposal to monitor PFAS in drinking water under the agency's Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Program -- an expansion of previous monitoring it conducted -- and to step up its agency-wide risk communication on the substances to help states, tribes and local governments inform the public on risks from PFAS.
Critics say the plan falls far short of what is needed to protect against harm from the substances. For example, Senate Environment & Public Works Committee ranking member Tom Carper (D-DE) said the agency is further delaying a decision on setting a PFOA and PFOS drinking water limit despite former Trump EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's assurances almost a year ago that he was close to making such a decision.
“It has taken the EPA nearly a year just to kick the can even further down the road. While EPA acts with the utmost urgency to repeal regulations, the agency ambles with complacency when it comes to taking real steps to protect the water we drink and the air we breathe,” the senator said.
EPW member Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-DI) separately said, “After a year of hemming and hawing, Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler’s EPA is punting on action to tackle a serious public health risk lurking in Americans’ drinking water. Meanwhile, Wheeler is pushing as hard as humanly possible to roll back vital environmental protections he thinks stand between his polluter patrons and bigger profits.”
And despite EPW Chairman Sen. John Barrasso's (R-WY) strong support for the Trump administration, his statement on the plan was not a comprehensive endorsement -- and he announced that his panel intends to a hold a hearing this spring on the action plan.
“Local communities and state regulators from across the country as well as members of Congress are concerned about PFAS pollution,” he said. “The Environmental Protection Agency’s PFAS plan is only a first step. As I have said before, EPA must speak clearly about the risk that this class of chemicals poses to public health and the environment. The agency must be willing to take decisive action where it is warranted. Industry and the Department of Defense must also play a constructive role.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-epa-unveils-pfas-action-plan-eye-potential-rules

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Barrasso Pans EPA Fluorochemicals Plan, Promises Senate Hearings

Feb 14, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Sylvia Carignan

The EPA’s new plan for tackling a family of ubiquitous chemicals contaminating drinking water across the country lacks teeth, the head of the Senate’s environment panel said Feb. 14.
The Environmental Protection Agency needs to take “decisive action” to address the contaminants, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a Feb. 14 statement.
Barrasso said his committee will hold hearings on the EPA’s plan this spring.
The committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Tom Carper (Del.), also called the EPA plan “insufficiently protective” in a statement.
In a press conference, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said he has “every intention” of setting limits for two compounds in drinking water, but acknowledged he’s unsure how long that could take.
The family of compounds, also known as PFAS, have been used to manufacture firefighting foams as well as nonstick and stain-resistant coatings in clothing, fast-food wrappers, carpets, and other consumer products.
The chemicals could cause developmental effects to fetuses, testicular and kidney cancer, liver tissue damage, immune system or thyroid effects, and changes in cholesterol, according to the EPA.
The EPA’s strategy “outlines concrete steps” to address the compounds, according to an agency fact sheet. The report notes the agency’s progress toward considering drinking water limits, interim cleanup recommendations for contaminated groundwater, and other efforts, but does not commit to specific, enforceable standards.
The National Ground Water Association applauded the agency’s efforts to move toward drinking water standards for the contaminants.
“PFAS contamination is a national crisis that requires national leadership, and EPA’s announcement is an important step in providing that leadership,” Lauren Schapker, the association’s government affairs director, said in a statement. The association represents public and private sector scientists, engineers, and others who work in groundwater issues.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/barrasso-criticizes-epas-plan-to-tackle-fluorochemicals

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OECD Proposal Would Identify Countries Regulating Industrial Chemicals

Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

By Leigh Stringer

The OECD is proposing to develop an indicator that identifies the number of countries that have legislation in place to manage industrial and consumer chemicals.
The indicator will be added to a number of others (see box) that currently measure progress in implementing the UN’s voluntary global chemicals programme, the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (Saicm).
"The aim is to increase awareness on industrial chemicals, signalling that managing them is a core building block of an overall chemicals management scheme," Bob Diderich, head of the OECD's environmental, health and safety division, told Chemical Watch.
Work is underway to develop an indicator that maps the different stages countries are at in implementing the UN’s Globally Harmonised System (GHS) of classification and labelling.
No such indicator exists for measuring countries’ progress in setting up systems, specifically dedicated to managing the risks of industrial and consumer chemicals. Such an indicator, says the OECD’s proposal, would identify where the legislative gaps are around the world.
"To complement the impact of the GHS on the reduction of risks from industrial and consumer chemicals, many countries have implemented legislation allowing them to prioritise chemicals for risk management, perform a risk assessment on priority chemicals and implement, if needed, risk reduction measures based on the outcome of the risk assessment."
Unfortunately, it says, many still lack such legislation and cannot manage the chemical risks, or establish measures to address them, that have been recognised in other countries.
The OECD says it could develop and maintain the indicator and periodically report on progress, for example once every two years. And it suggests that a baseline report could be presented at the fifth International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM5) next year.
All Saicm indicators are developed and published by the Inter-Organisation Programme for the Sound Management of Chemicals (IOMC), which is made up of the international organisations Food And Agriculture Organization (FAO), ILO, UNDP, Unep, Unido, Unitar, WHO, World Bank and the OECD.
Current Saicm progress indicators:
Number of countries with National Profiles – these are evaluations of how countries are managing chemicals (Unitar)
-Number of countries with a Pollutant Release and Transfer Register or PRTR (Unitar)
-Number of countries with Poisons centres (WHO) Countries with controls for lead in decorative paint (WHO and Unep)
-Number of countries that have achieved core capacities for chemicals under the International Health Regulations (WHO)
-Number of parties to the Basel, Rotterdam, Stockholm and Minamata Conventions
-Countries that have implemented pesticide legislation based on the FAO/WHO International Code of Conduct (FAO)
https://chemicalwatch.com/74328/oecd-proposal-would-identify-countries-regulating-industrial-chemicals

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US Retailer to Phase out Methylene Chloride, NMP Paint Strippers

Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

By Kelly Franklin

Midwestern US home improvement retailer Menards has joined the growing list of stores that say they will no longer sell paint strippers containing the solvents methylene chloride and N-Methylpyrrolidone (NMP).
Retailers across the country – including Lowe’s, Walmart, Home Depotand Amazon – have committed to pulling the products in recent months, amid an NGO campaign highlighting their risks and the US EPA’s failure to regulate them.
Jeff Abbott, a spokesperson for Menards, told Chemical Watch that the paint strippers sold in the company’s more than 300 stores meet government standards. But, "to be on the safe side, we are no longer purchasing paint removal products that contain any amount of methylene chloride or NMP", he said.
Mr Abbott said the company reached the decision to stop stocking the products last year. But he said it was difficult to determine how long it will take for the retailer to exhaust its existing supplies, because it will depend on the weather this spring.
‘Cautiously optimistic’
In a statement, Mike Schade, director of the Mind the Store campaign at NGO Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, said he was "cautiously optimistic" about Menards' announcement.
But he criticised the retailer for not removing the products from its shelves immediately. "Until this policy is fully implemented, this will be a ‘buyer beware’ situation," he said.
The NGO has recently been conducting compliance checks to ensure that other businesses that have committed to pulling the paint strippers have done so.
Menards' news emerged immediately after a letter from campaigners had reiterated their months-old request for the company to join other retailers in banning the products.
Mr Abbott, however, said the public interest groups "did not play a role" in the company’s decision. "This was the first communication I’ve heard on this subject," he added.
Pressure mounts on EPA
Meanwhile, the consumer advocacy community is continuing to press the EPA to act.
A final rule to regulate methylene chloride paint strippers under TSCA remains under interagency review. Nevertheless, a group of NGOs has sued the EPA for its continued inaction. And the organisations already have begun to express their frustration that the forthcoming rule appears unlikely to ban workplace applications.
With regard to NMP, the EPA says it will address the potential risk posed by the substance’s use in paint strippers under its ongoing TSCA risk evaluation.
A final assessment – along with the nine others in the EPA’s initial batch of reviews – are due in December, although the agency may extend this deadline for up to six months.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74349/us-retailer-to-phase-out-methylene-chloride-nmp-paint-strippers

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Action Needed to Protect Americans from Toxic EtO Pollution

Feb 14, 2019 | Natural Resource Defense Council

By Dan West

Ethylene oxide (EtO) is a common, highly hazardous industrial chemical linked to breast cancer and immune system cancers like non-Hodgkin lymphoma and lymphocytic leukemia (see EPA IRIS Exec Summary, Dec 2016). Concerned community members in Illinois made it a 2018 campaign issue after two federal agencies released studies showing elevated cancer risks outside Chicago. Thanks to the effort and organizing of their constituents, members of Congress are now taking action to combat the threat this colorless and highly explosive toxic gas poses to neighborhoods across the country.
EtO is made from ethylene, a petrochemical, and is used primarily to make ethylene glycol, a highly toxic chemical used in antifreeze and as a coolant for cars, gas compressors, and air conditioning systems. It is also commonly used as a sterilizer for medical equipment, and industrial sterilizing facilities around the country vent it, poisoning the air of nearby communities. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers EtO emissions from sterilization facilities to be among the most hazardous air pollutants posing the greatest health risks in the largest number of urban areas.
State and federal agencies monitor EtO air emissions, but monitoring is far behind where it should be. Local, publicly-available data is either outdated or nonexistent. The EPA released its most recent National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) in 2018, but the data is from 2014. The NATA is used as a screening tool to identify places of interest for more detailed study, so comprehensive local monitoring is still needed to pinpoint risk at specific places, like homes or schools, or to compare risks and exposures at local levels, like between neighborhoods, but the NATA is supposed to be the starting point.
Since 2014, EPA updated its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), estimating cancer risks from EtO exposure are 30 times worse than previously thought. This was based on a 2016 assessment of all available scientific studies including laboratory animal studies, cellular mechanistic studies, and workplace epidemiologic studies (see Jinot et al 2018). EPA’s updated risk assessment confirms that EtO is carcinogenic to humans by inhalation (stronger than its previous classification of ‘probably carcinogenic to humans’).
In August 2018, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) within the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) issued its final Health Consultation report on health risks posed by EtO air emissions from the Sterigenics facility in Willowbrook, a Chicago suburb. But the problem isn’t limited to this one facility.
Alarmingly, the 2014 NATA already shows 58 EPA monitoring tracts in 18 different counties across 12 states that have EtO air emissions at levels that pose cancer risks higher than 1 in 10 thousand people (see ATSDR 2018 Health Consultation report). This is far higher than the 1 in 1 million that EPA considers an acceptable risk, which triggers federal regulators to notify polluters.
Over 288,000 people live in the monitoring tracts across the country that EPA identified to be at elevated risk of EtO exposure, and nine counties have facilities that are emitting more EtO than the Sterigenics Willowbrook facility. This is not a singular issue affecting one suburb of Chicago, it’s a national issue that begs EPA action in how it monitors and regulates air toxics in general.
Successful efforts by community members and journalists in Illinois brought much needed public attention to EtO last year. Since then, Illinois Senators Durbin and Duckworth and Representatives Foster, Lipinski and Schneider introduced the Expanding Transparency Of Information and Safeguarding Toxics (ETO IS Toxic) Act, which directs EPA and ATSDR to modernize their pollution monitoring and chemical assessment programs. They’ve sent numerous letters already and plan to send more in the coming months.
EPA should update the National Air Toxics Assessment more frequently, coordinate more quickly and transparently with other agencies, and update and enforce stricter regulations on venting. Not only will it save lives if EPA takes these actions, it will help rebuild trust within local communities that the federal government really is trying to protect public health.
Unfortunately, EPA seems to be moving in the opposite direction. On February 4, EPA snuck a review of the health risk factor for EtO into its proposed amendments to the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) for the Hydrochloric Acid (HCl) Production source category, even though it acknowledges EtO is not part of the HCl source category under review. This happened a day before EPA released updated data from Willowbrook confirming high levels of EtO in surrounding neighborhoods, and a day after allegations surfaced that Sterigenics was covering up its emissions and operating secret plants.
On February 11, NRDC joined 17 other environmental organizations on a letter to EPA stating the inappropriateness of opening the EtO health risk factor in this source-focused proposal. But since EPA has done so, it should hold at least one public hearing on this proposal as it relates to EtO to give the public a chance to comment. The letter also emphasizes that though most of the national attention generated by this issue is in the Chicago area, EtO is an issue affecting communities around the nation.
Local Illinoisans and the members of Congress who represent them are raising awareness about this issue. Members of the Illinois congressional delegation—Sens. Durbin and Duckworth and Reps. Schneider, Lipinski, Foster, and Casten— most recently re-introduced the ETO IS Toxic Act. The people of Illinois – and all around the country – must be protected from this dangerous toxin. Given EPA’s foot-dragging on this issue, members of Congress should join this effort to force the agency to do its job and protect our health and that of our children.
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/dan-west/action-needed-protect-americans-toxic-eto-pollution

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Antimony Trade Group Raises Concerns over Proposed Threshold Limit

Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

By Leigh Stringer

The International Antimony Association (i2a) has said a recent proposal to lower the threshold limit value (TLV) for the substance antimony trioxide would cause production challenges and increased costs for many users.
Antimony substances are used extensively in flame retardants and also in lead batteries, alloys, plastics, paints, glass and other ceramics.
Earlier this month, US scientific organisation the Association Advancing Occupational and Environmental Health (ACGIH), recommended that the threshold limit for inhaling antimony trioxide should be 0.02mg/m³. The ACGIH’s recommended limit has been 0.5mg/m³ since 1979.
If the updated proposal is adopted, many users of the substance would face problems across their production processes, as well as higher costs, says i2a secretary general Caroline Braibant. While the ACGIH is not a regulatory agency, its opinions and conclusions on substances are well respected and can influence regulatory decisions.
To achieve such a limit, users of antimony trioxide would need to use low-dust or dust-free forms of the substance, such as wetted powders or masterbatches, which is where antimony is already added to a polymer, for example.
"Half of the production volume of antimony trioxide in the EU has already moved to these supply forms. But the cost of these forms to users is slightly higher because of the extra processing involved," says Ms Braibant. In addition, implementing the relevant workplace controls to comply with the threshold limit value may actually require significant, and much larger, investments, she adds.
The dust-free form of antimony, she says, is however "sometimes perceived as not as compatible with some downstream production processes".
Solutions to this issue can be established through better user and producer communication, says Ms Braibant. "Users can discuss the process barriers with their producers, explain their process needs and the producers may then be able to adjust."
But some users are not open to sharing their process details for confidentiality reasons.
"Therefore, they prefer to buy the pure powder form, despite the higher exposure potential it entails" she says.
‘Little detail’
In 2017, following the release of the US National Toxicology Program (NTP) Carcinogenicity studies on antimony, the ACGIH proposed a respirable limit of 0.03mg/m³. But the ACGIH withdrew the proposal after it held a public consultation.
ACGIH calculated its new proposed value for inhalable exposure by transforming the lowest concentration of respirable antimony – where the NTP studies’ mice and rats developed adverse chronic lung effects (3mg Sb/m³) – into a human equivalent concentration. It then divided it by a number of "uncertainty factors".
"This calculation mostly boils down to interpreting the very recent NTP toxicological animal evidence against the very limited reliable and relevant workplace exposure information available," an i2a press release says.
"However, very little detail is provided regarding the fashion in which respirable aerosol impacts in the NTP studies were converted to a proposed inhalable limit or the uncertainty factors that were applied in ACGIH’s derivation of the proposed TLV," it adds.
The difference between respirable and inhalable is that the former measures the particles that reach and enter the deep lung, while inhalable measures where they enter the nose and mouth.
In addition to submitting comments on the proposal, i2a plans to inform the ACGIH about its workplace monitoring programme, which kicks off next week.
"The data collected through this programme should replace a number of old, incomplete and unreliable workplace monitoring data ACGIH is currently referring to," the press release says.
The deadline for commenting on the ACGIH’s proposal is 31 May.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74338/antimony-trade-group-raises-concerns-over-proposed-threshold-limit

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Echa Round-Up

Feb 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

Updates to the registry of SVHC intentions until outcome
This registry aims to make interested parties aware of the substances for which there is a plan to submit an SVHC dossier to Echa. Updates this week include several substances submitted for accordance checks, including: 2-methoxyethyl acetate; ammonium 2,3,3,3-tetrafluoro-2-(heptafluoropropoxy)propanoate; and tris(4-nonylphenyl, branched and linear) phosphite (TNPP) with ≥ 0.1% w/w of 4-nonylphenol, branched and linear (4-NP).
Chromium trioxide authorisation consultations
Echa has started eight public consultations on applications for authorisation for chromium trioxide.
The applications are for a variety of uses, including functional chrome plating and electroplating of different types of substrates.
The deadline for comments is 10 April.Updated authorisation applications formats
The agency has updated the formats for applications for authorisation and review reports, which is intended to improve the transparency and efficiency of the application process and to speed up the decision making for the latter items.
The formats, which are compatible with the updated Opinion format of Echa’s scientific committees, show applicants how to present their analysis of alternatives and socio-economic analysis when applying for continuing the use of a substance of very high concern.
They are available on the website and will become mandatory on 1 June.
Registries of SVHCs and restrictions
Echa’s registries have been updated to cover all the steps in the procedures for SVHC identification, from intention right through to outcome.
The registries are a way of informing interested parties about planned submissions, to give them time to prepare for commenting later in the process. They are also used to track progress of a dossier through the CLH, SVHC identification and restriction processes.
The public activities coordination tool (PACT) has also been updated and now includes the outcomes of the SHVC identification and restriction processes.
Survey on EUON performance
Echa is still looking for comments on its EU Observatory of Nanomaterials through a short questionnaire. Results will feed into EUON's development and help it to better meet user needs. The deadline is 25 February.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74329/echa-round-up

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Energy News

The Trade War is Creating Uncertainty and Threatening US Economic Growth

Feb 14, 2019 | Real Clear Energy

By Aaron Padilla

The back-and-forth trade disputes initiated by the United States, against our allies Canada and the EU and other global powers like China, might seem like a far-off concept for many people. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has dismissed the impact of our unilaterally-imposed U.S. tariffs on imports as a “rounding error,” implying that most Americans would never notice its costs. But these tariffs are taxes on Americans that have wide-ranging consequences in communities across the country, and the burdens imposed on the natural gas and oil industry put us at the center of a trade war that shows few signs of ending.
Natural gas and oil support 10.3 million U.S. jobs throughout the country, nearly 8 percent of the U.S. economy. When the industry is affected by burdensome and protectionist government trade policies, the consequences are anything but trivial. The tariffs on imported steel under Section 232 cause uncertainty and cost increases for affected U.S. energy projects, hurting companies, workers, and ultimately consumers across the country. The “steel tax,” as the Section 232 tariffs are often referred to, added $40 million to a Plains All American pipeline project in the Permian Basin in West Texas. According to EIA, crude oil output in the Permian is expected to increase by over 1 million barrels per day by 2020 compared to December 2018 levels and will constitute 36% of U.S. production.
The surge of the natural gas and oil output requires additional pipeline capacity to bring this oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast for export and for refining into products we consume. The new Plains All American pipeline, which has generated 2,600 construction jobs, is dependent on specialty steel not produced in the United States, which had to be imported from Greece. This American energy project, with thousands of construction workers, was affected negatively by the tariffs imposed by this administration on European allies.
These trade policies can be especially damaging to energy infrastructure projects thanks to quotas. These measures restrict the amount of steel American companies can import altogether, meaning that projects could be significantly delayed when steel is stopped at the border because quota limits are reached. The U.S. has already imposed steel quotas on Argentina, Brazil and South Korea, and now we are discussing potential future quotas with Canada and Mexico.
Those quotas not only run counter to the spirit of free trade that underpins the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade deal, they actively hurt American businesses that rely on imported materials in order to build new projects and create jobs. In addition to U.S. tariffs and quotas, retaliatory tariffs from China have significantly affected the export markets for American natural gas and the outlook for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities here in the United States. With a rapidly growing but still nascent LNG industry, the United States depends on access to overseas markets to help grow the American natural gas sector and create jobs.
Reuters recently reported that only six LNG vessels went from the United States to China in the second half of 2018 as a result of retaliatory tariffs, down from 25 for the same period in the previous year. That decline raises serious red flags. Last year China’s LNG purchases, however, reached an all-time high. The fact that American LNG exports to China have dropped so precipitously shows that when the United States is unable to fill the energy needs of a major overseas market, other countries will readily fill the void.
The United States is right to fight to put us on a level market-based playing field globally. The current approach, however, is causing ongoing pain for the energy industry – an important driver of the U.S. economy that provides affordable and reliable energy for consumers. The administration needs to shift course quickly, before the impact of its trade policies becomes even more painful. Our economy and our workers are depending on it.
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2019/02/14/the_trade_war_is_creating_uncertainty_threatening_us_economic_growth_110394.html

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More Ships to Rely on LNG as Pollution Rules Tighten

Feb 14, 2019 | Houston Chronicle

By Marissa Luck

Liquefied natural gas is already poised to power the world's biggest economies as Asian countries increase their reliance on the cleaner-burning fuel, but there is yet another source that could drum up demand for LNG: the shipping industry.
A global shift to cleaner shipping fuels sparked by a change in international marine laws could create a big opportunity for the liquefied natural gas industry, said shipping industry executives speaking at S&P Global Platts conference in Houston Wednesday.
Liquefied natural gas – now an uncommon alternative to heavy, dirty fuel used by large vessels– is beginning to gain more traction as a fuel that meets increasingly strict emissions standards set by the International Maritime Organization.
"Environmental sells today. I don't think there are any house wives around town ... that don't take some of these issues seriously," said Peter I. Keller, executive vice president of Jacksonville-based shipping company Tote Inc. "The days of people saying, 'Green doesn't matter,' those days are long gone and as a result LNG and fuels like LNG have a major place going forward."
In less than a year the IMO will aim to dramatically cut pollution from the shipping industry by requiring vessels to burn fuel with a 0.5 percent sulfur content. Conventional analysis suggest that ships will either install expensive scrubbers to clean the sulfur content out of their traditional heavy bunker fuel, or else they will use ultra-low sulfur fuel.
But the availability of LNG is growing, said Keller. Now 9 out of 10 top refueling ports can provide ships with LNG. About 144 deep-sea large vessels are powered by LNG, but there is another 139 deep vessels on order that could come along in the coming months, said Keller who also serves as chairman of SEA/LNG, a cross industry group the aims to help vessels transition to LNG fuel.
With about 50,000 to 60,0000 deep sea vessels in the world, SEA/LNG anticipates that eventually 10 to 15 percent of those vessels will use liquefied natural gas in place of traditional bunker fuels, Keller said.
Other estimates are more modest. S&P Global Platts forecasts about 7 percent of the world's fleet will be using LNG as a bunker fuel by 2030, up from less than 1 percent today, said Madeline Jowdy, senior director of Global Gas and LNG Analytics and S&P Global Platts.
Jowdy pointed out that it the gas is already used to power smaller vessels such as ferries, barges and tugboats. It's the large deep sea voyage vessels where the fuel is less common.
The IMO rule change "isn't a game changer" for the LNG industry, Jowdy said, but it certainly doesn't hurt demand and could propel the adoption of LNG as a bunker fuel further.
Building a vessel with LNG capability comes with a hefty price tag though - up to $15 million to $16 million more than building a traditional fuel powered vessel. That compares to $8.5 million to install a scrubber. But Keller argues the long-term benefits could pay off as the International Maritime Organization further restricts nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide emissions in the next decade.
Eventually emissions standards could include particulate matter too, he suggested. Liquefied natural gas offers a 20 percent reduction in carbon and a 99 percent reduction in particulate matter compared to existing bunker fuels, Keller noted.
Plus some scrubbers – called "open-loop scrubbers" – clean out sulfur from ships' fuel only to d
He pointed to oil majors like Shell and Total that are "investing heavily in LNG as a marine fuel" as a sign that "LNG is here is to stay."
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/More-ships-to-rely-on-LNG-as-pollution-rules-13616225.php

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Oil, Biofuels Groups Add to Lengthy List of RFS 2019 Challengers

Feb 14, 2019 | Inside EPA

Oil and biofuels groups are adding to the lengthy list of organizations filing suit over EPA’s 2019 renewable fuel standard, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is consolidating the fresh challenges with an existing case that combines a host of already-filed challenges to the 2019 fuel targets.
The latest fuel groups filing suit in the appellate court include the National Biodiesel Board, refiner Monroe Energy, the Small Retailers Coalition and a group calling itself the RFS Power Coalition, representing biogas producers. The lead suit will remain known as Growth Energy v. EPA, et al., after the name of the pro-ethanol group that was the first to sue over the 2019 RFS in the D.C. Circuit.
The suits do not yet list the issues groups will raise in their legal briefs. However, biofuels groups are likely to challenge the 2019 RFS fuel volumes, which include biodiesel volume for 2020, as too low. The issue of EPA’s treatment of RFS exemptions for small refiners is a likely point of contention, as biofuels producers push to force EPA to increase volumes to compensate for the waivers, while refining and oil sector groups oppose this.
Refiner Monroe Energy has previously challenged EPA seeking to shift the RFS’ “point of obligation,” by moving the program’s compliance burden from refiners to fuel blenders. The Small Retailers Coalition has also previously urged EPA to take this step, claiming that independent fuel retailers are harmed by the current compliance mandate, which requires refiners to surrender compliance credits known as renewable identification numbers (RINs) to EPA.
Merchant refiners such as Monroe lack the ability to generate their own RINs by blending biofuel and must buy RINs from others at market rates, putting both the merchant refiners and their small retailer customers at a disadvantage relative to large oil companies that combine fuel production, blending and retail operations, refining sector critics say.
Meanwhile, California oil company Kern Oil & Refining Co. sent a letter to EPA Feb. 7 giving the agency 60 days’ notice of its intent to sue EPA over its failure to grant the company a small refiner waiver.
The dispute marks a departure from the practice of EPA under former administrator Scott Pruitt of granting many more such waivers than the Obama EPA did. Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler appears to be taking a more cautious approach to issuing the waivers than Pruitt. The waivers are available for refiners processing up to 75,000 barrels per day of oil, subject to them suffering “disproportionate economic hardship.”
Kern Oil says EPA has exceeded the 90 days allowed under the RFS for the agency to respond to the refiner’s petition for a waiver, and thus failed to discharge a “nondiscretionary duty.”
In a further RFS-related development, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) wrote to Wheeler Jan. 13, asking EPA to expedite its forthcoming rule to allow summertime sales of 15 percent ethanol fuel (E15). EPA must propose and finalize the rule by June 1 in order to allow E15 sales during the summer driving season, which lasts until Sept. 15.
Despite pressure from biofuels groups backing the E15 waiver, EPA this week said it will not split the E15 rule from a companion measure to reform the RIN market, adding to anxiety that it may miss its deadline.
The recent government shutdown “created a month-long delay with the EPA rulemaking process and will require a more expeditious effort to complete it by this summer,” Durbin wrote.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/oil-biofuels-groups-add-lengthy-list-rfs-2019-challengers

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Chemical Security News

CSB Opines That “Thermal Fatigue” Caused 2016 Plant Blast

Feb 14, 2019 | Powder & Bulk Solids

Chemical industry watchdog The U.S. Chemical Safety Board released a final report this week positing that “thermal fatigue” was the probable cause of an explosion and fire at the Enterprise Products Pascagoula Gas Plant in Pascagoula, MS on June 27, 2016.
Investigators from the agency determined that the incident started after a heat exchanger experienced a major loss of containment, releasing methane, ethane, propane, and other hydrocarbon substances. The liquids ignited, leading to a series of blasts and fires. Damages sustained during the incident forced the plant to remain closed for about six months.
“More than 500 gas processing facilities operate across the country and the use of similar heat exchangers is common. Extending the lifecycle of this equipment at these facilities requires more robust inspection protocols,” said CSB Interim Executive Kristen Kulinowski in an agency press release. “Operators shouldn’t take the risk of waiting to find a leak because, as this case demonstrates, that leak could result in a catastrophic failure.”
A brazed aluminum heat exchanger (BAHX) failed as a result of thermal fatigue, according to the CSB. The equipment’s aluminum parts became cracked after being in use for a period time, allowing hydrocarbons to escape. Investigators said an analysis of process data from the BAHXs at the Enterprise Products plant showed the equipment was subjected to changes in temperature that were not within limits suggested in industry-recommended practices.
“Typically when a leak is found, it can be repaired with minimal exposure or consequence before a major loss of containment occurs. Assuming that leaks will be discovered and can be repaired prior to a catastrophic failure is referred to as a ‘leak-before failure’ assumption,” the CSB’s release said. “Thermal fatigue is a known factor to BAHXs and there is industry guidance on recommended limits for maximum cyclic temperature fluctuations during operation and rates of cooling or heading during startup and shutdown.”
Four BAHX heat exchangers at the Pascagoula facility were repaired nine times over the last 17 years.
CSB officials said the report demonstrates that the guidance relating to BAHX heat exchangers, as well as the “leak-before failure” assumption, may work effectively to prevent catastrophic incidents.
“A number of midstream gas plant operators have reported that the limits and rates in existing industry guidance may not be realistic. Our report encourages a meaningful dialogue among BAHX manufacturers, gas processors, and repair technicians. The CSB concluded that more realistic and updated guidance is needed to improve the safe use of BAHX,” said CSB Investigator William Hougland in a statement.
https://www.powderbulksolids.com/news/CSB-Opines-That-Thermal-Fatigue-Caused-2016-Plant-Blast-02-13-2019

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Transportation and Infrastructure News

Spending Bill Would Provide $17B

Feb 14, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire

By Maxine Joselow

Infrastructure is a winner in the bipartisan border security and spending package released last night.
The legislation would provide $17 billion in funding "for new infrastructure investments to improve our roads, bridges, highways, railways and mass transit," according to a summaryreleased by House appropriators.
The Department of Transportation would receive $86.5 billion — a modest increase of $300 million over this year's enacted level — including $9 billion for new transportation infrastructure.
Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grants, formerly known as Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants, are on the short end of the deal. They would get $900 million, a decrease of $600 million below this year's level. The Trump administration, however, had proposed eliminating the program two years in a row.
The spending package comes as momentum builds for a broad infrastructure deal desired by President Trump as well as leaders of both parties.
The 116th Congress has already held two hearings on infrastructure, with the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee this week debating funding mechanisms and climate concerns (E&E Daily, Feb. 14).
High-speed rail
The spending bill also caps a turbulent week for high-speed rail.
Conservatives have been attacking the "Green New Deal" resolution from Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on the grounds it would "build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary."
In fact, that line was pulled from an older fact sheet, not the actual text of the resolution (Climatewire, Feb. 12).
Then last night, Trump got into a Twitter spat with California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) regarding federal funding for high-speed rail in the Golden State (Climatewire, Feb. 14).
"California has been forced to cancel the massive bullet train project after having spent and wasted many billions of dollars," Trump tweeted. "They owe the Federal Government three and a half billion dollars. We want that money back now. Whole project is a 'green' disaster!"
Newsom shot back: "Fake news. We're building high-speed rail, connecting the Central Valley and beyond. This is CA's money, allocated by Congress for this project. We're not giving it back. The train is leaving the station — better get on board!"
The political posturing over high-speed rail doesn't appear to have influenced congressional appropriators, who opted to fund Amtrak at $1.9 billion, equal to this year's level.
Meanwhile, the Federal Railroad Administration would see $2.9 billion, which is $218 million below this year's level but $1.9 billion above Trump's budget request.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/02/14/stories/1060121077

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Oil, Gas Industry Joins Pipeline Safety Groups in Backing Proposed PHMSA Rule

Feb 13, 2019 | Natural Gas Intelligence

By Charlie Passut

Trade associations representing the energy industry have joined pipeline safety groups in support of a natural gas transmission pipeline safety rule that has been under consideration by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration since 2011.
Subscription required for full article...
https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/117398-oil-gas-industry-joins-pipeline-safety-groups-in-backing-proposed-phmsa-rule

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Environment News

The Energy 202: House Science Committee Turns New Leaf on Climate Change with Democrats in Charge

Feb 14, 2019 | Washington Post

By Dino Grandoni

For years, the Republican-led House Science Committee has tried to put global warming research on ice. It tried to slash government research into the warming globe and even launched investigations into scientists who produced a global warming study many conservatives despised.
But in January, Democrats took control of the House. And that committee's former boss, Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), retired.
Now the panel is turning a new leaf: Its new leader, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Tex.), is taking a stronger stance on climate change. She decided to make the topic the focus of the committee's first full hearing this session and promised many more discussions about the science behind it in the coming two years.
“Rigorous scientific discourse can help enable the creation of a sound public policy,” Johnson (D-Tex.) said at the start of the committee's first full hearing in the new Congress.
“We’re already feeling the impacts of this warming today,” she said Wednesday. “It has almost become a given that we can expect record-breaking temperatures every year.”
With that, many observers — like NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt — saw the science panel returning to what they said it should be doing: taking science seriously.
After two years out of power from every branch of the federal government, Democrats are trying to send a message to voters that they will put a priority on the planet’s warming.
The most prominent effort to date on this front is the “Green New Deal” resolution from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
But that resolution is nonbinding and outlines only a broad progressive goal of driving down greenhouse gas emissions. The new Democratic committee chairs in the House, meanwhile, have actual bill-writing authority and are trying to set the stage for climate legislation by holding a series of hearings on climate change during the first few weeks of Congress.
Even if few if any of the bills they tee up pass the GOP-controlled Senate, Democrats hope to make climate change a marquee issue on which to campaign against President Trump and other Republicans in the 2020 election.
Smith, by contrast, used his perch atop of the science panel to become one of the fiercest and highest-profile critics of climate science in Congress.
Not only did the Texas lawmaker dismiss the broad scientific consensus that people are warming the planet, but he once suggested that additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was bringing “beneficial changes to the Earth’s geography.”
As such, he launched a probe into National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists who did a study refuting the idea that warming had "paused" and even started an investigation into state-level prosecutors investigating ExxonMobil over potential climate-related fraud.
During climate-related hearings, Smith made sure that a majority of expert witnesses were as skeptical as he was of the consensus on climate change. Many scientists said that the composition of those panels greatly misrepresented the state of climate science.
But on Wednesday, all the witnesses called to testify acknowledged not only the reality but the severity of climate change, emphasizing the deleterious effects it is poised to have on the health and economic well being of the nation.
“Climate change is real, it is happening now and humans are responsible for it,” said Rutgers professor Robert Kopp, who is the lead author of major climate reports for both the U.S. government and United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Even a witness brought in by Republicans — Joseph Majkut, director of climate policy at the Niskanen Center, which pushes market-based solutions to environmental problems — called climate change real.
“We promote a mainstream understanding of climate science,” he said. “Nothing to be afraid of.”
The committee hearing was notable for its lack of rancor. At one point, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) asked the witnesses if they thought the world’s nations should participate in the global climate agreement.
“We’re all in agreement on that?” Cohen asked as each one of the panelists nodded yes. “Kumbaya.”
While some Republican committee members, like Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), used their time to advance the idea that humans are not the cause of current rising sea levels, the new top Republican on the committee, Frank Lucas (Okla.), took a tone on climate change markedly different from Smith’s by pointing out the impact man-made climate change is having in his rural Oklahoma district.
Just as fracking revolutionized energy production in this own state, Lucas said he hoped new technologies like battery storage and the next generation of nuclear reactors could advance emissions reductions elsewhere in the United States.
“As any farmer can tell you, we are especially dependent on the weather,” Lucas said. “Drought, heat waves come and go naturally, but the changing climate has intensified their impacts.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2019/02/14/the-energy-202-house-science-committee-turns-new-leaf-on-climate-change-with-democrats-in-charge/5c6489231b326b71858c6b7f/?utm_term=.56601d828880

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Castor Letter Offers Clues on Committee's Direction

Feb 14, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire

By Jeremy Dillon

The newly minted head of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis is looking to bring some of the "Green New Deal" resolution's climate momentum to her home state of Florida.
In a letter sent yesterday, Rep. Kathy Castor, along with her fellow Florida Democratic House members, pressed Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to adopt more clean energy generation sources to fight back against the state's climate vulnerabilities.
The ideas presented in the letter may offer an indication of where Castor intends to steer the climate panel as it readies to launch its first hearing and actions in the coming weeks.
"The growing impacts and costs [of climate change] are well known to Florida families, businesses and local communities, but for too long Florida political leaders have ignored the dire threat to our state — and the opportunities," the delegation wrote in the letter. "We cannot afford to do so any longer."
Florida is one of the states most likely to feel the brunt of climate change. The Brookings Institution determined that some of the state's counties and metro areas are among the country's likeliest to suffer economic regression from effects like sea-level rise, heat waves and water quality concerns.
The letter makes the argument for additional clean energy sources as an economic one. The Sunshine State, the lawmakers argued, is missing out on fully realizing its potential on renewable sources and energy efficiency improvements — and the accompanying job creation the green economy can provide.
Florida ranks as the state with the eighth most solar capacity, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, behind Massachusetts and New Jersey.
To better align Florida with other clean energy trends, the lawmakers said, the state should set meaningful renewable and energy efficiency targets and should transition to "modern power purchase agreements."
"While most other states have set targets for renewable energy and efficiency, Florida has not," the lawmakers wrote. "Florida is far behind other states and the investor-owned electric utilities (IOUs) have been roadblocks to progress for decades."
The strategy should also include investment in "modern and efficient transportation options" like electric vehicle infrastructure and revising building codes, among other areas, they wrote.
"You have the opportunity of a lifetime to move Florida forward and we urge you to do so with courage and vision," the lawmakers wrote.
Those economic ideas of greater clean energy adoption to better compete with other states would seem to align with the broader push of Republicans to ensure climate policies do not harm the economy.
DeSantis, for his part, has spent the first month of his governorship looking to expand the state's role in addressing the effects of climate change.
He created a new Office of Resilience and Coastal Protection and announced he would appoint a chief science officer — signs the Democrats took as positive steps for mitigation efforts.
The governor's office was not immediately available to comment on the letter.
Republicans have largely rejected the idea of the "Green New Deal" and the massive investment necessary to transition the country to clean energy sources within ten years.
A small number of Republicans advocating for some type of climate policy have preferred to avoid those intensive government interventions, instead opting for an approach of innovation to address carbon emissions.
In a letter to Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), top Republicans on committee, including ranking member Greg Walden (R-Ore.), and Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and John Shimkus (R-Ill.), called for scrutiny of the "Green New Deal" as well as a bipartisan approach to embrace innovation.
"We want America's innovators to develop the next technologies that will improve the environment and create jobs here at home," the trio wrote, adding they "want our constituents and all Americans to have jobs and the opportunity to provide for their families."
"These are not mutually exclusive principles, and they are embedded in our approach to confronting climate risks," they said. "Let us work on them together."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/02/14/stories/1060121085

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McConnell Green New Deal Ploy Is Why Congress Is Hated: Schumer

Feb 14, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Catherine Dodge

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plan to hold a vote on Democrats’ Green New Deal amounts to a “cheap, cynical ploy” and is “what the American people hate about Congress,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said.
Every Republican, including McConnell, will vote against the measure, which is championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, in a “political stunt” that aims to try to embarrass Democrats, Schumer said on the Senate floor.
Republicans have failed to offer a serious plan to address climate change in the four years the party has controlled the chamber, said Schumer, who challenged McConnell to say that “our climate change crisis is real.”
McConnell’s aim is to split Democrats between the left-leaning members vying for the passions of their party’s base and more moderate senators who view the proposal as radical and disruptive.
Schumer said Democrats are unconcerned and will demand votes on amendments.
“Go for it. Bring it on,” Schumer said
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/mcconnell-green-new-deal-ploy-is-why-congress-is-hated-schumer

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Schumer on 'Green New Deal' Vote: 'Bring It On'

Feb 14, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire

By Jeremy Dillon

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) took to the floor this morning to challenge his Republican counterpart to admit the realities of climate change in the latest rhetorical shot in the chamber's "Green New Deal" fight.
"Today, I am issuing a challenge to the majority leader," Schumer said on the Senate floor. "I don't do this often, and my colleagues know that I would rather work in a bipartisan way on climate change. But his stunt — his cynical stunt — demands a response."
Schumer added, "I challenge Leader McConnell to say that our climate change crisis is real, that it's caused by humans, and that Congress needs to act."
Schumer's speech follows the action Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took last night to ready the resolution outlining the priorities of the "Green New Deal" for a floor vote, likely scheduled for when the Senate reconvenes after next week's President's Day recess.
Schumer also said, "So when the Republican leader says he wants to bring the 'Green New Deal' resolution up for a vote, I say go for it. Bring it on."
He said, "You think it might embarrass Democrats to vote on a nonbinding resolution that some of us may support but not others. Trust me, we'll be fine because the American people know that our entire party actually believes that climate change is happening and it's caused by humans."
"Leader McConnell thinks the 'Green New Deal' is just a resolution, but the 'Green New Deal' is a revolution," said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the Senate's "Green New Deal" sponsor.
Republicans have criticized the "Green New Deal" document as a "socialist fantasy" for its potential high price tag to transition the nation's leading economic sectors to clean and zero-carbon technologies.
They have especially taken issue with some of the progressive priorities like universal health care that backers have attached to the measure.
"I've noted with great interest the 'Green New Deal,'" McConnell told reporters on Tuesday (E&E News PM, Feb. 12). "We're gonna be voting on that in the Senate. It will give everybody the opportunity to go on the record and see how they feel about the 'Green New Deal.'"
Democrats accused McConnell of trying to sabotage the resolution, noting the likelihood that Republicans would vote against the climate measure without providing an alternative of their own.
Schumer noted in his floor speech that throughout the Republican four-plus years of controlling the chamber, McConnell has not offered any legislation related to carbon emissions.
"We're supposed to conduct the business of the nation. We're supposed to tackle our country's greatest challenges," Schumer said.
"Climate change is probably the No. 1 threat to our planet," he added. "And yet not a single Republican bill that addresses climate change in a meaningful way to reach the floor. Not a one."
Schumer added, "Ironically, the first measure to address climate change from the Republican leader will be one that he wants all of his members to vote against."
Republicans have even worked to undo some of the climate regulations put forward by the Obama administration, including a Congressional Review Act resolution to nullify efforts like the Clean Power Plan. GOP lawmakers argued the high economic costs of that regulation warranted the effort to repeal the carbon measure.
"If implemented, the plan will put millions of people out of work and it will cost tens of trillions of dollars," Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Tuesday about the "Green New Deal." "The plan to me is less about climate change, more about putting government in control of every facet of our lives."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/02/14/stories/1060121095

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Some GOP Lawmakers Are Thawing on Climate Change

Feb 14, 2019 | Roll Call

By Jacob Holzman

Congressional Republicans seem to be thawing on climate.
Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who has denied the science behind climate change, told reporters Wednesday he was open to confront the peril of the warming planet.
“There are some things I’m willing to look at,” the North Carolina Republican said of addressing climate change. While he remains skeptical of climate science, he said, “I think that greenhouse gas emissions is certainly something that we need to look at.”
Last week, Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso of Wyoming said America can cut its carbon output. It’s a business opportunity for U.S. firms, he said. “You know, as other countries grow their economies, they should be using the best possible technology to capture carbon emissions.”
And Illinois Republican Rep. John Shimkus, who in 2008 called a carbon tax “the only intellectually honest way to move forward on global climate change,” said Wednesday, referring to a possible climate bill, that there are “areas of agreement where Republicans can be supportive so that you might have a legislative solution that actually gets signed into law.”
As the long-set Republican opposition to addressing climate change recedes on Capitol Hill, even highly conservative members in the House and Senate are indicating they view greenhouse gases as a problem and are open to climate measures that would emphasize an expanded role for the private sector rather than the federal government.
While no deal is imminent or likely in this Congress, Republicans have set out areas they might be willing to compromise on or use as bargaining chips in negotiating climate legislation, including carbon-capture technology, energy efficiency, nuclear power, battery storage and funding for basic energy research and development.
In a column published Wednesday, a trio of top Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee — ranking member Greg Walden of Oregon, Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, and Shimkus — offered an “innovation” pitch to address the issue with what they called “bipartisan solutions”: renewable energy development, carbon capture and utilization, hydropower and nuclear power.
“These are bipartisan solutions we must seize on to deliver real results for the American people,” they wrote.
That type of offer may have an audience with Democrats who may view a proposal with more federal involvement, like the Green New Deal resolution from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, as less politically palatable. The resolution aims to overhaul the U.S. energy system and swiftly pull away from carbon-heavy sources.
House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon, who opposed cap-and-trade legislation Democrats narrowly passed when they last had control of the House, said he was interested in what Republicans had to offer.
“Renewable energy, R&D, energy efficiency, research into new battery technology, massive federal investments in those areas? Sure, I’m interested in that,” DeFazio said.
He said that before he’s willing to work with Republicans on these efforts, they must acknowledge the science behind climate change and the related risks presented to the planet.
“They have to acknowledge there’s a problem if they want to spend a bunch of money to solve it,” he said. “If they’re going to spend a bunch of money on a problem they say doesn’t exist, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Shimkus said that he, with Walden and Upton, was trying to move beyond the topic of climate science, which “we all agree with,” to a strategy of “how we can move forward.”
Republicans are considering “where are there areas of agreement where Republicans can be supportive so that you might have a legislative solution that actually gets signed into law,” he said.‘No-regret solutions’
At a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing last week, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who chairs the committee, laid out similar grounds for compromise.
“I have often spoken about clean energy innovation policies as ‘no-regret solutions,’” the Alaska Republican said. “But in reality, these are just those first steps.”
Deploying low-carbon energy infrastructure worldwide requires research and cost-cutting, she said, underscoring carbon capture technology, which is still in its infancy.
“It is time to push hard to bring down the cost of clean energy technologies like renewables, advanced nuclear, next-generation energy storage and carbon capture,” Murkowski said. “If we want credible technological solutions that are cost-effective and deployable globally and at-scale, we must ensure that the policies we put in place propel those efforts.”
Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Joe Manchin III said at that hearing that a comprehensive measure like the Green New Deal could be a way for lawmakers of both parties to “come together and understand that it’s a really lofty goal.”
“We get these divides where our caucuses, whether it be within the Democrat or Republican, or divide within the whole Senate or the whole Congress,” the West Virginia Democrat said. “We don’t want to drink dirty water. We don’t want to breathe dirty air. We want our kids to have a future. We really do. They also realize they have to have a job to sustain themselves.”
Shimkus agreed with the sentiment that Democrats’ Green New Deal created an opportunity to craft a more politically-moderate approach to addressing climate that could receive buy-in from his party.
“I think that’s helpful in getting us to look at something ... that we might be willing to consider,” he said.
In an interview, Rep. Paul Tonko, who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce’s Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee, lauded the Republicans’ willingness to address climate change but said their push for innovation falls short of what is needed to tackle such as sprawling threat.
"Innovation and research are important but again that's only picking two tools out of the kit,” the New York Democrat said. “And if we’re going to get to this very lofty ambitious goal with urgency, we’re going to need to have many more elements to be part of the equation for success.”
Tonko, whose subcommittee would be the first stop for legislation in the House to address climate change and energy issues, said there are opportunities to work out a deal between both chambers and parties.
He mentioned energy efficiency, weatherization, conservation, research and upgrading the electric grids as areas of collaboration — points Republicans have broadly said they would be open to.
“I applaud they're coming around,” Tonko said. “It appears as though the denial syndrome or the delay syndrome has been abandoned and that people are now talking solutions.”
http://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/some-gop-lawmakers-are-thawing-on-climate-change

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Millennial Socialists Want to Shake up the Economy and Save the Climate

Feb 14, 2019 | The Economist

When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, many consigned socialism to the rubble. The end of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union were interpreted as the triumph not just of liberal democracy but of the robust market-driven capitalism championed by Ronald Reagan in America and Margaret Thatcher in Britain. The West’s left embraced this belief, with leaders like Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Gerhard Schröder promoting a “third way”. They praised the efficiency of markets, pulling them further into the provision of public services, and set about wisely shepherding and redistributing the market’s gains. Men such as Jeremy Corbyn, a hard-left north London mp as far from Mr Blair in outlook as it was possible to be, and Bernie Sanders, a left-wing mayor in Vermont who became an independent congressman in 1990, seemed as thoroughly on the wrong side of history as it was possible to be.Get our daily newsletter
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was not quite four weeks old when the wall fell. Her childhood was watched over by third-way politics; her teenage years were a time of remarkable global economic growth. She entered adulthood at the beginning of the global financial crisis. She is now the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress, the subject of enthusiasm on the left and fascinated fear on the right. And, like Mr Corbyn and Mr Sanders, she explicitly identifies herself as a socialist. Their democratic socialism goes considerably further than the market-friendly redistributionism of the third way. It envisages a level of state intervention in previously private industry—either directly, or through forced co-operativisation—that has few antecedents in modern democracies.
For the American generation which has grown up since the downfall of the ussr, socialism is no longer the boo word it once was. On the left, a lot of Americans are more sceptical than they used to be about capitalism (see chart 1). Indeed, what might be called “millennial socialism” is having something of a cultural moment. Publications like Jacobin and Tribune bedeck the coffee tables of the hip, young and socially conscious. No film has ever made trade unions look cooler than last year’s “Sorry To Bother You”, written and directed by Boots Riley, a rapper and activist. When Piers Morgan, a British television presenter, found it impossible to believe that a young interviewee might come from a left beyond Barack Obama, her response quickly turned up on t-shirts: “I’m literally a communist, you idiot”.
The fight you choose
This currency aside, avowed socialists are still a rarity in America’s political class. But when Ms Ocasio-Cortez or Mr Sanders speak of the need for radical change, the disappointments and damage experienced in the past 30 years give their words resonance across a broad swathe of the less-radical but still disenchanted left. These people saw their third-way leaders support misguided foreign wars and their supposedly robust economy end up in a financial crisis. They feel economic growth has mainly benefited the rich (see chart 2) and that ideologically driven spending cuts have been aimed at the poor. They are angered by a global elite they see flitting from business to politics and back again, unaccountable to anyone, as economic inequality yawns ever wider (though the picture is more complex than that: see chart 3). The presence of Donald Trump in the White House underlines their discontent—as does, indelibly, the unchecked rise of greenhouse-gas emissions alongside global gdp, endangering, in many young eyes, their very future.
In response to this mood on the left, some parties which once embraced the third way have tacked decisively towards policies that seemed inconceivable ten years ago; see, for example, the embrace of Medicare for All by America’s Democratic presidential hopefuls. Other parties are dwindling into insignificance, overshadowed by more radical alternatives. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a far-left candidate who championed a 100% marginal income-tax rate on high earners in the French presidential election of 2017, comfortably outpolled the country’s mainstream socialists. Indeed, in the first round he got a vote 80% that of Emmanuel Macron’s.
This swing within the left is not necessarily a new path to power. Indeed, many caught up in it fear quite the reverse. Having achieved a better result than many expected in the election of 2017, Labour still sits behind Britain’s chaotic Conservatives in opinion polls. Though some far-left parties may do well in the forthcoming elections for the European Parliament, they are unlikely to make up for the loss of support suffered by the centre left. Primary voters may be enthusiastic about the cornucopian environmentalism of Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal”; but many senior Democrats fear that it will scare away more voters than it entices.
Many on the right agree, with relish. When President Trump asserted in his State of the Union address on February 5th that “America will never be a socialist country” it was not because he fears a socialist ascendancy. It was because he thinks that the majority of Americans, including many Democrats, will look askance at such a prospect. “America was founded on liberty and independence, and not government coercion, domination, and control,” Mr Trump told Congress. “We are born free, and we will stay free.” Socialism versus capitalism is still an easy call for most Americans; socialism versus freedom is about as done as a deal gets.
Millennial socialists, though, have their own ideas about freedom. They are not satisfied with the protection of existing freedoms; instead, they want to expand and fulfil freedoms yet to be obtained. Spreading economic power more widely, they say, will allow more people to make choices about what they want in their lives, and freedom without such capabilities is at best incomplete. Bhaskar Sunkara, founding editor of Jacobin, makes an analogy to India: what is the point of an ostensibly free press if a huge share of the population is unable to read?
Seizing power
Much of what the centrist left believed in the 1990s and 2000s has since been abandoned, not just by vanguardist millennial socialists, but by a broad swathe of left-wing opinion. The median supporter of left-wing parties is increasingly sceptical about free trade, averse to foreign wars and distrustful of public-private partnerships. What they still like is the income redistribution that came with those policies. They want higher minimum wages and a lot more spending on public services. Mr Sanders and Ms Ocasio-Cortez have energised young Americans by promising free college tuition; Labour promises the same in England and Wales.
Many entirely non-socialist Europeans will see nothing that remarkable about publicly paid-for health care and education: America starts from an unusual position in such matters. But almost any country would be staggered by a government initiative as all-encompassing as the Green New Deal resolution that Ms Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey, a senator from Massachusetts, have introduced into Congress.
As well as promising emissions-reduction efforts on a scale beyond Hercules at a cost beyond Croesus, in framing global warming as a matter of justice, rather than economic externalities, it promises all sorts of ancillary goodies, including robust economic growth (which some hard-line greens will have a problem with) and guaranteed employment. It abandons the economically efficient policies that have been the stamp of America’s previous, failed attempts to bring climate action about through legislation, most notably those in the cap-and-trade bill Mr Markey sponsored in the late 2000s. This is hardly surprising; the most popular text on global warming in left-wing circles, Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate”, derides such market-based mechanisms.
Millennial socialists want to do more than boost the incomes of the poor, create better public services and slash emissions. “Keynesianism is not enough,” in the words of James Meadway, an adviser to John McDonnell, Mr Corbyn’s shadow chancellor. It is also necessary to “democratise” the economy by redistributing wealth as well as income.
In part, this is an economic argument. Having a wage but no wealth increasingly means settling for a lower standard of living. In recent decades and in rich countries the share of total income accruing to owners of capital (in the form of profits, rent and interest) has risen, while the share paid to labour (in the form of salaries and benefits) has dropped. This means the incomes of people with lots of capital will diverge from those who have none. If the predictions made by Thomas Piketty, a French economist noted for his studies of wealth inequality, prove correct—something that many economists doubt—the total amount of capital in the economy will continue to rise relative to gdp, further compounding the advantage of wealth-holders.
But the argument for redistribution of wealth goes beyond economics—and its roots spread far beyond the socialist canon. James Harrington, a political theorist of the 17th century, wrote that “Where there is inequality of estates, there must be inequality of power.” He saw a reasonably even distribution of wealth and the freedom of democratic politics as two sides of the same coin. His ideas were a strong influence on America’s founding fathers. John Adams wrote that “Harrington has shewn that Power always follows Property.” Though Thomas Jefferson plumped for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as the rights to be mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, he was inspired by John Locke’s trinity of life, liberty and property, and his love of the yeoman farmer stemmed from his belief that those who produced their own food never needed to bend to the will of another, and thus were truly free.
Well before Karl Marx started to write about alienation, the idea that people treated only as factors of production would not only lack true freedom, but also other opportunities to reach their full potential, was a mainstay of Enlightenment thought. Adam Smith worried that the factory system, where workers simply turned up and followed the instructions of capitalists, would make its participants “as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.” John Stuart Mill, who valued political freedom above all else, also predicted that under capitalism people would become passive, dull wage-slaves; he wanted to see many more working in co-operatives. The echoes of Harrington, Smith and Mill are clear in the works that articulate the views of today’s left, from Mark Fisher’s “Capitalist Realism” to David Graeber’s “Bullshit Jobs”. Globalisation, in their eyes, is less an engine for prosperity and more a generator of insecurity, unfreedom and unfairness.
Share-taking democracies
On this reading, today’s task is to redistribute the economy’s stock of wealth—and thus political power, freedom, self-worth and prosperity.
How best to do this is hotly debated. Some are keen on a centralised path. Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project, a crowd-funded think-tank, touts “social wealth funds” through which the state could accumulate stakes in equity, bond and property markets, subsequently disbursing a share of the resulting income as a “universal basic dividend”. Norway and Alaska already have something akin to this, though funded by oil wealth. Others are sceptical of such measures. A policy paper commissioned for the Labour Party argues that such state-planning risks creating “a small private and corporate elite”, resulting in “little democratic scrutiny or debate”. Receiving a monthly cheque from the state social wealth fund would be nice, but would ordinary people feel empowered?
That concern is one reason why the left, generally well disposed to welfare spending, is divided on the question of universal basic income—despite, or perhaps because of, the support such schemes also have from some on the right. Mr Graeber and Andy Stern, an American trade unionist, are among those who have expressed support for the idea. Others worry that under such schemes “we gain ‘free time’, but we lose the historical agency we have as workers...we are seen as passive, alienated, taking as given a world shaped by others,” as John Marlow, an economist, argues in a recent edition of New Socialist, a journal.
A possibility for the centralised redistribution of wealth more compatible with the dignity of labour might be endowing all children with “baby bonds”, a policy Gordon Brown tried in Britain and which Cory Booker, another senator running for president, champions in America. But many see a stronger case for transfers of wealth at a sub-national scale, such as through the expansion of worker-owned co-operatives, which at present form a small proportion of firms in America and Britain.
Die Linke, Germany’s most left-wing party, has promised “to create suitable legal forms to facilitate and promote the joint takeover of enterprises by the employees.” In the Accountable Capitalism Act offered by Elizabeth Warren, another Democratic hopeful—though not, she insists, a socialist—workers would elect 40% of the members of corporate boards. That is not the same as seizing a chunk of the firm’s capital. But Senator Warren has other plans for redistributing wealth. She has proposed an annual tax of 2% on the wealth of Americans with a net worth of more than $50m, 3% on those worth more than$1bn.
Perhaps the most radical detailed plans for the “democratisation” of an economy put forward by a mainstream party are Labour’s. It says that it will double the size of the co-operative sector if elected, and that private firms of over 250 employees will have to transfer 10% of their shares to a fund managed by “workers’ representatives”. Staff would be entitled to dividends from the shares; the representatives would have a say in how the company was run.
Modern times
As far as public services are concerned, shareholders of England’s water utilities would be bought out and “regional water authorities” created in their place, to be run by “councillors, worker representatives and representatives of community, consumer and environmental interests”. Similar steps would encourage local energy provision. Proponents of such reforms speak glowingly of Paris’s municipal government, which a decade ago brought its water companies in-house and has created a mechanism for enabling local people to hold the new operation to account.
Buying up chunks of the economy at the same time as greatly increasing public services would be a costly undertaking. Some on the socialist left try to wave this aside by invoking “modern monetary theory” (mmt), which holds that the primary constraint on government spending is not how much money can be raised through tax or bonds, but how much of an economy’s capital and labour the state can use without sparking rapid inflation. Adherents of mmtnote the lack of inflation seen since the financial crisis, despite big deficits and governments printing money to buy bonds through “quantitative easing”. Many on the left have come to see the concerns that the right raises about deficits—which tend to surface only when it is not in power—less as economic prudence than a partisan politics of impoverishment.
Scholars such as Stephanie Kelton of Stony Brook University, who has the ear of various left-wing Democrats, suggest the very notion that spending must at some point be paid for by tax should be scrapped. Only when government spending pushes an economy beyond its capacity to produce goods and services should it be cooled using spending cuts and tax increases.
Let the billionaires bleed
Resistance to millennial socialism comes in various forms. Critics may believe that the socialist goals are bad ones; that, as a matter of fact, their policy ideas will not achieve those goals; that, even if the policies were to work, they would be too illiberal to stomach; or that, whether they work or not, they will cost the critic money. It is possible to hold all four of these positions at once in various degrees.
Take mmt. Most economists strongly resist the idea that governments can spend so freely, and such disagreement can easily be found on the left as well as the right. They also doubt that governments would, in fact, be able to cut spending or raise taxes when called on to do so by the tenets of the theory. And if a government were to do so, its actions could be quite regressive. Jonathan Portes of King’s College, London, points out that under mmt a country facing a combination of weak growth and high inflation, as Britain did in 2011-12, would require spending cuts rather than the increased stimulus called for by Keynes. The Labour Party, which was at that time decrying government austerity, has none of the sympathy for mmt seen in some of its fellow travellers across the Atlantic. “mmt is just plain old bad economics, unfortunately,” says Mr Meadway.
The non-mmt answer to “how to pay for it all” is usually to soak the rich. This is not always as popular a policy as some imagine, but today it does look like quite an easy sell in America. Unfortunately it yields less money than many on the left suppose. The best estimates of the extra revenues Labour might raise through the tax increases it plans for high earners suggest there may be none at all, in part because the rich may simply work less. The party is ignoring more reliable revenue raisers, like taxes on consumption and property. Yet its policies call for lots more government spending.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez has suggested a marginal tax rate of 70% on incomes above $10m; one estimate puts the extra annual revenue at perhaps $12bn, or just 0.3% of the tax take. The original New Deal cost a great deal more than that. Even if ambitious new steps were taken to stop the rich from hiding their lucre in tax shelters, a broader tax base would be required. There would be little help from Ms Warren’s wealth tax, which would discourage those whose wealth was the business that earned them their income and would be immensely hard to administer. Mr Sanders’s policy of increasing the inheritance tax, which introduces much less distortion, is a better one. But it would still be a hard sell for relatively little return.
Higher taxes on the rich can be about more than revenue. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, two economists, argue in favour of Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s tax plan on the grounds that shrinking top incomes is necessary to prevent America from sliding into oligarchy. Such plans can be read simply as punitive populism: billionaires are not very well regarded on the left, and thinning their number has an appeal all its own. The rich are well aware of this. It would be wrong to assume that Michael Bloomberg, a businessman and former mayor who may run for president, was motivated by the threat to his considerable personal wealth when he recently suggested that Ms Warren’s wealth tax threatened to make America a new Venezuela. Though, taken at face value, his hyperbole shows a profound pessimism about the durability of American institutions, his broader point is that once you start saying some people are just too rich, where do you draw the line?
However paid for, efforts to “democratise” the economy have their own problems. It is possible for companies partly controlled by their workers to raise capital. The German principle of “co-determination”, which aims to give shareholders and employees an equal say in the decision making within firms, has not hit the country’s international competitiveness. But some investment will surely either be scared off or rationally choose other destinations, depending on the circumstances and/or your perspective.
There is also a risk of capture. A lot of people may feel they have better things to do of an evening than discuss metering policy down the water company. Trade-union officials and government lackies may feel differently. Experience suggests that firms run by people close to the state may come under pressure to give contracts to political insiders rather than to the best supplier, and that they will often give in. A worry from the left is that workers on boards might, in self-interest, behave as badly as they think capitalists do.
Even if there were not so many legitimate causes for concern, and even setting aside their own interests, many liberals and conservatives would still be against policies explicitly aimed at appropriating private wealth for the common good. They see the confiscation of private property as an infringement of liberty just as sincerely as some socialists see it as the road to a wider popular freedom. That is a powerful argument, all the more so if it is offered alongside its own set of more acceptable approaches to empowering those currently without the capacity to exercise all their freedoms.
The possibility of the Green New Deal being enacted in all its pomp is nugatory. Seeing the full range of Labour’s schemes for worker empowerment established is unlikely. And therein lies a paradox facing millennial socialism. An unremitting pursuit of radicalism could easily contribute to defeat for the broader left. A more incrementalist approach will be too slow to deliver for the impatient young, not to mention their elderly leaders. Unless, that is, precipitating events as head-over-heelsy as the fall of the Berlin Wall intervene. Judge them, then, in decades to come, when Ms Ocasio-Cortez is either forgotten—or the grande dame of a Washington risen again from the waves of sea-level rise through monumental public works.
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/02/14/millennial-socialists-want-to-shake-up-the-economy-and-save-the-climate

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