Preview Newsletter
AM ACC Clips Report - February 21, 2019
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(ACC Mentioned) RI Gov. Pushes Bag Ban, Promises Broader Look at Plastic Waste
Feb 20, 2019 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo is endorsing a plastic bag ban in the state, and says she wants to use her office to drive a broader look at single-use plastics and other disposables. -
(ACC Mentioned) California Lawmakers Propose Phasing out Plastic Products That Aren't Recyclable
Feb 21, 2019 | Los Angeles Times
By Patrick McGreevy
With Californians already barred from getting plastic straws in many restaurants unless they request them and grocery stores not providing single-use plastic bags, state lawmakers are again proposing to ramp up efforts aimed at significantly reducing products that are not recyclable, including plastic cups, forks, spoons and packaging. -
New EPA Toxics Chief Seeks To Quell Critics As Agency Implements TSCA
Feb 20, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
In her first public remarks since being sworn in as EPA’s toxics chief, Alexandra Dunn sought to respond to both industry and environmentalist critics of the Trump administration’s implementation of the revised toxics law, saying her primary goal in implementing the law is “increasing public confidence in the work that we do.” -
EPA Updates List of Chemicals Used in the US
Feb 20, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt Erickson
Of the 86,228 chemicals listed in the US Environmental Protection Agency’s inventory of substances covered by the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), only 40,655 or about 47% are actually in use, the EPA reported on Feb. 19. Of the chemicals in use, 7,757 have confidential identities, the agency noted. -
EPA Releases Update to TSCA Inventory
Feb 20, 2019 | Lexology
By Lynn L. Bergeson and Margaret R. Graham
On February 19, 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it was releasing an update to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Inventory listing the chemicals that are actively being manufactured, processed and imported in the United States, which is required under amended TSCA. -
Updated TSCA Inventory Identifies “Active” Chemicals in Commerce
Feb 20, 2019 | Lexology
By Joseph J. Green
EPA has released the updated TSCA Chemical Substance Inventory, with, for the first time, “active” and “inactive” designations as required by the 2016 Amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
Labor Lawsuit Seeks Ban on Methylene Chloride Paint Strippers
Feb 20, 2019 | Inside EPA
The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) and environmental groups are suing to compel the Trump administration to finalize EPA’s Obama-era proposed ban on use of methylene chloride in paint strippers, claiming that the June 2016 revised toxics law requires the agency to protect workers from unreasonable risks. -
Environmentalists Sue to Compel EPA Asbestos Reporting Rule
Feb 20, 2019 | Inside EPA
The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) and other public health groups are urging a federal district court to compel EPA to issue a Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) rule requiring increased reporting on asbestos, arguing that the substance poses unreasonable risks, and that EPA inappropriately denied the groups’ petition for a rule. -
(ACC Mentioned) US, EU Trade Groups Remain Concerned over South Korea’s Osha
Feb 21, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Sunny Lee
EU and US industry groups said further work may be required to ensure effective implementation of the major amendment to South Korea’s Occupational Safety and Health Act (Osha), which was promulgated on 15 January. -
EPA Pledges Release of More Chemical Health, Safety Data
Feb 21, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The EPA expects to release more health and safety data on a pigment used to color industrial and consumer products that the agency concluded doesn’t pose health or environmental risks, its newly appointed chemicals chief said Feb. 20. -
North Carolina Tightens Chemours Chemical Cleanup Order
Feb 20, 2019 | Andrew M. Ballard
By Andrew M. Ballard
North Carolina has further tightened its toxic pollution control requirements for Chemours’ facility in Fayetteville. -
NGOs Question Industry Petition to Amend FDA Ortho-Phthalates Regulations
Feb 21, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins
A group of NGOs has questioned an industry request for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to revoke its authorisation of 26 ortho-phthalates for use in food contact applications. -
EU Proposes Ban on 12 Chemicals for WTO Review
Feb 20, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
World Trade Organization members have until April 16 to comment on a draft European Union law that would ban 12 hazardous chemicals under the bloc’s REACH law. -
EU to Add 12 Substances to REACH Authorisation List
Feb 21, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Oziel
The European Commission has published a draft regulation to add 12 substances of very high concern (SVHC) to Annex XIV – the REACH authorisation list. -
EDC Project Will Develop Methods for Female Reprotox Effects
Feb 21, 2019 | Chemical Watch
The EU has launched a five-year, €6 million research project to develop test methods for identifying endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that cause adverse effects on female reproduction. -
Council of Ministers and Parliament Agree on EU POPs Update
Feb 21, 2019 | Chemical Watch
The EU Council of Ministers has reached a provisional agreement with the European Parliament on updating the regulation on persistent organic pollutants (POPs). -
UK Companies Consider REACH Authorisation Transfer Ahead of Brexit
Feb 21, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Oziel
Six UK-based companies that have applied for a REACH authorisation for a specific use of an SVHC are contemplating transferring their applications to EU entities ahead of Brexit, Echa said. -
Why the Future of Oil Is in Chemicals, Not Fuels
Feb 20, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Alexander H. Tullo
In Yanbu, a massive industrial town on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, two Saudi state-owned firms—the oil company Saudi Aramco and the petrochemical maker Sabic—are planning a new complex that could prove to be a bellwether for the next decade in petrochemicals. -
The Hidden Risk in the Fracking Boom
Feb 20, 2019 | Rolling Stone
By Justin Nobel
At 10:40 a.m. on Monday, January 21st, a pipeline carrying natural gas ruptured in rural Noble County, in southeastern Ohio, producing a fireball that surged 120 feet into the air and engulfed the Noll family home, with 12-year-old son Nash inside. -
Power Plant Pollution Drops Despite Uptick in Electricity
Feb 20, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid and Abby Smith
Power plant pollution continued to fall in 2018 despite an increase in electricity generation and a slight uptick in carbon dioxide emissions, the EPA’s latest tally of emissions shows. -
As EPA Preps ACE Rule, Data Shows Slight Power Sector CO2 Rise In 2018
Feb 20, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
After years of declines, new EPA data shows that power plants' carbon dioxide emissions increased in 2018, potentially complicating the agency's message just as it is preparing to finalize its Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, a major rollback to Obama-era greenhouse gas standards for the sector. -
Expect New Chemical Safety Board Reporting Regs By Fall
Feb 20, 2019 | Law 360
By David Quigley, Stacey Mitchell and Bryan Williamson
Since its inception, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, or CSB, has not required reporting of accidental chemical releases. -
'Huge Vulnerability' in U.S. Energy Networks — Murkowski
Feb 21, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski pledged to take action on energy and election cybersecurity in an address to her state's lawmakers Tuesday. -
Federal DOT: New Emergency Response Rule Sharpens Oil Train Safety
Feb 21, 2019 | The Daily News Online
By Matt Surtel
A new federal rule is enacting stricter spill response regulations for oil trains. -
After Disasters, Experts Push to Revive Obama Policies
Feb 21, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Daniel Cusick
The 116th Congress has another opportunity to help flood-prone communities build higher, safer and stronger against future disasters. -
Exclusive: How a Top EPA Regulator's Law Firm Profited from the Fight to Roll Back Air Rules
Feb 20, 2019 | Politico Pro
By Zack Colman and Alex Guillén
The nation’s biggest coal-burning power companies paid a top lobbying firm millions of dollars to fight a wide range of Obama-era environmental rules, documents obtained by POLITICO reveal — shortly before one of the firm’s partners became President Donald Trump’s top air pollution regulator. -
‘Climate Security’ Panel May Give White House Skeptics New Voice
Feb 20, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter, Christopher Flavelle and Jennifer A. Dlouhy
The White House is considering establishing a presidential committee to assess the consensus of scientists and the Pentagon that climate change poses a national security threat, according to a person familiar with the plan. -
'Red Team' Revived Under Physicist Who Sees 'CO2 Drought'
Feb 21, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
The Trump administration found a way to formally question climate science after almost two years of false starts. -
Climate Threat Doubter Is Leading Effort to Advise Trump
Feb 21, 2019 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Kevin Freking and Seth Borenstein
The Trump administration is exploring the idea of forming a special committee to look at climate change and security risks, with the effort being coordinated by a 79-year-old physicist who rejects mainstream climate science. -
Trump’s New Attempt to Gut Clean Air Protection
Feb 20, 2019 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Michael R. Lemov
President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is laying out a devious plan to give the coal industry a major break on toxic air emissions. -
'Green New Deal' Is Shrinking, and It Mystifies Activists
Feb 21, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Mark K. Matthews and Adam Aton
In a matter of months, the "Green New Deal" has transformed the way Democratic candidates for president talk about climate change. -
Amazon Agrees to Reveal Carbon Footprint in 2019
Feb 20, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Emily Chasan
Amazon.com Inc. announced it will disclose its carbon footprint later this year, giving consumers and investors new insight into the environmental cost of its popular two-day shipping.
Industry and Association News
TSCA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) RI Gov. Pushes Bag Ban, Promises Broader Look at Plastic Waste
Feb 20, 2019 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo is endorsing a plastic bag ban in the state, and says she wants to use her office to drive a broader look at single-use plastics and other disposables.
Raimondo, a Democrat, said she will lead a legislative push for the plastic bag ban, which would include a nickel fee on paper bags and government efforts to distribute reusable bags. Her administration Feb. 14 released a report from its Task Force to Tackle Plastics that aims to take a wide-ranging look at plastic waste.
She also made clear, in comments to the task force during its Feb. 14 meeting, that the bag ban was just the beginning.
Raimondo said she planned executive actions focused on innovation and broader ways to cut plastics waste and pollution.
“I want to see us move more towards radical, broader-based solutions around innovation for non-plastics products, focusing on the source,” she said, adding that the policy would be “moving towards big consumers and manufacturers of plastic and trying to drive real change in the industry. That’s going to be phase two of the work that you do.”
In mid-2018, Raimondo launched the task force with an executive order. In comments to the group in a video posted by the EcoRI News non-profit journalism website, Raimondo said she would soon release a second executive order.
“You all know as I know that plastics are an enormous source of our pollution,” Raimondo said. “I support what you’re proposing and I’m grateful for your work, but I want to announce today that I plan to sign another executive order leading to stage two of this work. Because I think we’ve only just begun.”
A spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Environmental Management did not respond to questions about the new executive order.
A representative of the American Chemistry Council, which was not on the task force, told the group that the state’s plastics industry wanted a be a “more active part” of the next phases of the state government’s work.
“You can only innovate if the plastics industry is part of the innovative talk,” said Joan Milas, a contract lobbyist for ACC with the Providence, R.I. firm JPM Associates.
“We certainly applaud the efforts of everyone at the table,” she said. “I’ve probably been a thorn in everyone’s side because I’m constantly hammering about the industry, but the industry is an important component going forward so we hope that we can be part of the dialogue.”
Milas told the group that the chemical and plastics industries have worked with the state government constructively for more than 20 years on issues including waste and film recycling.
In a presentation in January to the task force, ACC urged caution on plastic bans, arguing that the environmental cost of plastics in consumer goods is 3.8 times less than alternative materials.
And it pointed to efforts like the industry-funded Alliance to End Plastic Waste as an example of efforts to reduce marine litter.
But the report argues that plastic pollution is a significant contributor to shoreline litter and that plastic bags and film are the “predominant contaminant” of recycling loads in Rhode Island.
It also said microplastics eaten by fish and aquatic life put the state’s fishing industry and aquatic ecosystems at risk.
The task force, which had 20 members from government, environmental groups and packaging, restaurant and hospitality businesses, said in the report’s executive summary that “developing stronger policies to reduce the use of plastics and single-use disposables is a top goal” of Raimondo’s administration.
The 35-page report outlined four main priorities: facilitating voluntary efforts to reduce single-use plastics; the bag ban legislation; increase awareness of plastic pollution and recycling; and support innovation including but not limited to single-use plastics.
As an example of that innovation, the report noted a pilot effort in the state to take fiberglass boats that would normally be landfilled or abandoned, and instead use them as fuel for cement kilns.
“There are a lot of resources we have here in the state in our business community,” said Johnathan Berard, co-chair of the task force and the Rhode Island state director for the environmental group Clean Water Action. “We’re not going to just ban and legislate our way out of this problem. There’s opportunities for business, for economic growth, for all sorts of ways to tackle this issue.”
The report outlined steps to take in the short term, in the next three years, and in the longer-term, over the next five years, with new laws, business innovation and education.
One suggestion: have Rhode Island be the first U.S. state to join the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy project.
Closer to home politically, the report discussed a more comprehensive legislative program around disposables, both plastic and non-plastic, and bottle bills and extended producer responsibility for plastic packaging.
The task force meeting heard that legislation was being prepared mirroring the report’s bag ban language, and that additional restrictions on expanded polystyrene foam and plastic straws were being considered.
Berard said given the short time frame the task force was working under, they chose to focus legislative work on bags and adopted their proposal for the ban on plastic checkout bags, 5-cent fee on paper bags and a call for distributing free reusable bags to the needy.
The report said the group debated various bag options, including banning both types of single-use bags or putting fees on both types, but adopted its proposal as a compromise.
Berard and Raimondo both said they wanted to reduce the negative impact of a bag law on businesses, lower-income consumers and senior citizens.
“The goal of a plastic bag policy is not to switch from one type of single-use disposable bag (plastic) to another (paper), but rather to reduce use of disposables overall,” the report said.
The report noted that plastic bag bans have been introduced in previous legislative sessions, and Raimondo told the group that she appointed different groups to the task force to see if they could hammer out some consensus.
“I’m going to need all of you to help get this bill passed,” she said. “We have momentum right now and I want to keep momentum going.”
https://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20190220/NEWS/190229988/ri-gov-pushes-bag-ban-promises-broader-look-at-plastic-waste
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(ACC Mentioned) California Lawmakers Propose Phasing out Plastic Products That Aren't Recyclable
Feb 21, 2019 | Los Angeles Times
By Patrick McGreevy
With Californians already barred from getting plastic straws in many restaurants unless they request them and grocery stores not providing single-use plastic bags, state lawmakers are again proposing to ramp up efforts aimed at significantly reducing products that are not recyclable, including plastic cups, forks, spoons and packaging.
New legislation announced Wednesday would require plastic and other single-use materials sold in California to be either reusable, fully recyclable or compostable by 2030.
The measure would also require the state to recycle or otherwise divert from landfills 75% of single-use plastic packaging and products sold or distributed in California, up from the 44% of all solid waste that was diverted as of 2017.
“We have to stop treating our oceans and planet like a dumpster,” said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), an author of the proposal. “Any fifth-grader can tell you that our addiction to single-use plastics is killing our ecosystems.”
The measures, co-authored by state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) and scheduled to be introduced Friday, directs the state Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery to develop a plan in the next two years for meeting the goals.
The American Chemistry Council, which has been a leading voice for the plastics industry at the Capitol, wants to review the specific language of the proposed legislation before taking a position, spokesman Tim Shestek said in an email.
But, he said, the council shares the proposal’s objective of significantly reducing the amount of plastic going to landfills, “consistent with the goals we set last year that 100% of plastics packaging is re-used, recycled or recovered by 2040 and that 100% of plastics packaging is recyclable or recoverable by 2030.”
Shestek noted that the council last year supported a bill by Allen that created new requirements that food service packaging used at state facilities be recyclable or compostable.
The latest push follows last year’s approval of a first-in-the-nation state law barring restaurants from providing plastic straws unless they are requested by customers.
It also builds on a law approved by the Legislature in 2014 that made California the first state to prohibit stores from using single-use plastic bags. Stores must offer paper and reusable plastic bags for at least 10 cents each.
Allen said annual global plastic production is rising and now totals 335 million tons. The United States, he said, discards 30 million tons a year.
The national recycling rate for plastic is projected to drop from 9.1% in 2015 to 2.9% this year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other sources, Allen said.
He said California only recycles 15% of single-use plastic in part because the cost of recycling plastics exceeds the value of the resulting material.
“We can’t keep ignoring the public health and pollution threat posed by mounting plastic waste,” Allen said. “Every day Californians generate tons of non-recyclable, non-compostable waste that clog landfills, rivers, and beaches.”
Microplastics are showing up in drinking water consumed by humans, and plastic pollution is harming sea life and costing taxpayers, state officials said. Local governments in California spend an estimated $420 million to clean up plastic.
“We have technology and innovation to improve how we reduce and recycle the plastic packaging and products in our state,” Gonzalez said. “Now, we have to find the political will to do so.”
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-plastic-product-phaseout-20190221-story.html
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New EPA Toxics Chief Seeks To Quell Critics As Agency Implements TSCA
Feb 20, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
In her first public remarks since being sworn in as EPA’s toxics chief, Alexandra Dunn sought to respond to both industry and environmentalist critics of the Trump administration’s implementation of the revised toxics law, saying her primary goal in implementing the law is “increasing public confidence in the work that we do.”
To do this, she said the agency will strive to meet statutory review deadlines in the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and address calls for greater disclosure of chemical data.
“We hear very strongly from all sorts of stakeholders that we are not as transparent as they would like us to be, or not fully engaging [with stakeholders], or that the science might not be the best available,” Dunn told a Feb. 20 webinar, sponsored by Bloomberg BNA and the law firm Bergeson & Campbell, P.C.
“We remain under a microscope as we implement the statute, and we want to implement it well,” she added.
While vowinDave Reynoldsg to consider stakeholder input in decision making, Dunn said EPA toxics officials will remain flexible as they seek to implement the revised TSCA. “The decisions that EPA is making are not happening in a vacuum,” she said, adding that even with significant input the agency can misstep. Although “decisions are not made accidentally, does not mean they’re all perfect. . . . Where we can revisit them we will.”
Jim Aidala, a former EPA toxics chief in the Clinton administration who is now with Bergeson & Campbell, said that Dunn’s confirmation will help the agency navigate its heavy workload in implementing the new law, even as the agency will face stepped oversight from House lawmakers and possible criticism from Democratic candidates running for president in 2020.
He also said that her confirmation could signal improved cooperation between environment committee senators and the White House, which could facilitate agency efforts in the future.
Prior to working in the Trump administration, Dunn served as executive director and general counsel of the Environmental Council of the States, which represents most state regulators.
And she told that webinar that her recent experience as EPA’s Region 1 administrator helped her to consider how agency policies affect stakeholders and to consider their input.
In her remarks, she outlined a series of concerns aimed at addressing various stakeholders' criticisms. For example, in outlining the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention’s (OCSPP) priorities for fiscal year 2019, Dunn addressed long-standing industry concerns that EPA is failing to meet statutory deadlines for reviewing new chemical uses.
She said the agency is conducting a LEAN analysis to streamline reviews of new chemicals and seeking to eliminate a backlog of reviews.
Industry groups have criticized the agency for failing to keep pace with a 90-day deadline for completing the reviews.
And in a nod to environmentalists’ calls for greater public disclosure of chemical data, she said that the agency is doing a close analysis to substantiate companies’ claims seeking to bar disclosure of chemical data under confidential business information (CBI) requirements, and will likely disclose additional data when that work is complete.
PV29 Assessment
Acting EPA chief Andrew Wheeler had previously promised to revise the agency’s controversial framework for reviewing new chemicals and to make the new chemicals program -- as well as the agency’s reviews of CBI for existing chemicals -- more transparent. Those were among a number of commitments Wheeler made to win Dunn's confirmation.
In her remarks, Dunn went further, seeking to allay environmentalists' concerns that the agency's draft assessment of pigment violet 29 (PV29), the first assessment of an existing chemical under the revised TSCA, would serve as a blueprint for future reviews that the agency conducts under the new law.
Dunn said that EPA selected PV29 as a pilot because only a few manufacturers produce the substance. But when the agency realized no U.S. entities had health and safety studies for the substance, staff relied on studies provided for the European Union, which contained only summary information.
Reviews of other chemicals will likely provide more detailed information, she said. “We have determined that PV29 was unique and probably not the model” for future reviews,” Dunn said, adding that EPA will build on that review in assessing future chemicals under the law.
She also sought to quell environmentalists' concerns spurred by the Trump administration’s planned rollback of Obama-era rules for protecting farmworkers from exposure to pesticides, though EPA has now followed through on Wheeler's pledge to drop the planned rollbacks.
“Environmental justice is important to us,” she said. “We’re going to work very closely with agricultural stakeholders and the public, and with EPA’s environmental justice advisory committee to ensure we focus on worker protection and keep that front and center.”
The Senate Jan. 2 confirmed Dunn to serve as assistant administrator for OCSPP, ensuring her ability to lead the office as it faces a host of looming deadlines and several lawsuits as a result of the agency’s implementation of the revised TSCA law.
Dunn told the webinar “Chemical Regulation After the Mid-Terms: What We Can Expect to See in 2019” that she has been working as toxics chief roughly a month but was officially sworn during a Feb. 19 ceremony.
In her remarks she outlined steps to meet deadlines required under the new TSCA, including proposing this spring a plan for reviewing CBI claims on chemicals on the TSCA inventory, a plan the agency must finalize by next February.
This spring the agency must begin a process of prioritizing 20 high and low priority chemicals for review and complete those designations by year-end.
Additionally, she said EPA plans to propose in June a rule regulating persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) chemicals, and complete that rulemaking within 18 months.
The agency faces a tentative year-end deadline for completing reviews of the first 10 existing chemicals selected for risk evaluation under the revised TSCA, though Dunn said staff are weighing whether to extend those reviews for six months, which is permitted under the law.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/new-epa-toxics-chief-seeks-quell-critics-agency-implements-tsca
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EPA Updates List of Chemicals Used in the US
Feb 20, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt Erickson
Of the 86,228 chemicals listed in the US Environmental Protection Agency’s inventory of substances covered by the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), only 40,655 or about 47% are actually in use, the EPA reported on Feb. 19. Of the chemicals in use, 7,757 have confidential identities, the agency noted.
The EPA was required to update the inventory so that it only evaluates chemicals that are actively being manufactured, processed, and imported in the US. Revisions to the TSCA enacted in 2016 required the agency to narrow down the inventory to chemicals used during the 10–year period ending June 21, 2016, the day before the revisions were enacted. The EPA automatically adds new chemicals to the inventory as it approves them, so chemicals that entered US commerce after TSCA was amended are also included in the inventory.
The effort will help the agency prioritize which chemicals to evaluate for health risks, Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention said in a statement. “This information also increases transparency to the public,” she added.
The EPA is grappling with how to review and substantiate claims of confidential business information (CBI) that allow manufacturers to shield the identities of some chemicals. Under the revised TSCA, the agency must assign each of those chemicals a unique identifier that protects the identity of the substance while providing the public with a way to find health and safety information about the chemical.
“EPA is supposed to finalize a rule establishing a review plan for these CBI claims within one year from now,” says Richard Denison, a lead senior scientist at the environmental group, Environmental Defense Fund. “It has yet to even propose the rule, and there is little indication it has started that work,” he notes. EPA is required to review the claims within five years of finalizing the rule, with the possibility of a two-year extension.
https://cen.acs.org/policy/chemical-regulation/EPA-updates-list-chemicals-used/97/i8
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EPA Releases Update to TSCA Inventory
Feb 20, 2019 | Lexology
By Lynn L. Bergeson and Margaret R. Graham
On February 19, 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it was releasing an update to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Inventory listing the chemicals that are actively being manufactured, processed and imported in the United States, which is required under amended TSCA. Some of the highlights from EPA’s announcement are:
A key result of the update is that less than half of the total number of chemicals on the current TSCA Inventory (47 percent or 40,655 of the 86,228 chemicals) are currently in commerce; EPA states that this information will help it focus risk evaluation efforts on chemicals that are still on the market.
As recently as 2018, the TSCA Inventory showed over 86,000 chemicals available for commercial production and use in the U.S. Until this update, EPA states that it was not known which of these chemicals on the TSCA Inventory were actually in commerce.
More than 80 percent (32,898) of the chemicals in commerce have identities that are not Confidential Business Information (CBI), increasing public access to additional information about them.
For the less than 20 percent of the chemicals in commerce that have confidential identities, EPA states that it is developing a rule outlining how it will review and substantiate all CBI claims seeking to protect the specific chemical identities of substances on the confidential portion of the TSCA Inventory.
From August 11, 2017, through October 5, 2018, chemical manufacturers and processors provided information on which chemicals were manufactured, imported or processed in the U.S. over the past ten years, the period ending June 21, 2016. EPA received more than 90,000 responses, a significant reporting effort by manufacturers, importers and processors.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=2aa70180-82e6-432e-a24c-9c913157cdf5
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Updated TSCA Inventory Identifies “Active” Chemicals in Commerce
Feb 20, 2019 | Lexology
By Joseph J. Green
EPA has released the updated TSCA Chemical Substance Inventory, with, for the first time, “active” and “inactive” designations as required by the 2016 Amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Of the 86,228 chemicals on the Inventory, less than half (40,655 or 47%) are designated as “active.” The updated Inventory can be accessed here.
The designations are based on reporting by chemical manufacturers, importers, and processors, which concluded on October 5, 2018, under the agency’s TSCA Inventory Notification (Active-Inactive) Rule. “Active” substances also include those that were reported during the 2012 and 2016 Chemical Data Reporting cycles. All substances not reported as “active” are identified as “inactive.”
While seemingly mundane, this is important stuff: chemicals that are classified as “inactive” will not be able to be manufactured or imported into the U.S. without going through EPA’s pre-manufacture notice (PMN) and review process. PMN is something to avoid, particularly after the 2016 amendments shifted the burden of proof to require that EPA now make an affirmative finding that the substance does not pose an unreasonable risk to health or the environment before allowing it on the market.
For processors (i.e., companies that use chemicals), it is imperative to confirm with suppliers that the chemicals they receive from them are designated as “active.” Manufacture, import or use of (or placement on the market of a product containing) an “inactive” substance can incur serious penalties. Companies that wish to start using an “inactive” substance must submit to EPA, within 90 days prior to the anticipated start of such use, a Notice of Activity (Form B) to EPA to change the Inventory designation from “inactive” to “active.”
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=36842221-c100-448f-bb59-147ad5dd5a60
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Labor Lawsuit Seeks Ban on Methylene Chloride Paint Strippers
Feb 20, 2019 | Inside EPA
The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) and environmental groups are suing to compel the Trump administration to finalize EPA’s Obama-era proposed ban on use of methylene chloride in paint strippers, claiming that the June 2016 revised toxics law requires the agency to protect workers from unreasonable risks.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Earthjustice filed the lawsuit Feb. 19 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that the Trump EPA’s failure to ban methylene chloride paint strippers violates the revised Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
“[EPA] knows that methylene chloride is killing workers, and it knows that only a ban will protect them,” Earthjustice attorney Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz says in a statement announcing the suit. He adds that exposure to methylene chloride paint strippers has killed more than 50 people. “Yet the Trump administration is so beholden to the chemical industry that it has chosen to leave workers and consumers in harm’s way.”
Plaintiffs ask the court to declare that EPA’s failure to promptly finalize the Obama-era ban as proposed violates TSCA and the APA by allowing workers’ exposures to continue despite unreasonable risk. They seek an order for EPA to finalize the ban and take any other steps necessary to protect workers from imminent hazards from exposure.
The lawsuit is the second that advocates have filed seeking to compel the Trump administration to finalize the Obama EPA’s January 2017 proposed rule banning use of methylene chloride in paint strippers after a 2013 risk assessment found that the substance poses unreasonable risks to workers and consumers.
The litigation comes amid fears the final rule EPA sent for White House Office of Management and Budget review Dec. 21 retreats from the proposed version by cutting worker exposures from the ban. The version includes an EPA training program to limit commercial exposures to methylene chloride, a step the Obama EPA deemed inadequate.
But EPA's apparent plan to limit worker exposures through a future training program may find some support in the Consumer Product Safety Commission's (CPSC) March 21 supplemental guidance calling for product labels to warn of acute inhalation hazards of paint strippers containing methylene chloride.
CPSC updated its 1987 guidance in response to the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance's July 2016 petition to account for methylene chloride's acute inhalation hazard in warning labels. HSIA has opposed the Obama EPA's proposed ban on methylene chloride paint strippers as unnecessary, in part because of other agencies' protections.
But CPSC also noted that EPA is weighing the January 2017 proposed ban on most uses of methylene chloride in paint strippers, and said that “By updating the 1987 Statement, we do not suggest that labeling will address all hazards EPA identified in its proposed rulemaking."
The Obama EPA proposed to ban the use of methylene chloride in paint strippers under TSCA section 6(a) authority, little used since EPA's attempt to ban most uses of asbestos in the 1980s.
That rule was struck down by a federal court in a 1991 decision that effectively shut down EPA's regulatory program of existing chemicals and prompted calls for overhauling TSCA, which Congress approved in 2016.
Plaintiffs argue that the June 2016 amended TSCA requires EPA to consider risks to “potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations,” including workers, who “due to either greater susceptibility or greater exposure, may be at greater risk than the general population of adverse health effects from exposure.”
“Latino and immigrant workers are more likely to perform jobs that use deadly paint strippers,” LCLAA executive director Hector Sanchez Barba says in a statement. “We deserve as much protection as every other group and should not be exposed to a chemical we know is deadly. Methylene chloride must be banned immediately.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/labor-lawsuit-seeks-ban-methylene-chloride-paint-strippers
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Environmentalists Sue to Compel EPA Asbestos Reporting Rule
Feb 20, 2019 | Inside EPA
The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) and other public health groups are urging a federal district court to compel EPA to issue a Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) rule requiring increased reporting on asbestos, arguing that the substance poses unreasonable risks, and that EPA inappropriately denied the groups’ petition for a rule.
In a Feb. 19 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, groups including ADAO, the American Public Health Association, and Environmental Working Group ask the court to direct EPA to issue a rule under TSCA section 8(a) expanding asbestos reporting requirements.
The suit comes after the agency in December rejected the groups’ Sept. 25 petition urging EPA to boost asbestos requirements by amending the agency’s Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) program and other changes, saying that the petitioners’ requested rule would not bring new information the agency does not already know.
More than a dozen states and the District of Columbia are likely to file a similar legal challenge as they had also petitioned EPA for such a rule.
“[T]he asbestos loophole in the CDR rule ‘has resulted in a troubling -- and wholly avoidable -- lack of reliable information about who is importing asbestos and in what quantities, where and how asbestos is being used in the US, and who is being exposed and how that exposure is occurring,” the lawsuit says, citing plaintiffs’ past petition.
“The Court should now require EPA to propose an asbestos reporting rule under TSCA section 8(a) because (1) asbestos presents an unreasonable risk of injury to human health and thereby meets the standard for judicial intervention under section 21(b)(4)(ii), and (2) EPA’s denial of the petition was arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law, thereby violating the Administrative Procedure Act.”
The petitions , filed under section 21 of TSCA, sought to bolster asbestos reporting requirements, arguing that the substance is inappropriately exempt under the CDR.
Advocates petitioned EPA for a series of steps, including adding asbestos to the CDR, lowering the reporting threshold, eliminating exemptions for natural substances, impurities and 'articles' and requiring reporting by processors.
The petition also asked EPA to find that reports submitted on asbestos are not subject to trade secret protection because disclosure is necessary to protect against an unreasonable risk of injury to health under section 14(d)(3).
In the lawsuit, plaintiffs say that the June 2016 revised TSCA aims for EPA to develop adequate information on chemical risks to human health and the environment, and to regulate to substances that pose unreasonable risks.
The groups say numerous authorities including World Health Organization, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health classify asbestos as a human carcinogen.
Arguing a dearth of information is hampering EPA oversight of asbestos, plaintiffs say that EPA’s June 2018 problem formulation document supporting the agency’s planned assessment of asbestos under the revised TSCA “provides virtually no information about the quantities of asbestos contained in these products, the volumes in which they are produced or imported, the sites where they are used and the number of exposed individuals.”
The lawsuit also faults EPA’s rejection of advocates’ petition for rulemaking, saying that EPA’s denial contains errors of law and fact and ignores information in the docket, as well as EPA’s own past statements.
TSCA “provides that, where the petition seeks promulgation of a rule under section 8, the district court shall ‘order the Administrator to initiate the action requested by the petitioner’ if it ‘demonstrates to the satisfaction of the court by a preponderance of the evidence’ that the chemical substance in question ‘presents an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, without consideration of costs or other nonrisk factors,’” the lawsuit says.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/environmentalists-sue-compel-epa-asbestos-reporting-rule
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(ACC Mentioned) US, EU Trade Groups Remain Concerned over South Korea’s Osha
Feb 21, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Sunny Lee
EU and US industry groups said further work may be required to ensure effective implementation of the major amendment to South Korea’s Occupational Safety and Health Act (Osha), which was promulgated on 15 January.
Cefic, the European trade body, and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) remain concerned at the "potential duplication of efforts" required to register new substances under both K-REACH and Osha. Cefic told Chemical Watch that "we believe it should be possible to use the information from the registration file under K-REACH to comply with Osha".Safety data sheets and CBI
On the issue of confidential business information (CBI) requirements on safety data sheets (SDSs), which the ACC raised with the South Korean government, however, the two groups were at odds.
The ACC’s Michael Walls, vice president of regulatory and technical affairs, said the ACC was "pleased to note that the final [amendments to] Osha have addressed the protection of confidential information, and that the Act makes clear that alternative information can be provided to help address worker health and safety issues."
However, Cefic stressed that more clarity on the detail is needed. It said that "further discussion between authorities and stakeholders is needed to clarify what information contained in SDSs should be treated as CBI by authorities and how such CBI will be protected in practice, without compromising the safe management of chemicals."
Cefic argues that international practice should govern how South Korea implements CBI rules, saying that "regulatory consistency with well-established practices from other regions (for example, the EU) in relation to SDSs content would be highly desired".
https://chemicalwatch.com/74462/us-eu-trade-groups-remain-concerned-over-south-koreas-osha
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EPA Pledges Release of More Chemical Health, Safety Data
Feb 21, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The EPA expects to release more health and safety data on a pigment used to color industrial and consumer products that the agency concluded doesn’t pose health or environmental risks, its newly appointed chemicals chief said Feb. 20.
“We hear the public call for more transparency,” said Alexandra Dapolito Dunn. The EPA is evaluating information it received from studies chemical manufacturers submitted to the European Union, but it expects “to be in a position to release additional information,” she said.
The Democratic leaders of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, along with environmental groups, have urged the Environmental Protection Agency to disclose all health and safety studies it reviewed on the risks posed by Pigment Violet 29 to the public.
Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Paul D. Tonko (D-N.Y.) have said the Toxic Substances Control Act requires such disclosures.
The feedback agency officials have received on their decision to shield industry health and safety studies as confidential shows that all sides want the agency to be more open and transparent, Dunn said.
She and other senior EPA pesticide and chemical officials described their priorities in a Feb. 20 webinar organized by the Bergeson & Campbell PC and hosted by Bloomberg Next.
Near-Term Priorities: Buckle UpShort-term priorities Dunn outlined include the March release of a proposed rule describing how the EPA will examine companies’ rationales for keeping chemical identities confidential.
In addition, the agency plans to release the names of 40 chemicals it will either prioritize for review or assign less priority to before April, she said.
Finally, EPA plans to propose a rule by June to regulate five chemicals that persist in the environment, build up in the food chain, and are toxic.
Reflecting on these and other deadlines set by the 2016 TSCA amendments, Dunn said 2019 “is going to be one of those buckle-your-seat-belt kind of years.”
Approving New ChemicalsThe EPA want its review process for new compounds to be more predictable and to finalize reviews within 90 days, agency officials said.
As it gains more experience, the EPA expects to post “frequently asked questions” documents to help chemical manufacturers submit clearer applications online, Dunn said.
Meeting with agency staff prior to submitting a pre-manufacture notice for a new product can reduce agency time spent clarifying omissions, EPA Director of the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics Jeffery Morris added.
“I’m confident as the word gets out about the effectiveness [of meeting with EPA], we’ll have a smoother process,” he said.
Pesticide Fee ProgramThe EPA also supports reauthorization of the Pesticide Registration Improvement Renewal Act, or PRIA, Dunn said.
The act allows industry to contribute funding to support EPA pesticide registrations of new products. The most recent funding program, PRIA 3, expired on Feb. 15.
The expiration means that pesticide registration service fees for new applications received after Feb. 15 will be down by 70 percent from the fiscal year 2017 levels, constraining the ability of companies to get crop protection tools to farmers for the upcoming growing season.
In the past, those fees ranged from $277 to $627,568, according to the EPA.
EPA decisions will no longer be subject to PRIA 3’s deadlines, which ranged from 1 month to 2 years depending on the active ingredient in new products.
On Feb. 14, the Senate passed a measure which would reauthorize PRIA through fiscal year 2023, and House Agriculture Committee leaders have expressed optimism about passing similar legislation.
“Our first order of business is getting PRIA passed to make sure EPA has sufficient funding,” said Beau Greenwood, a vice president with the pesticide trade group CropLife America, during the webinar.
Until PRIA gets reauthorized, the EPA is contacting manufacturers and asking them to update their priorities for any new pesticide product they submitted prior to PRIA expiring, said Rick P. Keigwin, director of the agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-pledges-release-of-more-chemical-health-safety-data
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North Carolina Tightens Chemours Chemical Cleanup Order
Feb 20, 2019 | Andrew M. Ballard
By Andrew M. Ballard
North Carolina has further tightened its toxic pollution control requirements for Chemours’ facility in Fayetteville.
Additional pollution control and reporting requirements are being imposed on the company in a deal reached with regulators and environmental groups, following a review of public comments.
The agreement, filed Feb. 20 in North Carolina’s Bladen County Superior Court, would settle a lawsuit against the company filed by the state and Cape Fear River Watch over water quality violations.
Discharges of GenX and other chemicals of concern into the Cape Fear River have led to a state and federal investigation and several lawsuits against Chemours and its parent company DuPont.
GenX is part of a family of toxic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that are used in manufacturing stain-resistant coatings for carpets, rain gear, fast food wrappers, and frying pans.
Record $12M FineIn November 2018, a draft agreement was released for public comment that would have required the company to nearly eliminate its air releases of GenX because the pollutant has been found to drift down and contaminate water.
A record $12-million-dollar fine was issued, along with a number of other control and reporting requirements.
Chemours previously had stopped water discharges of GenX and other compounds into the Cape Fear River.
The final deal, which still requires court approval, adds requirements that the company study downstream pollution and provide water treatment utilities with an accelerated plan to address PFAS contamination.
Requirements to study sediment pollution and boost alternative drinking water supplies also were included.
Improvements Seen“People affected by GenX and PFAS pollution in the Cape Fear River basin deserve real relief, and this order provides that relief,” Michael S. Regan, head of the state Department of Environmental Quality, said in a statement announcing the final order.
Environmental groups involved in the agreement voiced their support for the plan. “This order will result in clear air, a cleaner Cape Fear, and cleaner drinking water for families nearby and downstream,” Geoff Gisler, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said.
Chemours said in a statement provided to Bloomberg Environment that the order fits with its commitment to slash emissions at its Fayetteville facility and that the company has already taken significant steps to control releases.
The plan will make the Fayetteville facility “a best-in-class chemical manufacturing facility for air and wastewater emission control” and provide for “robust” cleanup efforts, according to the company. “We will continue to demonstrate our progress in a transparent way as we move forward,” Chemours said.
North Carolina’s new requirements for Chemours comes on the heels of a recently announced Environmental Protection Agency Plan to address PFAS contamination that state officials and environmental groups have criticized as insufficient.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/north-carolina-tightens-chemours-chemical-cleanup-order
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NGOs Question Industry Petition to Amend FDA Ortho-Phthalates Regulations
Feb 21, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins
A group of NGOs has questioned an industry request for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to revoke its authorisation of 26 ortho-phthalates for use in food contact applications.
Last July, industry group the Flexible Vinyl Alliance petitioned the FDA to pull its approval for the substances because "their use has been permanently abandoned". Ortho-phthalates are a class of food additives used in food contact materials as plasticisers, binders, coating agents, defoamers, gasket closures and slimicide agents.
The industry petition effectively countered a different ortho-phthalates petition, brought by a group of NGOs in 2016. It requested that the FDA revoke authorisation for a group of 30 chemicals – which include the 26 that industry has now flagged as abandoned – citing evidence that the substances disrupt the endocrine system, and can have reproductive, developmental and neurological health effects.
Now, Earthjustice has submitted comments on behalf of ten NGOs – including Breast Cancer Prevention Partners (BCPP), the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) – agreeing that the 26 substances in question should have their authorisations revoked.
But they want full assurance that industry has truly abandoned the substances and that the FDA will leave no loopholes – even while a showdown brews over the four ortho-phthalates that remain in use.NGO concerns
In recent comments submitted to the public docket, the NGOs have asked the FDA to "clarify that for any abandoned ortho-phthalates, all prior and future uses that have been deemed ‘generally recognised as safe’ (Gras) are invalid." In so doing, the agency could explicitly close the Gras process as a potential work-around for resuming the use of the 'abandoned' substances, they said.
And they questioned how the industry determined that these uses have been truly abandoned, citing concerns about the potential continued use of ortho-phthalates in manufacturing. They ask that the final rule explicitly prevents the use of equipment containing the abandoned substances.
The NGOs also raised concerns that the industry petition does not appear to comprehensively name all approved uses of each abandoned substance. They are therefore hoping that the FDA can clarify the status of five chemicals to ensure that all of their approved uses have, in fact, been abandoned.Disagreement remains
Even while the industry and the NGOs have broadly reached consensus on the fate of these 26 substances, they remain opposed in whether the remaining four ortho-phthalates used in food contact applications are safe. They are:dicyclohexyl phthalate (DCHP);di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP);diisononyl phthalate (DINP); anddiisodecyl phthalate (DIDP).
In the 2016 NGO petition, the groups said there was no longer a reasonable certainty of no harm for the use of the ortho-phthalates in food contact applications.
But an industry coalition disagreed, arguing that the NGOs incorrectly grouped the ortho-phthalates into a class, leading to an overestimation of cumulative dietary exposure.FDA decision-making process
Tom Neltner, chemicals policy director at the EDF, told Chemical Watch it is likely the FDA will reach a determination on the duelling petitions at once: "I could not imagine how they could make a decision on one and not the other," he said.
However, whether the FDA grants the NGO safety petition or the industry abandonment petition will have implications for the path ahead.
Granting the NGO petition would mean that the agency has completed a review on the health effects of the substances, which could go beyond their use in food contact materials. However, should the FDA grant the industry’s abandonment petition instead, the question of the safety of the 26 would be moot, while the four disputed substances could remain in use.
The deadlines for the FDA to respond to both the NGO and industry petitions passed late last year, even though the industry petition was only publicly announced four months after its receipt.
Earthjustice raised concern in its comments that the delay in publishing "raises questions about the seriousness with which the [FDA] takes these statutory deadlines."
https://chemicalwatch.com/74313/ngos-question-industry-petition-to-amend-fda-ortho-phthalates-regulations
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EU Proposes Ban on 12 Chemicals for WTO Review
Feb 20, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
World Trade Organization members have until April 16 to comment on a draft European Union law that would ban 12 hazardous chemicals under the bloc’s REACH law.
The draft law, if adopted, would include the substances in Annex XIV of REACH, meaning they must be phased out from use in the EU unless companies are granted continued-use authorizations for specific applications that can’t be replaced.
So far, 43 chemicals have been listed in Annex XIV, and companies have applied to continue to use otherwise banned substances in about 220 cases, according to data from the Helsinki-based European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), which administers REACH.
The impact of listing the 12 additional chemicals would likely be minimal for most of the substances, because they are little used in the EU. But the 12 substances will be phased out in the EU because they are toxic to reproduction and can build up in the environment.
Six of 12 RegisteredOf the 12 substances, six have never been registered under REACH (EU 1907/2006 on the registration, evaluation, authorization and restriction of chemicals). Registration is an obligation for chemicals traded in the EU.
Of the other substances, those with the most registrations are c,c’-azodi(formamide), which is used in the manufacture of foam-like plastics, and 2-(2H-benzotriazol-2-yl)-4,6-ditertpentylphenol (UV-328), which is an ultraviolet light absorber used to prevent the discoloration of plastics.
“It is not a big issue for us if this substance is banned. There are alternatives available in the market,” said Bettina Plaumann, spokeswoman for Kuraray Europe, which registered UV-328.
Armacell GmbH, which has registered c,c’-azodi(formamide), and Everlight Europe BV which has registered UV-328, didn’t respond to requests for comment Feb. 20.
Little-Used SubstancesThe remaining four substances listed by the draft law are registered by a small number of companies and used in the EU in low volumes, according to ECHA data.
Those four substances are sodium perborate, perboric acid, sodium salt; trixylyl phosphate; the karanal group of fragrances; and 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid, di-C6-10-alkyl esters; 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid, mixed decyl and hexyl and octyl diesters with 0.3 percent of dihexyl phthalate.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, submitted the draft law on the 12 substances to the World Trade Organization’s Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade Feb. 15 and said it expected to finalize the law in October 2019.
The six substances listed in the draft law that have never been registered under REACH are 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid, dihexyl ester, branched and linear; dihexyl phthalate; sodium peroxometaborate; and three other UV filters: UV-320, UV-327 and UV-350.
C,c’-azodi(formamide) is listed for phaseout because it is a respiratory sensitizer that causes breathing difficulties to workers that handle it.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/eu-proposes-ban-on-12-chemicals-for-wto-review
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EU to Add 12 Substances to REACH Authorisation List
Feb 21, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Oziel
The European Commission has published a draft regulation to add 12 substances of very high concern (SVHC) to Annex XIV – the REACH authorisation list.
Their inclusion, which the Commission has proposed for October 2019, would increase the number of substances in the Annex from 43 to 55. The draft regulation was discussed at the REACH Committee meeting in December, a Commission official said.
Of the 12, six substances or substance groups are toxic for reproduction category 1B:1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid, dihexyl ester, branched and linear;dihexyl phthalate;1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid, di-C6-10-alkyl esters; 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid, mixed decyl, hexyl and octyl diesters with ≥ 0.3% of dihexyl phthalate;trixylyl phosphate;sodium perborate, perboric acid, sodium salt; andsodium peroxometaborate.
Four others are persistent, bioaccumative and toxic (PBT), and/or very persistent and very bioaccumulative (vPvB), and one is vPVB only:5-sec-butyl-2-(2,4-dimethylcyclohex-3-en-1-yl)-5-methyl-1,3-dioxane [1], 5-sec-butyl-2-(4,6-dimethylcyclohex-3-en-1-yl)-5-methyl-1,3-dioxane [2] (covering any of the individual stereoisomers of [1] and [2] or any combination thereof) ('karanal group') – vPvB only;2-(2H-benzotriazol-2-yl)-4,6-ditertpentylphenol (UV-328);2,4-di-tert-butyl-6-(5-chlorobenzotriazol-2-yl)phenol (UV-327);2-(2H-benzotriazol-2-yl)-4-(tert-butyl)-6-(sec-butyl)phenol (UV-350); and2-benzotriazol-2-yl-4,6-di-tert-butylphenol (UV-320).
And one substance – diazene-1,2-dicarboxamide (C,C'-azodi(formamide)) (ADCA) – is a respiratory sensitiser category 1.
The draft regulation, published on 15 February on the Commission's Comitology register, proposes to extend the transitional arrangements for a number of substances for uses in spare parts and repair of articles and complex products produced before the ban comes into place.
This should allow "the adoption of implementing measures for simplified application" for authorisations in such cases, it says.
There are "no reasons" to set the sunset date – the date from which the substance is banned unless an authorisation is granted – earlier than 18 months for any of the substances, the draft regulation adds.Two postponed
The inclusion of further substances in Annex XIV was postponed. They are:tetralead trioxide sulphate; pentalead tetraoxide sulphate; orange lead (lead tetroxide) and lead monoxide (lead oxide); and1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP).
In the first case, the postponement is because the use of lead is covered by other European legislation and in view of the possible adoption of more stringent measures at the workplace, the draft regulation says. For NMP, the decision is for consistency with two similar substances, the inclusion of which was previously postponed.
The Commission has proposed to adopt the draft regulation in October 2019, according to a WTO notification filed on 15 February.
The EU executive last amended Annex XIV in June 2017 when it added 12 substances to the authorisation list. Before that, it had a three-year moratorium on such additions.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74515/eu-to-add-12-substances-to-reach-authorisation-list
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EDC Project Will Develop Methods for Female Reprotox Effects
Feb 21, 2019 | Chemical Watch
The EU has launched a five-year, €6 million research project to develop test methods for identifying endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that cause adverse effects on female reproduction. The Freia – "female reproductive toxicity of endocrine disrupting chemicals" – project will run until 2023 with the aim of improving OECD test guidelines (TGs).
It will aim to identify the mechanisms by which EDCs can affect female reproduction during specific life stages using human tissue models that span the entire life cycle. The tissue models will be used to identify human relevant biomarkers of EDC exposure. Additionally, the project will measure chemical exposures in two groups of women undergoing IVF treatment and link these to fertility outcomes. It will also conduct rodent studies to identify susceptible windows of exposure and novel endpoints for female reproductive toxicity that may be incorporated into OECD TGs.
By using primary human tissues, as well as exposure data from fetal and follicular fluid, the outcomes of Freia will be "directly applicable to the human situation", the project organisers say on the European Commission’s Cordis website.
Majorie van Duursen, professor of environmental health and toxicology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, is the project coordinator.
The project involves 10 institutions in seven EU members states, plus Tufts University in the US.
NGO the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL), which is working with the project, said the focus on TGs made the project "particularly unique".
https://chemicalwatch.com/74521/edc-project-will-develop-methods-for-female-reprotox-effects
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Council of Ministers and Parliament Agree on EU POPs Update
Feb 21, 2019 | Chemical Watch
The EU Council of Ministers has reached a provisional agreement with the European Parliament on updating the regulation on persistent organic pollutants (POPs).
In March last year the European Commission adopted a proposal to recast the regulation. The Council adopted its position in November and negotiations with Parliament started the following month.
The agreement is an "important milestone" that will limit "the damage from the world's most dangerous hazardous chemicals", Graţiela-Leocadia Gavrilescu, Romanian deputy prime minister and environment minister said.
Following technical finalisation of the text, the agreement will be submitted to EU ambassadors in the Council's Permanent Representatives Committee for endorsement. Parliament and Council will then be called on to adopt the proposed regulation at the first reading.
The Commission's proposed changes would align regulatory procedures of the Regulation with requirements of the Lisbon Treaty and give Echa new tasks. They would also introduce recent decisions taken within the framework of the Stockholm Convention and the POPs Protocol.
As a result of these changes, there will be "more clarity, transparency and increased legal certainty for all parties" involved in the implementation of the regulation, a Council press release said.DecaBDE review
Under the agreement, the flame retardant decaBDE is added to the list of substances and the unintentional trace contaminant value is set at 10mg/kg for cases where decaBDE is present in substances.
The unintentional trace contaminant value is set at 500 mg/kg for the sum of all BDEs, including decaBDE, where they are present in mixtures and articles. A review clause has been inserted to assess the impacts on health and the environment of this limit value.
Specific exemptions concerning the use of decaBDE have been made introduced for aircraft, motor vehicles and electronic equipment including imports. NGOs had recently applied pressure to lawmakers to end the exemptions.
Last month the Commission published its third implementation plan to address new POPs added to the Stockholm Convention since 2014 and the technical and legislative progress made in the area.
The 30-point action plan, includes proposals for greater dissemination of information and more coordination between authorities.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74518/council-of-ministers-and-parliament-agree-on-eu-pops-update
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UK Companies Consider REACH Authorisation Transfer Ahead of Brexit
Feb 21, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Oziel
Six UK-based companies that have applied for a REACH authorisation for a specific use of an SVHC are contemplating transferring their applications to EU entities ahead of Brexit, Echa said.
All REACH authorisations or registrations filed by manufacturers, importers or only representatives (OR) based in the UK will no longer be valid in the EU or European Economic Area if Britain leaves the single market on 29 March.
The six have informed Echa that they have "clear plans" for Britain’s departure and will decide "in the weeks to come" whether to move applications to a company operating in the EU27 so as to continue supplying the respective substances, the agency told Chemical Watch.
They are the only upstream companies that have applied for, or have been granted, an authorisation. Echa identified them following a request from the European Commission, and in January asked about their plans. The EU executive wants to ensure that there would be no market disruption if Brexit goes ahead, Echa said.
The companies and the substances concerned are:Indestructible Paint – pentazinc chromate octahydroxide;Brenntag UK – potassium dichromate and sodium dichromate;Wesco Aircraft EMEA – sodium chromate and strontium chromate;PPG Central Industries UK – strontium chromate and potassium hydroxyoctaoxodizincatedichromate;Cytec Engineered Materials – strontium chromate; andElementis Chromium – chromium trioxide.
In addition, Echa said, there are some UK-based downstream companies with authorisation applications. However these applications or authorisation decisions will not have an impact in the EU27 "as the authorisation concerns the use of the substance only" and not the articles the companies produce.
A case in point is aircraft engine manufacturer Rolls Royce. The company has an authorisation in the UK, Echa said, but the engines it sells in Europe are not affected.Registration exodus?
A growing number of UK companies are also looking to move REACH registrations to the EU27, according to trade associations and Echa.
The agency's helpdesk is receiving "an increasing number" of enquiries by companies seeking advice on undertaking such transfers.
So far it has not yet detected "any substantial increases" in the number of registrations transferred. It added that it will know more when it opens its 'Brexit window' in the REACH-IT system from 12 to 29 March. This will enable companies to make changes and transfer their REACH registrations. The window was announced as part of comprehensive instructions on Brexit issued to companies earlier this month.
Under REACH, the mechanism for companies in the UK to transfer manufacture or import and the resulting registrations is through a ‘legal entity change’.
With the clock ticking down to Brexit and no agreement yet on the withdrawal terms, contingency planning by companies "has very firmly moved to contingency action", the Chemical Industries Association (CIA) said. "The longer we wait for any deal, the more this will happen."
And the Chemical Business Association (CBA) said companies were already moving their registrations. It named Zanos – supplier of essential oils and aroma chemicals – among those that have done so.
Some SMEs are setting up new EU subsidiaries or disposing of their businesses to EU27 ownership, the CBA added.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74501/uk-companies-consider-reach-authorisation-transfer-ahead-of-brexit
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Why the Future of Oil Is in Chemicals, Not Fuels
Feb 20, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Alexander H. Tullo
In Yanbu, a massive industrial town on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, two Saudi state-owned firms—the oil company Saudi Aramco and the petrochemical maker Sabic—are planning a new complex that could prove to be a bellwether for the next decade in petrochemicals.
By 2025, the partners expect to have a facility that will make petrochemicals—9 million metric tons (t) of them—directly from 400,000 barrels (bbl) per day of Arabian light crude oil. Whereas most refineries convert just 5–20% of incoming oil into petrochemicals, some 45% of the output of the Yanbu facility will be chemicals, including olefins, aromatics, glycols, and polymers.
The partners are hardly alone in diverting their refinery product slates away from gasoline, diesel, and other fuels and toward petrochemicals. ExxonMobil has practiced direct crude crackingtechnology in Singapore since 2014 and may build another such unit in China. Several facilities under construction in China will transform 40% of their oil into p-xylene and other petrochemicals. Aramco itself is considering another chemical-laden refining project in India.
Over the next decade, oil may be the next big thing in petrochemicals. This is a change from the 2010s, when billions of dollars flowed into the US to build crackers and downstream petrochemical plants to process low-cost ethane from shale gas into ethylene and its derivatives.
The driver this time is the market more than it is cheap raw material supply. By 2030, demand for gasoline and other fuels will be on the decline. The petrochemical sector, in contrast, still has room to grow. Oil companies and engineering firms have noticed. They are installing new equipment and even designing new processes to seize on the trend.
The trend is so strong, says Bryan Glover, general manager of Honeywell UOP’s process technology and equipment business, that internally, UOP uses the term “refinery of the future” to refer to flexible technologies that enable refining complexes to make a wide variety chemicals. “The best outcomes result when you can match the molecules to the best market opportunities,” he says.
But the shift will have consequences. The larger scale of a refinery compared with a chemical plant means existing petrochemical markets could be swamped with outsize amounts of product.
Oil companies seem willing to take that risk. They are looking into their crystal balls and seeing a future in which the world’s appetite for fossil fuels isn’t insatiable. Auto sales will taper off in the developing world. Cars everywhere are becoming more fuel efficient. And increasingly popular electric vehicles consume no gasoline or diesel at all. The US Energy Information Administration predicts that US fuel consumption for light-duty vehicles will decline by 1% annually through 2050.
According to BP’s 2018 Energy Outlook, the share of the average oil barrel dedicated to transportation fuel will peak at 58% in 2025 and begin to decline. Oil consumed by industry, buildings, and power will also slump. Chemicals, however, will continue to grow, from 16% of oil demand in 2020 to 20% by 2040.
The Yanbu project is significant because it’s an acknowledgment by Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, that the future of oil is chemicals. In a recent speech to the Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association, Aramco CEO Amin H. Nasser pledged $100 billion in petrochemical investment over the next decade.
“The tremendous growth in chemicals demand provides us with a fantastic window of opportunity—but such windows by their very nature offer maximum benefit only to those who act quickly,” Nasser said.
The relationship between refining and petrochemicals was once largely an arm’s-length one. Refineries focused on fuels, and those that made the refining cut called naphtha would sell it to operators of ethylene steam crackers. These plants crack naphtha at high temperatures into ethylene, propylene, and other basic chemical building blocks.
With the new focus on chemicals, refineries are being reconfigured. The typical refinery begins with fractional distillation, which breaks crude oil into its constituent parts. These products range from light, short-carbon-chain molecules—such as gasoline, naphtha, and propane—to heavy diesel and vacuum gas oil. Refiners further process vacuum gas oil in either a hydrocracker or a fluid catalytic cracker (FCC), both of which break long molecules into shorter ones.
According to Avelino Corma, a professor at the Universitat Politècnica de València-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, hydrocracking excels at making diesel. The process produces no olefins because all double bonds are quickly hydrogenated. The naphtha from the hydrocracker is sent either to an ethylene steam cracker to produce olefins or to a reformer to be refashioned into aromatics. To up chemical output, more and more hydrocrackers are targeting naphtha rather than diesel production.
Alternatively, FCC units break down vacuum gas oil into gasoline. The process also cranks out olefins, namely, propylene, which is 5–20% of the output of most such units. Because of the strong incentives to make chemicals, refiners are running their FCCs at high severity—at high temperatures and long residence times—to increase propylene yield to well above 20%.
The linkage between oil refining and petrochemicals is as old as these industries themselves. And certainly, examples abound of companies—such as ExxonMobil, Reliance Industries, and Sinopec—with a reputation for integration between refining and petrochemicals.
“Historically, there have been players that integrated refineries with petrochemicals, not mainly to target maximum chemicals production but more to reap the synergies between the refinery and the petrochemical site,” says Leon de Bruyn, managing director at Chevron Lummus Global (CLG), a technology joint venture between McDermott and Chevron. These synergies include shared utilities and the ability to feed naphtha directly into an adjacent steam cracker.
The evolution of refiners into on-purpose chemical makers has occurred in small increments. “In the past, the basic configuration would not have produced chemicals. It would have produced gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and some heavy oil for maritime fuel,” UOP’s Glover says.
The gateway chemical was typically propylene from the FCC unit. “That would be a first step if someone was interested in a petrochemicals play,” he says. After that, refineries either sold naphtha on the merchant market or constructed their own naphtha-based ethylene crackers or aromatics-extraction units.
Now, Glover says, chemicals aren’t an afterthought. “Anytime we look at new refineries today or any significant refinery upgrades, we almost always find that a major goal is petrochemical production,” he says. “New-build refineries are integrating petrochemical production at a scale that we really haven’t seen before.”
A prominent example of this trend is Zhejiang Petrochemical, which is building a crude-to-chemicals complex in two phases in China’s Zhejiang Province. The scale of the project is staggering. The company is building two refineries, each capable of processing 400,000 bbl of oil per day. Overall, nearly 50% of the output—some 20 million t—will be petrochemical, twice as much as the complex planned for Yanbu, Saudi Arabia.
UOP is providing a host of technologies for both phases of the Chinese complex, including hydrocracking to break down vacuum gas oil into naphtha and reforming and extraction to make aromatics from the naphtha. All told, the complex will produce 8.8 million t of p-xylene, the main precursor for polyester fiber and polyethylene terephthalate, a polymer commonly used in bottles. Propane dehydrogenation units licensed from UOP will produce more than 500,000 t of propylene.
The massive Zhejiang Petrochemical project is not the only one in China. According to the consulting firm IHS Markit, Hengli Petrochemical is building a 400,000 bbl per day refinery that will yield 40% chemicals, largely p-xylene. Another project with a hefty output of p-xylene is Shenghong Petrochemical, which will process 300,000 bbl per day.
In China, Glover says, such privately owned refineries are driven by incentives beyond the attractive growth outlook for petrochemicals. Taxes on chemicals are lower than on fuels. Large, state-owned firms are hard to compete with in the domestic fuel market, yet Chinese refiners are prohibited from exporting fuels.
Refinery scale brought to bear on petrochemical production could forever change petrochemical markets, cautions R. J. Chang, vice president of the Process Economics Program at IHS Markit. Refineries, he points out, are a lot bigger than chemical plants. A 400,000 bbl per day refinery cranking out 50% chemicals will make about 10 million t of chemicals per year. The largest naphtha-based ethylene crackers make only 2 million t of products per year, he says.
“When these companies start to reconfigure the whole refinery with the target of producing chemicals, that effectively elevates the petrochemical production to a refinery scale, which could easily mean 5–10 times higher,” Chang says.
The scale is already proving to be large compared with the markets themselves. For example, Chang says the Chinese p-xylene projects will put out a combined 11.8 million t annually. China imports 11 million t of p-xylene per year, meaning today’s South Korean, Taiwanese, and Japanese suppliers will need to find new markets.
Aramco’s Yanbu project will make about 3.0 million t of ethylene per year, Chang estimates. That alone is a quarter of the 12 million t of capacity that chemical companies have been building on the US Gulf Coast. “It will only take a few of these projects to significantly affect global supply and demand,” he says.
However, as the crude-to-chemicals trend continues, refineries might shrink in size. Because the profits for fuels are slim, refineries have to be big to justify the expense, explains John Murphy, president of the chemical process consulting firm the Catalyst Group Resources. A crude-to-chemicals facility can be smaller in scale. “That’s among the numerous benefits,” he says.
Many of the plants under construction today are using off-the-shelf refining and petrochemical processes to make chemicals. Increasingly, engineering and chemical firms are tailoring processes for turning crude into chemicals.
“There is now a pipeline of technologies with different catalysts or variations of existing processes that can improve this conversion of oil to chemicals,” says Clyde Payn, CEO of the Catalyst Group. Examples include petrochemical FCC units and slurry hydrocracking.
At its Singapore complex, ExxonMobil developed a system to process crude oil, rather than naphtha, directly in a steam cracker. “The main challenge if you want to do the steam cracking of crude oil is the heavy part of the crude,” Universitat Politècnica de València’s Corma says. Heavy crude can coke the cracker, leading to expensive maintenance downtime.
ExxonMobil patents describe a system for evaporating crude in a “flash pot.” The setup, which it likely uses in Singapore and might use in China, feeds the vapors into the steam cracker, leaving behind the fouling residues.
At CLG, R&D is focused on turning refinery equipment into chemical manufacturing machinery. “There is a lot of research that we put into understanding which molecules are beneficial to produce—and maximize the production of those molecules—and which molecules we try to avoid,” CLG’s de Bruyn says.
Last year, Saudi Aramco signed a joint development agreement with McDermott and CLG to further develop a thermal crude-to-chemicals process. McDermott is lending its expertise in steam cracking and other technologies, and CLG, its hydrocracking and heavy oil conversion know-how. The Saudi firm also signed an agreement last month with Axens and TechnipFMC to work on a high-severity FCC process for chemicals.
De Bruyn says his firm’s Saudi Aramco partnership has been making progress. “All three companies have significant intellectual property contributions, and all three work together to develop a scheme to capture all contributions in an integrated way,” he says.
To de Bruyn, the future will largely be about tearing down the old walls between refining and chemicals. “We are going into the next wave of more intimately integrated sites,” he says, “where there is not necessarily a clear demarcation of what is the refinery and what is the petrochemical site.”
https://cen.acs.org/business/petrochemicals/future-oil-chemicals-fuels/97/i8
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The Hidden Risk in the Fracking Boom
Feb 20, 2019 | Rolling Stone
By Justin Nobel
At 10:40 a.m. on Monday, January 21st, a pipeline carrying natural gas ruptured in rural Noble County, in southeastern Ohio, producing a fireball that surged 120 feet into the air and engulfed the Noll family home, with 12-year-old son Nash inside. The boy’s grandfather rushed into the inferno and rescued him, says Noble County Emergency Management Agency Director Chasity Schmelzenbach, and together the two ran for their lives. Nash ended up with burns on the back of his legs and neck and on top of his head. “We are just happy our son is alive, honestly,” said mother Brittany Noll when reached by phone at a Comfort Inn, where the family was staying after the explosion. Their home had been largely destroyed.
It was the second time in three years that an explosion carrying a furious wave of burning methane gas had erupted into the lives — and bedrooms and living rooms — of residents living along this 76-year-old pipeline system. The 9,029-mile Texas Eastern Transmission Pipeline, which runs from the Gulf Coast to the Philadelphia and New York City metro areas and is operated by Canadian energy giant Enbridge, also exploded in April 2016 in Salem Township, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh. That incident produced a crater 50 feet long by 12 feet deep and generated a fireball — videotaped by morning commuters — that obliterated a home, melted a road and sent a 26-year-old man to the hospital with third-degree burns over 75 percent of his body.
And in Noble County, last month’s blast was the second major pipeline explosion in the space of a single year. “That is scary,” said resident Cheryl Rubel, as she recorded a video of a January 31st, 2018, explosion on a pipeline operated by the Kansas-based firm Tallgrass Energy. Her camera zoomed over a dark yard to reveal flames shooting above the nearest hilltop and noise like a roaring freight train.
In September 2018, a natural-gas pipeline exploded in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, on the Ohio border. Three months prior, in June, a pipeline had exploded in nearby Marshall County, West Virginia. “There goes another one,” a resident told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“I don’t want to point fingers here but a lot of this has to do with lobbying efforts to reduce the power of PHMSA,” says pipeline safety expert Richard Kuprewicz, speaking of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Kuprewicz, who runs a pipeline-safety consulting firm called Accufacts, has been a fixture for years at pipeline-safety conferences and regularly testifies before Congress on pipeline matters. In the wake of the Noble County blast, Kuprewicz, in a series of interviews with Rolling Stone, laid out startling safety concerns with ramifications for pipelines across the nation, and amplified his criticism of the country’s pipeline regulatory agency.
“Every time the agency trains someone, the industry pays them more money and they leave,” says Kuprewicz. “In this 35 or 36-day [government] shutdown, you can bet you see some PHMSA people saying, ‘Why do I want to put up with this crap?’ [The shutdown] was a really big hit, and people aren’t thinking about this stuff when they put up these battles. The shutdown just adds another pressure point.”
PHMSA has been hamstrung by industry lobbyists and industry-friendly legislators for decades, says Kuprewicz. But fracking, which has given drillers access to extraordinarily fuel-rich and previously inaccessible shale layers stacked beneath the farms, forests and towns of America, may have pushed the agency toward a breaking point. In 2012, the Government Accountability Office expressed concern over PHMSA’s ability to keep up with the proliferation of new pipelines connected to “the increased extraction of oil and natural gas from shale deposits.” In 2015, the GAO again raised concerns, and then again in 2018.
PHMSA numbers indicate that “significant incidents” — including explosions, volatile liquid releases and fatal pipeline accidents — have inched up in the past two decades, from a total of 275 in 1999 to 329 in 2015, and 285 last year. In the wake of recent natural-gas pipeline explosions across Appalachia and the Northeast, and growing unease by a public increasingly dubious of the legitimacy of government regulators, the critique of PHMSA has gone beyond government auditors, watchdog groups and industry experts and has entered the main stage of politics. “Unfortunately, federal safety regulators fail to do their jobs when it comes to pipeline safety,” Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey said at a Senate hearing held last November in the wake of the 2018 Merrimack Valley pipeline explosions, which damaged 131 structures and killed a young man in a suburb north of Boston. “The agency is the posterchild for an agency that has been captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate,” continued Markey. “Rather than being a watchdog it has become a lapdog.”
Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton was also highly critical of the agency during the hearing, as was New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan. “There has been safety incident after safety incident after safety incident,” said Hassan. “It is 2018 in the United States of America and nobody should be worried when they come home at night that their house is going to explode, nobody.”
THE SCENIC belt of farms and snaking rivers in the area where Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania meet is the epicenter for an incredible energy rush that some industry insiders have termed the “Appalachian Miracle.” Two gas-rich shale layers — the Marcellus and the Utica —are being harvested via the thunderous techniques of fracking. Together they are generating nearly one-third of America’s natural gas production. Each day, according to the Energy Information Administration, the Marcellus and Utica produce an astonishing 31.5 billion cubic feet of gas. A 2017 American Petroleum Institute study says the boom has created 656,300 jobs across the three states, a region that had been experiencing a notable economic slump.
Residents of this gas-rich tri-state area are regularly astonished by the pure hustle of the boom — the trucks, the drilling rigs, the busy installation of new pipelines. Yet along with all of that has come a barrage of carcinogenic emissions, toxic waste and explosions of fracking well pads and pipelines, leaving many residents scared, outraged and with the nagging feeling that regulators cannot keep pace with industry. Indeed, in late January the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported the front-page news that Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is pursuing criminal investigations of “environmental crimes” by frackers in the southwestern part of the state. People across this region are living, says Leatra Harper, founder of the Ohio-based watchdog group FreshWater Accountability Project, “in a fracking sacrifice zone.”
“For my own sanity I have to compartmentalize it, and put it on the backburner of my mind, because this whole year has been so incredibly stressful,” says Micki Rockenhauser. The 120-acre eastern Ohio farm she operates with her husband, Pete, was sullied last year when Williams, an Oklahoma-based energy company, began construction on a natural-gas processing plant on neighboring property — without first obtaining a proper air permit, which is “common practice,” according to Ohio EPA spokesperson James Lee.
These types of gas plants remove water and other impurities from “gathering pipelines,” which loop in natural gas from frack pads scattered about the surrounding countryside. The plants also emit an array of toxic chemicals, including known human carcinogens. The processing plant installed a pipe that drains directly onto the Rockenhausers’ farmland and regularly spews strange gray water into their cow pond. But the fear of pipelines exploding when, for example, her five-year-old son is out in the garden gathering herbs, is what worries Micki most. “They put the pipelines in so quick and dirty,” she says. “Who am I to know how these things are engineered? I saw the one that exploded in Beaver, it just seems like with all these regulation cuts, it is great for the companies.”
“Oversight is above and beyond what is called for by federal natural gas pipeline safety standards,” Matt Schilling, spokesperson with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, tells Rolling Stone. When asked if he is concerned about the pace of Ohio’s pipeline build-out, Schilling replies, “No. The PUCO has adequate staffing to keep up with the pace of pipeline construction and operations in Ohio.”
But the Rockenhausers remain very concerned. “From the distance that we’re at, if one of the pipelines over there was to explode, there would be blood vessels blown in our eyes and soft tissue damage, because we are still in the blast zone,” says Pete. Last summer, he says, he saw workers dig a massive pit near the entrance to the gas plant. A truck with a big tank attached returned throughout the day and dumped a sludgy, lumpy waste product into the newly dug hole. “Then they put seed over it,” says Pete. “They did it all so quick, it had to be something shady.” (Williams did not respond to Rolling Stone’s questions regarding this incident).
Harper, with the FreshWater Accountability Project, says stories like this are all too common across the Ohio-Pennsylvania-West Virginia border region. “People in the area are acclimated to being taken advantage of by the fossil-fuel industry and their operatives,” she says.
“At the end of the day no child should be subject to unnecessary risk or trauma,” says Rebecca Britton, who lives in suburban Philadelphia less than 500 feet from the Mariner East pipelines. “I am sending my children out into the world knowing that if they simply run the wrong way, if they run to the left or to the right, if they run downhill or uphill, they can be ending their life,” says Britton, who founded a group called the Uwchlan Safety Coalition, aimed at keeping her community safe from pipeline hazards. “Those are really heavy loads for us parents to carry on our backs.”
THE EXPLOSION on the Texas Eastern line in Noble County, Ohio, has exposed a new concern that up until now has received little media attention but has quietly gained notice among regulators and pipeline experts: “flow reversal.”
“Reversals used to be very, very rare,” says Kuprewicz. “Now they are showing up in a lot of places, so it’s valid to question whether our safety regulations have kept up with the changes in these pipeline systems.”
Flow reversals — when an operator switches the direction fuels are flowing in a pipeline — are a product of America’s fracking boom. “The sudden abundance of oil and natural gas is putting pressure on North America’s existing pipeline infrastructure, which simply cannot cope with this additional demand,” reads a September 2015 article in Pipeline & Gas Journal by Oklahoma-based energy expert Mike Kirkwood. Building new pipeline networks can be extraordinarily expensive, thanks in part to the U.S.’s cherished institution of private property, and a growing network of pipeline protesters. Flow reversals can be a way around all that.
By retrofitting an existing pipeline to carry product in a different direction, operators can relieve supply surpluses in new areas of heavy production, such as the Marcellus-Utica region, or get gas or other fuels to new markets or port regions. Kirkwood, writing in Pipeline & Gas Journal, had concerns. “Many of the pipelines undergoing reversals are older,” he wrote, “and were manufactured using outdated processes, materials or design elements that aren’t acceptable by today’s standards.”
PHMSA has been concerned about flow reversals too. In September 2014, the agency issued an advisory bulletin that warned operators of “the potential significant impact” of reversals. “Failures on natural gas transmission and hazardous liquid pipelines have occurred after these operational changes,” states the bulletin, which lists two notable examples.
In September 2013, the Tesoro High Plains Pipeline ruptured in North Dakota, leaking 20,000 barrels of crude oil into Steven Jensen’s wheat field. “The location of pressure and flow monitoring equipment had not been changed to account for the reversed flow,” says the PHMSA bulletin. In March 2013, the Pegasus Pipeline spilled 3,190 barrels of Canadian heavy crude oil into a neighborhood in Mayflower, Arkansas. A local news photo shows dark gunky oil flowing out of the woods, through a yard and into the street. The oil, according to the EPA, then entered “a nearby creek, wetlands and a cove of Lake Conway.”
PHMSA reserves particular concern about reversals in older lines and lines that have exploded before, such as the Texas Eastern. The bulletin warns of performing flow reversals on “pipelines that have had a history of failures and leaks most especially those due to stress corrosion cracking, internal/external corrosion, selective seam corrosion or manufacturing defects.”
“If you are doing flow reversals on a pipeline,” says Kuprewicz, “you want to be damn sure you don’t have bonified crack threats, and there is a whole family of those.”
In its investigation of the 2016 Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, explosion, on the Texas Eastern pipeline, PHMSA determined “the preliminary cause of the rupture was external corrosion” and that a second line in the pipeline system exhibited “a pattern of external corrosion with characteristics similar to the condition that caused the failure.”
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas and oil and has some authority over flow directions on interstate lines. “Only in cases where the flow direction involves the construction of new equipment, like a valve or compressor station, would the company be required to seek FERC approval,” says agency spokesperson Tamara Young-Allen, meaning, once an operator has reversed flow on a line, or if new facilities are not needed, a pipeline operator may reverse flows at their own discretion, without notifying FERC.
Neither PHMSA nor the Texas Eastern line’s operator Enbridge provided specific answers to Rolling Stone’s question of whether or not the line had reversed flow. Built in the early 1950s, the Texas Eastern originally transported gas up from the Gulf region to the cities of the lower Midwest and Northeast. But an article published in late January by Reuters, referencing the January 21st Noble County explosion, revealed that “Before the blast…gas was flowing south through the damaged section of pipe from the Marcellus and Utica shale in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia toward the Gulf Coast.” Thus, at some point, flow in the line had been reversed.
There are other reasons for concern. A 2013 FERC document regarding the Texas Eastern conveys that at least certain sections of the pipeline have been flowing with ethane, a fuel byproduct of the massive natural-gas production in the Marcellus-Utica region that is part of a group of gas byproducts called natural-gas liquids, or NGLs. Many producers, “in trying to get rid of this extra commodity,” explains Kuprewicz, are putting ethane and other NGLs in natural-gas pipelines. “But you have to be careful with how you do it,” he says, because once enriched with NGLs, the burn properties of natural gas are altered. “It burns hotter,” says Kuprewicz.
“Until [a] thorough investigation is complete, it doesn’t serve anyone to speculate on what may have caused the event,” Michael Barnes, an Enbridge media relations and crisis communications expert, tells Rolling Stone, concerning the Noble County explosion. “Since the early 2000s the access to domestic supply of natural gas has grown and allowed for flexibility in the markets. Over the past decade, pipelines have completed work to change the direction of the flow of gas when the market dictates so. Such reversals are subject to various regulations regarding pipeline safety and commercial operations, including those administered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.”
PHMSA supplied Rolling Stone with a general response to the Noble County pipeline explosion, stating, “PHMSA is working closely with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and local authorities to determine the underlying cause.” But more detailed questions went unanswered. When pressed why PHMSA could not reply to specific questions regarding flow reversal, which had potentially grave significance for pipelines across the country, a PHMSA spokesperson eventually explained that, “Pipeline operators are not mandated to seek approval from PHMSA for flow reversals.’”
IN EASTERN Ohio, the building of new well pads and new pipelines continues apace. In Washington D.C., the Trump administration appears poised to weaken pipeline regulations even further. Back in January 2017 Trump issued his famous two-for-one executive order, which said for every new federal regulation implemented, two must be rescinded. But Kuprewicz says this order was done “willy-nilly” and helped kill an important set of new pipeline regulations — an update of the Integrity Management Program — that PHMSA had been working on studiously for many years.
Last October, The Hill reported that Trump was “likely to make a renewed push to permit and build oil and natural gas pipelines” in 2019. In late January, Politico suggested the promised pipeline push may be coming soon, reporting that the White House was considering “possible executive orders that would weaken states’ power to block energy projects and ease the construction of new pipelines.”
According to the Energy Information Administration, there are 305,000 miles of interstate and intrastate natural-gas transmission pipelines in the United States. A publicly available document lists all current natural-gas pipeline expansion projects, as well as those in the works and ones recently completed. Flow reversals are identified too. Since August 31st, 2017, the document indicates that nine flow-reversal pipeline projects have been completed, six have been approved and are in construction, at least one was canceled (in Ohio), and one project, on the Iroquois Pipeline, in New York, is on hold. The reversal projects that have already been completed are on pipelines that pass through Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Texas.
Whether or not residents who live in what PHMSA refers to as the pipeline “blast zone” have been informed about these flow reversals is unclear. The PHMSA advisory bulletin on flow reversals states that, “Public awareness communication should start in the project’s planning stage, continue into the operations phase, provide project specific information and be responsive to the concerns of potentially affected persons.” But a PHMSA report that expands on the advisory explains, essentially, that the document’s warnings are merely recommendations, and do not have the full weight of the law behind them.
It’s this regulatory toothlessness that set the New England senators into fiery tirades last November over the Merrimack Valley pipeline explosions, and has turned mothers like Rebecca Britton in Pennsylvania into activists. “Historically, Americans were prided across the world because we had checks and balances and we did the right thing,” says Kuprewicz. “Now, people think that the same institutions and checks and balances that have been in place that made the country great are still in place. We expanded, we built pipelines and all that, but the truth is these systems have gotten weaker not stronger, and they continue to.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/pipeline-explosions-fracking-796569/
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Power Plant Pollution Drops Despite Uptick in Electricity
Feb 20, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid and Abby Smith
Power plant pollution continued to fall in 2018 despite an increase in electricity generation and a slight uptick in carbon dioxide emissions, the EPA’s latest tally of emissions shows.
Compared with 2017, the EPA said Feb. 20, nitrogen oxide spewed by power plants fell by 4 percent to 1.02 million tons, sulfur dioxide dropped 6 percent to 1.26 million tons, while carbon dioxide increased by 0.6 percent to 1.93 billion tons in 2018.
Combustion of coal and oil to generate electricity results in emissions of nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxides, and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Bill Wehrum, the EPA’s air chief, attributed the continued pollution reductions in this sector to compliance with Clean Air Act regulations and technology advances by the power sector.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s data comes as outside reports find total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions may have increased in 2018. The Rhodium Group, in a January report, estimated U.S. emissions rose by more than 3 percent.
‘Takes a Lot of Nerve’Environmental groups have criticized the EPA’s current leadership for rolling back the Obama administration’s regulations to reduce pollution from this sector, including the first-ever plan to reduce greenhouse gases and its proposal to undermine the basis for power plant limits on mercury and other toxic air pollutants.
“It takes a lot of nerve for the former coal plant attorney heading EPA’s air quality office to tout pollution reductions achieved by safeguards from prior administrations—when the Trump administration is undermining those safeguards, and this attorney & his clients sued to block the responsible protections,” John Walke, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Clean Air, Climate & Clean Energy Program, told Bloomberg Environment via Twitter.
EPA data show that the reductions in nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide have been on a downward trajectory since Congress enacted the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments to reduce these power plant pollutants.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/power-plant-pollution-drops-despite-uptick-in-electricity
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As EPA Preps ACE Rule, Data Shows Slight Power Sector CO2 Rise In 2018
Feb 20, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
After years of declines, new EPA data shows that power plants' carbon dioxide emissions increased in 2018, potentially complicating the agency's message just as it is preparing to finalize its Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, a major rollback to Obama-era greenhouse gas standards for the sector.
The agency's latest power sector emissions data, released Feb. 20, shows that CO2 increased by 0.6 percent last year compared to 2017, though emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) declined by 4 percent over the same time period and emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) dropped by 6 percent.
EPA in a press release sought to downplay the CO2 increase by saying the emissions rise occurred “even while electric generation increased by 5 percent.”
“These data show that America is enjoying ever cleaner air as our economy grows, and the U.S. continues as a global leader in clean air progress,” EPA air chief Bill Wehrum said in the release.
EPA also cited several “longer-term trends,” including that CO2 emissions from power plants dropped by roughly 20 percent since 2011.
Specifically, the new data show 1.93 billion tons of power sector CO2 emissions in 2018, marginally higher than 2017's 1.92 billion tons.
The sector's CO2 emissions peaked in 2007 at 2.57 billion tons, followed by continued annual declines -- except for an emissions rebound in 2010 following the Great Recession, as well as a slight increase in 2013 that was subsequently wiped out by a wave of coal plant retirements in 2015 that many attributed to the Obama EPA's utility air toxics rule.
Trump EPA officials at various times have argued that long-term market shifts toward lower-carbon power generation show that strict regulations are not necessary.
They have also touted technological shifts such as the fracking-induced natural gas boom that has caused gas-fired power to continually eat away at coal's market share.
But the agency's 2017 GHG inventory, released earlier this month, showed that total GHG emissions across the economy fell by only 0.3 percent from the prior year. At the time, Wehrum dismissed concerns that the country was “hitting a wall” on its progress toward reducing GHGs.
Overall, EPA says that implementing its proposed ACE rule -- which would replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) -- would lead to similar levels of power sector GHG emissions as the CPP's 2030 goal of a 32 percent cut relative to 2005 levels.
But critics of the plan say that it could have the perverse outcome of allowing an increase in CO2 emissions at some plants because it would encourage deployment of coal plant efficiency projects that would allow such plants to operate more often.
Some observers have suggested these emissions-related arguments could signal legal peril for ACE, because the rule would rely largely on business-as-usual shifts toward low-carbon power and might ultimately exacerbate the problem it is trying to address.
EPA's new emissions data for the sector could underscore these claims because the CO2 increase -- however marginal -- comes after years of steady emissions cuts in the sector, signaling that tough regulations are needed more than the Trump EPA previously argued.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-preps-ace-rule-data-shows-slight-power-sector-co2-rise-2018
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Expect New Chemical Safety Board Reporting Regs By Fall
Feb 20, 2019 | Law 360
By David Quigley, Stacey Mitchell and Bryan Williamson
Since its inception, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, or CSB, has not required reporting of accidental chemical releases. However, after a scathing court order from a federal judge earlier this month, the board might just find itself reporting for duty after all.
Air Alliance Houston v. CSB
In a succinct, yet forceful, decision, Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia lambasted the CSB for what he called “an egregious abdication of a statutory obligation” to promulgate reporting regulations under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.[1]
Even by its own admission, the CSB is required by the Clean Air Act to “establish by regulation requirements binding on persons for reporting accidental releases into the ambient air subject to the Board’s investigatory jurisdiction.”[2] In its decision, the court dismissed the CSB’s arguments that plaintiff environmental groups lacked standing and found that the board did “unreasonably delay” action after having failed to promulgate regulations for nearly 28 years.
Ultimately, the court ordered the CSB to promulgate final accidental chemical release reporting regulations within 12 months.[3] Absent a successful appeal or request for extension by the CSB, owners and operators of industrial facilities can expect to see a new rule-making — with an accompanying opportunity to submit public comments — by the fall.
Potential Rule-Making Approaches
With a mere calendar year to finalize regulations, the CSB will need to act promptly. Although it may look to its stalled attempt in 2009 to promulgate reporting regulations, it is anyone’s guess whether the board will ultimately take a different direction altogether given the change of administrations.
Nevertheless, in its 2009 advance notice of proposed rule-making, the CSB announced its intent to promulgate a rule that would “further its current efforts to improve data collection and would permit more accurate surveillance of chemical incidents.”[4] The board requested public comment on four general approaches:
Requiring reporting of information on all accidental releases subject to the CSB’s investigatory jurisdiction.
Requiring reporting of basic information for incidents that meet significant consequence thresholds.
Requiring owners or operators of certain high-risk facilities to report more extensive information on chemical incidents in their workplace after notification by the CSB following an accident.
Requiring reporting based on the presence or release of specified chemicals and specified threshold amounts.[5]
Who Might Be Regulated?
The Clean Air Act requires that CSB reporting requirements be binding on all entities subject to the CSB’s investigation jurisdiction. Thus, the CSB rule would cover a wide range of entities, including power plants, refineries, chemical manufacturers, and owners and operators of other industrial facilities.
The board clarified in 2009, however, that it would focus on “high-consequence events,” that is, those that result in death, serious injuries requiring in-patient hospitalization, large public evacuations, very substantial property damage or acute environmental impact.[6] Nevertheless, the CSB also acknowledged that releases of “small amounts of chemicals” and unlisted chemicals can result in serious consequences and could be subject to reporting requirements.[7]
Likely Scope of New Reporting Requirements
Reporting obligations, at the very least, could require identifying the location, date and time of incidents involving chemical releases, the chemicals involved, and the number of injuries.[8] Upon receiving this information, the board would consider investigating the event and making subsequent recommendations.
In addition, the CSB noted that it may seek to limit the scope of reporting requirements in several key ways to reduce regulatory burdens and the CSB’s oversight costs. These include:
Coordination with other chemical incident reporting requirements to avoid duplication with existing rules by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Reporting thresholds that limit reporting requirements to select, high-consequence events totaling, at most, a few hundred incidents throughout the country each year.
Clarification of key terms, including “ambient air,” “extremely hazardous substance,” “serious” injury and “substantial” property damage.
Reporting submissions via the CSB website or the National Response Center hotline, as contemplated by the Clean Air Act.[9]
Despite these limitations, the extent of additional compliance protocols required by the rule remains uncertain.
A More Expansive Rule in the Trump Era?
Although it is too early to predict the scope of a new CSB rule, the board’s current composition indicates that regulated entities could face relatively more progressive, expansive reporting requirements compared to those promulgated by agencies throughout Donald Trump’s presidency. As an independent agency, the CSB consist entirely of members appointed by President Barack Obama, each of whom is serving a fixed term of five years and may only be removed from office by the president for cause.[10]
Although two of the board’s leadership spots sit vacant, the board is guaranteed to have a Democratic-appointed majority throughout most of 2019 and potentially beyond. As such, Democratic appointees will lay much, if not all, of the new rule’s foundation and would perhaps be more inclined to look to impose broader reporting requirements than would a contingency led by Trump appointees.
Conclusion
Although the CSB has yet to comment publicly on the court’s ruling or its intentions to appeal or initiate rule-making, the court’s 12-month deadline does not leave the board with much time. Therefore, the board may be without an option to release a proposed rule-making with the opportunity for public comment by fall of this year if it has any hope of meeting this court deadline.https://www.law360.com/articles/1130666/expect-new-chemical-safety-board-reporting-regs-by-fall
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'Huge Vulnerability' in U.S. Energy Networks — Murkowski
Feb 21, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski pledged to take action on energy and election cybersecurity in an address to her state's lawmakers Tuesday.
"We are not doing enough, quick enough," the Alaska Republican said.
"You want to bring a community to its knees? You take out the power. You want to bring down a country? There's a huge vulnerability there for us," she said.
"We know that infrastructure is vulnerable and that everyone — everyone, I don't care how remote you are," can be a target.
"We've seen it with our Railbelt utilities," Murkowski added, referring to public power companies in a south-central stretch of Alaska.
Murkowski offered hints at how she'll craft anticipated cybersecurity legislation this Congress. Responding to a question on election security from state Sen. Tom Begich (D), she said gaps in energy-sector defenses also posed a daunting threat to national security.
Russia and China-backed hacking groups have been aggressively targeting U.S. energy-sector control networks in recent months, according to alerts from the Department of Homeland Security and the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats.
Murkowski stressed the need for a "nimble" strategy for thwarting hackers. That could involve offering incentives to critical infrastructure organizations for boosting cybersecurity, rather than a "check the box" approach, she suggested.
Too many cybersecurity professionals are "not lying awake at night, thinking, 'What are the bad guys doing to come in and disrupt us?' because they're just focused on the day job, which is checking the box," she said. "So we've got to get away from that model."
Murkowski hosted a cybersecurity hearing last week and has spoken regularly on emerging threats to U.S. electricity and natural gas networks (Energywire, Feb. 14).
At a meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners last week, Murkowski said she "will be writing new legislation" with her committee, where Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is the top Democrat.
"We anticipate that we'll roll that out in the next several months here," Murkowski said.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/02/21/stories/1060121679
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Federal DOT: New Emergency Response Rule Sharpens Oil Train Safety
Feb 21, 2019 | The Daily News Online
By Matt Surtel
A new federal rule is enacting stricter spill response regulations for oil trains.
The rule affects the crude oil trains that pass through Genesee County regularly on the CSX railroad.
It specifically requires railroads to establish geographic response zones along affected routes while ensuring personnel and equipment are staged and prepared to respond in the event of an accident.
Railroads are also required to identify the person responsible for each response zone, along with the organization, personnel, and equipment capable of removing and mitigating a worst-case discharge. Information about the trains must be provided to state and tribal emergency response commissions.
The rule applies to trains hauling petroleum oil in a block of 20 or more loaded tank cars or those that have a total of 35 loaded petroleum oil tank cars.
“This new rule will make the transport of energy products by railroad safer,” said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao in a news release.
Oil trains haul large amounts of highly-flammable petroleum oil. It’s typically a safe process but accidents — when they occur — have sometimes resulted in major spills, fires and fatalities.
The trains travel routinely through Genesee County on their way from Chicago to terminals and refineries in the Albany and New York City areas.
CSX is reviewing the new rule and is committed to fully complying with its requirements, the railroad said Tuesday.
“Our top priority is the safety of our employees and the communities where we operate, and many of the measures outlined in the rule are already in place,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “CSX has a robust incident response system, which includes hazardous material experts in every region and contracts for additional resources and specialists to deploy anywhere on our network at a moment’s notice. Additionally, CSX conducts year-round training with first responders across the country, and we maintain open lines of communication with public officials across our network, giving them information about the shipments moving through their communities.”
Genesee County’s local first responders — including fire departments and the county’s response team — train, drill and exercise on a monthly basis to ensure a timely and safe response to any hazardous materials event, said Coordinator Tim Yaeger of the county’s Emergency Management Services.
“Genesee County’s ESU Team (Emergency Support Unit) is the county Hazardous Material Response Team,” he said. “The Hazardous Materials Technicians team members and staff have attended classes in Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Alabama, Texas, Maryland and New York for classroom education and field exercises related to products from petroleum to explosives, to nuclear, biological and chemical agents.
“I personally attended a five-day management program in Atlanta, Ga. sponsored by CSX, to ensure first responders and CSX work hand-in-hand if a event were to occur,” he continued.
The county’s ESU team is trained in using firefighting foam; hazardous material leak control; and booming, diking and control measures that protect life safety and lessen environmental impact, Yaeger said. The county has a large supply of firefighting foam which is augmented through the statewide mutual aid system, with additional supplies in Orleans, Monroe, and Erie counties, along with and supplies from the state Office of Fire Protection and Control.
The ESU likewise has dedicated trailers and response vehicles fully equipped to respond to such incidents, along with an additional state Department of Environmental Conservation trailer located at the county’s fire training center.
“These trailers would support the Hazardous Material Response Unit and Mobile Command Unit, both operated by the Genesee County Emergency Management Office,” Yaeger said. “The G.C. ESU team members have attended thousands of hours of training and achieved national certifications to ensure the safety of the citizens and visitors of Genesee County and the region.”
The exact numbers of such trains passing through the county wasn’t immediately known Wednesday. About 20 to 35 such trains passed through weekly as of 2014.
https://www.thedailynewsonline.com/bdn01/federal-dot-new-emergency-response-rule-sharpens-oil-train-safety-20190221
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After Disasters, Experts Push to Revive Obama Policies
Feb 21, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Daniel Cusick
The 116th Congress has another opportunity to help flood-prone communities build higher, safer and stronger against future disasters.
But doing so will require a combination of regulation and spending that the Trump administration largely abandoned with its purge of the Obama-era climate change program in 2017.
Yesterday, the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning policy think tank, called on Congress to resuscitate and codify one of those policies — the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard — while also allocating hundreds of millions of additional dollars to grant and loan programs that help communities build infrastructure that can withstand disasters.
"By investing in resilient infrastructure, including in urban and rural communities that need it the most, Congress can safeguard the economy as well as the public health and well-being of people across the nation," CAP researchers Cathleen Kelly and Guillermo Ortiz wrote in an issues brief published online.
The Obama administration's flood risk standard imposed new base elevation requirements on all taxpayer-financed infrastructure projects — from highways to housing to hospitals — at risk from future floods or storm surges that scientists say are made worse by climate change.
Experts say such standards better prepare low-lying areas from catastrophic disasters while also saving billions of taxpayer dollars allocated to post-disaster recovery and reconstruction.
Kelly, a senior fellow for energy and environment at the center, said the benefit of a federal flood elevation standard was made clear almost immediately after President Trump rescinded the Obama order in August 2017.
That's when a trio of mega-hurricanes — Harvey, Irma and Maria — made landfall in rapid succession, causing an estimated $265 billion in damages, according to NOAA. Total disaster damages from 2017, including inland flooding, droughts and Western wildfires, reached $306.2 billion.
And the trend of multibillion-dollar disasters extended into 2018, when hurricanes, floods and wildfires caused an additional $73 billion in damages, NOAA estimated.
CAP experts say the evidence of climate warming's role in worsening natural disasters makes it even more imperative that Congress "ensure that infrastructure and facilities funded with public dollars are built to withstand the effects of climate change."
The center also called on Congress to create a new revolving loan program to help states finance resilience projects, while also doubling annual spending on FEMA pre-disaster mitigation programs, from roughly $250 million annually to $500 million annually.
Such programs allow federal funds to be used to elevate homes before disasters strike or flood-proof properties that are particularly susceptible to storm surges or rising water. Research from the National Institute of Building Sciences has shown that taxpayers receive $6 in benefits for every dollar spent on pre-disaster mitigation.
Kelly said the "State Future Funds" could be modeled on the government's existing revolving loan funds for drinking water and stormwater infrastructure improvements. Those two EPA programs have leveraged $62 billion in taxpayer dollars to help states complete $168 billion in essential water projects.
"The idea is that every state, and local communities within each state, are facing significant disaster and climate risk — so much so that they can't afford to foot the bill alone," Kelly said.
Last fall, CAP and the Miami-based Cleo Foundation released the outlines of a proposed future fund for Florida, one of the most vulnerable states to sea-level rise, increased storm frequency and intensity, and other effects of climate change (Climatewire, Sept. 11, 2018).
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/02/21/stories/1060121677
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Exclusive: How a Top EPA Regulator's Law Firm Profited from the Fight to Roll Back Air Rules
Feb 20, 2019 | Politico Pro
By Zack Colman and Alex Guillén
The nation’s biggest coal-burning power companies paid a top lobbying firm millions of dollars to fight a wide range of Obama-era environmental rules, documents obtained by POLITICO reveal — shortly before one of the firm’s partners became President Donald Trump’s top air pollution regulator.
Now that ex-partner, Bill Wehrum, is aggressively working to undo many of those same regulations at the EPA, where he is an assistant administrator in charge of issues including climate change, smog and power plants’ mercury pollution.
Wehrum’s past role as a utility lobbyist is well-known, but the documents reveal never-before-disclosed details of how extensively his old firm, formerly called Hunton & Williams, worked to coordinate the power industry’s strategy against the Obama administration’s regulations. Twenty-five power companies and six industry trade groups agreed to pay the firm a total of $8.2 million in 2017 alone, according to an internal summary prepared in June of that year — less than three months before Trump tapped Wehrum for his EPA post.
POLITICO obtained 26 pages of briefing materials distributed to members of an umbrella group of utilities Wehrum represented while at the firm. Known as the Utility Air Regulatory Group, the secretive organization included some of the largest coal-burning utilities in the country. The materials were marked "CONFIDENTIAL ATTORNEY-CLIENT COMMUNICATION" and outlined goals for a meeting of the group's policy committee.
Topping the list of funders were Duke Energy, Southern Co. and AEP, which together contributed nearly one-third of the money.
Wehrum has said he won't work on lawsuits former clients are involved in, but nothing in federal ethics rules prevents him from working on regulations that apply to a broad sweep of actors in the industry he once represented. To that extent, it does not appear Wehrum has violated any laws, but it does expose holes in the ethics system.
"The scandal here is what is legal," said Kathleen Clark, a Washington University in St. Louis law professor and ethics expert. She said the documents show “industry group strategizing about how to change federal policy through the installation of friendly personnel as regulators — and then one of their own who was in the meeting, who was in the room where it happened, ended up being the key regulator.”
Wehrum said Wednesday that he has stayed on the right side of the ethical line.
“From the beginning and from well before I joined EPA I thought it was very important to understand the ethical obligations that would apply to me,” he said in an interview with POLITICO. He added, “The ethical rules do not prevent me from working on regulations of general applicability.”
Wehrum spent 10 years as a partner at the firm, now called Hunton Andrews Kurth. His EPA biography notes that he was also head of the firm’s “Administrative Law Group.”
Wehrum convened his power plant industry clients on June 22 and 23, 2017, at his law firm’s Washington, D.C., offices to lay out a road map for attacking the very policies he now oversees, the documents show. The roster of clients under the umbrella of the Utility Air Regulatory Group include some of the largest, most influential utility companies in the country. Wehrum told POLITICO he does not remember the two-day meeting, but a person familiar with the meeting and another who attended confirmed he was there.
Wehrum is certainly not the only person in Washington or the Trump administration to swing from lobbying to regulating. But the documents lay out an unusually clear picture of how Washington lobbyists steer a legal campaign for clients, keeping litigation churning while earning massive fees for their firms.
“I think the proximity of what he was doing in private sector advocacy then government work is a thing that distinguishes him from a lot of people and makes him vulnerable to criticism and questioning," said a former government ethics official.
By the time Trump had nominated Wehrum, he’d already made millions for and from Hunton — his financial disclosure listed a $2.1 million partnership share in his last year at the firm. That form also lists the Utility Air Regulatory Group as one of 20 sources of his compensation surpassing $5,000, but only one UARG member — Salt River Project — is named individually.
The documents prepared for the group's June 2017 policy committee meeting laid out how much money Hunton & Williams was seeking for its work on behalf of the companies. It estimated an $8.8 million budget for 2018.
Once “the new leadership team at EPA is in place, if that team shows that it has the ability to address expeditiously many of the initiatives of greatest importance to UARG members — and if UARG wants to participate meaningfully in such initiatives — then UARG will likely need an overall year-2018 budget that is higher than this year’s budget,” it read.
A month after the meeting, word began to circulate that Wehrum was headed to EPA, and by September, Trump made the nomination official.
It was unclear how far Wehrum was in his negotiations with the administration at the time of the meeting — he told POLITICO he was first approached in "early 2017" about the possibility — but he already had access to high-level EPA officials.
Mandy Gunasekara, then a top EPA air official, attended the UARG meeting at Wehrum's request.
“We are interested in any Clean Air Act regulatory issue that you are willing and able to address,” Wehrum wrote in an email to Gunasekara, according to separate documents obtained by the Sierra Club under the Freedom of Information Act. "Topics of interest include the Clean Power Plan, the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard, regional transport, regional haze, and NAAQS/NAAQS implementation. We are not asking you to address pending litigation on any of these issues. We are interested in discussing only possible future regulatory action."
A person who was at the meeting confirmed both Gunasekara and Wehrum were there.
Wehrum told POLITICO that while he continued to work for Hunton for most of 2017, he “billed typically just a few hours a year to UARG.” He said he’s stayed within ethical boundaries because rules don’t prohibit him from working on regulations that apply to a broad suite of players and he has not met with UARG since joining the EPA.
Wehrum has previously said he would recuse himself from litigation matters that he previously participated in, but not policymaking, such as regulation. He represented UARG in court as late as March 2017, when he filed a lawsuit over an Obama administration rule boosting chemical safety and reporting requirements at industrial facilities.
“UARG is an entity. It’s a legal entity,” he said, explaining that his clients were “not the individual members” of UARG.
Wehrum recused himself for two years from decisions related to a Dominion Energy subsidiary, Duke and Salt River Project, but not any of the other UARG member companies, according to a September 2018 recusal statement to acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.
Wehrum has in the past tried to firewall his work on litigation and policy, suggesting he would recuse himself from matters in which Hunton has represented clients in lawsuits challenging Obama-era policies. But the newly obtained documents show how deeply Hunton was involved in the cradle-to-grave formation of policy through UARG. For example, the June 2017 briefing materials cited "possible participation in rulemaking activity" among the services for which Hunton expected to bill the group's members.
Since he was confirmed by the Senate in November 2017, Wehrum has undertaken many of the policies UARG identified as top priorities.
For example, the June 2017 UARG document says the group will “coordinate member efforts and strategy regarding EPA review and potential reconsideration of” an Obama-era rule that justified major limits on mercury from power plant smokestacks by counting “co-benefits” from incidental reductions in other types of air pollution.
Then, last December, after Wehrum joined the agency, EPA proposed changing the rule to disregard the co-benefits, aligning itself with the position UARG has taken since at least 2016. (The agency also opened the door to revoking rule entirely — something that would benefit the dirtiest coal plants in the country — although it says it has no immediate plans to do so.)
Another area of focus UARG outlined in June 2017 was “potential administrative actions related to the New Source Review program,” a reference to permits thatcoal plants have to receive before conducting major upgrades.
Wehrum included major changes to that program as part of EPA’s new carbon rule for power plants. The proposal would waive the New Source Review requirements for coal plants installing efficiency technology because the permitting costs would make the upgrades “no longer viable,” Wehrum told reporters last week. That change could allow coal plants to run more frequently, potentially increasing overall emissions even if the plant is more efficient.
And in a separate move last November, Wehrum revived a New Source Review rule issued in the final days of the George W. Bush administration but halted by the Obama administration. The project “aggregation” rule could help utilities avoid more stringent permitting requirements, and it is also listed as an action item on UARG’s 2017 list.
The Edison Electric Institute, the main trade association for the nation’s investor-owned utilities, foots most of the UARG bill, according to the newly obtained briefing materials. But UARG doesn’t show up in any official documents — it has no tax identification number, no address, no incorporation filings. In lawsuits, UARG generally describes itself as a "not-for-profit" or "ad hoc" group of electricity generators without further describing its membership.
UARG's structure allows it to avoid a paper trail. Utilities are dues-paying “members” of the organization. Many of those members, though, are also part of EEI. Rather than collect directly from companies, the briefing materials show that Hunton bills EEI directly — thus avoiding involvement of any formal entity known as UARG. EEI’s 990 filings with the IRS, which nonprofits file annually, show a more than $8 million “consulting” tab for Hunton dating back years, making up more than half of the trade organization’s independent contractor services.
“EEI provides accounting services to groups such as UARG and participates in a number of coalitions covering a range of issues important to our members," EEI spokesperson Brian Reil said in a statement to POLITICO. "UARG provides a variety of services to its members, including regulatory, technical, and compliance advice and information. EEI does not participate in any votes on UARG policy matter decisions. EEI files our own comments on the issues that are important to our members and their customers."
The names of the UARG members are some of the biggest in the business, along with some of the largest consumers of coal.
The documents show that 25 companies that are EEI members — including AEP, Ameren, Dominion, DTE Energy Co., Duke, FirstEnergy Corp., NiSource, South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. and Southern Co. Services — accounted for $6.8 million in 2017 dues to UARG.
Organizations that have backed efforts to soften pollution and climate regulations account for the remaining $1.4 million in dues: American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, American Public Power Association, EEI, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and the National Mining Association. The Tennessee Valley Authority also paid $462,967 in dues that year, according to the documents.
Wehrum thus can have a significant effect on keeping business flowing to his old firm through regulatory maneuvers that affect the power industry. Some companies have already questioned whether some of Wehrum’s moves are necessary. Redoing the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, a pollution rule that most utilities already have spent millions complying with, tops that list. UARG member Duke, for example, has publicly criticized EPA’s decision to revisit that rule.
In an interview, Wehrum cited EPA's work on the mercury rule as one area where his policies have diverged from the wishes of some UARG members. “I’m not going to put words or thoughts into anybody’s mouth,” Wehrum said of UARG, but he added, “I know at least a lot of individual member companies wanted to go the other way.”
Given that Hunton participates both in regulatory comment periods and litigation, Wehrum’s old firm would be slated to be involved in every step of the policy process. The June 2017 UARG document lists specific budget allocations for various programs, such as climate change, pollution control technologies, hazardous air pollutants and regional air quality.
Wehrum told POLITICO he believes he's doing things by the book.
"I don't believe anybody has gotten special access because they’re a friend of mine," he said.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2019/02/exclusive-how-a-top-epa-regulators-law-firm-profited-from-the-fight-to-roll-back-air-rules-1191258
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‘Climate Security’ Panel May Give White House Skeptics New Voice
Feb 20, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter, Christopher Flavelle and Jennifer A. Dlouhy
The White House is considering establishing a presidential committee to assess the consensus of scientists and the Pentagon that climate change poses a national security threat, according to a person familiar with the plan.
The move, being spearheaded by William Happer, a physicist and National Security Council senior director who has touted the benefits of carbon dioxide emissions, could give climate skeptics a platform to push back against conclusions reached by the Pentagon and other agencies within Trump’s own administration that climate change is a major national security threat.
The proposed Presidential Committee on Climate Security has yet to receive sign off by the White House and the panel will be the subject of a deputy-level meeting Feb. 22, according to the person who requested anonymity to discuss non-public deliberations.
Representatives of the National Security Council did not immediately comment.
The idea drew swift condemnation from climate activists.
“The science and facts on climate change are well-established and do not need an administration-influenced review by an NSC headed panel,” said Ron Keys, a retired U.S. Air Force general and senior member of the advisory board at the Center for Climate and Security, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “What we do need are practical and pragmatic policy choices today to fix the problem.”
According to a National Security Council discussion paper obtained by the Washington Post, which reported earlier on the proposed committee, the panel would “advise the president on scientific understanding of today’s climate, how the climate might change in the future under natural and human influences, and how a changing climate could affect the security of the United States.”
“It’s a great idea, spearheaded by a great guy,” said Steve Milloy, a policy adviser for the Heartland Institute, a group critical of climate science. “Sounds like the dishonest/know-nothing climate bedwetters in the national security apparatus—as well as those across the federal government—are about to get schooled in CO2 reality.”
The effort to upend the military approach to climate change comes as some conservatives grow disappointed the Trump administration is not moving more aggressively to eliminate or undercut a swath of domestic climate policies enacted under former President Barack Obama.
Conservative ConcernsStill the possible new initiative illustrates the seriousness of the Trump administration’s commitment to undermining a scientific and government consensus about the national security threat posed by climate change, as rising seas, more intense storms and deeper droughts threaten to uproot communities, destroy property and create new geopolitical tensions around the globe.
Last month, the Pentagon issued a report warning of the dire risk of climate change to the military’s bases and troops, and a worldwide threat assessment of the U.S. intelligence community by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence recognized climate change as a threat. A report issued late last year by several federal agencies said climate change posed a serious threat to the U.S., and one that is quickly getting worse.
“Global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond,” Dan Coats, director of National Intelligence, said in a statement for the Senate intelligence committee. “Climate hazards such as extreme weather, higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea level rise, soil degradation, and acidifying oceans are intensifying, threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security. ”
The committee could shift the Pentagon’s behavior in a new and significant way, according to John Conger, who was assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment under Obama.
In the two years since Trump became president, the military has been able to continue planning for climate risks, Conger, who now directs the Center for Climate & Security, said in a phone interview Feb. 20. But if a White House committee declared that climate change was not a security threat, the result could be what he called a “dampening” on those efforts.
For example, Conger said that budget officials might stop requesting funds to protect air bases and other facilities against the effects of more severe storms, guessing that those requests were unlikely to be approved. Military planners might become reluctant to raise climate concerns with their superiors.
“You want the military to be able to give their best military judgment. What happens when the White House advocates a view that is directly opposed to that best military judgment?” Conger said. “Budgeting is an inherently political process.”
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/climate-security-panel-may-give-white-house-skeptics-new-voice
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'Red Team' Revived Under Physicist Who Sees 'CO2 Drought'
Feb 21, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
The Trump administration found a way to formally question climate science after almost two years of false starts.
William Happer, a prominent opponent of climate science in the Trump administration, is heading a new White House effort to downplay the national security risks posed by climate change. It resembles the "red team" approach promoted by scandal-plagued former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
Named the Presidential Committee on Climate Security, the group is scheduled to meet tomorrow in the Situation Room at the White House, The Washington Post first reported. Its goal is to provide an "adversarial" review of climate science to determine if a series of recent reports have overstated the risks posed by global warming, according to a memo circulated within the White House obtained by E&E News.
"These scientific and national security judgments have not undergone a rigorous independent and adversarial scientific peer review to examine the certainties and uncertainties of climate science, as well as implications for national security," the memo says.
The meeting will be run by Happer, an emeritus physics professor at Princeton University who serves on the National Security Council as senior director for emerging technologies. Happer, who is not a climate scientist, has rejected mainstream climate science for years. He routinely says that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and that the world could burn more fossil fuels without harm. Happer heads a group called the CO2 Coalition, which advocates for a rejection of climate science, and he has said the world is in a "CO2 drought." His work has been funded by the conservative Mercer family, a major donor to the Trump campaign.
The memo's recipients included Kelvin Droegemeier, the president's science adviser and an expert on extreme weather, and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who rejected climate science as a congressman from Oklahoma but later said he "evolved" to accept it. The meeting tomorrow follows several instances in which President Trump has confused climate and weather by implying that low temperatures disprove global warming.
"Red team" exercises are typically used to review military operations. When Pruitt sought to apply it to climate science, it caused divisions among White House advisers before being scuttled by former Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general.
Happer was an integral part of the initial "red team" effort. He has been in contact with other prominent skeptics of climate change as he formulated the current review plan, according to those involved in the discussions.
The memo lays out a goal of bringing in a variety of experts who can examine climate science and the risks of rising temperatures to national security.
"The membership should include experts in national security and the science of climate and related fields, including statistics, data reliability, fluid motions of the atmosphere and oceans, radiation transfer, and geophysics," the memo says.
Experts in those fields have determined that climate change poses security risks throughout the world, from rising sea levels and the displacement of millions of people to deadly heat waves and floods. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Climate Assessment both found that civilizations face sharpening threats from a warming planet.
Longtime opponents of climate science hailed the move, praising a critical review of climate science because it leads to government policies with cost implications.
"Other scientific or engineering issues that involve large consequences is tested and scrutinized to death from every possible angle, and every possible criticism is taken and evaluated," said Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Center for Energy and Environment. "Any process that does a critical review is welcome."
Climate scientists are rigorously scrutinized through the peer-review process, and their assessments are tested by real-world conditions. As scientists predicted decades ago, the world has continued to warm at a rapid pace. The past five years have been the warmest in recorded history. In addition, prominent U.S. science agencies have found that humans are warming the planet at an unprecedented pace through the burning of fossil fuels.
The move comes weeks after the Pentagon released a report that showed how global warming is affecting military installations across the country. In Alaska, bases built on thawing permafrost are suffering cracking building foundations, and rising sea levels are putting a number of coastal installations at risk. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told a Senate committee last month that climate change poses security risks to the country.
"Global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress and social discontent through 2019 and beyond," he said.
The nation's intelligence community has studied the risk posed by climate change for decades. During the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War, the CIA examined the negative effects of climate change on grain crop yields in the Soviet Union. Declassified CIA memos show that John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser, participated in at least one climate change briefing as far back as 1989, when he was assistant secretary for international organization affairs at the Department of State under President George H.W. Bush.
The Trump administration's partisan attacks on science could harm preparation for climate change across a number of agencies, said Francesco Femia, co-founder of the Center for Climate and Security. Top officials might decide to drop it from their analyses to avoid picking a fight with the president, he said.
"Frankly, it's insulting to those in the intelligence community and those who are in our science agencies," Femia said. "Within the Pentagon and within the intelligence community, there are a lot of people who are evidence-driven, fact-driven, science-driven patriots, and they see a risk and they begin to put that into their analysis because they know if you don't do so, you're going to have a blind spot on security. And that's never a good thing."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/02/21/stories/1060121683
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Climate Threat Doubter Is Leading Effort to Advise Trump
Feb 21, 2019 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Kevin Freking and Seth Borenstein
The Trump administration is exploring the idea of forming a special committee to look at climate change and security risks, with the effort being coordinated by a 79-year-old physicist who rejects mainstream climate science.
A “discussion paper” obtained by The Associated Press asks federal officials from an array of government agencies to weigh in on a proposed executive order that President Donald Trump would sign establishing the “Presidential Committee on Climate Security.”
A memo to those federal officials asks them to direct any questions to William Happer, a member of Trump’s National Security Council and a well-known critic of mainstream climate science findings.
“Happer would be a fringe figure even for climate skeptics,” said retired U.S. Navy Rear Adm. David Titley, now a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University.
Several climate scientists agreed with Titley, including Georgia Tech’s Kim Cobb, who said Happer’s “false, unscientific notions about climate change represent a danger to the American people.”
Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes, who wrote the book “Merchants of Doubt” on climate denial, pointed to instances when Happer has claimed that carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas from the burning of coal, oil and gas, is good for humans and that carbon emissions have been demonized like “the poor Jews under Hitler.”
Happer’s bio at Princeton University, where he previously taught, describes him as a pioneer in the field of optically polarized atoms. It notes that he served in the administration of President George H.W. Bush as the director of energy research at the Department of Energy, where he oversaw a basic research budget of roughly $3 billion.
The National Security Council advises the president on security and foreign policy issues. According to the discussion paper, the council would fund and oversee the committee. Among the committee’s responsibilities would be to “address existing United States Government reports on climate for scientific accuracy and advise on the national security implications of climate change.”
The committee would be composed of 12 members, according to a draft of the executive order. Members would include experts in national security and climate science. The panel would advise the president on how climate “might change in the future under natural and human influences.”
A spokesman for the National Security Council declined to comment.
The Washington Post first reported on the proposed executive order establishing the climate security committee.
Trump once tweeted that climate change was a “Chinese hoax.” More recently, he used a cold snap that hit much of the nation last month to again cast doubts. “People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming (sic)? Please come back fast, we need you!” he tweeted.
Both the Pentagon and the president’s intelligence team have mentioned climate change as a national security threat, and a 2018 National Climate Assessment detailed drastic effects of global warming.
Over about a dozen years, government scientists, military leaders and intelligence experts have repeatedly highlighted climate change as a major national security risk, said Titley, who founded one such study team in the Navy.
Titley said these studies have come to the same conclusions under three presidents, including two Republicans. He said there are “a surprising number of documents from the Pentagon and intelligence community after January 2017 (when Trump took office) that talk about climate and security risk.”
“For the Pentagon, it’s about readiness,” Titley said. “For the intelligence community, it’s about risks. We see the risks are accelerating.”
Climate change can “push a marginally stable area into chaos,” Titley said, mentioning Syria, which suffered a record drought at the same time as a civil war that triggered a migration of a million people.
Francesco “Frank” Femia, chief executive of a think tank that reviews systemic risk to national and international security, expressed concern that the proposed panel was meant to poke holes in future government reports and studies.
“I would welcome a serious study commissioned by the White House on the security implications on climate change that include climate scientists and national security experts, but this is not that,” said Femia, the CEO of The Council on Strategic Risks.
A place like the National Academy of Sciences was set up just for that type of study, said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, which monitors global temperatures.
“The ice doesn’t care what this administration thinks,” Titley said. “It’s just going to keep melting and obeying the laws of physics, whatever Will Happer wants.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/climate-change-doubter-is-leading-effort-to-advise-trump/2019/02/20/172c7ac8-3572-11e9-8375-e3dcf6b68558_story.html?utm_term=.1281797c315f
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Trump’s New Attempt to Gut Clean Air Protection
Feb 20, 2019 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Michael R. Lemov
President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is laying out a devious plan to give the coal industry a major break on toxic air emissions.
The EPA announced in December it will change the way it evaluates costs and benefits for the mercury and air toxics rule.
The main target is the limit on emissions of mercury, a powerful neurotoxin that attacks the human brain and causes debilitating illness and death, particularly in infants and young children. Since the current rule was put in place under the Obama administration, it has saved up to 11,000 lives a year.
The administration has proposed eliminating all indirect benefits in assessing the cost-benefit finding that underlies the rule. This would ensure the rule is not cost-effective and thus doom it.
Indirect benefits are those that are reasonably projected to flow from a rule, but are not its main purpose. For example, particulate matter (soot, smoke and poisonous gases) emitted by coal- fired power plants, can cause heart disease, cancer and asthma, but the scrubbers used by coal- fired power plants to remove mercury also remove particulates thus creating a major, indirect benefit.
If the administration is successful in the elimination of indirect benefits, which have been part of the evaluative process for 40 years, the limits on toxic pollutants other than mercury could also be attacked as too costly to be “appropriate and necessary” under the Clean Air Act.
It is hard to see how this change in the Clean Air Act can be justified by the Trump administration.
The Act’s primary purpose, spelled out in the first section of the law, is to “protect and enhance the quality of the Nation’s air resources so as to promote the public health and welfare…and the productive capacity of its population.”
Based on that mandate, EPA has enacted many rules, all consistently defining the words “protection of human health” to include both “direct” and “indirect” benefits.
Over the years, the EPA and Office of Management and Budget have issued studies of the costs and benefits of clean air regulations. They have found that most air pollution regulations including those relating to power plants and mercury are both life-saving and cost- beneficial by an average ratio of at least four to one, benefits over costs.
Benefits include elimination of lost income and health care costs for people killed or disabled from both direct and indirect causes.
For 40 years, the agency has consistently followed this definition of “benefits” based primarily on Executive Order 12866, issued by President George H.W. Bush and reissued by President Clinton:
Agencies should “assess all costs and benefits of available regulatory alternatives” and “be understood to include both quantifiable measures…and qualitative measures that are difficult to quantify… but nonetheless essential to consider.”
The executive order adds, “agencies should select those approaches that maximize net benefits including potential economic, environmental, public health and safety and other advantages.”
To further clarify, OMB issued Circular A- 4 in 2003, which directed agencies to “attempt to quantify benefits and costs as much as possible (e.g. tons of pollution avoided, or the number of children… (effected) and exercise professional judgment in determining whether non-quantified factors are important enough to justify consideration of the regulation.”
Circular A-4 also states that a systematic identification of all of the costs and benefits that are associated with a forthcoming regulation should include “non-quantitative and indirect costs and benefits.”
Now, the Trump EPA has proposed gutting limitations on the discharge of carcinogenic mercury from power plants by changing the core finding of “benefits” to exclude indirect benefits. This would omit counting reductions in emissions of particulates, a major coal-fired power plant emission and health threat.
The proposed approach has created a split between the electric generating industry, which has complied with the existing rule by installing scrubbers, and the coal industry, which is pushing hard for the change.
A primary proponent of the change is Trump’s acting director and current nominee for EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler, who was for years a coal industry lobbyist.
If applied to all clean air rules, the redefinition of costs and benefits could eliminate health-based limits on dozens of toxic emissions.
The Trump action raises life and death policy questions.
--Can the administration redefine the benefits of past or future pollution regulations to exclude indirect costs, even though they are certain to occur and have been used under the law since 1970?
--Can EPA apply this new definition of benefits to already existing regulations such as the mercury rule, which have the force of law?
--What is the standard for court review (which is surely imminent) of such a redefinition and reduction of “benefits” in the rule? Can the amended finding be supported by reasonably accurate scientific evidence in the administrative record?
Existing Supreme Court precedent appears to preclude this change, whether it is called a finding or an amendment to an existing rule. In the “air bag” case, decided in 1983, when the Reagan administration attempted to rescind the passive restraint rule enhancing motor vehicle safety, the Court held that agencies, (including the White House) cannot change existing regulations (or presumably their key sections) without establishing a reasonable basis in the rule-making record, and proving that any proposed new regulation is reasonably supported by the evidence.
It seems unlikely that the Trump administration can meet this test to support this change in the mercury air toxics, or other clean air rules.
https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/430870-trumps-new-attempt-to-gut-clean-air-protection
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'Green New Deal' Is Shrinking, and It Mystifies Activists
Feb 21, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Mark K. Matthews and Adam Aton
In a matter of months, the "Green New Deal" has transformed the way Democratic candidates for president talk about climate change.
But will they transform the "Green New Deal"?
That's the unwelcomed test faced by a fledgling movement of activists who, somehow, intensified the climate debate within the Democratic Party. Now that they've convinced White House hopefuls to adopt a boundless climate plan, their next challenge is to draw a boundary against modest campaign promises.
It's a thorny test that's made more difficult by the very nature of the "Green New Deal," a sprawling plan to fight climate change with a massive, government-led jobs program. The concept remains vaguely defined outside its central target — net-zero emissions by 2030 — even after dozens of Democrats came together earlier this month to outline its goals in a symbolic congressional resolution.
That kind of elasticity has its advantages. It can't be sunk by specifics. But it also gives supporters and detractors the opportunity to define the "Green New Deal" on their terms, in a way that fits their own political ambitions.
"Most everybody wants to get on board with the 'Green New Deal' as long as it's warm and fuzzy. When the outlines start to come into sharper relief, there will be more splintering," said RL Miller, chair of the California Democratic Party environmental caucus.
At least six presidential hopefuls have signed onto the "Green New Deal" resolution as co-sponsors: Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Several of them have already tried to put their own spin on the proposal, from Klobuchar's dialed-back approach to Sanders' full-throated support. For his part, President Trump has criticized the idea as a "massive government takeover" that would "shut down American energy" (Climatewire, Feb. 12).
Klobuchar's stance on the "Green New Deal" embodies the tension between the Democratic presidential field and liberal activists, who see it as a vehicle to usher in a new era of universal health care, fair pay and net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.
In an interview with Fox News, Klobuchar confirmed she would vote for the "Green New Deal" if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sends the symbolic resolution to the floor. But Klobuchar described the measure as aspirational, and she cautioned that implementing its ambitions into law would be another matter.
"I would vote yes, but I would also, if it got down to the nitty-gritty of an actual legislation as opposed to 'Oh, here are goals we have,' that would be different," she said (Climatewire, Feb. 14).
Klobuchar expanded on those thoughts this week during a forum with CNN. When asked to name the climate policies she supports, Klobuchar rattled off a list that included fuel economy standards for cars and "sweeping legislation to upgrade our infrastructure." She also vowed to rejoin the Paris climate agreement on her first day in office.
But Klobuchar hedged again when it came to the "Green New Deal." "We may not have agreements on exactly how it will work and when we can get it done," she said. "And my point that I made there was that this is a discussion that we must have as a country."
Her responses were greeted with skepticism by the Sunrise Movement, the youth-led environmental group that's championed the "Green New Deal" (Climatewire, Dec. 3, 2018).
"Amy Klobuchar's comments have been, I think, leaving us wanting more," Evan Weber, the group's political director, said in a phone interview. "We're hoping to see Klobuchar step up her game when she talks about climate action and the 'Green New Deal.'"
Among Sunrise activists, Weber has been one of the most outspoken in trying to police discussion of the "Green New Deal" on the campaign trail.
In late January, he zinged former New York City Mayor and possible 2020 contender Michael Bloomberg for floating his own vision of a climate-action plan, which would include a "transition as quickly as possible to clean energy."
"I've already begun working on putting together the details of what I believe is a 'Green New Deal,'" Bloomberg said.
Weber countered on Twitter: "Alternatively you could lend your support (read: massive fortune, resources, and access) to the @sunrisemvmt who launched the #GreenNewDeal onto the national stage, and the frontline grassroots community groups who have been advocating and advancing local solutions for decades."
Bloomberg, a longtime climate activist, has been critical of some of the early rhetoric.
"It's time as a party that we started putting some meat on the bone and laying out exactly [what] a 'Green New Deal' ... should include, and I believe that that plan should be bold and ambitious and, most importantly, achievable," said Bloomberg last month.
"I'm a little bit tired of listening to things that are pie in the sky, that we never are going to pass and are never going to afford," he said. "I think it's just disingenuous to promote those things."
Weber said Sunrise is tracking how all the major presidential candidates talk about the "Green New Deal" and that it has discussed plans to rank or compare each version. But he said Sunrise is not wholly responsible for filling in the details and that much of that responsibility lies with the politicians running for the White House.
"We hope the adults in the room can at least do something, now that we've shown the way," he said.
Activists have so far given the benefit of the doubt to Sanders, the runner-up for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. He hasn't yet detailed his vision for a "Green New Deal." While other candidates are trying to prove their green credentials and boost their name recognition, Sanders did both in his 2016 run (Climatewire, Feb. 20).
"People are not expecting him to spell things out in great detail because they trust he's already there," said Miller, who is also political director of the activist group Climate Hawks Vote.
Sanders' staffers have for weeks hinted that he will unveil legislation that puts his own stamp on the "Green New Deal." But activists are watching other candidates more closely — and offering support when they inch to the left.
For instance, Booker has won plaudits from Sunrise despite his travails with other progressive causes. He told Iowa voters this month that the "Green New Deal" is a "bold idea that we need to lean [into]."
Weber tweeted footage of Booker's remarks. "This is pretty good from @CoryBooker. Looking forward to hearing other candidates talk about the #GreenNewDeal, and to seeing policies and platforms come together as the race heats up," he wrote.
One factor working against "Green New Deal" supporters is electoral history.
Voters rarely rank the environment as a top issue, though there are signs that attitudes are shifting.
A recent survey by Yale and George Mason universities found an uptick in the importance of global warming to U.S. citizens. Another poll from the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental group, found that Democrats in early voting states consider climate a top-tier issue, second only to universal health care.
Political pundit Kyle Kondik said there is little question that "the eventual Democratic nominee will be someone who has talked about climate change extensively."
But he said he wasn't sure yet whether the "Green New Deal" becomes a "proxy for environmentalism" among the Democratic faithful. And he wondered whether there was a political risk for presidential candidates who already back the "Green New Deal" — as that could be perceived as a kind of political outsourcing of their climate change policy.
"If you let the activists on the left set the agenda for you, they may revolt" from a candidate who departs from that framework, said Kondik, who serves as managing editor of the campaign analysis site Sabato's Crystal Ball. "These Democrats might be better off coming up with their own specific ideas."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/02/21/stories/1060121671
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Amazon Agrees to Reveal Carbon Footprint in 2019
Feb 20, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Emily Chasan
Amazon.com Inc. announced it will disclose its carbon footprint later this year, giving consumers and investors new insight into the environmental cost of its popular two-day shipping. The company also pledged in a blog post Monday that half of its shipments would be “net zero” carbon—also known as carbon-neutral—by 2030.
The world’s biggest e-commerce company has for years resisted pressure from investors and other stakeholders to disclose more information about its environmental impact. Late last year, several Amazon employees used their stock grants to submit shareholder proposals asking the company to devise and disclose its plans for climate change.
Estimating the emissions from e-commerce is complicated. Ordering something online is often less energy intensive than driving to and from a physical store to pick up an item, because shipping can take advantage of economies of scale. But the benefit declines rapidly as delivery times get shorter and when customers don’t group items together, said Josué Velázquez-Martínez, a sustainable logistics professor at MIT.
That’s a challenge for Amazon, which now counts more than 100 million Prime members, all of whom are eligible for two-day shipping. “When customers want to receive a product in one or two days, the carbon emissions increase substantially,” he said. “If you are willing to wait a week, it’s like killing just 20 trees instead of 100 trees.”
Amazon didn’t say whether it would be buying carbon offsets outright, and absent that, the most likely way for it to reach its emissions goals would be to fine-tune its delivery process. The “last mile” of delivery—from a warehouse to a customer’s home, for example—is often one of the largest costs for e-retailers, Velázquez-Martínez said. Amazon already encourages customers to group items together, for example.
“They’ve definitely been a leader in terms of reducing packaging waste and purchasing renewable energy, but they still have a lot of improvements they can make,” said Martin Kremenstein, head of ETFs at asset manager Nuveen. The firm doesn’t hold Amazon in its socially-responsible portfolios partly because the company hasn’t been transparent about this kind of carbon information.
Social issues are becoming a bigger concern for the company, Kremenstein said, highlighted by concerns about labor, wages and its local impact after Amazon last week withdrew its plan for a second headquarters in New York City.
Only a handful of e-commerce companies, including eBay and Etsy, disclose any information about their greenhouse gas emissions. Traditional retailers with growing online businesses like Target and Walmart don’t break it out for investors or consumers.
“If they start to disclose it, their competitors might start to disclose it and then everyone could start to tighten up their behavior,” Kremenstein said.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/amazon-agrees-to-reveal-carbon-footprint-in-2019
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