Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 2/25/2019
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Securing Our Nation’s Chemical Facilities: Building on the Progress of the CFATS Program
Feb 27, 2019 | House Homeland Security Committee
Location: 310 Cannon / 10:00 AM -
Full Committee Hearing on IEA's World Energy Outlook
Feb 25, 2019 | Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
Location: 366 Dirksen / 10:00 AM -
“Examining How Federal Infrastructure Policy Could Help Mitigate and Adapt to Climate Change”
Feb 26, 2019 | House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee
Location: HVC 210 / 10:00 AM -
Hearing on "EPA's" Enforcement Program: Taking the Environmental Cop off the Beat"
Feb 26, 2019 | House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Location: 2322 Rayburn / 10:30 AM -
The Denial Playbook: How Industries Manipulate Science and Policy from Climate Change to Public Health
Feb 26, 2019 | House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Location: 1324 Longworth / 02:30 PM -
Oversight Hearing: Understanding the Changing Climate System and the Role of Climate Research
Feb 26, 2019 | House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies
Location: H-309 Capitol / 10:00 AM -
“We’ll Always Have Paris: Filling the Leadership Void Caused by Federal Inaction on Climate Change”
Feb 28, 2019 | House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change
Location: 2123 Rayburn / 10:00 AM -
Hearing to Examine S. 383, the Utilizing Significant Emissions with Innovative Technologies Act, and the State of Current Technologies that Reduce, Capture, and Use Carbon Dioxide
Feb 26, 2019 | Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
Location: 406 Dirksen / 10:00 AM -
Sea Change: Impacts of Climate Change on Our Oceans and Coasts
Feb 26, 2019 | House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Environment
Location: 2318 Rayburn / 10:00 AM -
The Future of ARPA-E
Feb 26, 2019 | House Energy Subcommittee on Science, Space and Technology
Location: 2318 Rayburn / 10:00 AM -
Securing U.S. Surface Transportation from Cyber Attacks
Feb 26, 2019 | House Homeland Security Subcommittees on Transportation and Maritime Security, and Cybersecurity, In
Location: 310 Cannon / 10:00 AM -
Perspectives on Protecting the Electric Grid from an Electromagnetic Pulse or Geomagnetic Disturbance
Feb 27, 2019 | Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
Location: 106 Dirksen / 2:30 PM -
Hearing on “Clean Energy Infrastructure and the Workforce to Build It.”
Feb 27, 2019 | House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy
Location: 2322 Rayburn / 10:30 AM -
Full Committee Hearing to Examine the State of U.S. Territories
Feb 26, 2019 | Senate Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy
Location: 366 Dirksen / 10:00 AM -
(ACC Mentioned) High Inventories Weigh on Sentiment in the US PP Market
Feb 25, 2019 | ICIS
By Zachary Moore
High inventory levels continue to weigh on sentiment in the US polypropylene (PP) market, with participants currently anticipating that contracts might settle lower for a fourth consecutive month. -
(ACC Mentioned) Middleport CAP Seeks New Members
Feb 22, 2019 | Lockport Union-Sun & Journal
The Middleport Community Advisory Panel (CAP) is seeking new, qualified members who want to be involved in the community, learn more about FMC's local packaging plant, and provide feedback to the plant. -
Trump to Delay China Tariff Hike Due to 'Substantial Progress'
Feb 24, 2019 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Doug Palmer
President Donald Trump said today that he is delaying his plan to raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods later this week because talks aimed at addressing U.S. trade concerns have made "substantial progress." -
Federal Court Rejects Lawsuit on EPA Science Advisory Committee
Feb 25, 2019 | Chemical Watch
A District of Columbia federal court has thrown out the lawsuit filed by NGOs and researchers over the US EPA’s policy of barring anyone receiving agency grant money from serving on its scientific advisory panel. -
Updating Innovation in the Cleaning Product Industry
Feb 25, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Michael McCoy
One of the first events at the American Cleaning Institute’s weeklong annual conference is a ceremony at which the consumer-product maker Henkel hands out awards to its raw material suppliers for innovations and other contributions. -
As EPA Weighs Changes, EDF Says New Chemical Approvals Fail Workers
Feb 22, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
Environmentalists are charging that the Trump administration’s process for approving new chemicals under the recently revised toxics law without restrictions fails to adequately address risks to workers, -
New TSCA Inventory Released by EPA Lists Active Chemicals
Feb 25, 2019 | EHS Daily Advisor
By William C. Schillaci
The EPA has released what it describes as the first update of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Inventory in 40 years. -
(ACC Mentioned) California Proposes Phaseout of Single-Use Plastics by 2030
Feb 23, 2019 | CNBC
By Jeff Daniels
California already has placed curbs on plastic items such as straws and bags — and this week legislation was introduced to phase out single-use plastic food containers and other packaging that isn't recyclable or compostable. -
(ACC Mentioned) New York Moves to Regulate a ‘Likely Human Carcinogen’ in Drinking Water
Feb 23, 2019 | PBS Newshour
By Hari Sreenivasan, Sam Weber and Connie Kargbo
New York state is proposing the country’s first firm limit on a chemical found in drinking water in heavy concentrations in some Long Island, New York communities. -
Bayer Faces Second Trial Over Alleged Roundup Cancer Risk
Feb 25, 2019 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Tina Bellon
Bayer AG is set to face a second U.S. jury over allegations that its popular glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup causes cancer, six months after the company's share price was rocked by a $289 million verdict in California state court. -
Minnesota Company May Have Leaked Carcinogen TCE into Air for Years
Feb 22, 2019 | CBS News
A Minnesota business may have been emitting a cancer-causing chemical into the air for a decade or more. Manufacturing company Water Gremlin is located White Bear Township, north of St. Paul, near several lakes and residential neighborhoods. -
(ACC Mentioned) Bills Criminalizing Pipeline Protest Arise in Statehouses Nationwide
Feb 24, 2019 | Nation of Change
By Steven Horn
The oil and gas industry has started its 2019 lobbying efforts with a bang. -
FERC Considers Direct GHGs For LNG Projects, Omits Broader Analysis
Feb 22, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in a new order says it must consider the direct greenhouse gas emissions from liquified natural gas (LNG) export projects under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)... -
(ACC Mentioned) A Tale of Two Toxic Cities
Feb 24, 2019 | The Intercept
By Sharon Lerner
After a crucial division of the Environmental Protection Agency reassessed the dangers of two key pollutants — ethylene oxide and chloroprene — the risk of cancer from air pollution shot up in many communities around the country. -
Lawmakers Eye Long-Term Security Program Extension
Feb 25, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
The House Homeland Security Committee this week will ask witnesses about a chemical security program that requires reauthorization. -
Want a Green New Deal? Here’s a Better One.
Feb 24, 2019 | Washington Post
By Editorial Board
WE FAVOR a Green New Deal to save the planet. We believe such a plan can be efficient, effective, focused and achievable. -
The Green New Deal Is Better Than Our Climate Nightmare
Feb 23, 2019 | New York Times
By Editorial Board
It’s hard to believe, but worth recalling, that during the presidential debates in 2016, not a single question about climate change was put to Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. -
'Green New Deal' Vote Overshadows Slate of Hearings
Feb 25, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Nick Sobczyk
House lawmakers have scheduled a slate of climate-related hearings, as Republicans set up a full-court press against the "Green New Deal." -
Feinstein Slams Green New Deal in Tense Meeting with Protesters
Feb 22, 2019 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said today she did not agree with the Green New Deal resolution expected to be voted on soon in the Senate during a tense confrontation with youth climate protesters. -
White House to Set up Panel to Counter Climate Change Consensus, Officials Say
Feb 24, 2019 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin , Josh Dawsey and Brady Dennis
The White House plans to create an ad hoc group of select federal scientists to reassess the government’s analysis of climate science and counter conclusions that the continued burning of fossil fuels is harming the planet, according to three senior administration officials. -
We Can’t Wait for Washington’s Green New Deal. California Needs Just Transition Now
Feb 24, 2019 | Sacramento Bee
By Miya Yoshitani and Gladys Limón
As the deadliest wildfire in a century raged in Butte County last year, leaving 85 people dead and thousands without homes, hundreds of young people filled the halls of Congress to demand a Green New Deal. -
Capturing Carbon: Can It Save Us?
Feb 25, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jeff Johnson
Time is not on our side. -
Michigan Governor Swerves in Environmental Rules Game of Chicken
Feb 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alex Ebert
Michigan’s agricultural and industrial interests can keep their seats at the environmental regulatory table after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) revised her plan to kill a review committee and a permit appeal process favored by Republican lawmakers. -
Lawmakers Propose Carbon Tax
Feb 25, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Ines Kagubare
Washington state lawmakers last week introduced a new carbon tax proposal that would target the transportation sector. -
Record-Warm Oceans: How Worried Should We Be?
Feb 22, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Ilissa Ocko
The world’s oceans are heating up. Scientists have found that 2018 was the hottest year ever recorded for our oceans, and that they are warming even faster than previously thought.
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News
TSCA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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Securing Our Nation’s Chemical Facilities: Building on the Progress of the CFATS Program
Feb 27, 2019 | House Homeland Security Committee
Witnesses
David Wulf, Director, Infrastructure Security Compliance Division, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Nathan Anderson, Acting Director, Homeland Security & Justice, U.S. Government Accountability Office.
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Full Committee Hearing on IEA's World Energy Outlook
Feb 25, 2019 | Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
Opening Remarks
Sen. Lisa Murkowski
Chairman
Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Sen. Joe Manchin
Ranking Member
Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Witness Panel 1
Dr. Fatih Birol
Executive Director
International Energy Agency
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“Examining How Federal Infrastructure Policy Could Help Mitigate and Adapt to Climate Change”
Feb 26, 2019 | House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee
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Hearing on "EPA's" Enforcement Program: Taking the Environmental Cop off the Beat"
Feb 26, 2019 | House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Witnesses
Panel I
The Honorable Susan Bodine
Assistant Administrator
Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance
U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyPanel II
Bruce Buckheit, JD, MS
Analyst and Consultant
Former Director
Air Enforcement Division, Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance
U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyBakeyah Nelson, PhD
Executive Director
Air Alliance HoustonEric Schaeffer, JD
Executive Director
Environmental Integrity ProjectChris Sellers, PhD, MD
Professor of History
Director, Center for the Study of Inequality and Social Justice
Stony Brook UniversityJay Shimshak, PhD
Associate Professor of Public Policy and Economics
Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy
University of VirginiaThe Honorable Ronald J. Tenpas, JD
Partner
Vinson & Elkins LLP
Former Assistant Attorney General
Environment and Natural Resources Division
U.S. Department of JusticeCOMMITTEE ACTIVITYHearingsMarkups -
Feb 26, 2019 | House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Majority Witnesses
Chris Borland, Retired NFL player
Chris Borland is a former linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League. He retired early from a successful career because of concerns about chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurological condition caused by repeated blows to the head and body experienced by professional, college, and early age football players.
Mr. Ryan Hampton, Founder, Voices Project
Ryan Hampton is a national addiction recovery advocate and person in sustained recovery from 10 years of active opioid use. He has worked with multiple non-profits and community organizing campaigns—including the nation’s top addiction recovery advocacy organizations.
Ms. Alexandra Precup
Ms. Precup is a native of Puerto Rico who was displaced by Hurricane Maria. She will speak to the effects of climate change on her and her family.
Dr. David Michaels, Professor, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, George Washington University
Dr. Michaels is the former Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health.
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Oversight Hearing: Understanding the Changing Climate System and the Role of Climate Research
Feb 26, 2019 | House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies
Witnesses
Dr. Michael Freilich
Director of NASA’s Earth Science DivisionDr. Neil Jacobs
Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction -
“We’ll Always Have Paris: Filling the Leadership Void Caused by Federal Inaction on Climate Change”
Feb 28, 2019 | House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change
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Feb 26, 2019 | Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
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Sea Change: Impacts of Climate Change on Our Oceans and Coasts
Feb 26, 2019 | House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Environment
WitnessesDr. Sarah Cooley, Director, Ocean Acidification Program, Ocean Conservancy
Dr. Radley Horton, Lamont Associate Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University Earth Institute
Dr. Thomas K. Frazer, Professor and Director, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Florida
Ms. Margaret A. Pilaro, Executive Director, Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association
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Feb 26, 2019 | House Energy Subcommittee on Science, Space and Technology
Witnesses
Dr. Arun Majumdar, Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor, Stanford University
Dr. Ellen Williams, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland
Dr. John Wall, Retired CTO of Cummins, Member of the Committee on Evaluation for the 2017 National Academies Review of ARPA-E
Dr. Saul Griffith, Founder and CEO, Otherlab
Mr. Mark Mills, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute
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Securing U.S. Surface Transportation from Cyber Attacks
Feb 26, 2019 | House Homeland Security Subcommittees on Transportation and Maritime Security, and Cybersecurity, In
Witnesses
Panel 1:
Ms. Sonya Proctor, Director for the Surface Division, Office of Security Policy and Industry Engagement, Transportation Security Administration, Department of Homeland Security
Mr. Bob Kolasky, Director of National Risk Management Center, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Department of Homeland Security
Panel 2:
Mr. James Lewis, Senior Vice President and Director, Technology Policy Program, Center for Strategic & International Studies
Ms. Rebecca Gagliostro, Director of Security, Reliability and Resilience, Interstate Natural Gas Association of America
Mr. Erik Robert Olson, Vice President, Rail Security Alliance
Mr. John Hultquist, Director of Intelligence Analysis, FireEye (Minority Witness)
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Feb 27, 2019 | Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
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Hearing on “Clean Energy Infrastructure and the Workforce to Build It.”
Feb 27, 2019 | House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy
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Full Committee Hearing to Examine the State of U.S. Territories
Feb 26, 2019 | Senate Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy
Opening Remarks
Sen. Lisa Murkowski
Chairman
Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Sen. Joe Manchin
Ranking Member
Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Witness Panel 1
The Honorable Ricardo Rosselló
Governor
Puerto Rico
The Honorable Lourdes A. Leon Guerrero
Governor
Guam
The Honorable Lolo Matalasi Moliga
Governor
American Samoa
The Honorable Albert Bryan
Governor
U.S. Virgin Islands
The Honorable Ralph Deleon Guerrero Torres
Governor
Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands
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(ACC Mentioned) High Inventories Weigh on Sentiment in the US PP Market
Feb 25, 2019 | ICIS
By Zachary Moore
High inventory levels continue to weigh on sentiment in the US polypropylene (PP) market, with participants currently anticipating that contracts might settle lower for a fourth consecutive month.
PP inventories in North America rose 19% between the months of September and December, according to data from the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and Vault Consulting. Inventory levels reached their 2018 high point in December at a level 6.7% above the second highest inventory figure for 2018 recorded in November.
Debottlenecking projects added some capacity to the market over the past year, while operating rates also improved in recent months as some major plant outages from earlier in the year were resolved.
Ample monomer inventories have also encouraged higher PP production and inventory levels. According to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), propylene inventories hit a fresh record high on the week ended 15 February.
From the 2018 low point recorded in the week ended 14 September, propylene inventories more than doubled while inventories have also risen by 45% since the end of November. The sharp rise in inventories has pushed spot prices for polymer grade propylene (PGP) to a 26-month low.
The dip in the spot market has generated anticipation that contracts may decline for a fourth consecutive month even after falling by a cumulative amount of 20 cents/lb ($441/tonne) in the three-month period between November and January.
PP contracts have posted equivalent declines over the past three months. US PP contract prices are typically formula-based and are set at PGP values plus an adder.
Adders over PGP have been coming under pressure as inventory levels grow while demand has not shown any major signs of improvement despite the sharp drop in prices.
Trade balances are also shifting, as import economics grow less favourable while supply pressure is pushing US sellers to explore opportunities.
Traders active in the import market say that interest in overseas material has fallen dramatically as overseas producers are not willing to implement price decreases as steep as those seen for domestic material.
Export activity has risen significantly as sellers look to place their increased volumes. Most exports have been moving to Mexico and Central America, although traders are beginning to pursue other possible destinations.
“Bagging facilities along the Gulf Coast are mostly filling export orders for polyethylene (PE), so most PP exports are confined to destinations such as Mexico where material can move by rail,” a market participant stated.
ICIS assessed January contracts for homopolymer PP injection at 59-63 cents/lb delivered in bulk US while contracts block copolymer PP were assessed at 60-64 cents/lb with the same terms.
Major US PP producers include Braskem, ExxonMobil, Formosa, INEOS, LyondellBasell, Phillips 66 and Total Petrochemicals.
https://www.icis.com/explore/resources/news/2019/02/22/10323476/high-inventories-weigh-on-sentiment-in-the-us-pp-market/
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(ACC Mentioned) Middleport CAP Seeks New Members
Feb 22, 2019 | Lockport Union-Sun & Journal
The Middleport Community Advisory Panel (CAP) is seeking new, qualified members who want to be involved in the community, learn more about FMC's local packaging plant, and provide feedback to the plant.
Established more than two decades ago as a concept of the American Chemistry Council’s Responsible Care Program, the Middleport CAP meets five times a year to provide open and honest communication between FMC and the community on the plant and its operations in such areas as safety, environmental performance, employment, community involvement, emergency preparedness and response.
Previous meeting topics have fostered discussion on health, safety, environmental concerns, emergency response, products, economy and education.
“Members of the CAP help the plant’s leadership to better understand the community’s perspectives and concerns, and FMC Middleport in turn helps the community to better understand the facility and its operations,” said Jessica Heideman, CAP facilitator and FMC community liaison.
“These regular meetings help ensure the voice of the community is heard and provide yet another way for FMC to work directly with the community around the plant,” she said. “FMC looks forward to meeting with the new and returning members of the CAP team throughout 2019 and beyond.”
CAP members are all community residents from various walks of life including, but not limited to, parents, teachers, law enforcement, business professionals, students and retirees. Members are appointed for three-year terms.
To be considered for CAP membership, contact Jessica Heideman at the FMC Community Office, 8 S. Vernon St., call (716) 735-9769 or email jessica.heideman@fmc.com .
https://www.lockportjournal.com/news/local_news/middleport-cap-seeks-new-members/article_9f7cb757-b48f-5e9d-9d1f-7845dd177d98.html
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Trump to Delay China Tariff Hike Due to 'Substantial Progress'
Feb 24, 2019 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Doug Palmer
President Donald Trump said today that he is delaying his plan to raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods later this week because talks aimed at addressing U.S. trade concerns have made "substantial progress."
"I will be delaying the U.S. increase in tariffs now scheduled for March 1," Trump said in the second of two tweets on the talks. "Assuming both sides make additional progress, we will be planning a Summit for President Xi and myself, at Mar-a-Lago, to conclude an agreement. A very good weekend for U.S. & China!"
The remarks follow several days of meetings between teams led by Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He. Trump met with Liu in the Oval Office on Friday, and both men expressed optimism that a deal to end the trade war could be reached.
"I am pleased to report that the U.S. has made substantial progress in our trade talks with China on important structural issues including intellectual property protection, technology transfer, agriculture, services, currency, and many other issues," Trump said in the first of his two China-related tweets today.
Trump has already imposed a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods and a 25 percent tariff on another $50 billion. He had planned to raise all the duties to 25 percent on March 2 if no deal was reached by March 1.
Trump had repeatedly indicated in recent weeks he could extend the deadline if the talks are making progress. Sunday's decision marks the second time he has extended the deadline for China, since the tariff hike was originally scheduled to take place at the end of last year.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Federal Court Rejects Lawsuit on EPA Science Advisory Committee
Feb 25, 2019 | Chemical Watch
A District of Columbia federal court has thrown out the lawsuit filed by NGOs and researchers over the US EPA’s policy of barring anyone receiving agency grant money from serving on its scientific advisory panel.
Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt introduced the policy in October 2017, arguing that researchers dependent on agency funding could be biased, favouring policies that could prompt more funded research.
Two months later, the plaintiffs – led by the NGO Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) – filed a lawsuit arguing that the policy violates ethics regulations and procedural rules.
In last week's decision, Judge Trevor McFadden – a Trump nominee – determined that Mr Pruitt did not violate the law with his directive. He ruled that the law does not "dictate whom administrators must, or even should, appoint to federal advisory committees."
The law "delegates significant authority to agency heads" and therefore changing appointment policies is at the Administrator’s discretion, he continued.
Mr Pruitt left the office last summer and has been replaced by acting administrator Andrew Wheeler. Mr Wheeler appointed new members to the Science Advisory Board and subcommittees last month.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74553/federal-court-rejects-lawsuit-on-epa-science-advisory-committee
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Updating Innovation in the Cleaning Product Industry
Feb 25, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Michael McCoy
One of the first events at the American Cleaning Institute’s weeklong annual conference is a ceremony at which the consumer-product maker Henkel hands out awards to its raw material suppliers for innovations and other contributions. One of the last events of the conference, which took place late last month in Orlando, Florida, is an innovation showcase at which raw material suppliers reveal new products.
In between those bookends are countless meetings where cleaning product makers and their suppliers bang out agreements about prices, logistics, and other nitty-gritty of industrial commerce. Still, innovation is a theme that runs through the conference, and in interviews with C&EN, company executives made clear that they are changing how they innovate and who they innovate with.
Henkel’s first prize for laundry and home care innovation went to a new enzyme, licheninase, that the Danish enzyme maker Novozymes developed for Henkel’s Somat automatic dish-washing detergent line. One of two second prizes went to BASF for a keratin polymer technology, first used in personal care products, that can be added to light-duty laundry detergents to strengthen garment fibers.
Henkel started the innovation awards in 2008 to acknowledge the contributions of its ingredient suppliers, said Thomas Müller-Kirschbaum, head of laundry and home care R&D at the firm. The business launches more than 100 new products a year, he said, and more than half of them contain some kind of technological innovation.
The new enzyme, for example, breaks down hemicellulose-containing fibrous materials, such as those found in oats or cereal, that can be hard to remove from dishes and silverware. Novozymes came up with the enzyme, never before used in detergents, exclusively for Henkel and will supply it to the German firm alone for a certain period of time, according to Müller-Kirschbaum.
The enzyme is a solution an entry on Henkel’s laundry and home care technology wish list, which is close to 40 entries long, Müller-Kirschbaum said. Novozymes and other strategic partners, he noted, “have full transparency to our technology needs for the next three to five years.” Henkel also periodically sends out briefs to companies it thinks might have answers to specific problems.
These days, exclusive supply deals like the one with Novozymes are common, Müller-Kirschbaum said, and they represent roughly half of new-product agreements that Henkel has with raw material suppliers. But such arrangements can be tricky to hammer out and are best for long-term projects like the development of a completely new product. “If you are in need of a quick solution, it’s less likely to be an exclusive agreement,” he said.
Indeed, Tammo Boinowitz, general manager of Evonik Industries’ care-solutions business, pointed out that the importance of getting to market quickly often trumps the advantages of exclusivity. Speed was key in the development of a new Evonik opacifying agent that won first prize in Henkel’s beauty innovation category this year. Based on ethylene glycol distearate, which is biodegradable, the ingredient replaces polymeric materials used to give body-care products a pearl-like appearance.
Evonik doesn’t have an exclusive agreement to sell the ingredient to Henkel, and that’s fine with both firms, according to Boinowitz. “Speed means first-mover advantage,” he says. “It’s also a certain kind of exclusivity.”
Executives at BASF, an Evonik competitor, also marveled at the accelerating speed of change—and how much they like it. “It’s a positive thing that there’s fast change,” said Daniele Piergentili, vice president of BASF’s home and personal care ingredient business in North America. “This creates an opportunity for innovation for our partners, and for us to support it.”
Increasingly, Piergentili noted, innovation in home care isn’t just a two-party affair. “Sometimes lately the solution doesn’t come from just one supplier,” he said. “There might need to be an ecosystem of two to three suppliers to find the solution.”
He pointed, for example, to the delivery of fragrance in home care products. Developing a new product might involve a fragrance company, a delivery-technology specialist, and a consumer-product maker. Another product could require a chemical company, a washing-machine manufacturer, and a detergent maker to work together, Piergentili said.
At the innovation showcase, the Brazilian chemical company Oxiteno presented a new line of products called Oxizymes that it developed with Novozymes, the enzyme maker. Combining Oxiteno surfactants with up to five enzymes from Novozymes, the products are targeted at formulators of inexpensive detergents for budget-conscious Latin American consumers. Using one of the blends, customers can create a detergent with 8% active ingredients that works as well as or better than a premium detergent with 12% actives, according to Oxiteno literature.
Cristiane Canto, global head of Oxiteno’s home and personal care business, told C&EN that the partners spent three years developing the new line. One big challenge, she said, was keeping the enzymes stable in detergents with low levels of active ingredient and high concentrations of water.
Similarly, Ashland and Robertet are a year into an agreement combining their respective skills in encapsulation and fragrance to create long-lasting microencapsulated fragrances for home care. Linda Foltis, vice president of Ashland’s care specialty-ingredient business, said a consumer product containing an encapsulated fragrance is already on the market in the US. Ashland also has alliances with firms in the aerosol industry that marry Ashland’s polymer skills with partners’ know-how in cans, propellants, and valves, Foltis said.
For Ashland, working with partners can take many forms, Foltis said. A customer’s newly hired chemist might visit an Ashland lab for a few days of “polymer 101” education. Ashland arranges new-product brainstorming sessions with customer scientists and marketers. And once a year the firm runs the Avant Institute Symposium, an event where roughly 100 guests hear from Ashland scientists and invited academic experts. The most recent meeting, in December, focused on elevating the consumer experience through texture and rheology.
When talking about innovation, Foltis and other executives at the conference distinguished between a new product or formulation they develop with a single customer and a major innovation that gets launched to all takers worldwide.
“In some cases we collaborate with a specific customer on a specific technology for a specific purpose,” BASF’s Piergentili explained. “In other situations we try to develop more of a platform technology that can be used by different customers.”
An example of the latter would be an ingredient that brings fabric-softening properties to laundry detergents. Such products have failed in the past because when fabric-softening molecules attach to fibers in the wash, they can bring suspended dirt with them, creating a graying effect.
Dow Chemical used the ACI meeting to showcase SupraCare 133, a cationic cellulose that it claims can impart softness and fragrance to liquid laundry detergents. And thanks to improved polymer structure, it does this while avoiding graying, according to Eric Peeters, general manager of Dow’s home and personal care business.
Peeters was bullish on SupraCare 133, saying it recognizes a market trend for more “care” in fabric care. At the same time, he acknowledged that bold ingredient launches are not the norm these days. “It still happens that we invent a molecule, take it to market, and push, but that has become the minority of products that are going to market,” he said. “The evolution is one of more and more collaboration.”
https://cen.acs.org/business/consumer-products/Updating-innovation-cleaning-product-industry/97/i8
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As EPA Weighs Changes, EDF Says New Chemical Approvals Fail Workers
Feb 22, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
Environmentalists are charging that the Trump administration’s process for approving new chemicals under the recently revised toxics law without restrictions fails to adequately address risks to workers, building on long-standing opposition to the new chemicals review process as Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler has pledged revisions.
Richard Denison, a lead senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), says that an analysis of dozens of EPA approvals of new chemicals or new chemical uses under the Trump administration’s streamlined process shows the agency identifying, but failing to address, significant risks to workers, instead relying on workers to wear personal protective equipment (PPE), which federal regulators have long cited as an inadequate last resort.
“EPA appears at least in limited ways to be identifying risks to workers posed by new chemicals,” Denison says in a Feb. 21 blog post.
“But when it comes to actually protecting them from such risks -- which would require imposing binding requirements on companies -- that’s when workers get thrown under the bus.”
“Add this to the long and growing list of illegal actions EPA has taken to render the new chemicals program weaker than under the old” Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
EDF and other environmental groups have long opposed the Trump administration’s plans for reviewing new chemicals under the 2016 law, particularly the agency’s plan to drop use of orders imposing restrictions as an interim step before issuing a significant new use rule (SNUR), which can entail a lengthy rulemaking process.
While environmentalists have dropped litigation seeking to compel EPA to amend the new chemical review process, Wheeler has signaled that EPA is planning to issue a revised framework after consultation with Democrats and public input.
During negotiations for Senate confirmation of toxics chief Alexandra Dunn, Wheeler committed to publishing EPA's “next version of this framework” and to hosting a public meeting to discuss it.
In a letter to Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Wheeler said that EPA's framework will specify the statutory and scientific justification for the approaches the agency plans to take as well as the policies and procedures that EPA plans to use in its pre-manufacture notification (PMN) reviews.
But in an email to Inside EPA, Denison doubts Wheeler's commitments. “From our perspective, [the revised framework] is already long overdue, given the flawed decisions the agency is busy cranking out,” Denison says. “And Wheeler also said the new version would include a legal and scientific justification for the agency’s approach, something the agency [has] never provided, and about which we are highly skeptical, to say the least.”
“'Expecting' Them Out Of Existence”
EDF’s analysis, detailed in Denison’s blog, appears likely to play into the debate on any new framework. It found that since last summer EPA has approved dozens of new chemicals or chemical uses without imposing restrictions, and that many approvals came despite EPA identifying either significant risks to workers, such as carcinogenicity or developmental toxicity, or deeming data inadequate to assess worker risks.
“So how does EPA make these risks to workers magically disappear -- without imposing a single condition on such chemicals?” Denison asks. “By simply ‘expecting’ them out of existence.”
He says that in deeming a new chemical that poses health hazards “not likely to present an unreasonable risk under the conditions of use,” EPA says in the approval that it expects workers will use appropriate PPE that a chemical’s producer recommends in a safety data sheet (SDS).
But Denison argues that EPA provides no evidence to support its expectation that workers will use PPE.
“SDSs impose no binding requirements either on employers or their employees to do so,” he says.
“The mere presence of language in an SDS is completely insufficient to conclude that PPE is actually utilized or is sufficiently effective and protective.”
Denison points to EPA and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) policies to show that an SDS alone does not require use of PPE and says significant evidence suggests that SDSs are often misunderstood or ignored. He also says regulators have deemed certain forms of PPE, such as respirators, a least effective means of protection.
As an example, he notes that while OSHA’s 2012 Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) requires chemical manufacturers to provide information on recommended controls, such as PPE, respiratory protection, or engineering controls, employers are not required to implement those recommendations.
Citing OSHA’s HCS, Denison says studies have shown that a third of employees do not understand SDS information, and 40 percent of surveyed workers who reviewed SDSs found them difficult to understand.
Denison says following OSHA’s Industrial Hygiene Hierarchy of Controls (HOC) is the “best available science and policy” for limiting workers chemical exposures, and notes that the HOC prioritizes eliminating or reducing workplace hazards over using PPE, which relies on workers protecting themselves.
He adds that the Obama EPA in 2016 proposed strengthening its SNUR process to align with OSHA’s update to its HCS and to incorporate the HOC into its regulation.
“Unfortunately, EPA has not finalized the proposed modifications to its SNUR regulations,” the blog says.
“While EPA had been incorporating language reflecting the HOC into consent orders it was issuing for new chemicals, it now appears EPA is abandoning reliance on the HOC altogether, both by failing to issue orders and basing its ‘not likely’ determinations on assumed use of PPE.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-weighs-changes-edf-says-new-chemical-approvals-fail-workers
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New TSCA Inventory Released by EPA Lists Active Chemicals
Feb 25, 2019 | EHS Daily Advisor
By William C. Schillaci
The EPA has released what it describes as the first update of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Inventory in 40 years. The update indicates that 47 percent of the 86,228 chemicals listed on the Inventory are “active,” which means they have been manufactured, processed, or imported for a nonexempt commercial purpose during the 10-year “lookback” period ending on June 21, 2016, the enactment date of the 2016 TSCA amendments.
Determining if a chemical is on the Inventory is a critical step before beginning to manufacture, process, or import a chemical substance. For purposes of regulation under TSCA, if a chemical is on the Inventory, the substance is considered an existing chemical substance in U.S. commerce. Any chemical that is not on the Inventory is considered a “new chemical substance.” Section 5 of TSCA requires that anyone who plans to manufacture a new chemical substance for a nonexempt commercial purpose must provide the EPA with a Premanufacture Notice (PMN) at least 90 days before initiating the activity.Existing but Not in Commerce
The TSCA Inventory has long been considered a bloated resource, loaded with chemicals that are no longer active and in commerce. Under the amendments, Section 8(b)(4)(A) gave the EPA 1 year to require that manufacturers notify the Agency about which of their Inventory chemicals are active; a chemical for which no notice was received would be considered inactive. The EPA spelled out the electronic notification requirements in what has been termed the TSCA Reset Rule (August 11, 2017, Federal Register (FR)). The reset rule also established procedures for “forward-looking” electronic notification of chemical substances on the TSCA Inventory, which are designated as inactive, if and when the manufacturing or processing of such chemical substances for nonexempt commercial purposes is expected to resume. On receiving a forward-looking notification, the EPA changes the designation of the pertinent chemical substance on the TSCA Inventory from inactive to active.
Under the reset rule, companies had about 13 months to provide notices. According to the Agency, more than 90,000 responses were received.Public and CBI Inventories
Under TSCA, the EPA also develops two TSCA Inventories—one version the public may access at any time and one version that is not accessible to the public because the manufacturers claim the information they provided to the Agency constitutes trade secrets. The TSCA amendments indicate that the EPA must develop criteria manufacturers must meet to substantiate their trade secret or confidential business information (CBI) claims. The Agency says it is in the process of developing a rule on how CBI claims must be substantiated. Also, the EPA notes that more than 80 percent of Inventory chemicals in commerce are not CBI.
According to the EPA, the updated Inventory will enable the Agency to focus its new TSCA risk evaluation responsibilities on chemicals that are actually in commerce.
Information about the Inventory, including instructions on how to access it, is available at https://www.epa.gov/tsca-inventory.
https://ehsdailyadvisor.blr.com/2019/02/new-tsca-inventory-released-by-epa-lists-active-chemicals/
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(ACC Mentioned) California Proposes Phaseout of Single-Use Plastics by 2030
Feb 23, 2019 | CNBC
By Jeff Daniels
California already has placed curbs on plastic items such as straws and bags — and this week legislation was introduced to phase out single-use plastic food containers and other packaging that isn't recyclable or compostable.
The proposed measure also would apply to polystyrene foam containers used for takeout meals, as well as plastic detergent bottles. Assembly Bill 1080, introduced Thursday, would phase out the single-use plastics by 2030 and follows concerns about plastic debris going in oceans and on beaches.
If the legislation becomes law, some experts believe it could lead to other states taking similar steps. In 2014 California became the first state with a single-use plastic bag ban, they noted, which led to at least four other states introducing similar measures.
"What we do in California tends to spread across the country," said Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, a nonprofit environmental group. "If manufacturers have to comply with this rule in California, they probably are going to do this across the country."
If passed, Murray said the legislation would be a "win" for companies making or marketing two common recycled plastic materials: polyethylene terephthalate (or PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE). PET is commonly used for plastic bottles that contain water or soda, while HDPE is used in milk jugs, shampoo bottles, household cleaning bottles and in some trash bags and cereal liners.
"For some plastic manufacturers who have invested in recycling and closed-loop recycling, this is going to be a boon," Murray said. "The losers are going to be polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride and polypropylene, because those are the ones that aren't being recycled."
Proponents of the legislation say it could help reduce the problem of plastic ending up along beaches and in oceans and rivers. The issue has been highlighted by reports of whales and other marine life found with plastic items in their stomachs.
"We have to stop treating our oceans and planet like a dumpster," said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, who authored AB 1080. "Any fifth-grader can tell you that our addiction to single-use plastics is killing our ecosystems." She added, "We have technology and innovation to improve how we reduce and recycle the plastic packaging and products in our state. Now we have to find the political will to do so."
At the same time, backers of the legislation argue that discarded plastics has become a bigger concern in the past year since China started turning away plastic waste beginning in 2018.
Gonzalez teamed up with state Sen. Bill Allen, D-Santa Monica, who in December introduced Senate Bill 54 in an attempt to reduce the amount of single-use plastic waste that ends up polluting waterways and other places.
According to Allen, the plastic waste often breaks down into toxic chemicals, including some considered cancer-causing. Plastic can take hundreds of years to biodegrade in the ocean, according to research from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"At the Plastics Industry Association, we believe uncollected plastics do not belong in our oceans or waterways," said Scott DeFife, vice president of governmental affairs for PIA, a D.C.-based trade association. "We share the goal of increased recovery in order for plastics to be used at their highest and best potential."
The American Chemistry Council, which represents leading makers of plastic resins, last May set a goal of 100 percent of plastic packaging being recycled, reused or recovered by 2040. ACC also advocates 100 percent of plastic packaging be recyclable or recoverable by 2030.
In 2014, California passed legislation to curb the use of single-use plastic bags at grocery stores. It mandated that retailers charge consumers for reusable plastic bags or paper bags.
Last year the Golden State became the first in the nation to restrict the use of plastic straws in restaurants with the passage of Assembly Bill 1884. The state also passed Senate Bill 1335, legislation reducing the use of non-recyclable takeout food containers.
"Last year we worked closely with Sen. Allen on his SB 1335, a bill that we ultimately supported which created new requirements that food-service packaging used at state facilities be recyclable or compostable," said Tim Shestek, senior director of state affairs for ACC. "We'd welcome the opportunity to work with Sen. Allen and all stakeholders on efforts to recycle and recover more plastic material so that it doesn't become waste or ocean litter."
However, some contend the state should stay out of the business of restricting plastics, whether straws or packaging. They also claim a small percentage of plastics in the ocean are coming from the United States.
"It won't change anything, and nobody will see a difference," said Kerry Jackson, a fellow at the Center for California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute, a conservative think tank based in San Francisco. "This is a freedom issue as well. [Companies] should be able to decide what they're going to give to customers, and customers should be able to decide what they want to get."
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/23/california-proposes-phaseout-of-single-use-plastics-by-2030.html
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(ACC Mentioned) New York Moves to Regulate a ‘Likely Human Carcinogen’ in Drinking Water
Feb 23, 2019 | PBS Newshour
By Hari Sreenivasan, Sam Weber and Connie Kargbo
New York state is proposing the country’s first firm limit on a chemical found in drinking water in heavy concentrations in some Long Island, New York communities. 1,4-dioxane has been labeled a “likely human carcinogen” by the EPA, but is not currently regulated in drinking water at the federal level. Hari Sreenivasan reports in this follow-up to our 2017 story.
Hari Sreenivasan:
The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced it would start the process of setting drinking water standards for two widely found chemicals by the end of this year. PFOA and PFOS were used to make things like non-stick cookware and water repellent materials. They have since been linked with cancer, kidney disease, and weakened childhood immunity. But the federal government regulating new chemicals in drinking water is uncommon. It's a task often left to states, if it happens at all. In tonight's signature segment we are updating a report on drinking water safety and New York state's push to regulate a chemical found in drinking water around Long Island. It's a story about how one region is trying to clean up its water, and how costly it can be.
Hari Sreenivasan:
So this is one of the more contaminated well sites?
Rich Humann:
Yea.
Hari Sreenivasan:
Engineer Rich Humann is showing me a water treatment plant in suburban Bethpage on Long Island, New York.
These cylinders are like giant versions of the water filter in your fridge. Installed in 1990, they use carbon to clean water polluted by decades-old industrial activity.
But they aren't effective at removing a new contaminant that has been detected in Long Island's water.
So what are these going to do?
Rich Humann:
So this is the advanced oxidation system that the Bethpage Water District had installed primarily to deal with 1,4-dioxane.
Hari Sreenivasan:
1,4-dioxane is a chemical found in degreasers, paint-strippers, solvents, and in some consumer products like detergents and soaps.
It's classified as a quote "likely human carcinogen" by the Environmental Protection Agency, associated with nasal cavity, liver and gall bladder tumors in animal studies.
Is there a gap between what's tested and what's in the water?
Adrienne Esposito:
The answer is yes. We have more emerging chemicals. We have to mandate that those chemicals are tested for.
Hari Sreenivasan:
Adrienne Esposito runs the Citizens Campaign for the Environment, which is based on Long Island. It has been raising alarms about the lack of regulation around 1,4-dioxane and other unregulated contaminants in drinking water.
Adrienne Esposito:
Each year we know a little bit more, we test a little bit more, and we find a little bit more and that's a little bit scary.
Hari Sreenivasan:
Between 2013 and 2015, the EPA required every large water provider in the US to test for 1,4-dioxane. That's the first step in whether or not a contaminant will be regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Results showed that Long Island was a hot spot.
More than 70 percent of water authorities here had levels of 1,4-dioxane above .35 parts per billion. That's the level that the EPA calculates poses a lifetime, one-in-a-million increased chance of developing cancer.
That may not sound like that high a risk level, but many sites here on Long Island had levels way above the ones associated with that long-term cancer risk. In fact, officials here in Hicksville had to shut down this well in 2015 because it was found to have levels of 1,4-dioxane that were the highest in the country, amounts that were nearly a 100 times higher than that one-in-a-million risk level.
But 1,4-dioxane's presence in drinking water doesn't mean it'll necessarily be regulated at the federal level. the EPA says it will not make any final determination until at least 2021.
Stan Carey:
The federal government didn't take a lead role in wanting to regulate it. So the state decided that due to the high occurrence on Long Island that we were going to take a closer look.
Hari Sreenivasan:
Stan Carey is the superintendent of the Massapequa Water District on Long Island. In 2017, he was appointed by Governor Andrew Cuomo to be on the New York State Drinking Water Quality Council. The council was charged with coming up with a level under which 1,4-dioxane and two other unregulated chemicals should remain.
Stan Carey:
Do you have any numbers if that standard was set lower?
Hari Sreenivasan:
In December 2018, the council recommended that the maximum allowable level of 1,4-dioxane in drinking water should be one part per billion. In other words, about three times the level associated with that one-in-a-million cancer risk.
Carey says he supports the recommendation of the council, but he actually would have allowed for more 1,4 dioxane to be in the water. He says other chemicals aren't regulated so stringently.
Stan Carey:
I don't want to, you know, jeopardize public health. I wasn't trying to do that. But other contaminants that are regulated, they are not regulated at the one-in-a-million cancer risk level. Vinyl chloride, TCE, Trichloroethylene, they're regulated in the range closer to one-in-ten-thousand. So putting it in perspective, that's what I was using as a comparison.
Hari Sreenivasan:
Carey also says that even though the limit might be one part per billion, the state ordinarily makes water suppliers take action before a chemical reaches the maximum level. Meaning in practice, water utilities will be forced to meet an even lower limit. And then there's the potential cost for water providers and ratepayers.
Stanley Carey:
You have to take in the cost of the treatment and there has to be a balance of actually what's feasible to implement.
Hari Sreenivasan:
Esposito says the proposed new limit, which would be the first firm regulation on 1,4-dioxane in the country, will protect New Yorkers.
Adrienne Esposito:
Right now there is no standard. So for the public to gain that level of protection, that's a significant advancement of public health protection.
Hari Sreenivasan:
Esposito acknowledges the challenge is how water providers will pay to meet this new state standard.
Adrienne Esposito:
Many of the water supplies do do due diligence. I think they actually want to know what's in the drinking water. The problem is when they find out something's there, the cost of the treatment.
Hari Sreenivasan:
New York state allocated $2.5 billion towards water infrastructure in 2017. And last October, the state announced $200 million of that money would fund treatment for emerging contaminants, including 1,4-dioxane.
At Bethpage's plant six, the level of 1,4-dioxane tested eight times higher than New York's proposed threshold.
Rich Humann:
So two million gallons a day water can be treated through this set of reactors.
Hari Sreenivasan:
The water district is piloting this advanced oxidation process, or AOP, and splitting the nearly $3 million cost with the state. The system, which is still being tested, is one of the only known ways to remove 1,4-dioxane from water
Rich Humann:
One of the more significant challenges in dealing with 1,4-dioxane is it's highly soluble which makes it difficult to come out of water through some traditional treatment techniques.
Hari Sreenivasan:
Humann showed us how it works. Hydrogen peroxide is added to the untreated water. The water is then run past UV lamps. The process breaks down and removes the 1,4-dioxane from the water.
Rich Humann:
You can do everything from a technical perspective and you can understand the theory and how the treatment supposed to work. But you know there's always the practicality of the actual operation of the system.
Hari Sreenivasan:
In fact there are unknowns about how this technology even works. At the Center for Clean Water Technology at Stony Brook University, researchers are studying the system using a miniature version, and setting up AOP pilot projects at four water utilities on long island. Arjun Venkatesan is the Associate Director for Drinking Water Initiatives at the center.
Arjun Venkatesan:
This is a simulated groundwater. We add known amounts of contaminants, in this case it's 1,4-dioxane, and the water is pumped through the reactor. This is set up in such a way that we can understand how quickly the dioxane degrades over time.
Hari Sreenivasan:
The Center's researchers are also looking at chemical byproducts created when UV light reacts with the contaminated water.
Arjun Venkatesan:
We want to make sure the advanced oxidation process system does not generate some toxic chemicals that we don't understand yet.
Hari Sreenivasan:
Long Island's industrial past plays a big role in its drinking water issues. Bethpage was home to a 600 acre complex where the US Navy and defense contractor Grumman, now Northrop Grumman, developed and built aerospace equipment from the mid-1930s to the 1990s. Industrial waste from the site has sunk down to the aquifer, which is the sole source of drinking water for nearly 3 million people on long island.
Engineer Rich Humann says the underground plume, as it's known, is a reality that water providers like Bethpage have to deal with.
Rich Humann:
We're never going to get away at least I'm going to say in my lifetime from the fact that we've got the old Navy/Grumman property
Hari Sreenivasan:
Right.
Rich Humann:
We've got one of the most significant groundwater contamination plumes in the entire country that this water district has been impacted like no other. And dealing with the burden that frankly no water supplier should have to deal with, but they have no choice.
Hari Sreenivasan:
Elsewhere on Long Island, some water providers are suing the makers of 1,4-dioxane. Since 2017, at least ten of them have filed lawsuits against Dow Chemical, and two other chemical manufacturers.
In a statement to Newshour Weekend, Dow said, in part, that, "these lawsuits are without merit."
The chemical industry more broadly downplays the risks from 1,4-dioxane. In a statement, the American Chemistry Council, an industry group, said, in part, it's "…troubled by [New York's]… recommendation for 1,4 dioxane…" Claiming that it's "…neither scientifically justified nor economically feasible." And points out that in Canada, the limit is 50 parts per billion, 50 times New York's proposed standard.
Meanwhile, in Bethpage, officials tell us it's not just the contaminants they know about, like 1,4-dioxane, that worry them.
Hari Sreenivasan:
Considering all of the other chemicals out there that have happened in the last 30 or 40 years. When science starts to figure out how to detect those in the water. Does that mean we're going to have to build new tools like this just to be able to get that out of our drinking water?
Rich Humann:
That's… If 1,4-dioxane as an indicator, then that's, that's likely.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/new-york-moves-to-regulate-a-likely-human-carcinogen-in-drinking-water
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Bayer Faces Second Trial Over Alleged Roundup Cancer Risk
Feb 25, 2019 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Tina Bellon
Bayer AG is set to face a second U.S. jury over allegations that its popular glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup causes cancer, six months after the company's share price was rocked by a $289 million verdict in California state court.
A lawsuit by California resident Edwin Hardeman against the company was scheduled to begin on Monday in federal rather than state court. The trial is also a test case for a larger litigation. More than 760 of the 9,300 Roundup cases nationwide are consolidated in the federal court in San Francisco that is hearing Hardeman's case.
Bayer denies all allegations that Roundup or glyphosate cause cancer, saying decades of independent studies have shown the world's most widely used weed killer to be safe for human use and noting that regulators around the world have approved the product.
Under a January ruling by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, who presides over the federal litigation, jurors in Hardeman's case will not initially hear all the evidence presented in last year's California trial.
Chhabria called evidence by plaintiffs that the company allegedly attempted to influence regulators and manipulate public opinion "a distraction" from the science in the cases. He said such evidence should only go before the jury in a second trial phase that would only take place if they determined Roundup caused Hardeman's cancer.
Evidence of corporate misconduct was seen as playing a key role in the finding by a California state court jury in August that Roundup caused another man's non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and that Bayer's Monsanto unit failed to warn consumers about the weed killer's cancer risks. That jury's $289 million damages award was later reduced to $78 million.
Bayer's share price dropped 10 percent following the verdict and has remained volatile.
Hardeman began using the Roundup brand herbicide with glyphosate in the 1980s to control poison oak and weeds on his property and sprayed "large volumes" of the chemical for many years on a regular basis, according to court documents. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system, in February 2015 and filed his lawsuit a year later.
But Hardeman has a history of hepatitis C, a risk factor for developing lymphoma. Bayer in court filings also said the majority of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma incidents are idiopathic, or have no known cause.
Plaintiffs criticized Chhabria's order dividing the trial and restricting evidence as "unfair," saying their scientific evidence allegedly showing glyphosate causes cancer is inextricably linked to Monsanto's alleged wrongful conduct.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/02/25/business/25reuters-bayer-glyphosate-lawsuit.html
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Minnesota Company May Have Leaked Carcinogen TCE into Air for Years
Feb 22, 2019 | CBS News
A Minnesota business may have been emitting a cancer-causing chemical into the air for a decade or more. Manufacturing company Water Gremlin is located White Bear Township, north of St. Paul, near several lakes and residential neighborhoods.
The Minnesota Department of Health and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency are investigating after the company was found to be releasing high levels of trichloroethylene (TCE) into the air, CBS Minnesota station WCCO reports.
Breathing in high concentrations of the carcinogen has been linked to kidney cancer, liver cancer and lymphoma. It can also impact the immune and central nervous systems, and it can cause heart defects in babies, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
John Bartholomew has lived near Water Gremlin for more than 30 years. About a month ago, he found out the air he has been breathing may have been contaminated with a cancer-causing chemical.
"We want answers. The whole neighborhood wants answers," Bartholomew said.
Founded in 1949, Water Gremlin makes fishing sinkers and battery terminal posts. The company has used the chemical TCE since the 1970s to clean and coat those posts, WCCO-TV reports. The business was supposed to have pollution control equipment in place to remove the chemical from the air before it left the building, but that equipment hasn't been working since at least 2009.
"Our concern is that this has had some health impacts on people in the community," said Jeff Smith of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).
The facility was checked several times a year throughout this time period, but investigators didn't notice the flaw and the company didn't report it.
"We expect that a facility as sophisticated as they are ought to know their pollution equipment is not working," Smith said.
Agency officials took questions from the community Thursday night and laid out the risk factors of this exposure.
"TCE is a significant hazardous air pollutant. It is something that at the federal level they are trying to ban right now," Smith said.
The MPCA was made aware than the company violated the air permit back in July, but the company was only asked to shut down the coating process in late January, the station reports.
With all of this concerning information coming to light, Bartholomew says his planned move from the neighborhood may have come too late.
"My wife is retiring. I am retiring, and we were planning on selling and downsizing this summer, so it will be interesting to see what the results are from this," he said.
Water Gremlin sent WCCO-TV the following statement from Vice President of International Manufacturing Carl Dubois:
Water Gremlin has been a proud member of the White Bear Township community for more than 60 years. We employ approximately 300 people from our region and manufacture fishing sinkers and battery terminals that are distributed across the globe.
We apologize for the concern and inconvenience this has caused. The safety of our employees and neighbors continues to be our number one priority. We are working with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to permanently resolve the issue and switch to an alternate solvent that is not a hazardous air pollutant. We will not restart our operations until we are in full compliance with MPCA requirements.
We are grateful for our partnership with the MPCA and the Minnesota Department of Health as we work to understand this situation and safely resume our operations.
Another community meeting is scheduled for March 7.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/water-gremlin-company-minnesota-company-may-have-leaked-carcinogen-tce-into-air-for-years/
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(ACC Mentioned) Bills Criminalizing Pipeline Protest Arise in Statehouses Nationwide
Feb 24, 2019 | Nation of Change
By Steven Horn
The oil and gas industry has started its 2019 lobbying efforts with a bang.
Eight different statehouses across the nation are considering bills criminalizing protests on property owned by the the oil and gas industry which critics say could squelch pipeline protesters and others calling attention to climate change-causing infrastructure.
The bills offer steep criminal penalties for trespass onto oil and gas industry-owned private property defined as “critical infrastructure” under state law. The legal definition of “critical infrastructure,” which incorporates essentially all assets serving as the bedrock of the current economic system, has greatly expanded in the post-September 11 era. With that expansion came increasingly harsh criminal enforcement mechanisms available to prosecutors in the name of protecting national security.
It is no coincidence that the bills are rolling out simultaneously with nearly identical language, in various states. The Real News has traced these bills back to model bills emanating from two organizations, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Council of State Governments (CSG), both of which receive generous financial backing from the oil and gas industry. In turn, the organizations serve as facilitators for doling out model legislation to state legislators.
Critical infrastructure bills of this sort, first passed in statehouses in early 2017 following the mobilization at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, have been taken up by both ALEC and CSG for use as model legislation.
In the first month of the year, Indiana, Wyoming, Illinois, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Idaho, and Ohio have all taken this template-based model legislation under consideration, which mirrors two bills passed in Oklahoma in 2017. Sandwiching them together as one, ALEC created the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act at one of its annual meetings held in December 2017. And the lobbyists and legislators involved in the organization in the room that day gave it a “yes” vote.
ALEC is a corporate-backed organization of state legislators and lobbyists; its membership base mostly consists of Republican members of state legislatures. It convenes three times per year for educational panel sessions, networking, and to vote on model bills. Those model bills then get distributed to state legislators nationwide, often becoming state law.
Just a week after ALEC’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Act was approved, the Council of State Governments (CSG), another corporate-funded organization, also adopted the same Critical Infrastructure Protection Act as model legislation, or what it calls Shared State Legislation. Like ALEC’s model bills, CSG also distributes its Shared State Legislation to statehouses across the country. But unlike ALEC, CSG has a bipartisan membership base and its general budget receives funding largely from taxpayers.
The ALEC and CSG model legislation calls for criminal punishment in the form of incarceration or heavy fines for those who “willfully and knowingly trespass or enter property containing a critical infrastructure facility without permission by the owner of the property.” It also allows for conspiracy charges to be brought against “persons who are found to have committed any of the crimes.”
Under the original Oklahoma bills, anyone who trespasses on critical infrastructure can face up to six months in jail and up to a $1,000 fine. If the state can prove intent to damage the property, individuals can be fined up to $10,000 and face a year in prison. And for actually damaging property, protestors can face up to 10 years in prison and be fined up to $100,000. Co-conspirators can see fines of up to $1 million.
In 2017, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Oklahoma all saw like-minded legislation pass, with the two pieces of Oklahoma legislation taken up as the gold standard by ALEC and CSG. Iowa and Louisiana both passed the model bill. Ohio considered the bill in 2018, but it did not pass; it’s been taken up again in 2019. In Wyoming and Minnesota the model bills advanced to the desks of their respective governors, but both received a veto.
CSG receives funding from companies such as Koch Industries, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Marathon Petroleum, as well as industry trade association groups like American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, American Chemistry Council, Edison Electric Institute, and American Gas Association. ALEC’s corporate funders include or have included the likes of Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, Energy Transfer Partners, Shell, and a long list of others.
Critics of the legislation have previously told The Real News that even if does not pass, its introduction creates a chilling effect for frontline activists who commit acts of civil disobedience in defiance of industry projects like pipelines and refineries.
“[The legislation] is going to create a real chill around the communities, the environmental communities, the civil rights communities, and others who are fighting against the pipeline and these energy things,” Bill Quigley, a professor at Loyola University New Orleans, told The Real News in a 2018 interview about the legislation in Louisiana. “This [is] criminalizing of dissent [and] criminalizing of alternative views. Again, the private for-profit oil companies are trying to force the state to use its powers to inhibit and clamp down on the First Amendment rights of people who are looking for ways to try to stop the pipelines.”
In advance of the ALEC meeting in December 2017, Marathon Petroleum, American Chemistry Council, Edison Electric Institute, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, and American Gas Association all wrote a letterto the state legislators informing them that ALEC’s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force would consider the model bill at the forthcoming meeting.
“Energy infrastructure is often targeted by environmental activists to raise awareness of climate change and other perceived environmental challenges. These activities, however, expose individuals, communities, and the environment to unacceptable levels of risk and can cause millions of dollars in damage,” they wrote in the letter, obtained and published by The HuffPost. “This model policy would help safeguard our nation’s critical infrastructure, while also holding individuals and organizations accountable for tampering with, and disrupting operations.”
Connor Gibson, a researcher with Greenpeace USA’s investigations team, provided research for this article, a trove of which is published on the blog PolluterWatch. Gibson, a longtime watchdog of ALEC, pointed to the contradiction of Koch Industries funding ALEC while also nominally supportingfederal criminal justice reform.
“ALEC legislators are out full force pushing bills to make felons out of peaceful protestors,” said Gibson. “Ironically, this is all happening while ALEC and Koch Industries are seeking credit for recent Congressional efforts to free nonviolent offenders from prison.”
Wyoming comes and goes
Wyoming, a state with heavy oil and gas industry presence and pipelines owned by companies like OneOK and TransCanada, was first out of the blocks in introducing the critical infrastructure legislation for the 2019 year. The state did so at the end of 2018 in the form of its HB 10. It was the state’s second attempt at passing the bill and, like the first time, it came to an end due to opposition within the Republican Party.
Two of the bill’s co-sponsors, Rep. Eli Bebout and Rep. Danny Eyre, pay dues as ALEC members. Bebout also sat on the CSG West Executive Committee for the 2017-2018 period. Senate bill sponsor Dave Kinskey, meanwhile, sat on the CSG West State and Federal Affairs Committee in 2018, while Drew Perkins sat as a CSG West Finance and Economic Development member in 2018.
The lobbying organization American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, of which Koch Industries subsidiary Flint Hills Resources is a member, was the organization which pushed the legislation. Lacking support from the Petroleum Association of Wyoming and coming under opposition by the state’s Native American tribes, the bill did not last long.
Other states have picked up the baton and ran with the legislation, including a few in the midwest.
Midwest bills
Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana legislators have all introduced the model bills in their respective statehouses. At least two of them, in Illinois and Indiana, appear to have momentum.
In Illinois, a state which uses hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) to obtain oil and gas in its southern tier, HB 1633 already has 14 co-sponsors—eight Democrats and six Republicans. On February 13, the bill was assigned to the House Judiciary Committee and received a hearing.
The Dakota Access Pipeline, owned by the company Energy Transfer Partners, ends in Illinois in the industry hub town of Patoka. So too does the TransCanada-owned Keystone Pipeline, as does a segment of the Canadian company Enbridge’s Illinois pipeline system. At the February 13 hearing, representatives for all three of those companies testified in support of the bill.
Three of the bill’s co-sponsors—Rep. Kelly Burke, Rep. Rep. Marcus Evans and Rep. Frances Ann Hurley—all have spent time in a leadership or training capacity within CSG. All three are Democrats.
Burke serves as both a member of CSG’s Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Legislative Caucus and sits on the Steering Committee of the CSG Midwest Bowhay Institute for Legislative Leadership Development (BILLD), while Evans served on the CSG Midwest Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee during the 2017-2018 year. Hurley, for her part, attended the 2016 BILLD session overseen by CSG Midwest.
Indiana, Illinois’ eastern neighbor, also has seen its SB 471 move swiftly through the legislature. On February 7 it passed unanimously, 49-0, in the Indiana Senate.
The Senate bill sponsors, Eric Koch and Michael Crider, both have connections to ALEC. Crider signed an ALEC letter published by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, urging then-U.S Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to support it. Koch, on the other hand, has long maintained a membership connection to the organization as a dues-paying member.
The two of them, both Republicans, also have gotten involved with CSG.
Crider attended the 2015 BILLD, which is a CSG five-day academy of sorts, geared toward midwest-based state legislators. The 2015 version of BILLD, according to the Web Archive, had a sponsor list which included pipeline company titans TransCanada and Enbridge, as well as petrochemical trade association group American Chemistry Council.
In an interview at the Indiana Statehouse, Crider denied any connection to ALEC, but did acknowledge his attendance at the CSG BILLD conference. He said he did not know this was a model bill for either of the two organizations. Crider formerly worked as the Director of Law Enforcement for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy.
For his part, Koch attended an August 2016 CSG gathering in North Dakota, The Fundamentals of Natural Gas Policy Academy, which transpired during the early days of the Standing Rock uprising that exploded in the fall of that year. Officials present heard presentations given by representatives from a wide range of oil and gas industry players, including the industry-funded U.S. Energy Association, pipeline company Tesoro, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, American Gas Association, and Piedmont Natural Gas.
Koch’s office did not make him available for repeated requests for comment for this story. Legislators from all of the other states which have proposed legislation also did not respond to requests for comment made via email.
In the interview with Crider, he maintained that he did not have concerns about potential First Amendment impacts of the legislation.
But he also said it’s ultimately up to courts to decide if it elevates to that level if a constitutional challenge is brought to the law on its face, or as-applied in action after a prosecution. He admitted, though, that the law’s mere existence on the books will likely stop many would-be activists in their tracks.
“Hopefully, the escalation of penalties makes it sure enough a deterrent that we won’t actually have one we have to try in court, that we have to try it,” said Crider. “So I think it’s, it’s one of those situations where, you know, we’re just trying to figure out.”
In Crider’s eyes, this is strictly an issue over protection of private property rights.
“From my perspective, if you have a private property situation with key critical assets on your property, then people who come on that property should be an invited guest, and once they’re on the property as invited guests then you don’t really have an expectation of privacy in that situation,” Crider explained. “I would say that, you know, once you have stepped on a property where somebody can articulate a reason for which—you either create a danger for yourself or for other members of the public [and for] the protection of commerce and the electric grid—if you can articulate that, then there’s clearly a reason why folks should be excluded from that property.”
Bowden Quinn, Director of the Hoosier Chapter of the Sierra Club, told The Real News that he sees the bill as an imminent threat for those doing environmental advocacy in the Hoosier State.
“You know, we were kind of thinking about trying to amend the bill to make it better at first,” said Quinn. “But our thought now is you can’t make this bill better. It’s a terrible bill. Its primary intent is to stifle free speech and public protests. And so we’re going to try defeat it.”
Quinn said he is also troubled by the “conspiring organization” language found within the bill.
“There’s a big refinery in Whiting, Indiana, the BP Whiting facility. And a couple of years ago we engaged with groups up there who wanted to organize a protest because they really expanding the facility to be able to take tar sands,” Quinn explained. “And so our group up there was initially in the discussions, but it became clear that some of the groups involved wanted to do civil disobedience and Sierra Club’s bylaws in general forbid us to participate in civil disobedience, so we withdrew.”
The action ended up happening, Quinn said, and some faced arrest for blocking a road considered private property under the ownership of BP.
“You know, just because we had been in the initial discussions or if we had tweeted just to inform our members that this demonstration was going to take place, could we be found under the current language in that bill to be a conspiring organization?” Bowden asked rhetorically. “If you have a good prosecutor, then probably not, but if you have some prosecutor who’s, you know, got an axe to grind against environmental organizations or wants to curry favor with the petroleum industry, they could go a long way with this.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Indiana has joined Indiana’s Sierra Club in opposing SB 471.
The Ohio legislation, newly introduced on February 12 as SB 33, has the same lead author as the 2018 version, Republican Senator Frank Hoagland, who is a dues-paying member of ALEC, according to documents filed with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office. Other co-sponsors, Senators Lou Terhar and Bill Coley, also sit as ALEC State Chairs. Four others—Senators Bob Peterson, Steve Wilson, Bob Hackett and Matt Hoffman—also pay their dues as ALEC members.
Ohio houses Energy Transfer Partners’ Rover Pipeline project and is a major producer of oil and gas obtained via fracking in the Utica Shale Basin.
Upper West Side
In the Great Plains and Mountain West, North Dakota and Idaho also have model bills under consideration.
North Dakota, ironically, had already passed multiple pieces of legislation in response to the Standing Rock protests, and passage of the ALEC and CSG model bill would only solidify already-passed state law. It would come in the form of SB 2044, a bill which passed through the Senate 42-3 on February 15with two Republican co-sponsors, Sen. Janne Myrdal and Rep. Chuck Damschen. Myrdal is a registered ALEC member, while Damschen signed onto the ALEC letter sent to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in support of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court..
North Dakota serves as one of the most prolific fields of the U.S. oil fracking boom, home of the prolific Bakken Shale formation, and the origin point of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Its legislature has also proposed a bill which would exempt the state apparatus from open records requests concerning the interaction of protests and oil and gas industry-related critical infrastructure.
Idaho has recently entered into the fold as well, introducing SB 1090 on February 11. It does not yet have a list of bill introducers or co-sponsors.
Show me down south
The “Show Me State,” Missouri, a state which houses the original TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, has also seen model bills move through its statehouse in the form of both HB 954 and SB 293.
In the deep south, Mississippi, too, introduced the bill. Introduced by Democratic Representative Angela Cockerman, HB 1336 died a quick death in committee. Cockerman attended and spoke at the 2017 CSG Southern Leadership Conference annual meeting, as well as a 2012 CSG delegation visit to the tar sands oil mines in Alberta, Canada.
Mississippi has numerous pipelines and oil and gas infrastructure situated on or along the Mississippi River, including the Mississippi Storage Hub owned by pipeline and export giant, Sempra Energy.
Pennsylvania
In, Pennsylvania—home of the gas-rich Marcellus Shale—has introduced similar legislation. The state has numerous pipelines which come and go from that major field, including the Mariner East pipelines owned by Energy Transfer Partners.
The state has yet to introduce legislation this year, but Senators Mike Reganand Scott Martin have announced their intentions to re-introduce two bills from the 2018 session. Martin explicitly stated in his sponsorship memorandum that the Standing Rock protests of 2016 inspired him to introduce the bill.
“The fundamental right to free speech, assembly, and petition is part of the bedrock of democracy and is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I of the Constitution of Pennsylvania,” wrote Martin in the memorandum. “However, it is improper for taxpayers to bear the financial burden for response costs related to illegal or destructive activity that stems from the right to protest on private or public lands.
”“Harder to Resist”
The bills have forced the hands of activists across the country, diverting time and energy that would be spent organizing towards fending off the model bills. Maggie Ellinger-Locke, staff attorney for Greenpeace USA, says she believes the impact will be felt in communities nationwide regardless of whether these bills become law.
“The vast majority of these bills have, so far, been defeated in one way or another. Either they are vetoed, don’t make it out of committee, expire, etc. But at core the problem here is that even where we can point to successes, the mere introduction of these bills has the power to chill speech, acting as a deterrent and discouraging resistance,” Ellinger-Locke told The Real News Network. “So we are hearing from people in the communities where these bills have been introduced that they are less likely to attend the next protest; these bills are sending a message that hurts a culture of activism. And the impact of that message falls disproportionately onto groups of people without access to institutional power.”
https://www.nationofchange.org/2019/02/23/bills-criminalizing-pipeline-protest-arise-in-statehouses-nationwide/
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FERC Considers Direct GHGs For LNG Projects, Omits Broader Analysis
Feb 22, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in a new order says it must consider the direct greenhouse gas emissions from liquified natural gas (LNG) export projects under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), but that it need not assess broader upstream and downstream GHG emissions as it must do for certain gas pipelines.
The commission’s 3-1 order, issued Feb. 21, is being called a “breakthrough” because it is the first approval of an LNG terminal in two years, ending a stalemate over GHGs in NEPA reviews after Democratic Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur agreed with the two Republicans on a more limited GHG review than environmentalists wanted.
The decision approves construction of Venture Global’s $5 billion Calcasieu Pass LNG Export Facility in Louisiana.
The project’s approval had been pulled from FERC’s December agenda, fueling speculation that there was a partisan deadlock. But LaFleur took issue with that in a Feb. 21 Twitter post.
“I have been troubled by the narrative that a partisan divide [at] FERC would prevent action on LNG exports,” she wrote. “Today’s order demonstrates that FERC can act when commissioners are engaged and willing to compromise. I remain committed to moving our work forward, but will continue to consider each project on the merits.”
FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee in a Feb. 21 statement touted the agreement as potentially providing “a path forward for consideration of [LNG] export terminals that are pending before the commission.”
FERC “applied a new approach for consideration of direct [GHG] emissions from LNG facilities,” which could set a precedent for how it considers 12 other pending LNG applications, Chatterjee said, adding that expediting LNG applications is a priority.
Chatterjee also thanked the commissioners who voted with him: LaFleur, who “was supportive of the project and constructive in working to reach our agreement,” and newly installed Commissioner Bernard McNamee, who “showed just how he got his reputation as being a ‘lawyer’s lawyer’ through his attention to the law and work to find common ground.”
However, it is unclear how lasting the agreement will be, given that LaFleur announced last month she would leave FERC as soon as June 30 and not seek a third term after it became clear that President Donald Trump would not re-nominate her. Under FERC’s rules, she has to be replaced by a Democrat.
The commission currently has four members, two Republicans -- Chatterjee and McNamee --and two Democrats -- LaFleur and Richard Glick. There is one vacancy, which will be filled by a Republican to replace former Chairman Kevin McIntyre, who died Jan. 2. It is unclear when Trump will announce picks for either that slot or LaFleur’s seat.
In a concurrence on the order approving the LNG project, LaFleur called the GHG agreement a good first step. She laid out her reasons for limiting the GHG review to direct impacts from construction of the facility and its operations, rather than a broader review that could include upstream emissions from induced gas production and downstream emissions from when the gas is burned.
Prior LNG Rulings
Specifically, she cited rulings by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit holding that the broader emissions impact consideration is up to the Department of Energy when it issues a determination that exporting LNG is in the public interest.
“This framework leaves the Commission with the limited authority to approve or deny an application” including based on a proper NEPA review, she wrote. Even so, she said FERC “still has the clear responsibility to disclose and consider the direct and cumulative impacts.”
The 2017 rulings she cited held that DOE satisfied NEPA even without broad upstream and downstream GHG reviews that the Sierra Club had sought. The opinion said that because DOE did not know where additional gas would be produced, it “was not required to ‘foresee the unforeseeable.’”
Here, FERC disclosed the direct construction and operational GHG emissions and compared them to the national inventory, a comparison it has used in the past, according to LaFleur. She noted that the magnitude of the direct emissions from the project “certainly appear to be significant, as contemplated by NEPA. However, to date, the Commission has not identified a framework for making a significance determination.”
LaFleur has advocated for monetizing the emissions using the social cost of carbon (SCC), noting that could help determine significance. While a majority of her colleagues have not embraced the idea, “I am confident that, given the importance of this issue, the Commission could find a way to adapt and apply a metric such as the [SCC],” adding that FERC “makes challenging determinations on quantitative and qualitative issues” in many other areas.
She also cited a key 2017 D.C. Circuit ruling, Sierra Club v. FERC, requiring FERC to broadly assess the downstream GHGs from its approval of the Southeast Market Pipeline Project. In response, she noted, FERC quantified “the net, gross and full-burn of downstream GHG emissions and compared them to state and national” inventories.
However, FERC is also seeking to limit the scope of that precedent only to pipelines where the destination of the gas is known.
LaFleur also wrote that she disagreed with FERC’s “failure to disclose and discuss cumulative potential direct GHG emissions” associated with the Calcasieu Pass LNG project as well as other nearby projects because a cumulative impact analysis is important and was done for other pollutants. She noted that five of the nearby projects are also LNG terminals “that have considerable direct GHG emissions,” and “it is clear that the liquefaction of natural gas for export has meaningful GHG consequences.”
The panel’s other Democratic member, Glick, issued the lone dissent in the Calcasieu Pass approval, citing climate change considerations. He charged the commission is “again deliberately ignoring the consequences that its actions have for climate change. Neither the [Natural Gas Act] nor NEPA permit the Commission to assume away the climate change impacts of constructing and operating an LNG facility that will directly emit large volumes of [GHG] emissions. Yet that is precisely what is happening today. . . . Similarly, the Commission’s NEPA analysis ignores the Project’s potential contribution to climate change, enabling the Commission to misleadingly conclude that its environmental ‘impacts will be reduced to less than significant levels.’ As a result, I have no choice but to dissent.”
Consistent Approach
In an analysis of the decision, Clearview Energy Partners says FERC has not changed its approach on LNG projects and limited GHG consideration under NEPA. “In other words, to the extent the D.C. Circuit allows FERC to sidestep the issue of upstream and downstream emissions,” FERC’s approach remains the same.
The analysis adds that based on the order and concurrence, “there must have been a lack of agreement over what comparisons/evaluations that FERC should make given the project’s estimated direct emissions from construction and operation. . . . The order issued today explicitly compares the direct GHG emissions to the national inventory and notes the absence of any benchmarks by which to assess the significance of the incremental emission increases the project would take.”
That “framework” will allow more projects to be approved despite LaFleur’s push to define a significance threshold and Glick’s dissent, the consulting firm says.
ClearView also cites draft proposed NEPA GHG guidance that the White House Council on Environmental Quality submitted Feb. 6 for interagency review. That guide “could help give FERC cover to follow its current approach for the time being.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/ferc-considers-direct-ghgs-lng-projects-omits-broader-analysis
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(ACC Mentioned) A Tale of Two Toxic Cities
Feb 24, 2019 | The Intercept
By Sharon Lerner
After a crucial division of the Environmental Protection Agency reassessed the dangers of two key pollutants — ethylene oxide and chloroprene — the risk of cancer from air pollution shot up in many communities around the country. In 109 census tracts around the United States, the risk was suddenly unacceptable, according to the EPA’s own standards. Yet the agency didn’t take the next logical step: regulating these compounds or limiting emissions to protect residents from exposure. Instead, what happened next depended on where these hotspots were — and who was living there.
IN WILLOWBROOK, ILLINOIS, an affluent suburb southwest of Chicago, residents were understandably horrified when they learned that they faced an elevated risk of cancer due to air pollution. According to the EPA’s most recent National Air Toxics Assessment, released in August, the residents of seven census tracts in the Chicago suburb and the surrounding area in DuPage County have a risk of developing cancer from air pollution that’s greater than 100 per million people, compared with the national average of 32 per million. The primary culprit was a chemical called ethylene oxide, a colorless gas emanating from a local plant owned by a company called Sterigenics. The chemical has been shown to cause reproductive problems, respiratory tract irritation, headaches, memory loss, and certain cancers, including leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and breast cancer.
When Gabriela Tejeda-Rios saw the list of health problems, a sickening wave of recognition washed over her. “It was like reading our medical history,” said Tejeda-Rios, an immigration lawyer who lives with her husband, two children, and mother just a half block from the plant. Since she moved to the house in 2009, Tejeda-Rios has suffered from intense headaches, dizziness, nausea, inability to concentrate, and memory loss. She has found it difficult to read through briefs, and almost instantly forgets movie plots and even some conversations. Both of her children, who have lived in the house for most of their lives, have had respiratory problems since they were little. Her 12-year-old daughter has often coughed to the point of vomiting and has developed a bone cyst. And one of her 9-year-old daughter’s classmates at the local elementary school was recently diagnosed with leukemia, as was Tejeda-Rios’s next-door neighbor, an otherwise healthy man in his early 50s.
The many doctors her family has seen over the past few years had been unable to explain their litany of health complaints. “It was always the same — ‘it’s a fluke, we don’t know why this is going on,’” said Tejeda-Rios. Knowing that there was an explanation for their suffering, that a chemical floating in their air has been wreaking havoc on each of their bodies, brought a strange form of validation along with anger — and shock.
Tejeda-Rios is not the only one experiencing disbelief about Willowbrook’s toxic burden. With 10 public parks, well-ranked public schools, and a “superior way of life,” according to its website, this leafy suburb doesn’t seem like a place where you’d find serious air pollution. In August, when a neighbor texted Neringa Zymancius, another area resident, about the ethylene oxide, “I literally wrote back, ‘Are you crazy?’ Because if we were being forcefully poisoned, there’d be a bigger hoopla about it,” said Zymancius. “There are reporters and doctors who live here, celebrities who live in the area.”
When they were moving from Chicago five years ago, Zymancius and her husband chose the neighboring town of Darien in large part because it seemed like a place where her children would be safe. “You look for sexual predators, good schools, taxes,” she said. “You don’t think you would have to look at air and water. You feel like it’s the one thing in our country we wouldn’t have to think about. We have the EPA, we have people who work hard to protect us.”
Zymancius’s friend turned out to be right about the pollution, as she and Tejeda-Rios learned when they attended a community-wide meeting in late August. The Sterigenics plant, which uses ethylene oxide to sterilize medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, and food, had been emitting dangerous levels of the chemical for 34 years.
It was only because a division of the EPA known as the Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, had assessed ethylene oxide in 2016 that they learned of the danger. The evaluation had changed the chemical’s status from a probable human carcinogen to plainly “carcinogenic to humans” and calculated a new risk threshold for ethylene oxide that was 30 times lower than the previous level. Two years later, the EPA used that new safety standard when calculating the values for its latest National Air Toxics Assessment (released in August 2018 but based on 2014 data), which gauges the health risks posed by air pollution in every census tract in the country.
Although the amount of ethylene oxide released into the air remained roughly the same — and, near the Sterigenics plant, had actually decreased slightly in recent years — because of the new IRIS level, the official reflection of the risk it posed suddenly shot up. When the new report came out on August 22, seven census tracts in DuPage County had cancer risk levels greater than what the EPA considers the “upper limit of acceptability”: 100 cancers per million people. In the most polluted tract in the county, the risk of cancer from air pollution was 282 per million.
Zymancius, Tejeda-Rios, and some of their neighbors immediately sprang into action. Within a few days of the public forum, they had formed a group called Stop Sterigenics. Less than six months later, that group has raised thousands of dollars, drawn more than 6,000 members to its Facebook page, held a lobby day to educate local legislators about the issue, and committed to doing whatever else it takes to rid the Willowbrook neighborhood of its chemical menace.
The people living in Willowbrook, Illinois, were understandably horrified to learn that they face an elevated risk of cancer due to air pollution. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent National Air Toxics Assessment, which was released in August, the residents of eight census tracts in the Chicago suburb and the surrounding area in DuPage County had a more than 100 in a million risk of getting cancer from air pollution. The primary culprit was a chemical called ethylene oxide, a colorless gas that emanated from a local plant owned by a company called Sterigenics. The chemical has been shown to cause reproductive problems, respiratory tract irritation, headaches, memory loss and certain cancers, including leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, and breast cancer.Willowbrook, Illinois -- Thursday, February 22, 2019Gabriela Tejeda-Riosm at right, and Lauren Kaeseberg are part of the core team that runs Stop Sterigenics.From the story:The people living in Willowbrook, Illinois, were understandably horrified to learn that they face an elevated risk of cancer due to air pollution. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent National Air Toxics Assessment, which was released in August, the residents of eight census tracts in the Chicago suburb and the surrounding area in DuPage County had a more than 100 in a million risk of getting cancer from air pollution. The primary culprit was a chemical called ethylene oxide, a colorless gas that emanated from a local plant owned by a company called Sterigenics. The chemical has been shown to cause reproductive problems, respiratory tract irritation, headaches, memory loss and certain cancers, including leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, and breast cancer.CREDIT: Alyssa Schukar for The Intercept
Protest organizer Neringa Zymancius of Darian leads the protesters in a chant in front of the Oak Brook headquarters of Sterigenics Friday, Sept. 14, 2018 in Oak Brook, Ill. Sterigenics uses ethylene oxide gas in nearby Willowbrook to sterilize items as part of their business. (Mark Black/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images) Neringa Zymancius, left, leads protesters in a chant in front of the Oak Brook headquarters of Sterigenics on Sept. 14, 2018, in Oak Brook, Ill. Photo: Mark Black/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images
“They poked the wrong bear,” is how Lauren Kaeseberg, an attorney and member of a core team that runs Stop Sterigenics, described the company’s decision to pollute her community. Since learning about the contamination, Kaeseberg has spent most of her waking hours while not at her job at the Illinois Innocence Project working to stop the emissions — poring over the plant’s contracts and permits, marshaling her personal and professional contacts, and reaching out to politicians.
The prosperous and well-educated community near the Sterigenics facility in Willowbrook is particularly well-positioned to fight the contamination. Per capita income in the most affected census tract here is more than twice the national average. The many lawyers in the area have helped connect residents with seven law firms that are now exploring litigation against Sterigenics. The village of Willowbrook has been able to pay for its own independent testing for the chemical. And the local reporters whom Zymancius counted among her neighbors have helped ensure that the crisis has been well-covered in the Chicago Tribune.
Yet it was not clear whether even the extraordinary efforts of this powerful community would be enough to remove the carcinogens from Willowbrook’s air. Even when government scientists quantify a clear health risk from a chemical, the people there have learned, there is no straightforward path to turning that number into enforceable regulation.
The risk levels set by IRIS are meant to guide lawmakers, who can use them to put legally binding limits on the chemicals — or to shutter factories that emit them. The EPA also uses the numbers along with emissions data reported by companies to estimate the local cancer risks in the National Air Toxics Assessment. But the values set by IRIS are not themselves binding, which left the people of Willowbrook in a strange situation: The government has precisely quantified the threat they face and yet offered no obvious way to address it.
And there’s another issue in play here: race. Most of the census tracts across the country with dangerous levels of air pollution have lower percentages of white residents than the rest of the country, according to an analysis of national air pollution data by The Intercept. The U.S. population is 72 percent white; on average, however, the census tracts with elevated risk of cancer from air pollution are 57 percent white. In Willowbrook, by contrast, they are 77 percent white.
No one should be poisoned by toxic air pollution, regardless of the color of their skin. But the national attention to the Willowbrook crisis has exposed a stark racial divide when it comes to federal, state, and local responses to toxic air pollution. And in all of these places, residents who want to rid their air of toxic pollutants are coming up against a powerful enemy: the companies that make these chemicals, which are waging their own far better funded campaign to keep their carcinogenic products from being regulated.
The Response
Many residents of Willowbrook have criticized the EPA for its handling of their ethylene oxide crisis. Zymancius said she was “disgusted” with the agency, which declined to close the Sterigenics plant, despite its own findings.
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin also called out the agency for not moving more quickly. “The EPA failed residents of DuPage County” and Lake County, another area of Illinois that has elevated levels of ethylene oxide “when it didn’t notify them in a timely manner of dangerously high levels,” Durbin said in November.
Outrage over the plant was fanned by a CBS report from early February that found the EPA and state authorities had known that Sterigenics was emitting ethylene oxide at levels that exceeded even the older safety thresholds. Despite these revelations, which Sterigenics disputed, the plant continued to operate — and to emit ethylene oxide in unsafe amounts. Monitoring results released by the EPA in early February measured the chemical in the air near Willowbrook Village Hall at 3,600 times the safety level set in the IRIS report.
Yet the federal agency has defended its response as swift. “EPA has been fully engaged in Willowbrook, working with elected officials, community leaders, local press and the facility to address and assess the ethylene oxide (EtO) issue,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement to The Intercept.
The EPA did begin addressing Willowbrook’s ethylene oxide problem well before the public was aware of it. In February 2018, six months before the national air toxics report was released, EPA staff began meeting with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the Centers for Disease Control, to discuss the risks ethylene oxide presented in Willowbrook. In May, the EPA began sampling the air near the Sterigenics plant. In June, staff from headquarters began providing technical support to its regional office and reviewing a permit application to install pollution controls in the plant. And by July, that equipment was successfully installed. Soon thereafter, the federal agency oversaw stack tests to make sure the equipment was functioning properly.
In August, the day before the national air toxics report was released to the public, the ATSDR published an evaluation of the potential health impacts of ethylene oxide from the plant in Willowbrook, which the EPA had requested. The report recommended “that Sterigenics take immediate action to reduce EtO emissions at this facility.”
Local officials were notified about the pollution the same day the national air toxic report was published, and a wide range of government representatives attended the public meeting about the ethylene oxide the following week. In addition to staff from EPA headquarters and its regional office, representatives of the ATSDR, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, and the DuPage County Health Department were on hand to address locals’ concerns, as were two members of Congress representing the area, a state senator, Willowbrook’s mayor, and the village’s trustees.
But residents were outraged by the emissions and angry they hadn’t been informed about the pollution as soon as the agency’s staff had learned of it, and the EPA’s attention didn’t quell the uproar. The agency dispatched its top officials to deal with the crisis. In November, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler met with Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth and two of the state’s congressional representatives to discuss Willowbrook’s ethylene oxide problem. That month, the chief of the EPA’s office of Air and Radiation, Bill Wehrum, went to Willowbrook to answer residents’ questions and assure them that the agency was considering more stringent limits on ethylene oxide. Wehrum also wrote to Durbin, Duckworth, then-Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, as well as three of the state’s congressional representatives to assure them that “the Agency shares your concerns and is taking actions to provide certainty to the residents of Willowbrook.”
Sterigenics responded to questions about this story with a statement that took issue with the IRIS assessment of ethylene oxide, describing it as “widely questioned and criticized by scientists and other experts and remains disputed, even within the U.S. EPA.”
Separate and Unequal
While the EPA was tending to the furor in Willowbrook, the agency was not paying particular attention to other communities facing dangerous threats from toxic airborne chemicals. St. John the Baptist, a small African-American community on the Mississippi River in Louisiana, may provide the best evidence that not all air pollution crises are treated equally.
St. John, a mostly black parish half an hour west of New Orleans, has an even bigger ethylene oxide problem than Willowbrook. In St. John, where ethylene oxide emanates from a factory run by Evonik Materials, a company that makes chemicals used in cosmetics, 12 census tracts face cancer risk from the carcinogenic gas that’s greater than 100 per million, compared with seven such tracts in DuPage County. The most highly affected area in St. John has a cancer risk from the gas of 317 per million, according to the national air toxics report. The highest cancer risk due to the pollutant in Illinois is 251 per million.
But ethylene oxide is just one of the toxic chemicals in the air in St. John. In the most heavily polluted census tract in this Louisiana parish, the air contains 45 industrial pollutants that cause cancer and other serious health problems. One of them is chloroprene, a chemical emitted by the country’s only neoprene factory, which sits just across a chain link fence from people’s homes.
Ninety percent of residents in that tract are African-American, with a per capita income of just over $17,000 a year — less than a fourth of the per capita income in the most polluted census tract in Willowbrook, which is $71,266.
Together this stew of chemicals gave the residents of this small neighborhood, where many of the streets are unpaved, a cancer risk from air pollution of 1,505 per million — the very highest in the U.S., according to the EPA’s most recent air toxics report. That’s more than five times the highest risk faced in Illinois, where the census tract with the highest cancer risk from industrial chemicals ranks 19th in risk of cancer from all air pollutants.
When I first visited this small neighborhood two years ago, many of the residents told me they felt they had borne an unusually high burden of disease for years. Lydia Gerard, whose husband had just been diagnosed with kidney cancer, was suffering from an autoimmune disorder that gave her rashes, welts, and stomach troubles. Trollious Harris had a rare autoimmune condition that took her mobility and caused her to stomach to stop working. And, at 54, Kellie Tabb had an irregular heartbeat and lung cancer, like several other nonsmokers in the neighborhood.
David Sanders, whose house looks out on the neoprene factory, suffered from seizures and breathing problems. Both Sanders’s parents had died of cancer, as did one of his sisters, his aunt, and his uncle. His first cousin Marcia, who lived next door, had recently developed sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease that has been linked to air pollution. The condition caused Marcia to lose her sight before she died in her early 40s.
“We all have all lost people,” Mary Hampton told me. Hampton lives less than a quarter mile from the neoprene factory, and just over 3 miles from the plant that emits ethylene oxide. Her daughter-in-law, son-in-law, and two sisters-in-law died of cancer in recent years.
Although in Willowbrook the EPA has worked alongside local and state officials to address the dangerous levels of ethylene oxide, the agency has done little or nothing in St. John, where people continue to breathe in the highest levels of carcinogens in the country.
“Nothing has really changed,” Hampton told me recently.
Asked for comment on this story, a communications manager for Evonik Corporation referred The Intercept to a September press release from the American Chemistry Council, an industry group to which the company belongs. The statement explained the group’s belief that the risk value set by IRIS was too low and “significantly flawed.” The press release included a link to the ACC’s request to the EPA for a correction of the IRIS assessment.
Dangerous Disparities
Even for the 59 communities (see table above) that have officially dangerous levels of the very same pollutant — ethylene oxide — Willowbrook’s treatment is unusual. The EPA has paid far less attention to the eight less affluent, less white communities in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas, Puerto Rico, and West Virginia where the risk of cancer from ethylene oxide is even greater. The average median income in these eight polluted areas is roughly $50,000, compared with $92,000 in Willowbrook. While the EPA created a webpage to address residents’ concerns about ethylene oxide in Willowbrook and another to address pollution in Lake County, Illinois, which ranks 42nd in the nation in terms of cancer risk from ethylene oxide, the agency didn’t make webpages about the ethylene oxide problem in any of these other places.
Nor did it send high-ranking agency officials — or, in most cases, any officials at all — to address local concerns in public meetings. In many of the places with the highest risk of cancer from air pollution, residents are not even aware they’re being exposed to the carcinogen.
St. Charles, Louisiana, a half-hour from St. John, hasn’t received its own webpage or a visit from EPA staff, even though ethylene oxide from a plant owned by Dow’s Union Carbide presents the highest risk of cancer from the chemical in the country. In St. Charles, the cancer risk from ethylene oxide is 710 per million people, according to the EPA’s air toxics report, almost three times the risk faced in the areas of Illinois most polluted by ethylene oxide.
While the EPA played a key role in getting air monitoring around the Sterigenics plant and helping the company install pollution control equipment, the people in these eight other communities got no help from the EPA in ensuring that the facilities responsible for the pollution would reduce their emissions.
"No one has required anyone to even consider putting on control technologies here,” said Wilma Subra, an environmental consultant who has been keeping some Louisiana residents abreast of the developments around ethylene oxide. “In Illinois, EPA had ATSDR look at the risk and do air monitoring. But here in Louisiana, where we have the highest risk for ethylene oxide, they didn’t do any of that.”
The EPA did not respond to questions about the discrepancies between the agency’s responses to air pollution problems in various parts of the country.
The people of St. John also learned about their air pollution problem because of IRIS. In their case, the revelation stemmed from a 2010 assessment that deemed chloroprene to be much more dangerous than previously thought. The assessment found that the gas that had been released into their community since 1969 increased rates of leukemia, lung cancer, kidney cancer, and liver cancer.
The safety threshold calculated in the 2010 IRIS evaluation made it clear that the plant, then owned by DuPont, was emitting chloroprene at dangerous levels — and had been for decades. (DuPont sold the plant to a Japanese company called Denka in 2015.) But no one from the agency mentioned the dangerous new levels of the carcinogen to people living near the factory when the assessment was published. Nor did anyone alert residents to their risk — which was the highest in the country — right after the National Air Toxics Assessment came out in December 2015.
In a written response to questions for this article, a spokesperson from Denka criticized the safety level for chloroprene calculated by IRIS as “based on incomplete and flawed data” and disputed the characterization of its emissions as dangerous: “Scientific research shows Denka Performance Elastomer’s operations do not pose any additional health risks to the surrounding community.”
Denka’s spokesperson also cited research to back up that claim, noting in particular that “a published peer-reviewed study that tracked more than 15,000 workers in Neoprene plants across the world, including 1,400 from the [St. John] LaPlace facility, found no increased incidence of cancer deaths among them since the 1940s.” That study was paid for by the International Institute of Synthetic Rubber Producers, an industry group that includes DuPont as a member. Independent studies have shown that exposure to the chloroprene increased the risk of leukemia, kidney cancer, liver cancer, colon cancer, and liver cancer.
Unlike in Willowbrook, where the EPA apprised local officials of the risk the very same day the NATA report was published and within a week was presenting residents with information about the risks they faced, in the most affected census tract in St. John, people didn’t learn about their risk from chloroprene until eight months after the 2015 national report was published.
In St. John, there were no visits from high-ranking federal officials eager to answer residents’ questions. Nor did the ATSDR write or present the people of St. John with a report explaining the dangers they faced from the plant near their homes, or how to mitigate them.
The director of the EPA’s Office of Research and Development wrote to the agency’s regional office about the problem in May 2016, five months after the publication of the NATA report. But residents of St. John only learned about the problem in July, after a small handful of locals attended a meeting with a representative of the EPA’s regional office and parish leaders. The meeting wasn’t publicized, according to Robert Taylor, who was present. Only three to five community members attended, Taylor said, and those who wanted to ask questions had to submit them in writing. The EPA did set up a webpage with information about chloroprene in St. John.
As in Willowbrook, people in St. John were terrified and angry to learn about the dangers of the chemical they had been breathing for decades. Both communities were extremely worried about their children, who are particularly vulnerable to air pollution. And, as in Willowbrook, the Louisiana community very quickly formed a residents’ group, Concerned Citizens of St. John, to protect themselves from the pollution.
Members of the concerned citizens group with Wilma Subra at an open house meeting with School Board and Lawyers about air quality situation in St. John The Baptist Parish. Members of Concerned Citizens of St. John attend an open house meeting with the school board and lawyers about the air quality in St. John on March 18, 2018. Photo: Julie Dermansky
Fearmongers or Change-Makers?
But the community groups have met with very different responses. In Illinois, outrage over ethylene oxide has relatively quickly led to action. In August, days after the news about Sterigenics broke, state lawmakers introduced legislation that would make it impossible for facilities to release ethylene oxide above the safety threshold set by IRIS. By November, another state bill had been filed that would make the use of ethylene oxide illegal by 2021.
In Washington, D.C., Sens. Duckworth and Durbin have led the charge against the chemical. In November, the senators, along with congressional representatives from Illinois, introduced two bills addressing the pollution crisis. One would require the EPA to change emission standards for the chemical and notify the public within 30 days if that standard is violated. The other, the Ethylene Oxide Is Toxic Act, would institute several protections, including a requirement that the EPA notify Congress, state and local public health departments, and affected communities when air pollution reaches a dangerous level.
And just over a week ago, less than six months after they first learned of the pollution, Willowbrook residents finally triumphed over their local polluter and brought an end to the release of the carcinogenic gas. A February 15 order from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency suspended operations at the Sterigenics facility, halting the use of ethylene oxide “until measures are in place to prevent emissions of ethylene oxide that contribute to ambient levels of ethylene oxide which present a public health hazard to residents and off-site workers in the Willowbrook community.” The order, which was issued with the approval of Gov. J. B. Pritzker, used a little-known provision of Illinois law that gives the state the authority to “seal” facilities that create an immediate danger to public health.
Sterigenics called the closure “indefensible” in a statement that went on to describe the state’s closure of its plant as endangering health. “Unilaterally preventing a business that is operating in compliance with all state permits and regulations from carrying out its vital function sets a dangerous precedent. The Illinois EPA’s decision will place the health and lives of thousands of patients who rely on the critical medical products sterilized at Willowbrook at risk.” On February 18, Sterigenics sued the IEPA, arguing that the state was wrong to close the plant because it was operating according to its permits. (On February 20, a judge refused to lift the shutdown order.)
The news of the closure reached the members of Stop Sterigenics in the early evening. By the time they met in front of the plant to celebrate, it was already dark and only 19 degrees. After marveling over the police order taped to the factory door, Kaeseberg cranked “Hit the Road, Jack” on her phone, and she and her fellow activists danced in the freezing night. Afterward, dozens of residents and local lawmakers from both sides of the aisle gathered to toast their victory.
While lawmakers and residents were celebrating in Willowbrook, Louisiana lawmakers have yet to introduce either federal or state legislation addressing the air pollution crisis or address it publicly at all. And instead of sparking legislative action, the squeaky wheels of St. John have met with indifference and sometimes hostility from their government representatives.
Only one member of the group’s congressional delegation has responded to Concerned Citizens of St. John. “We sought help from our U.S. congressman, who sent a representative to one of our meetings,” said Robert Taylor, one of the group’s founders. “He sat in the meeting, said nothing, and got up and left. We never heard from him again,” Taylor added. “And we’ve never heard anything from either of our senators.”
Taylor’s group did get a visit from New Jersey senator and presidential hopeful Cory Booker, who stopped by St. John as part of a tour of some of the most polluted parts of Louisiana. Rather than treating his visit as a call to arms, one of the local papers, The Advocate, ran an editorial chastising Booker for criticizing the polluters without considering “the jobs and growth that the petrochemical corridor provides for the state.”
When one elected official — a local school board member named Patrick Sanders — attended the group’s meeting in January, Taylor publicly heralded him just for showing up. “It takes courage on the part of any politician to come and speak to us,” Taylor told Sanders as he sat among a few dozen of his neighbors gathered in a local church.
When I first visited met Taylor in 2017, he had just begun trying to call attention to local air pollution after his wife and daughter became gravely ill. While we spoke, his wife, Zenobia, who has multiple sclerosis and breathing difficulties, lay motionless on the family’s couch. His 48-year-old daughter, Raven, who has an extremely rare autoimmune condition, was bed-bound. Unable to digest food, Raven had recently been forced to abandon her nursing career. She had already had her uterus removed and a gastric pacemaker installed.
“It’s too much,” Taylor had said, by way of explaining how he, a 78-year-old musician who had spent his decades observing the problems around him, became someone who arranged community meetings, made posters, and stood in the streets carrying them.
In a state where chemical companies account for a significant portion of the economy, Taylor knew the group would be treading on sensitive ground. Lest they be branded as anti-business, he and other members have been careful to avoid asking for the Denka plant to be shuttered. Instead, the activists have requested only that the company bring its emissions down to 0.2 micrograms of chloroprene per cubic meter of air, the maximum level the IRIS report deemed safe.
“We just want to stop being poisoned,” Taylor said.
Still, Concerned Citizens of St. John has been tarred as troublemakers. “We’ve been ostracized, outcast,” said Taylor. After the group raised concerns about chloroprene at a 2016 meeting with Chuck Carr Brown, the secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality, Brown criticized them for “fearmongering.” When asked about the criticism, a spokesperson for Brown said that he was not talking about the advocacy group when he used the term “fearmongering.”
Over the past few years, as the group’s cries for help have become increasingly desperate, Taylor has become even more outspoken about why he thinks their concerns have gone unheeded — and why DuPont first located the factory in St. John. “They looked at this community and did like they normally do,” said Taylor. “If we find a place where it’s just going to be Negroes, we can set up business there, we can set up shop there, because nobody cares about them.”
Meanwhile, the toxic emissions in St. John continue. Although the local activists have held rallies, picketed in front of local schools wearing T-shirts emblazoned with 0.2 to remind passersby of the safety threshold for chloroprene, and worried aloud over the fate of their children at virtually every one of the bi-monthly meetings they’ve held over the past two years, they still haven’t manage to convince authorities to bring the carcinogens in their air down to a safe level.
Denka has said it is unable to lower its chloroprene emissions to EPA’s safety limit. Instead, in 2017, the company installed pollution controls that it said would bring its emissions down by 85 percent. In a statement, the company said that it spent over $35 million on “several major emissions reduction projects,” and that, as a result, the company “will very nearly meet its 85 percent reduction estimate once calculations have been completed.”
There has been a slight reduction of chloroprene emissions since last summer, when the most recent report came out. But air monitoring from November showed that emissions still hit levels that are hundreds of times above what’s safe, according to the EPA’s 2010 assessment. In October, students at East St. John High School were exposed to more than 152 times the threshold set by the IRIS report — more than the highest levels recorded at that spot before the pollution control equipment was installed. And at the local elementary school, Fifth Ward Elementary, just two blocks from the factory, almost 500 young children are still being exposed to the carcinogen. The highest readings released in October were slightly down from the heights they reached in 2016, but they were still as much as 289 times the EPA’s limit. In December, the levels were lower but still reached more than 124 times the safety limit.
In Willowbrook, until last week’s order from the Illinois EPA, children were still being exposed to carcinogens, too. Four schools and a daycare center are within a mile of the Sterigenics plant. In mid-January, EPA monitoring measured ethylene oxide in air outside of the local middle school and high school at more than 200 times the safety limit in the IRIS report. A few days later, the levels had dropped at the schools, but were higher than ever at several other points in town. And independent testing done by a company hired by the village of Willowbrook found the chemical at dangerous levels at various spots inside several schools, including the library of Gower Middle School, where the ethylene oxide was measured at 163 times the safety threshold.
Darien, Illinois -- Thursday, February 22, 2019Lauren Kaeseberg, a lawyer and part of the core team that runs Stop Sterigenics, poses for a portrait in her home. Kaeseberg, who worked in Willowbrook, died of cancer at age 59.From the story:The people living in Willowbrook, Illinois, were understandably horrified to learn that they face an elevated risk of cancer due to air pollution. According to the Environmental Protection Agencyís most recent National Air Toxics Assessment, which was released in August, the residents of eight census tracts in the Chicago suburb and the surrounding area in DuPage County had a more than 100 in a million risk of getting cancer from air pollution. The primary culprit was a chemical called ethylene oxide, a colorless gas that emanated from a local plant owned by a company called Sterigenics. The chemical has been shown to cause reproductive problems, respiratory tract irritation, headaches, memory loss and certain cancers, including leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, and breast cancer.CREDIT: Alyssa Schukar for The InterceptDarien, Illinois -- Thursday, February 22, 2019In Lauren Kaeseberg's home, she displays a photo of her mother Marsha Kaeseberg, who worked in Willowbrook and died of cancer at age 59. Lauren Kaeseberg is part of the core team that runs Stop Sterigenics.From the story:The people living in Willowbrook, Illinois, were understandably horrified to learn that they face an elevated risk of cancer due to air pollution. According to the Environmental Protection Agencyís most recent National Air Toxics Assessment, which was released in August, the residents of eight census tracts in the Chicago suburb and the surrounding area in DuPage County had a more than 100 in a million risk of getting cancer from air pollution. The primary culprit was a chemical called ethylene oxide, a colorless gas that emanated from a local plant owned by a company called Sterigenics. The chemical has been shown to cause reproductive problems, respiratory tract irritation, headaches, memory loss and certain cancers, including leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, and breast cancer.CREDIT: Alyssa Schukar for The Intercept
Left/top: Lauren Kaeseberg, a lawyer and part of the core team that runs Stop Sterigenics, in her home on Feb. 22, 2019. Right/bottom: A photo of Kaeseberg's mother, Marsha, who worked in Willowbrook and died of cancer at age 59.Photos: Alyssa Schukar for The Intercept
The emissions have been infuriating to Lauren Kaeseberg, who grew up in the Willowbrook area and moved back a few years ago. Kaeseberg attended high school less than half a mile from the plant during its peak year of emissions, 1998, when the Sterigenics facility sent more than 30,000 pounds of the chemical through its stacks. Kaeseberg believes those emissions are the reason that so many of the people she knows were struck by cancer, including classmates and her mother, who died in 2010 at age 59.
“Cancers have plagued our community. Growing up we thought that was normal,” said Kaeseberg. “I feel so angry that I sat there unknowingly breathing in that crap.” Having children of her own in a local school and daycare in the area moved Kaeseberg to no longer be a passive victim of Sterigenics. So in addition to working with Stop Sterigenics, she is now running for her local school board and, if she wins, plans to advocate for the board to monitor ethylene oxide levels in schools.
At best, even when the U.S. government takes action, regulating air pollution can take years. On the federal level, IRIS is supposed to play a critical role in keeping Americans safe. By law, the values calculated in its chemical assessments are meant to help set national standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants and for cleanups at Superfund sites as well as enforceable levels under the Safe Drinking Water Act and Clear Air Act. States can also use the assessments to set safety levels, which in turn are used in permits for facilities that emit these chemicals.
But decades can go by before published studies make their way into IRIS assessments. Twenty-five years elapsed between the most recent chloroprene assessment and the government’s previous report on the chemical. For ethylene oxide, the process took even longer.
Even more time can pass before states use those IRIS numbers to set regulations — if they ever do. Meanwhile, states set permits for industrial facilities based on outdated science. In the cases of both the Denka plant in St. John and the Sterigenics facility in Willowbrook, emissions that were well above the safety limits calculated by the EPA were nevertheless below the legal levels set by states in their permits.
Willowbrook, Illinois -- Thursday, February 22, 2019. Air quality monitoring devices hang between the two Sterigenics buildings, one of which is seen at right, in the Willowbrook Municipal Campus. Sterigenics has been emitting a carcinogenic chemical called ethylene oxide.CREDIT: Alyssa Schukar for The Intercept Air quality monitoring devices hang between two Sterigenics buildings, one of which is seen at right, on the Willowbrook Municipal Campus on Feb. 22, 2019. Photo: Alyssa Schukar for The Intercept
Three Bad Chemicals
And yet the biggest hurdle for polluted communities isn’t necessarily the slow-churning bureaucratic system that allows regulation to lag so far behind government science, leaving chemicals in a gray area of the law, but the companies that take advantage of that uncertainty. Chemical manufacturers have long bristled at regulation and employed scientists and lawyers to fend it off. IRIS, the only division of the EPA that independently assesses the toxicity of industrial chemicals, has been a favorite target of chemical companies for years.
Today the regulatory process is increasingly paralyzed by this corporate pushback, making it even harder for people contending with air pollution.
Three main chemicals are responsible for more than 90 percent of the cancer risk from air pollution in the 109 census tracts that have an officially elevated risk, according to an analysis by The Intercept: ethylene oxide, chloroprene, and formaldehyde, a chemical used in building materials, glue, and fabrics that has been linked to cancers. If these three pollutants were eliminated, only one census tract in the U.S. would have a cancer risk from air pollution above 100 per million. In both St. John and Willowbrook, the cancer risk for air pollution would be well under 20 per million.
Yet the EPA hasn’t moved to ban or put national restrictions in place for any of these pollutants. For each, the chemical industry has repeatedly attempted to cast doubt on the government science — interventions that have worked to slow or halt the process of regulating the chemicals in communities rich and poor.
In the case of the chloroprene assessment, Denka has employed a consultant named Kenneth Mundt to undermine science that has already undergone decades of scrutiny. For example the National Toxicology Program’s Report on Carcinogens described chloroprene as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” back in 2000, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified it as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” in 1999. Yet Mundt, who was originally hired by DuPont, claimed that the 2010 IRIS assessment of the chemical was flawed. In the past two years, Denka twice requested that IRIS increase its safety threshold and change its classification of chloroprene as a “probable” human carcinogen.
Denka and Mundt had help from the Republican-led House Science Committee, which invited Mundt to be the main witness at a 2017 hearing on IRIS. The Congressmen described the EPA’s work on the chemical as “overreach” and spoke of eliminating IRIS.
IRIS denied the company’s first request to change the risk value of chloroprene. Tina Bahadori, director of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment, which includes IRIS, told The Intercept in 2017 that the government scientists had turned down Denka’s request for reconsideration. “It was our firm response that you can’t change the science just because you don’t like the answers,” said Bahadori.
But last year industry consultants submitted another request for the chloroprene assessment to be reconsidered. Denka gave the EPA even more information this month, according to an agency spokesperson. Though it may ultimately reject the company’s suggestions, IRIS is once again considering them.
The chemical industry is waging a similar campaign to exonerate ethylene oxide. In September, the American Chemistry Council requested that the EPA correct the assessment of that chemical, too, insisting it was “substantially flawed” and asking the agency to not just change the evaluation but also the values calculated in the National Air Toxics report. Dow, which operates the Union Carbide plant in St. Charles, the biggest emitter of ethylene oxide in the country, has also disputed the assessment. In its suit against IEPA, Sterigenics also disputed the “accuracy and validity” of the IRIS assessment of ethylene oxide.
And in late December, the EPA issued a highly unusual request for public comment on the use of the risk value IRIS calculated for ethylene oxide in an unrelated document. In a letter to acting EPA Administrator Wheeler, Duckworth said she was alarmed that hidden inside a 103-page document “was a troubling information request that appears to be a transparent invitation for the public — including chemical industries — to weaken EPA’s forthcoming rules intended to protect Illinoisans and Americans throughout the nation from elevated levels of cancer risk resulting from exposure to ethylene oxide.”
“I’ve never seen this before,” said Emma Cheuse, a staff attorney at Earthjustice who has been working on protections from ethylene oxide. “It’s shocking that EPA would attempt to question or ignore the most current scientific assessment.”
The EPA responded to an inquiry about the request for public comment with an emailed statement saying that the agency intends to evaluate and address facility-wide risks due to ethylene oxide in future rule-making.
Meanwhile, an IRIS assessment of formaldehyde has been near completion for years but has yet to be released. In 2015, that scientific report was being reviewed and prepared for public comment, according to an IRIS document from that year. But formaldehyde was absent from the division’s most recent agenda, published in December.
Willowbrook, Illinois -- Thursday, February 22, 2019. A seal order from the Environmental Protection Agency of the state of Illinois is duct taped to every outside door at the Sterigenics plant, which has been emitting a carcinogenic chemical called ethylene oxide. One of the buildings is about 0.2-miles away from homes in Willowbrook. CREDIT: Alyssa Schukar for The Intercept A seal order from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is duct-taped to the door of a Sterigenics facility in Willowbrook. Photo: Alyssa Schukar for The Intercept
A recent Trump appointment may explain the disappearance. At the end of September, David Dunlap, the former director of policy and regulatory affairs for Koch Industries, was appointed to run the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, the division of the EPA that includes IRIS. Koch Industries owns Georgia-Pacific, which is a major producer and user of formaldehyde, and Koch has lobbied against designating the chemical as a carcinogen for years. And Dunlap had represented formaldehyde manufacturers on a panel of the American Chemistry Council that disputed the link between the chemical and leukemia.
On December 19, Dunlap voluntarily recused himself from work on the IRIS evaluation of the chemical — the very same day the EPA released the IRIS agenda that omitted formaldehyde. In his letter, Dunlap committed not to work on the formaldehyde assessment in the future but didn’t address any work he might have already done on it during the two months he had been at the agency.
When asked about the timing of the letter, an EPA spokesperson said in an email that assistant EPA administrators and their deputies set the priorities for IRIS assessments and did not identify formaldehyde as a top priority.
But a leaked copy of a Government Accountability Office report found that EPA leadership has been hindering IRIS’s work, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. Agency staff directed the heads of various EPA programs to limit the number of chemicals they wanted IRIS to study, and nine of 16 assessments — including the assessment of formaldehyde — were subsequently dropped, according to the story.
IRIS also has apparently delayed the release of a handbook laying out its independent process for developing and reviewing chemical assessments. Last year, the National Academy of Sciences had praised a draft of the document, which was expected to be published shortly thereafter.
While the draft formaldehyde assessment hasn’t been made public, a central issue for the chemical is its relationship to leukemia. In 2014, the National Toxicology Program identified the link with leukemia when classifying formaldehyde as a known carcinogen. But the American Chemistry Council has disputed that finding and insists that the chemical doesn’t cause cancer. While the lobbying group has held this position for years, the most recent evidence it cites comes from Kenneth Mundt, the same scientific consultant who has challenged the evidence of chloroprene’s harms.
Formaldehyde already accounts for more than half the nationwide cancer risk from air pollution around the country, according to the National Air Toxics Assessment. And that’s using a safety threshold set in 1989. If the updated formaldehyde assessment were to be released, it could very well drive that number significantly higher.
Yet that’s unlikely to happen soon. While formaldehyde is no longer on the IRIS agenda, the American Chemistry Council has been working to have the chemical considered under another division of the EPA, which is headed by one of its former executives, another Trump appointee named Nancy Beck. In her first 10 months at the agency, Beck had 19 calls or meetings related to IRIS, according to documents released in response to a FOIA request filed by the Environmental Defense Fund.
The EPA ultimately may not grant the industry requests to revise its assessments. But even if the agency rebuffs the industry, the requests have allowed chemical manufacturers to cast doubt on the safety standards. When I asked Chuck Carr Brown, the head of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, why his agency wasn’t requiring the Denka plant to lower its chloroprene emissions to the safety level IRIS had calculated, Brown told me that “there are folks that are challenging IRIS.”
Robert Taylorís daughter, Raven Taylor, homebound due to a rare autoimmune disease. g Robert Taylor’s daughter, Raven Taylor, at home on Jan. 6, 2018. She is homebound due to an extremely rare autoimmune condition. Photo: Julie Dermansky
Matters of Life and Death
The decisions and calculations made by government have become matters of life and death in the parts of the country struggling with the worst air pollution. In Willowbrook, that realization sparked a victorious campaign against their local polluter. “Zero was the only number we accepted,” Kaeseberg said after the plant was forced to shut its doors.
As they are in St. John, the residents of Willowbrook have been primarily concerned with protecting their own community from the immediate threat it faces. But in their six-month fight, they have come to realize that the battle over air pollution is bigger than the factory in their village. “Sterigenics is our monster, but they’re not the only one,” Kaeseberg told me. Within a few months of learning about their own toxic air, Stop Sterigenics members located two plants in Lake County, Illinois, that were also emitting ethylene oxide. And, even after Sterigenics was forced to stop operating, the group chose not to cancel a planned lobbying day at the state capitol. Instead, they met with legislators and argued that all facilities should be permanently banned from the release of ethylene oxide throughout the state.
“We added more people to meet with legislators,” said Kaeseberg, who is hoping Willowbrook’s victory will send a hopeful message to other activists in Illinois and throughout the country. “It shows that a group of people, if you’re loud enough and you are strategic enough and you’re relentless enough, you can take some of the power back from these corporations and lobbyists,” she said.
Yet in St. John, almost three years of being loud and relentless has yet to pay off. And while they’ve been waiting for authorities to respond to their outrage, many of the people at the center of that fight have become more focused on survival than strategy.
For Raven Taylor, the past few years have been particularly difficult. Taylor, who is still struggling with a rare autoimmune condition, has had seven surgeries since I first spoke with her in 2017. Her good friend Trollious Harris died almost a year ago. Harris was 49, just a few months younger than Taylor, and grew up around the corner.
“That was hard on me,” said Taylor. The two used to commiserate about the extremely uncommon stomach problem they both shared, gastroparesis. Although the disorder is very rare, Taylor has met a few others in St. John with the same condition. The only other people she’s ever encountered who had the disease live in a Kentucky community where another DuPont plant emitted chloroprene while making neoprene. That plant, in Rubbertown, Kentucky, closed in 2008, in part due to health concerns, making the St. John facility the only place in the country where neoprene is manufactured.
Taylor’s mother is doing somewhat better, but the family attributes her improvement to her departure from St. John for California, where she now lives with her son. Kellie Tabb, who is recovering from lung cancer, also decided to leave St. John. And though she still struggles for breath, having lost one of her lungs to surgery and radiation, she feels better. “I have over $30,000 in credit card debt from the move,” Tabb told me recently. “But it was worth it. I left to save my lungs. I chose to go in debt to fight for my life.
The small neighborhood next to the plant has suffered other losses over the last two years. Lydia Gerard’s husband, Walter, died of cancer in June at age 64. A few months ago, Mary Hampton’s 57-year-old brother was diagnosed with cancer, making him the sixth member of her immediate family living in St. John and by her count the tenth person on her street to develop the disease in recent years.
David Sanders in front of his home which is across the street from Denka/DuPont's fenceline .Feb. 6, 2019 On Feb. 6, 2019, David Sanders stands in front of his home, which is across the street from the fence of the Denka facility. Photo: Julie Dermansky
Meanwhile, David Sanders, who still has respiratory problems and occasional seizures, has become even less mobile. Sanders, who will be 62 in May, now rarely leaves his small three-bedroom home across from the factory. After news of the air pollution first surfaced, he was briefly hopeful that the government might quickly stop it. But his optimism soon faded.
“As urgent as it is and how long it took for it to be acknowledged, I thought it would be approached in a more emergency-like manner,” Sanders told me. He paused to catch his breath and consider how the rest of the country has treated the news that his neighborhood has the highest risk of cancer from air pollution. “It’s like it’s just — a story,” Sanders said.
Still, even after losing a sister, a brother, an aunt, an uncle, and both his parents to cancer, Sanders remains hopeful that the story might have a happy ending. “Not for me. I’m on my way out,” he said. But he is still trying to protect the home that his parents built before DuPont put the factory across from it — “back when folks were sharecropping.”
“It’s for my children and grandchildren,” said Sanders. “It’s the only inheritance I have for them.”
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/24/epa-response-air-pollution-crisis-toxic-racial-divide/
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Lawmakers Eye Long-Term Security Program Extension
Feb 25, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
The House Homeland Security Committee this week will ask witnesses about a chemical security program that requires reauthorization.
The Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program, or CFATS, regulates more than 3,000 facilities. It is designed to prevent terrorist attacks at high-risk chemical facilities.
The program was set to expire after Jan. 18, but House and Senate lawmakers came to a last-minute agreement to extend the program by 15 months (E&E News PM, Jan. 17). Now lawmakers have set their sights on long-term reforms.
House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) butted heads with Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) over details of the program's reauthorization.
Thompson sought a two-year extension in a bill that overwhelmingly passed the House.
Johnson indicated that he would not support a long-term extension of the program without reforms. In turn, he and Peters offered the 15-month extension, which Thompson "reluctantly" supported, according to his spokesman.
Schedule: The hearing is Wednesday, Feb. 27, at 10 a.m. in 310 Cannon.
Witnesses:
· David Wulf, director, Infrastructure Security Compliance Division, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Department of Homeland Security.
· Nathan Anderson, acting director, homeland security and justice, Government Accountability Office.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2019/02/25/stories/1060122251
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Want a Green New Deal? Here’s a Better One.
Feb 24, 2019 | Washington Post
By Editorial Board
WE FAVOR a Green New Deal to save the planet. We believe such a plan can be efficient, effective, focused and achievable.
The Green New Deal proposed by congressional Democrats does not meet that test. Its proponents, led by Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), are right to call for ambition and bold action. They are right that the entire energy sector must be reshaped.
But the goal is so fundamental that policymakers should focus above all else on quickly and efficiently decarbonizing. They should not muddle this aspiration with other social policy, such as creating a federal jobs guarantee, no matter how desirable that policy might be.
And the goal is so monumental that the country cannot afford to waste dollars in its pursuit. If the market can redirect spending most efficiently, money should not be misallocated on vast new government spending or mandates.
In this series of editorials, we propose our own Green New Deal. It relies both on smart government intervention — and on transforming the relentless power of the market from an obstacle to a centerpiece of the solution.
To glimpse what we mean, take a brief trip with us to Dominion Energy’s Cove Point plant on the Chesapeake Bay’s western shore.
Giant natural-gas storage tanks offer a warning of how the U.S. government must step up its efforts to combat global warming — but also of how environmentalists and politicians who claim to know how to do that are generally unable to predict how technology and practice will develop. The plant is a reminder that big change is far easier when you get the market to work with you, rather than against you.
Huge ships used to bring liquefied natural gas from overseas, weigh anchor a mile offshore and pipe their cargo into the tanks at Cove Point. Then fracking unlocked vast amounts of cheap U.S. gas, turning the country from net importer to net exporter. Now ships wait offshore to receive U.S. liquefied natural gas for export to Asia. As he celebrated the facility’s shipments to Japan in Yokohama last June, Dominion Chief Executive Officer Thomas Farrell boasted that the United States has perhaps 200 years’ worth of obtainable natural gas that “we will be exporting toward our allies across the world for decades and decades.”
To some, Cove Point is evidence that unhindered economic growth enables environmental stewardship. U.S. natural gas is far less damaging to the environment than coal. It has become so cheap that it is displacing coal in electricity generation, driving down emissions.
To others, Cove Point is an environmental catastrophe. Natural gas is still a fossil fuel, and burning it releases lots of greenhouse-gas emissions, which cause climate change.
Both arguments are right.
Natural gas’s displacement of carbon-rich, toxic coal as the country’s top electric fuel source would have seemed a preposterous dream just a decade ago. It has come about with no government mandate and while saving consumers money. When the market demands an outcome, things change fast.
But even substantial reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions in the long term will not be enough to head off catastrophic climate change. The transition from coal to natural gas has been beneficial. But society must eliminate its carbon dependency. It cannot burn vast amounts of any fossil fuel for “decades and decades,” as Mr. Farrell hopes, unless there is a revolution in emissions capture technology. Even in the short term, U.S. emissions are rising, despite the restraint that stepped-up natural-gas burning has provided. The government must demand more change, more quickly.
Putting the planet first requires accepting both insights. The government should insist on cutting emissions but, to the largest extent possible, decline to dictate how, instead setting incentives and standards that unleash public and private effort.
Carbon pricing can do a lot — but not everything
ASK PRACTICALLY any climate scientist whether humanity must cut greenhouse-gas emissions, and you get an emphatic yes. Ask practically any economist how to do that as cheaply as possible, and the answer is equally emphatic: put a price on carbon dioxide emissions with a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program.
Pollution pricing is not untested theory. It is the policy that ended acid rain, ahead of schedule and more cheaply than projected. Following that success, it was long assumed that pricing carbon dioxide would be the centerpiece of any ambitious plan to slash emissions. Yet Republicans never embraced the market-based idea, even though conservative economists admit its appeal, because they never accepted the need to act at all. Some environmentalists, meanwhile, are increasingly wary of carbon pricing. The Democrats’ Green New Deal, which is noncommittal on the policy, reflects the accelerating drift from the obvious.
Yet neither the science nor the economics has changed. It is still imperative to act. And carbon pricing is still the best first-line policy.
Theory and practice confirm this unassailable point: If it costs more to pollute, there will be less pollution. Taxing all fuels according to their carbon content would send a price signal to every business and every consumer. Habits that pollute would become more costly. Changes that reduced pollution — generating cleaner electricity, buying more efficient appliances, weatherizing homes, investing in smart thermostats — would become more desirable.
A high-enough carbon price would shape millions of choices, small and large, about what to buy, how to invest and how to live that would result in substantial emissions cuts. People would prioritize the easiest changes, minimizing the costs of the energy transition. With a price that steadily rose, market forces would steadily wring carbon dioxide out of the economy — without the government trying to dictate exactly how, wasting money on special-interest boondoggles.
Here’s an example. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found last year that an average carbon price between 2030 and the end of the century of $100, $200 or even $300 per ton of carbon dioxide would result in huge greenhouse-gas emissions cuts, could restrain warming to the lowest safety threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius and would almost certainly prevent the world from breaching the traditional warming limit of 2 degrees Celsius. In contrast, U.S. biofuels policy, a sad example of nanny-state inefficiency, costs $556 to $618 in 2010 dollars to abate one ton of carbon dioxide, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2013. With its array of green subsidies and mandates, the government is overpaying for too few emissions cuts in too few sectors of the economy.
One objection is that carbon pricing is not powerful enough. The European Union’s carbon pricing program has not worked well. But that is a failure of design and political will. A carbon price equal to the challenge would start high and rise higher, sending a much stronger price signal.
Another criticism is that carbon pricing hurts the poor, who would suffer most when prices rose. But the revenue from carbon pricing could be recycled back to Americans in a progressive way, and most people would end up whole or better off.
A third objection is that carbon pricing is politically impossible, because it reveals the cost of fighting global warming in the prices people pay — rather than hiding the costs in wasteful subsidy programs that people pay for with their tax dollars. This is a leadership challenge, not a policy challenge. More than 40 governments globally, including several states, have found the political will to embrace carbon pricing programs, which is the only option that would plausibly be bipartisan.
One objection does have merit: Though carbon pricing would spur huge change in infrastructure and power generation, that alone would not be enough. It would not stimulate all the innovation the nation needs in the climate fight, nor would it change behaviors in circumstances where the desired price signal is muted or nonexistent.
Carbon pricing can do a lot — but not everything.
Start with carbon pricing. Then fill in the gaps.
LAST OCTOBER, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the world is not on track to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius — and that even 2 degrees may be too much. It would be safer for humanity to keep warming below 1.5 degrees. Sea-level rise would threaten up to 10 million fewer people. Coral reefs might survive. Mosquito-borne illnesses would not spread as widely.
Green New Dealers are right that a big problem requires a big solution. Only one serious option — putting a price on carbon — would encourage every sector of the economy to green up in equal measure. Pricing greenhouse-gas emissions with a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program, the economy-wide option, is bigger than the more spectacular-sounding but piecemeal subsidy and mandate programs some environmentalists prefer.
But even carbon pricing would not be quite enough. There are places where the price signal would not come through or be effective. In those circumstances, the government would have to do more.
For example, economists know that companies that invest in research and development do not get rewarded for the full social value of their work. Others benefit from their innovations without paying. Consequently, firms do not invest in research as much as society should want. On clean energy, that would be true even with a price on carbon emissions. The government should fill this research gap. It would take only a small fraction of the revenue a carbon pricing system would produce to fund a much more ambitious clean-energy research agenda. Basic scientific research and applied research programs such as ARPA-E should be scaled up dramatically.
Similarly, a carbon price would encourage homeowners to invest in more efficient appliances or double-paned windows, but renters pay their own electricity bills yet have little say over such decisions. Because of this dynamic, even with a high carbon price, the country would get less investment in energy efficiency than it needs. The government must fill this efficiency gap. Federal standards for appliances and buildings could slash energy waste where price signals failed to do so. Government loan programs could also help low-income people finance money-saving investments.
The government must also account for the fact that not all greenhouse-gas emissions come from burning the fuels that a carbon pricing program would reach — coal, oil and gas. How would the government charge farmers for the methane their cows emit or for the greenhouse gases released when they till their soil? How about emissions from cement, ammonia and steel production? The federal government would have to tailor programs to the agricultural and industrial sectors, which might include judicious use of incentives and mandates. Tying eligibility for the nation’s extensive farm subsidy system to environmental stewardship would be a place to start.
Finally, there is transportation, a sector that is deeply hooked on oil and dependent on government decision-making on infrastructure investment. Carbon pricing would deter unnecessary driving and spur the purchase of cleaner cars, but only government can ensure adequate mass transit options. Local governments could help with zoning laws to encourage people to live in denser, more walkable communities. The federal government should also press automakers to steadily improve fuel efficiency.
In the fight against climate change, the government must enlist the whole economy. Start with carbon pricing. Then fill in the gaps.
Cutting emissions, at home and abroad
STOP US IF you’ve heard this before: No matter what the United States does to fight global warming, it won’t matter as long as China, India and the rest of the world do nothing.
Those who make this point often argue for doing nothing in the United States, too: sitting back and watching the world cook in a stew of greenhouse gases and mutual distrust. But fatalism is not the only possible reaction to climate change’s international nature. The smarter response is to build policy around it.
That starts with making sure that emissions-cutting efforts at home do not have unintended consequences. If the United States puts a price on greenhouse-gas emissions, other countries would lure U.S. manufacturers with the promise of lax environmental rules. Relocated manufacturers could then export their goods to the United States. The net effect would be no benefit for the planet but fewer U.S. manufacturing jobs.
One response is a kind of tariff on goods entering the country from places with weaker carbon-dioxide policies. That would both eliminate the incentive to offshore manufacturing and encourage countries to strengthen their own rules.
Such a border adjustment system would stoke suspicions that the United States was raising protectionist trade barriers in the guise of environmentalism. It would be far more likely to be considered credible — in foreign capitals and at the World Trade Organization — if the United States remained party to the Paris Agreement, the 2015 climate accord that every nation in the world has agreed to. President Trump announced in 2017 that the United States would exit the agreement by 2020, which would make the United States the only country in the world hostile to the pact. For any rational leader following Mr. Trump in office, reentering the Paris Agreement would have to be a top priority.
Participating in the agreement would give the United States a forum — and a basis — to press other nations to reduce emissions. Much like the wildly successful General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which oversaw successive elimination of trade barriers among major economies, the Paris Agreement has established an expectation that the world’s big players will meet regularly and boost their ambition to meet a goal in everyone’s interest, in this case massive greenhouse-gas reduction. To walk away from that process is to reject the lessons of decades of post-World War II international cooperation.
Beyond Paris, the government could share the fruits of U.S. clean-energy research with other nations. It could zealously promote international agreements such as the Kigali Accord — a 2016 pact that Mr. Trump has so far not rejected and that serves as more proof of international interest in arresting climate change — which would phase out extremely potent greenhouse-gas agents known as hydrofluorocarbons. Foreign aid to prevent deforestation could be among the most cost-effective climate-preserving measures. Helping other countries to replace archaic cooking stoves that produce noxious fumes would help cut emissions and improve quality of life across the developing world.
The best way to ensure that other countries commit to attacking climate change is for the United States to show that it is no slouch — and that it will lead the world as others do their part, too.
Good intentions aren't enough. We can't afford bad ideas.
IN THE climate debate, the most destructive actors are those who want to do nothing — or even, like the Trump administration, go backward. But it’s also true that good intentions are not sufficient. There are a lot of bad ideas out there.
The Green New Deal that some Democrats have embraced is case in point. In its most aggressive form, the plan suggests the country could reach net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030, an impossible goal. Christopher Clack, the CEO of analysis group Vibrant Clean Energy, estimates it would cost $27 trillion to get there by 2035 — a yearly price tag of about 9 percent of 2017 gross domestic product. (Total federal spending is currently a bit more than 20 percent of GDP.) Put another way, that would be more spent every three years than the total amount the country spent on World War II. The plan’s proposal to retrofit all existing buildings is also astonishing in its implied scale, and its promise to invest in known fiascos such as high-speed rail reveal deep insensitivity to the lessons of recent government waste.
At the same time, the Democratic plan would guarantee every American “high-quality health care” and “a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security.” These expensive aspirations, no matter how laudable, would do nothing to arrest greenhouse-gas emissions. As ostensible parts of a Green New Deal, they divert money and attention from the primary mission: rapidly eliminating emissions between now and midcentury.
Even focusing only on that central mission, it is easy to go wrong. California created a cap-and-trade program that prices emissions in the state. But policymakers undercut the system with a variety of additional and unnecessary mandates, such as the state’s low-carbon fuel standard. Because California put an overall ceiling on its total emissions — the “cap” in “cap and trade” — the same level of emissions reduction would happen without the additional fuels standard. The standard just forces particular businesses and consumers to bear a higher burden for the same level of greenhouse-gas abatement.
Then there is Germany, a country whose government has imposed extremely high electricity costs on its people in the name of emissions reduction but that still burns tremendous amounts of noxious brown coal. The German energy consumers’ investment has not paid off as much as it should have, in large part because the government surrendered to anti-nuclear-power hysteria following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster. Germany’s nuclear power plants produced vast amounts of electricity with no carbon dioxide emissions. But instead of keeping them open as long as possible, giving the country more time to scale up renewables, Germany is shutting them early. The nation’s investments in renewable energy have gone to filling this loss of zero-carbon electricity generation, rather than to retiring coal plants. Spurning a major carbon-free energy source is an irrational indulgence that no nation can afford in the fight against global warming.
Good intentions will not solve the global warming crisis. Massive social reform will not protect the climate. Marshaling every dollar to its highest benefit is the strongest plan. Our Green New Deal would do that.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-a-green-new-deal-heres-a-better-one/2019/02/24/2d7e491c-36d2-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?utm_term=.483390b6d1d2
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The Green New Deal Is Better Than Our Climate Nightmare
Feb 23, 2019 | New York Times
By Editorial Board
It’s hard to believe, but worth recalling, that during the presidential debates in 2016, not a single question about climate change was put to Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. That, of course, was before a plague of hurricanes, droughts and savage forest fires in California and around the world captured the public’s attention; before Mr. Trump brought renewed focus to the very issue he had dismissed as a hoax by fecklessly rolling back nearly every positive policy thing President Barack Obama had done to address it; before a series of frightening scientific reports appeared last year, warning that the window of opportunity to ward off the worst consequences of a warming globe was quickly closing.
It was also long before anyone had seen a nonbinding congressional resolution calling for something called the Green New Deal, an ambitious plan to tackle climate change (and a lot else, too) that earlier this month burst like a shooting star upon the Washington political and legislative scene. The resolution — introduced by Ed Markey, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a newly elected Democratic representative whose district covers parts of the Bronx and Queens — calls for a “10-year national mobilization” through giant investments in infrastructure and carbon-free energy. It has since won the full or partial allegiance of a half-dozen Democratic presidential hopefuls who pray that town hall participants or debate moderators will ask them what they think about global warming. Which in turn means that, whatever becomes of the plan, it will have moved climate change — a serious issue that has had serious trouble gaining traction — to a commanding position in the national conversation. That alone is reason to applaud it.
In name and concept, the plan is not new. The term Green New Deal appeared in a column in The Times by Thomas Friedman in January 2007, in which he called for a vast public and private investment program that would throw everything under the sun (including, actually, the sun itself) — wind, solar, nuclear power, energy efficiency, advanced research, tax incentives and a price on carbon — into a massive effort to build a more climate-friendly energy system while also revitalizing the American economy.
This is essentially what the Mr. Markey and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez had in mind when they rolled out their resolution on Feb. 7. Unfortunately, that rollout was anything but smooth, due largely to the bungling of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s staff, which posted on her website a set of pugnacious and poorly written talking points (later disavowed) that scared even moderate Democrats. Apart from bold if probably unattainable objectives (a total transformation to renewable energy in 10 years), the talking points dismissed as unacceptable three strategies that many experts say are necessary to any solution: nuclear power, technology that allows fossil fuel plants to capture and store their own emissions, and market-based solutions like a carbon tax or the kind of cap and trade bill that Mr. Markey worked valiantly and unsuccessfully to get Congress to approve 10 years ago. The talking points made other dubious promises, including jobs even for Americans “unwilling” to work. The immediate result of this amateurish mess was to hand Mr. Trump and other climate deniers irresistible political talking points.
The actual resolution seems more measured. It speaks only of a 10-year mobilization effort to reduce carbon emissions, without giving an explicit deadline, and it is silent as to particular strategies, leaving nuclear, carbon capture and price signals very much on the table. It does not mention costs. Some experts believe that fully remaking the energy delivery system could run into the trillions of dollars; proponents argue that spending trillions now could save much more in damages later.
The idea of decarbonizing the economy is ambitious, commendable and urgent. In early January, for instance, came three hugely dispiriting reports. The Rhodium Group, a research firm, estimated that America’s carbon dioxide emissions, after a period of decline, had risen by 3.4 percent in 2018, even as a near-record number of coal plants around the country were retired. The main culprits were economic growth and rising emissions from factories, putting America’s vow to cut greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 further out of reach, absent bold new policies or technological breakthroughs.
This bad news was followed by a study in Science finding that the oceans are warming at an alarming pace, 40 to 50 percent faster than the United Nations had estimated, putting corals and fisheries at even greater risk. If that were not enough, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences followed with a study predicting faster melting of Antarctica’s huge ice reserves.
These are not good signs, but Mr. Markey, ever the optimist, thinks there is no better time to put forth aggressive ambitions and solutions. Obviously, nothing will happen legislatively as long as the Republicans control the Senate and Mr. Trump sits in the White House. But the stars are aligned, Mr. Markey thinks, for a robust debate about a climate strategy that his party can take to the voters in 2020. The steady drumbeat of alarming reports, plus one climate-related multibillion dollar disaster after another, has raised public consciousness, which in turn increases public pressure on Congress to do something. In an exchange that went viral on Friday, a group of children pressed Democractic Senator Dianne Feinstein over her refusal to support the plan. “We’re the ones who are going to be impacted,” one of the children lamented.
Meanwhile, technological progress toward clean-energy solutions has been nothing short of remarkable, giving the lie to the old denier argument that clean energy inevitably means fewer jobs. Wind capacity has increased more than fourfold in the last decade. Solar power, while still a very small part of the total energy mix, has increased at an even faster rate. And prices for both have dropped to the point where they are increasingly competitive with fossil fuels. Ten years ago, an electric car was a curiosity; now more than a million have been sold in the United States.
For now, the nation must endure Mr. Trump’s boneheaded policies. The president has rejected the Paris agreement on climate change and rolled back Obama-era limits on carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and methane emissions from oil and gas facilities, while doing all he can to open more lands and waters to oil and gas exploration.
Last week, his administration made clear that it would proceed with plans to weaken fuel economy standards, despite strong objections from California and other states. In addition, The Times reported, he will soon form a special committee whose main purpose, it appears, is to challenge warnings from the Pentagon and intelligence agencies that global warming poses a threat to national security.
The immediate task facing the Democrats in 2021 — if they win control of the White House and Congress — will be to reverse Mr. Trump’s reversals. But even now, there are familiar policies that the Democrats, who control the House, can pass through key committees and the full House to force the Senate, and the nation, to debate them. These policies could go a long way toward meeting a goal of net zero emissions by midcentury, less than what the Green New Deal calls for but consistent with the recommendations of the United Nations. They could include a national electricity standard utilizing nuclear and carbon capture along with wind and solar; larger (and more consistent) tax incentives for electric vehicles; an infrastructure program that brings serious federal dollars to bear on improving efficiency in buildings and the electrical grid; major efforts to promote the sequestration of carbon in forests, farms and public lands — a critical component, which the Green New Deal recognizes, in any effort to pull carbon from the atmosphere.
Step-by-step measures like these will suit the political temperature of most House Democrats (only about 70 of whom have endorsed the Green New Deal), including the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who gave even the toned-down resolution the back of her hand — “The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?”
Whether such measures will satisfy the activists who have gathered around Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is another matter. After all, her talking points, as well as the resolution itself, speak also of providing higher education for all Americans; universal health care; affordable housing; remedies for “systemic injustices” among the poor, the elderly and people of color; and a federal job guarantee insuring “a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations and retirement security.”
Which raises this question: Is the Green New Deal aimed at addressing the climate crisis? Or is addressing the climate crisis merely a cover for a wish-list of progressive policies and a not-so-subtle effort to move the Democratic Party to the left? At least some candidates — Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota among them — seem to think so.
Read literally, the resolution wants not only to achieve a carbon-neutral energy system but also to transform the economy itself. As Mr. Markey can tell you from past experience, the first goal is going to be hard enough. Tackling climate change in a big way is in itself likely to be transformative. We should get on with it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/opinion/green-new-deal-climate-democrats.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FClimate%20and%20Energy%20Legislation
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'Green New Deal' Vote Overshadows Slate of Hearings
Feb 25, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Nick Sobczyk
House lawmakers have scheduled a slate of climate-related hearings, as Republicans set up a full-court press against the "Green New Deal."
Committees will hold at least six climate hearings, beginning with two tomorrow at 10 a.m. and concluding Thursday with an Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change hearing on the Paris agreement.
Meanwhile, the Senate could vote on the "Green New Deal" as soon as this week, a move by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to put moderates in a tough spot and force Democrats to vote on a measure Republicans will inevitably use to brand them as extreme socialists.
The resolution was introduced by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) earlier this month. It has since become the focus of intense GOP attacks.
McConnell's office has not offered any specific timeline yet for the vote. He's bringing up his own modified version of the resolution, a parliamentary maneuver that allows for speedier debate (E&E Daily, Feb. 14).
McConnell's announcement that the Senate would vote on the measure spurred on the messaging firestorm. The two parties have butted heads over climate change on the national stage during the last few weeks in a way they rarely do regarding environmental issues.
Republicans have taken to the Senate floor to make questionable claims about the document, which aims to cut out greenhouse gas emissions through a 10-year economic mobilization, and the Congressional Western Caucus is planning a press conference to attack it later this week.
On the other side, organizers with the Sunrise Movement are planning to protest the majority leader on Capitol Hill today.
A video of the group confronting Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that circulated on Twitter late last week demonstrates just the kind of pressure Democrats are facing regarding the "Green New Deal."
Asked by young activists to vote "yes" on the resolution, Feinstein suggested it would be a fruitless effort in the Republican Senate.
"That resolution will not pass the Senate, and you can take that back to whoever sent you here," she said.
Most other Democrats have not signaled how they'll vote yet, and it's unclear what their strategy will be headed into the roll call. Even Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said on MSNBC he was unsure how he would vote.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ranking member Tom Carper (D-Del.) wouldn't say how he plans to vote, either, but said earlier this month that he was happy to have "young people who care about this planet and want to do something about it."
"The Green New Deal is not perfect — God knows, nothing I have worked on is perfect — but I welcome their enthusiasm and excitement," Carper said. "They have a point, and their point is we don't have forever to get to work and be serious about fixing carbon."
Regardless of how they vote, it's clear Democrats will try to point out that Republicans have done nothing to combat climate change while they've controlled the Senate.
"Since Republicans took control of this chamber in 2015, they have not brought a single Republican bill to meaningfully reduce carbon emissions to the floor of the Senate," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the floor ahead of last week's recess. "Not one bill."
Schumer said the vote amounts to "a game of political gotcha" out of President Trump's playbook.
"Well, the American people are not laughing. They weren't laughing when a U.S. senator brought a snowball to the floor of this chamber to mock climate science," Schumer said, referring to Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe's famous 2015 stunt. "They weren't laughing when President Trump called climate change a 'hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.'"
Hearings on tap
Perhaps the highest-profile House hearing will come tomorrow morning, with an oversight hearing on climate research in the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee.
Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division, and Neil Jacobs, assistant secretary of Commerce for environmental observation and prediction, a top job at NOAA, are both expected to testify.
It will mark the first Democratic oversight hearing on the Trump administration's climate policies, though lawmakers have already held a number of hearings aimed at shaping future climate legislation.
Freilich isn't likely to be controversial, but Jacobs before coming to NOAA — which oversees the National Weather Service — was a longtime proponent of privatizing weather data (Climatewire, Oct. 3, 2017).
Jacobs was formerly chief atmospheric scientist for Panasonic Avionics Corp., which he once told House lawmakers could more accurately predict the weather than NOAA.
Also tomorrow morning, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a hearing on "Examining How Federal Infrastructure Policy Could Help Mitigate and Adapt to Climate Change."
Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) is hoping to move quickly on an infrastructure bill, a high priority for Democratic leadership. Lawmakers see that as one of the first legislative opportunities to address climate change in a divided Congress, and the hearing will be the first step.
Then, on Wednesday, the Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Environment will hear from another round of climate scientists in a hearing dubbed "Sea Change: Impacts of Climate Change on Our Oceans and Coasts."
It will mark the first hearing for that panel under the chairmanship of freshman Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas).
The Natural Resources Committee, meanwhile, will address climate in two hearings tomorrow. The Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee will examine "the denial playbook," a hearing that will feature testimony from former National Football League player Chris Borland.
The idea is to link climate science denial to the tactics used by the NFL to tamp down concerns about chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurological condition that has been linked to repetitive blows to the head.
The other Natural Resources meeting, in the Water, Oceans and Wildlife Subcommittee, will highlight the pressures on Western water supplies.
Finally, the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change will round out the week with a hearing on the Trump administration's withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.
The agreement is an easy unifier for Democrats in the sometimes fractured world of climate policy. One of the first climate votes on the House floor could be a resolution offered by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and others that would reaffirm support for the Paris accord (E&E News PM, Feb. 8).
"The Trump Administration's reckless decision to pull out of the Paris agreement has been a disaster for U.S. global leadership," Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee Chairman Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement with full committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.).
"As the Trump Administration sits on the sidelines, other countries are stepping up to fill the leadership vacuum."
Schedule: The Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee hearing is Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 10 a.m. in H-309.
Witnesses:
· Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division.
· Neil Jacobs, assistant secretary of Commerce for environmental observation and prediction.
Schedule: The Transportation and Infrastructure hearing is Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 10 a.m. in HVC-210 Capitol.
Witnesses: TBA.
Schedule: The Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife hearing is Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 10 a.m. in 1324 Longworth.
Witnesses:
· Brad Udall, research scientist, Colorado State University's Colorado Water Institute.
· Susana De Anda, executive director, Community Water Center, Visalia, Calif.
· Tony Willardson, executive director, Western States Water Council, Murray, Utah
· Harrison Ibach, president, Humboldt Fishermen's Marketing Association, Humboldt, Calif.
Schedule: The Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing is Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 2 p.m. in 1324 Longworth.
Witnesses:
· Chris Borland, retired NFL player.
· Ryan Hampton, founder, Voices Project.
· Alexandra Precup, Puerto Rican and victim of Hurricane Maria.
· David Michaels, professor, George Washington University's Department of Environmental and Occupational Health.
Schedule: The Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Environment hearing is Wednesday, Feb. 27, at 10 a.m. in 2318 Rayburn.
Witnesses:
· Sarah Cooley, director, Ocean Acidification Program, Ocean Conservancy.
· Radley Horton, professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University Earth Institute.
· Thomas Frazer, professor and director, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Florida.
· Margaret Pilaro, executive director, Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association.
Schedule: The Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change hearing is Thursday, Feb. 28, at 10 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn.
Witnesses: TBA.
Twitter: @nick_sobczyk Email: nsobczyk@eenews.net
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2019/02/25/stories/1060122289
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Feinstein Slams Green New Deal in Tense Meeting with Protesters
Feb 22, 2019 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said today she did not agree with the Green New Deal resolution expected to be voted on soon in the Senate during a tense confrontation with youth climate protesters.
The criticism from Feinstein is further indication of the uphill battle activists face in uniting Democrats behind the ambitious proposal that some in the party see as unrealistic. Feinstein said she may vote present when the resolution comes to a vote, which could happen as soon as next week, but she noted it would not pass because all Republicans oppose it.
"It’s not a good resolution," Feinstein said in video posted by the Sunrise Movement from her San Francisco office.
Twelve senators, including presidential candidate and Feinstein's colleague Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), have endorsed the resolution S. Res. 59 (116) introduced by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
When the youth advocates argued that scientific findings indicate there are just a dozen years to stave off the worst consequences of climate change, Feinstein bristled and said the problem "is not going to get turned around in 10 years.”
"You come in here and you say it has to be my way or the highway," she said. "I don’t respond to that. I’ve gotten elected. I just ran. I was elected by almost a million vote plurality and I know what I’m doing. Maybe people should listen a little bit."
Because of California's open-primary system, Feinstein ended up beating a more liberal Democrat, former state Sen. Kevin de León, in last year's election.
Feinstein's staff provided the group with copies of an alternative climate resolution she said would have a better chance of being passed this Congress. Her office did not immediately respond to a request for a copy.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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White House to Set up Panel to Counter Climate Change Consensus, Officials Say
Feb 24, 2019 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin , Josh Dawsey and Brady Dennis
The White House plans to create an ad hoc group of select federal scientists to reassess the government’s analysis of climate science and counter conclusions that the continued burning of fossil fuels is harming the planet, according to three senior administration officials.
The National Security Council initiative would include scientists who question the severity of climate impacts and the extent to which humans contribute to the problem, according to these individuals, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The group would not be subject to the same level of public disclosure as a formal advisory committee.
The move would represent the Trump administration’s most forceful effort to date to challenge the scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are helping drive global warming and that the world could face dire consequences unless countries curb their carbon output over the next few decades.
The idea of a new working group, which top administration officials discussed Friday in the White House Situation Room, represents a modified version of an earlier plan to establish a federal advisory panel on climate and national security. That plan — championed by William Happer, an NSC senior director and a physicist who has challenged the idea that carbon dioxide could damage the planet — would have created an independent federal advisory committee.
The Federal Advisory Committee Act imposes several ground rules for such panels, including that they meet in public, are subject to public records requests and include a representative membership. The new working group, by contrast, would not be subject to any of those requirements.
While the plan is not finalized, NSC officials said they would take steps to assemble a group of researchers within the government. The group will not be tasked with scrutinizing recent intelligence community assessments of climate change, according to officials familiar with the plan.
The National Security Council declined requests to comment on the matter.
During the Friday meeting, these officials said, deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman said President Trump was upset that his administration had issued in November the National Climate Assessment, which must be published regularly under federal law. Kupperman added that congressional Democrats had seized upon the report, which is the product of more than a dozen agencies, to bolster their case for cutting carbon emissions as part of their Green New Deal.
Attendees at the session, which included acting interior secretary David Bernhardt and senior officials from throughout the government, debated how best to establish a group of researchers that could scrutinize recent federal climate reports. More than one participant suggested they might face a challenge establishing an independent outside panel that would question central findings of the National Climate Assessment and other landmark federal reports, said one official familiar with the discussion.
Happer, who headed an advocacy group called the CO2 Coalition before joining the administration in the fall, has challenged the scientific consensus on climate change inside and outside of government.
Public records show the coalition, which describes its mission as informing policymakers and the public of the “important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy,” has received money from far-right organizations and donors with fossil fuel interests.
In 2017, according to federal tax filings obtained by the Climate Investigations Center, the group received $170,000 from the Mercer Family Foundation and more than $33,000 from the Charles Koch Institute.
One senior administration official said the president was looking for “a mixture of opinions” and disputed the National Climate Assessment, a massive interagency report, in November that described intensifying climate change as a threat to the United States.
“The president wants people to be able to decide for themselves,” the aide said.
Several scientists, however, said the federal government’s recent findings on climate change had received intense scrutiny from other researchers in the field before they became public.
Christopher Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute who served on the National Academy of Sciences review panel for the scientific report that formed the basis of last year’s climate assessment, said the committee met several times “to do a careful, page-by-page evaluation by the entire report.”
“The whole review process is confrontational from the very get-go, but it’s based in scientific credibility, in a traceable chain of evidence through publications,” said Field, an earth system science and biology professor.
Trump officials had weighed the idea of conducting a “red team-blue team” exercise on climate change, an idea espoused by Scott Pruitt, who was then the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, during the early months of the administration. White House aides, including then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, blocked the idea, and at one point discussed whether to “ignore” the climate research being conducted by federal scientists.
Government researchers in a range of disciplines have identified climate change as a serious threat for the past two decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations.
In 2003, the Pentagon commissioned a report to examine how an abrupt change in climate would affect the country’s defense capabilities: Its authors concluded that it “should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern.”
Last year, a military-funded study warned sea level rise and other climate impacts could make more than a thousand low-lying islands in the Pacific Ocean “uninhabitable” by midcentury, including an atoll where a missile defense site is located.
Just last month, the national intelligence director delivered a worldwide threat assessmentthat “climate hazards” including extreme weather, wildfires, droughts and acidifying oceans are worsening, “threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security.”
Judith Curry, a former Georgia Tech climate scientist whom Republicans have sought to testify on climate change because she often highlights the uncertainties that remain, said in an email that she backed the idea of an independent assessment of government climate reports as long as the participants reflected a range of perspectives and are not activists on either side of the debate.
But retired Rear Adm. David Titley, who served as oceanographer of the Navy and chief operating officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the new initiative could imperil national security by clouding “truthful assessments of the risks stemming from a changing climate.”
“I never thought I would live to see the day in the United States where our own White House is attacking the very science agencies that can help the president understand and manage the climate risks to security of today and tomorrow,” said Titley, who sits on the advisory board of the Center for Climate and Security, a nonpartisan group focused on climate-related risks. “Such attacks are un-American.”
Several experts questioned whether the White House’s plan could undermine decades’ worth of science pointing to a warming planet. One federal climate scientist, who asked for anonymity to avoid possible retaliation, said agency researchers had pursued and published their research in the past two years without meaningful resistance.
Camilo Mora, a geographer and environmental professor at the University of Hawaii, said in an email that a single task force could not alter the findings of scientists across the globe.
“When it comes down to climate change, we are talking about thousands of independent papers, from everywhere, finding exactly the same thing: that the climate is changing, that we are doing it and that most often than not, the impacts are pretty bad,” Mora said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/white-house-to-select-federal-scientists-to-reassess-government-climate-findings-sources-say/2019/02/24/49cd0a84-37dd-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?utm_term=.69e837128024
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We Can’t Wait for Washington’s Green New Deal. California Needs Just Transition Now
Feb 24, 2019 | Sacramento Bee
By Miya Yoshitani and Gladys Limón
As the deadliest wildfire in a century raged in Butte County last year, leaving 85 people dead and thousands without homes, hundreds of young people filled the halls of Congress to demand a Green New Deal.
This sense of urgency is long overdue. For decades, our alliance has brought together parents, students, workers and elders living next to oil fields, fracking wells, dirty power plants and massive refineries to stop California’s biggest polluters from poisoning our families and destabilizing our climate.
Five years ago, in the Kern County community of Arvin, a gas pipeline leak forced dozens of families out of their homes. First, people complained of headaches, strange smells and fainting. Then flames began shooting out of their outlets and inspectors found explosive levels of gas.
Neighbors began organizing with the help of Committee for a Better Arvin. Kern County is the largest oil-producing county in the U.S. Oil pumps and gas wells dot the landscape between homes, schools and churches.
“It’s so sad, with schools so close by and kids walking to school where all this gas is being released,” said Estela Escoto, chairman of Committee for a Better Arvin.
Last year, despite the oil and gas industry’s propaganda, Estela and Arvin residents won over the City Council and unanimously passed an ordinance that prevents oil drilling near homes and schools.
“If we don’t have clean air, clean water, we don’t have anything,” says Estela. “We don’t have health.”
The people of Arvin are not alone. In frontline communities across the state and country, people have long organized to make sure that future generations can grow up without asthma, respiratory illnesses or exposure to dangerous chemicals and endocrine disruptors. All of these result from living next to oil refineries and dirty gas power plants.
Our communities are tired of just surviving. We are fighting for a future where we can thrive.
The New Deal of the 1930s remade our economy through public works projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority, which brought infrastructure, jobs and power to millions of people, starting in isolated rural areas. Today, we need a Green New Deal that will stabilize the climate and build local regenerative economies, starting in the neighborhoods most impacted by racism, poverty and pollution. The racial justice element is important because the original New Deal excluded millions of black workers and families from its benefits.
A Green New Deal means taking bold, inclusive steps to divest from a fossil fuel economy that is destroying our health and environment. It means phasing out oil and gas production. It means saying no to multibillion-dollar bailouts for investor-owned utilities and skyrocketing electric bills for the rest of us.
In addition to ending bad things, a Green New Deal means building new ways to power our neighborhoods that ensure safety, bring good jobs and stabilize the climate.
In the 21st century, we can do much better than pour billions into patching up an antiquated energy infrastructure that relies on nearly 200 dirty gas plants to generate electricity and carry it across dangerously long distances. With a Green New Deal, we can build distributed energy resources that generate and store clean, renewable power locally and regionally.
In places like Oakland and Richmond, people have already begun to imagine what this transformation could look like. We’ve developed plans to turn municipal buildings, apartments, schools, churches and community centers into sites for clean renewable energy generation. This brings down energy costs for entire neighborhoods.
Our members have also proposed creating resilient microgrids and energy storage in places already designated as local evacuation centers. This will help communities with the fewest material resources to weather increasingly devastating climate disasters.
As we increase clean energy sources, we can unplug dangerous gas plants and ensure that workers in the fossil fuel industry transition into jobs in the renewable energy economy. That means training and hiring thousands of workers to build the infrastructure of community-owned solar, wind and energy storage public works projects. These must be built in every city, but especially in places like Richmond and Wilmington, where people have been unfairly burdened by dirty fossil fuels.
Most importantly, we must put decision-making power back in the hands of workers and communities – and take power away from corporations that put profits over safety.
California has a head start. Local clean energy aggregators have sprung up in counties across the state so that people can decide where they get their power. Last year, our state committed to achieving 100% renewable energy by 2045. Frontline communities helped create the Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing (SOMAH) program to invest $1 billion to bring solar power to working-class renters. The California Public Utilities Commission agreed to fund community shared solar projects, which put clean energy in our neighborhoods.
Such steps are crucial, but we need a full commitment and a comprehensive strategy. The Golden State must lead the way. It’s time for a Green New Deal in California.
Miya Yoshitani is the executive director of Asian Pacific Environmental Network. Gladys Limón is the executive director of California Environmental Justice Alliance.
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article226570909.html
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Capturing Carbon: Can It Save Us?
Feb 25, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jeff Johnson
Time is not on our side.
Catastrophic consequences of climate change are just steps away, according to a slew of reports released at the end of 2018. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that without swift action, global temperatures will rise by 1.5 °C by 2030 and 2 °C by 2050—and will continue to climb beyond then. Those increases will cause disastrous effects, including record-breaking sea-level rise, flooding, wildfires, extreme weather events, famine, and wildlife habitat destruction, the IPCC says. The impacts will hit the world’s poor particularly hard.
And these effects seem all but certain. Humans are on a path to generate so much carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases that it appears nearly impossible to cut emissions enough to avoid the worst.
50 billion
Metric tons of greenhouse gases currently emitted to the atmosphere annually
Source:United Nations Environment Programme.
Enter “negative-emissions technologies,” a term but a few years old. NETs are methods that physically and chemically remove CO2 or other gases from the atmosphere. Today, a handful of technologies capture emitted CO2 before it ever reaches the atmosphere. NETs would extract CO2 or other gases directly from the air, change land-use practices to plant more carbon-sequestering trees and plants, and aggressively use natural systems to remove CO2 from the environment.
NETs would not relieve the world of the need to cut emissions, but they could ease the path to reach net zero emissions by 2050—the timeline that the United Nations Environment Programme says is necessary to keep the global temperature rise below 2 °C, the original goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Emission cuts and NETs “are two tools in the same toolbox,” says Stephen Pacala, an ecology and environmental biology professor at Princeton University who chaired a 2018 US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study of NETs. “They both are necessary and are likely to coexist for a long, long time.”
In the following sections, C&EN examines some NET approaches that are just getting underway. Whether they will be able to scale up to meet the need is an open question. The numbers are staggering: globally, nearly 50 billion metric tons (t) of greenhouse gases are emitted to the atmosphere annually, the UN Environment Programme estimates. Of those emissions, about 37 billion t is CO2 and the rest is mostly methane. And even with various efforts in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, global CO2emissions increased by nearly 3% in 2018.
Avoiding a climate disaster would require some 10 billion t of CO2 emissions to be eliminated from the atmosphere each year by midcentury through emission reductions or NETs, the National Academies study estimates on the basis of UN data. By 2100, that number grows to 20 billion t per year.
Scientists estimate that NETs, if scaled up successfully, could address roughly 30% of the needed reductions.
Getting there will require policy changes such as carbon taxes or new economic drivers. A separate National Academies report, also released in late 2018, examined the possible use of CO2 or methane as a feedstock to make chemicals, fuels, or other products. It found potential markets in construction materials, chemicals, and fuels. However, at best the marketplace could use about 10% of greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded. And if CO2 is used to produce fuels, little is gained unless CO2 emissions are again captured when that fuel is burned.
Globally, advocates of the need to address climate change typically point to the US as not doing its share. The country has historically been the global leader in carbon emissions; it is currently second to China for total greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and the world’s largest emitter per capita. President Donald J. Trump has announced plans to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, and his administration is working to reverse tighter emission requirements on coal-fired power plants.
Nevertheless, there are some bright spots for NETs in the US, Pacala says. For example, a 2018 federal law, the FUTURE Act, provides a $50 tax credit for each metric ton of CO2 that is captured and stored underground. Also, recent changes to the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard program allows greenhouse gas polluters that fail to meet a declining state emission cap to buy emission credits from companies that captured and sequestered CO2. Those emission credits have been trading at $190 per metric ton. Both programs could generate funds for NET development.
But to develop NETs further, and especially to get them to scale, additional investment is needed. The National Academies report estimates that the US may need to invest up to $900 million annually in NET R&D. In a world increasingly focused on constraining carbon emissions, such investment in NETs could have large economic rewards, with intellectual property rights and economic benefits accruing to nations and companies that develop the best technologies. However, the Department of Energy’s total budget for its Office of Fossil Energy, which covers development of carbon capture and storage and supports certain oil and gas resources, is just $740 million for 2019.
Meanwhile, the European Union plans to spend approximately €15 billion ($17 billion) on what it calls climate, energy, and mobility programs from 2021 to 2027 as part of its Horizon Europe research program. The EU estimates that overall, Europe will need to invest €520 billion to €575 billion annually in its energy systems to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. China’s approach to NETs is unclear.
Given sufficient R&D investment and an appropriate policy framework, NETs could be a “powerful policy or economic lever” to offset future emissions, says Howard Herzog, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology senior research engineer, who for 30 years has specialized in carbon capture technologies. Nevertheless, NETs will come at a price—they will likely always be a more expensive option than approaches that limit emissions in the first place.
“If we as a people are unwilling to use the relatively cheap mitigation technologies to lower carbon emissions available today, such as improved efficiency, increased renewables, or switching from coal to natural gas, what makes anyone think that future generations will use NETs, which are much, much more expensive?” Herzog says. Expecting NETs to save the world on their own is, he says, “more hope than reality.”
EXTRACTING FROM AIR
Pulling CO2 out of thin air and piping it deep into Earth involves viable technologies already in use—but they have yet to be tried on a planetary scale.
Carbon capture has long been employed to treat air in submarines and spacecraft to keep sailors and astronauts alive. Similar approaches are used throughout the world to reduce CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants, natural gas processing plants, fertilizer and biofuel manufacturing sites, and other industrial point sources. And the technology has been successfully coupled with underground injection and sequestration of CO2.
But the current scale of these approaches is millions—not billions—of metric tons per year. And they’re capturing carbon from relatively concentrated sources, not extracting it after it’s been diluted into the atmosphere.
To capture CO2 at a power plant or other point source, costs vary from roughly $50 to more than $100 per metric ton. But CO2 in the atmosphere is orders of magnitude less concentrated than emissions blasting from a power plant’s smokestack. If the same technology is used to extract CO2 from the atmosphere, estimated costs run from $600 to $1,000 per metric ton.
Several companies are working to increase the capacity and lower costs of atmospheric CO2 extraction systems, also called direct air capture, to make them commercially viable. Among those companies are Carbon Engineering, Climeworks, and Global Thermostat. Climeworks, based in Switzerland, pipes its captured CO2 to greenhouses to enhance vegetable and other plant growth.
The basic operating principles of point-source capture and atmospheric extraction of CO2 are similar, says Christopher Jones, a chemical engineering professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology who is a technology development adviser for Global Thermostat and was a member of the National Academies study committee. A stream of air is sent through a liquid or solid sorbent that collects CO2. The sorbent is then heated to release CO2 in a concentrated form that can be sequestered or used as a feedstock for fuels or other products.
Conveniently, direct air capture can be placed near the location of sequestration or where the CO2 might be used as a feedstock, eliminating the need for complicated piping systems. The biggest cost driver is the energy used to heat the sorbent to release the captured CO2.
Jones and other researchers are focusing on developing sorbent materials that allow for spontaneous absorption and low-temperature desorption of CO2. Climeworks and Global Thermostat are working with amine-based solid materials, while Carbon Engineering is experimenting with a potassium hydroxide solution, Jones says. Pilot studies show promise at getting costs below $200 per metric ton of CO2, where the technology would become commercially viable. Scaling up and lowering costs will be a “significant but not an impossible challenge,” Jones says.
There is currently no marketplace sufficiently large to support enough innovators to explore and develop the chemical processes and physical machinery that might decrease the cost to extract CO2from the air, the National Academies report says. Thus, direct-air-capture advocates are hoping for long-term government investments, a carbon tax, other state or federal tax incentives, or some other inducements that would mirror past efforts to develop solar cells or fossil-fuel extraction through hydraulic fracturing—efforts that led to upheavals in energy generation and fossil-fuel production.
AIR CAPTURE AT A GLANCE
Primary benefits: Mobile, measurable
Primary constraints: Energy intensive
Current cost per metric ton of CO2: $200–$1,000
Estimated removal capacity: High
Research needs: Sorbent development to lower energy
BURNING NEW FUELS
Combining energy production with carbon capture and sequestration could prove to be a powerful negative-emissions technology. So-called bioenergy systems use recently grown biomass as a feedstock to create energy in the forms of electricity and heat while permanently storing the resulting carbon dioxide underground, forever, explains Erica Belmont, a University of Wyoming mechanical engineering professor.
Importantly, the feedstocks—wood, energy crops such as elephant grass and switchgrass, agricultural waste, or other biomass sources—have all been grown recently. That means that they took up and concentrated “new” carbon from today’s environment. Burning new biomass, when combined with capturing and sequestering emissions, makes the bioenergy approach a NET because it captures carbon twice: first through photosynthesis and then through carbon-capture technology. Fossil fuels, in contrast, don’t have the benefit of incorporating contemporary carbon even if emissions are captured.
BIOENERGY AT A GLANCE
Primary benefits: Renewable energy
Primary constraints: Land availability, transportation infrastructure
Current cost per metric ton of CO2: $200–$1,000
Estimated removal capacity: 3.5 billion–5.2 billion t of CO2 annually
Research needs: Increase energy density of crops
It’s “a very appealing approach and carbon negative as long as we keep these CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere,” Belmont says. “But still, the problems are formidable.”
The primary challenge is growing enough biomass to make a dent in greenhouse gas emissions without affecting food production. Capturing and sequestering 10 billion t of CO2 annually from biomass energy production would require almost 40% of global cropland, according to the National Academies report. Realistically, 3.5 billion–5.2 billion t of CO2 per year globally could be captured without causing food shortages.
As for technologies to burn biomass for energy production while capturing CO2, processes are already used at small scales.
Overall, more research is needed to increase the energy stored in bioenergy crops and subsequently released by burning, improve infrastructure to move the biomass for processing, and scale up processes. Some solutions, such as heating and drying feedstock to make it easier to transport and burn, appear straightforward. Other problems, such as developing a transportation infrastructure for biomass feedstock akin to that already in place for moving coal, are more complex.
On the sequestration side of the bioenergy equation lies biochar, a solid carbon bioproduct of biomass burning. Technology developers hope to use it as a soil amendment to aid plant growth. However, there are outstanding questions around biochar’s long-term stability in soil and whether it would eventually become a carbon source rather than a sink.
BURYING UNDERGROUND
For two potentially powerful NETs—direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture—it’s not enough just to capture CO2. The substance must also be stored. Fortunately, deep geological reservoirs have sufficient space to sequester plenty of CO2, according to the National Academies report.
Sequestering CO2 underground involves compressing it to a supercritical fluid and then piping or shipping it to an injection well. Compressing the gas allows more CO2 to be transferred and sequestered than if it remained in gaseous form. At the well, the CO2 is injected into a geologic formation that is sufficiently deep—typically 1 km or farther underground—and impenetrable so that the CO2 stays in a supercritical form, explains Princeton’s Pacala, the National Academies panel chair.
GEOLOGICAL SEQUESTRATION AT A GLANCE
Primary benefits: Capacity
Primary constraints: Transportation infrastructure, long-term liability
Current cost per metric ton of CO2: Low, but amount unclear
Estimated total storage capacity:2 trillion t of CO2
Research needs: Scale up injection
Suitable geological formations for storing CO2 are porous and permeable reservoir rock such as sandstone, limestone, dolomite, or mixtures of these rock types. Typically, the reservoir rock is overlain by an impermeable rock species such as shale.
The oil industry has used a similar process for years, in which it injects CO2 into nearly depleted oil fields to drive residual oil and natural gas to the surface for processing. Currently, about 64 million t of CO2 is injected annually as part of this process, which is called enhanced oil recovery. About one-third of the CO2 used for injection comes from captured emissions from sources such as power plants and natural gas processing facilities. The rest comes from natural sources.
A portion of the CO2 used to extract oil remains sequestered in the oil fields; hence, this process is considered a successful means to sequester CO2. But the demand for CO2 to enhance oil recovery is far too small to curb global warming.
Separate from oil fields, however, deep geological formations with the necessary rock characteristics are sprinkled around the globe. In total, they could hold more than 2 trillion t of CO2, enough to substantially contribute to greenhouse gas mitigation strategies. Carbon capture, coupled with underground sequestration, could contribute about 14% of the CO2 emission reductions needed to stabilize the climate at a 2 °C increase, the National Academies report says.
However, although the capacity for carbon sequestration exists, developing a sequestration infrastructure and addressing liability issues may be challenging. Sequestration sites are unlikely to be near large sources of CO2 emissions, and sequestration scaled to address global warming will require development of new large-scale and long-distance infrastructure to transport CO2 by pipelines or ships—with the accompanying risk of leaks or releases from accidents. Financial liability and legal responsibility issues will need to be sorted out as quantities grow to billions of metric tons and storage stretches to hundreds of thousands of years.
MAKING ROCKS
Carbon mineralization is an emerging NET that pulls carbon dioxide from the air and stores it in the permanent form of carbonate minerals, such as calcite or magnesite.
MINERALIZATION AT A GLANCE
Primary benefits: Capacity
Primary constraints: Speed, water needed, transportation infrastructure
Current cost per metric ton of CO2: $100
Estimated removal capacity: High
Research needs: Fundamental understanding of mineralization chemistry
Mineralization occurs naturally during the weathering of silicate materials such as olivine, serpentine, and wollastonite. It also occurs in rocks rich in calcium and magnesium—particularly peridotite, which composes Earth’s upper mantle, and basaltic lava formed by partial melting of the upper mantle.
Mineralization takes advantage of rocks that geological processes have brought from deep within Earth up near or to the surface, where they are far from equilibrium and therefore reactive. Because mineralization uses this naturally available chemical energy, the approach may offer a low-cost means to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. And because the CO2 is locked in solid carbonate minerals, storage is potentially permanent and nontoxic.
Carbon can be sequestered through mineralization in three main ways, the National Academies report says. One approach, called ex situ carbon mineralization, involves transporting rocks to a site of CO2capture, where the reactants are combined with fluid or gas rich in CO2. Another process involves reacting a CO2-bearing fluid or gas with mine waste, alkaline industrial wastes, or sedimentary formations rich in reactive rock fragments. A third method, called in situ carbon mineralization, circulates CO2-bearing fluids through suitably reactive rock formations beneath Earth’s surface.
Carbon mineralization is not a new concept. Researchers have been investigating its potential to capture atmospheric CO2 for three decades. A recent study found that chemical reactions in common basalt rock can convert CO2 into solid minerals in less than two years—dramatically faster than the hundreds or thousands of years previously estimated (Science 2016, DOI: 10.1126/science.aad8132). However, mineralization could suffer from other resource problems. For example, the process requires 25 t of water for every metric ton of CO2 stored. And as with underground sequestration, it will require the development of transportation infrastructure.
GROWING PLANTS
Improved coastal zone management, reforestation, and enhanced agricultural practices could increase carbon dioxide sequestration capacity while also benefiting the environment.
Tidal wetlands incorporating salt marshes, mangroves, and seagrass beds thrive in the soft sediment and shallow water of estuaries between high and mean sea level. These so-called coastal-blue-carbon areas also hold large amounts of carbon in their soils and vegetation and could contain more.
PLANT GROWTH AT A GLANCE
Primary benefits: Environmental cobenefits
Primary constraints: Land availability
Current cost per metric ton of CO2: $20–$50
Estimated removal capacity: Blue carbon, 130 million t of CO2 annually; reforestation and enhanced agriculture, 2.5 billion–3 billion t of CO2 annually
Research needs: Impact of sea-level rise and land-use changes, increasing crop uptake of CO2
The plants take in some 840 million t of CO2 each year. The National Academies report estimates this level could more than double in the near future with active restoration and wetland creation, reaching additional cumulative storage of 5.4 billion t of CO2 by 2100.
Coastal wetlands are already targeted for restoration and management efforts because of the broad range of ecosystem services they provide, including coastal storm protection, water-quality improvement, wildlife habitat protection, and fishery support, notes Tiffany Troxler, science director for the Sea Level Solutions Center at Florida International University and one of the National Academies panel members. Enhancing the quantity of coastal plants available to sequester CO2 would give added weight to these protections, she says, and CO2sequestration could be carried out with almost no additional expense.
Another advantage, she notes, is that these carbon benefits can occur right away, unlike other negative-emissions approaches that are still in early development.
However, coastal regions also face constant development pressure. Globally, some 450 million t of CO2 annually is lost to the atmosphere from excavation and other human activities in coastal areas.
Sea-level rise, Troxler says, could also be a problem, but that could be avoided by allowing sediments to naturally accrue on estuaries and wetlands—letting the soil keep pace with rising seas rather than be blocked by coastal development and artificial construction.
Similar carbon uptake can be achieved inland, through forest and soil amendments. In these areas, however, sequestration efforts quickly run into conflicts over land for food versus land for CO2sequestration.
And there are other considerations. For forests, increasing sequestration means not only more trees but more trees that grow quickly and close together, to increase the amount of carbon uptake per unit area. Forests must be maintained over a long time, which necessitates the consideration of disease, fire, and harvesting operations, the National Academies report says.
For soil-based organic carbon, enhancing sequestration means adding organic waste to soil as well as reducing the decomposition rate of organic compounds into CO2.
Inland CO2 capture is inexpensive and can be deployed quickly, says Richard A. Birdsey, a forestry expert at Woods Hole Research Center and a National Academies panel member. However, expansion can be difficult. Birdsey notes there are 11 million US forest landowners, each with different objectives for their property. Some landowners want to raise more timber, some want land for hunting, and some just want to be left alone, he says. He estimates that maybe 10% of forest landowners would be willing to change their practices to promote carbon sequestration.
The National Academies report estimates that implementing inland carbon sequestration practices in a way that would not jeopardize food security and biodiversity globally would allow the capture of 2.5 billion to 3 billion t of CO2 annually from forests and agricultural soils combined.
The CO2-removal costs would be less than $50 per metric ton. If more aggressive land-management approaches prove to be practical and economical, rates of carbon removal for both forests and agricultural soils could double, the report says.
However, both inland and coastal-blue-carbon gains are reversible if the carbon-sequestering practices are not maintained. For example, forested land could be cleared again, and reverting agricultural soils to intensive farming practices could stir up and release captured carbon back to the atmosphere. And restored coastal wetland could be drained or simply dug up, ending any carbon benefit.
Jeff Johnson is a freelance writer based in Washington, DC.
https://cen.acs.org/environment/greenhouse-gases/Capturing-carbon-save-us/97/i8
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Michigan Governor Swerves in Environmental Rules Game of Chicken
Feb 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alex Ebert
Michigan’s agricultural and industrial interests can keep their seats at the environmental regulatory table after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) revised her plan to kill a review committee and a permit appeal process favored by Republican lawmakers.
In a game of chicken, Whitmer swerved, reissuing an earlier executive order that the state’s assembly blocked because it eliminated the committee and permit appeal process.
The Feb. 20 reissued executive order reinstating the panel and appeal process is a victory for the GOP-controlled House and Senate, which held an unprecedented vote to block Whitmer’s prior executive order.
The state’s assembly won’t attempt to rescind Whitmer’s reissued executive order that intensifies the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality’s focus on drinking water, climate change, and services for the poor, aides for Michigan House and Senate leaders told Bloomberg Environment Feb. 22.
Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield thanked Whitmer in a Feb. 21 statement, saying “We all want clean drinking water and the protection of our Great Lakes, and I’m glad we could reach a consensus.”
But the consensus might be short-lived.
Legality QuestionedWhitmer initially said she wouldn’t change her previous executive order, but said in a Feb. 20 statement that she’d wait to act on the committee and permit appeal process until Democrat Attorney General Dana Nessel issues an opinion on whether they violate state law.
The review panel gives the business community a formal avenue for ensuring the state considers industry concerns over stricter environmental rules.
The permit appeal process will save businesses significant attorneys’ fees. Instead of immediately filing a lawsuit against the state if a permit is denied, a permit applicant can seek an independent appeal from a panel of experts chosen from outside the Department of Environmental Quality staff.
The committee and permit process (S.B. 652, 653) were enacted last June under former Gov. Rick Snyder (R).
Business groups, such as the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, say these procedures level the playing field for business groups that are impacted by regulation or permit denials not based on science.
Michigan environmental groups say these processes insert pro-business viewpoints into regulation that should focus instead on the health of Michiganders.
Nessel has asked for public comments through Feb. 27 as her office researches the issue.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/michigan-governor-swerves-in-environmental-rules-game-of-chicken
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Feb 25, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Ines Kagubare
Washington state lawmakers last week introduced a new carbon tax proposal that would target the transportation sector.
The bill, known as "Forward Washington," would impose a $15-per-metric-ton fee on carbon and generate about $7.9 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. The proposal is part of a massive $17 billion investment in environmental projects related to transportation and infrastructure.
"This is a huge investment into our environment here in Washington state," said state Sen. Steve Hobbs (D), lead sponsor of the bill, which was introduced Thursday.
If the measure passes, it would make Washington the first state to impose a carbon tax by law. However, Washington legislators have struggled over the last few years to pass similar measures.
Last year, voters rejected a state ballot initiative that would have placed a carbon fee on the transportation sector. The measure would have taxed carbon starting at $15 per metric ton starting in 2020 and increasing by $2 per metric ton every year until 2035, with revenue going toward environmental projects (E&E Daily, Nov. 7, 2018).
Earlier in 2018, another carbon tax proposal died in the state Senate. That measure would have imposed a $12-per-metric-ton fee on carbon generated through the sale or use of fossil fuels such as gasoline and natural gas.
Hobbs said he opposed both of the previous measures because "the money was not accounted for" and did not directly tackle transportation and environmental issues. He added that the transportation sector makes up almost 50 percent of Washington's carbon output, making it the state's largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions.
"If you're going to do any carbon policy it should come back to transportation and go to projects that affect our environment," Hobbs said.
Under the new bill, revenue from the carbon fee would go toward transportation projects, the removal of fish passage barriers, stormwater improvements and energy grid upgrades, among other things.
The bill package also includes a 6-cents-per-gallon increase to the fuel tax, which is expected to generate about $2 billion in revenue that would go toward infrastructure projects, including state highway improvement and maintenance, traffic operations, and debt service repayment on related capital investments.
The increase would raise the state's fuel tax from 49.4 cents per gallon to 55.4 cents per gallon. Currently, Washington has the second-highest fuel tax in the country after Pennsylvania, which imposes a tax of 58.2 cents per gallon.
Hobbs said he has received bipartisan support for his bill.
"It's kind of like the 'Green New Deal' except for Washington state," Hobbs said, referring to progressives' national climate proposal.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/02/25/stories/1060122265
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Record-Warm Oceans: How Worried Should We Be?
Feb 22, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Ilissa Ocko
The world’s oceans are heating up. Scientists have found that 2018 was the hottest year ever recorded for our oceans, and that they are warming even faster than previously thought.
When documenting global warming trends, we often focus on air temperature. But the oceans actually absorb more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by human emissions of greenhouse gases. So if we really want to know how much our planet is warming up, we look to the oceans.
And what the oceans are telling us is alarming.
Using multiple measurement devices, scientists from across the globe found that the amount of heat in the upper part of the world’s oceans in 2018 was the highest ever recorded [PDF] since observations began in the 1950s. In fact, the past five years are the warmest years on record and the increase in ocean heat has been accelerating since the 1990s.
Scientists also found that the oceans are warming faster than data previously published in a 2013 landmark report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Studies now show that in recent decades, the rate of warming in the upper ocean – the top 2,000 meter or 6,500 feet layer of the ocean – was about 40 percent higher than the earlier IPCC estimates showed. The new data, made possible by vast improvements to ocean heat records in recent years, is also consistent with model projections of ocean warming.
So how worried should we be?
Why warmer oceans matter
Rising ocean temperatures are a major concern for societies and ecosystems across the globe. Hotter oceans lead to:
· rising sea levels when water molecules expand from increasing temperatures, and then erode coasts, threaten infrastructure and contaminate freshwater with intruding saltwater.
· heavier downpours and widespread flooding because more ocean water evaporates as temperatures increase, supplying the atmosphere with more moisture.
· more destructive hurricanes because of the increased moisture in the air and higher sea levels that worsen storm surges.
· dying coral reefs as the corals’ colorful algae, their main food source, leave the corals due to heat stress. This bleaches corals of their vivid colors, causing them to starve, while affecting the survival of thousands of species that live in the reefs.
· fish moving poleward because their current habitats are becoming too warm, disrupting fisheries.
There is still time
Recent scientific reports have concluded that our greenhouse gase emissions so far have not yet committed us to future warming levels that can cause catastrophic climate impacts. That is great news.
There are, in fact, countless reasons to feel hopeful. Numerous countries are reducing greenhouse gas emissions while growing their economies. Renewable energy sources are increasingly more affordable. And new technologies, such as carbon dioxide removal, are emerging.
Oceans are warning us, and we need to act now. As disconcerting as this oceans news has been, there’s still time.
https://www.edf.org/blog/2019/02/22/record-warm-oceans-how-worried-should-we-be
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