Preview Newsletter
PM ACC Clips Report - March 13, 2019
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA 'Not Planning' to Extend TSCA Risk Evaluation Deadline
Mar 13, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The US EPA plans to meet the December deadline for finalising its first ten risk evaluations under TSCA, according to recent remarks from chemicals office head Alexandra Dunn. -
Democrat Says EPA Not Protecting People as it Oversees Chemicals
Mar 13, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Congress’ effort to protect Americans by giving the EPA additional authority to oversee and regulate chemicals of concern is being “squandered,” Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) said March 13. -
EPA Deters Safer Chemicals from Market, Rep. Shimkus Warns
Mar 13, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Delays in the EPA’s reviews of new and often safer chemicals are keeping more concerning compounds on the market, Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) said March 13. -
EPA, Chemical Industry Version: Killing Workers Is Job One
Mar 13, 2019 | Natural Resources Defense Council
By Daniel Rosenberg
When he was a candidate for President, Donald Trump (in)famously said that he could stand in the middle of fifth avenue and shoot somebody, and he wouldn’t lose any voters. -
(ACC Mentioned) Global Goal for Chemicals Will Not Be Achieved, Says UN Report
Mar 12, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
The global goal to minimise adverse impacts of chemicals and waste will not be achieved by 2020, according to a major UN report. -
PFAS Plaintiffs Urge 3rd Circuit to Reject Navy Rehearing Bid
Mar 13, 2019 | Inside EPA
Pennsylvania residents who want the Navy to fund third-party medical monitoring costs due to their exposure to perfluorinated chemicals are urging a federal appeals court to reject the military's request for rehearing of a ruling that allowed the residents claims to proceed, arguing the Navy is misreading the court's holding that its sovereign immunity is waived. -
PFAS: States Not Waiting For EPA
Mar 13, 2019 | Lexology
By Daniel J. Grucza
EPA has shown a little love for states wanting action on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). -
Member States Begin Checks on Hazardous Chemicals in Imported Products
Mar 13, 2019 | Chemical Watch
National enforcement authorities (NEAs) in 16 EU member states have started inspections on imported goods to check for the presence of substances of concern. -
Brexit Prompts UK’s CBA to Sell Regulatory Compliance Business
Mar 13, 2019 | Chemical Watch
The UK’s Chemical Business Association (CBA) has sold its specialist regulatory compliance company Regulatory Facilitation Company (ReFaC) to Germany-based consultant and services provider CSB. -
Fracking 2.0 Was a Financial Disaster, Will Fracking 3.0 Be Different?
Mar 12, 2019 | DeSmog (Blog)
By Justin Mikulka
Two years ago, the U.S. fracking industry was trying to recover from the crash in the price of oil. -
Shell, BP, Exxon Press EPA to Regulate Methane
Mar 13, 2019 | Energywire
By Hannah Northey and Mike Lee
Three of the world's biggest oil companies are pushing for federal regulation of methane emissions from energy production, punctuated by a warning yesterday from BP CEO Bob Dudley. -
(ACC Mentioned) Keep Track of Senate Breaches, Duo Advocates
Mar 13, 2019 | Politico - Morning Cybersecurity
By Tim Starks
...A representative of the chemical industry on Tuesday told a House panel that DHS should do both more and less on cyber. -
Judges Appointed by Democrats Thwart Trump Agenda — Report
Mar 13, 2019 | E&E Greenwire
By Niina Heikkinen
A former senior George W. Bush administration official is warning that President Trump's environmental and climate regulatory rollbacks are vulnerable to reversal by the courts. -
UN Report: Environmental Damage Could Cause Millions of Deaths by 2050
Mar 13, 2019 | Politico Pro - Whiteboard
By Ginger Hervey
“Unsustainable” human activity is “endangering the ecological foundations of society,” according to a massive report published today by the United Nations.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
TSCA News
Chemical Management News
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Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA 'Not Planning' to Extend TSCA Risk Evaluation Deadline
Mar 13, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The US EPA plans to meet the December deadline for finalising its first ten risk evaluations under TSCA, according to recent remarks from chemicals office head Alexandra Dunn.
Passage of the Lautenberg Act in 2016 set in motion a series of deadlines for the EPA to select and complete risk evaluations on ten priority substances, with final assessments due by 19 December.
The statute does allows for a six-month extension, if needed. But speaking at the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) GlobalChem conference in Washington, DC, last week, Ms Dunn said the agency "at this moment, [is] not planning on using it."
"We intend to meet that date," said the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention assistant administrator.
Ms Dunn indicated that there will not necessarily be ten separate peer reviews convening, because the agency can group together similar chemicals. August will probably see the culmination of the peer review process to allow the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) 90 days to complete its interagency review before the evaluations are finalised, she added.
To date, only one of the ten draft risk evaluations – for pigment violet 29 (PV29) – has been released. But its peer review was put on hold due to the US’s longest government shutdown, which left the EPA shuttered for more than a month. A catch-up date has not yet been set.
'We have got to move,' Alexandra Dunn, chemicals office head, EPA
Additionally, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler pledged to Congress that the agency would stagger the release of the draft evaluations and allow a minimum of 60-day comment periods on each to "maximise the opportunity for review".
"We are planning to move deliberately, thoughtfully, intensively through this," Ms Dunn said. But it is going to be a challenge, she added: "We have got to move."Additional evaluations loom
Beyond these first ten risk evaluations, Ms Dunn indicated that additional ones may be in the works for substances nominated by industry.
The EPA "can do additional evaluations based on manufacturer requests, and we have some of those from the American Chemistry Council and I believe we have one other," she said in her remarks.
The TSCA risk evaluation framework rule anticipates nearly 200 days from receipt of a manufacturer request to beginning an evaluation: this includes a public notification step and comment period process before the EPA makes a determination to grant or deny it.
Therefore, if accepted, evaluations of these nominated substances would probably come alongside the next 20 substances that the EPA will begin evaluating.
Ms Dunn confirmed that the candidate list for these 20 ‘high priority’ substances is set to be released later this month.
She said the substances have been selected from the 2014 TSCA workplan, "so there should not be a surprise about any of them".
The statutory deadline for the EPA to finalise its next set of high priority chemicals and begin assessments on them is 22 December.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74990/epa-not-planning-to-extend-tsca-risk-evaluation-deadline
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Democrat Says EPA Not Protecting People as it Oversees Chemicals
Mar 13, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Congress’ effort to protect Americans by giving the EPA additional authority to oversee and regulate chemicals of concern is being “squandered,” Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) said March 13.
One of those important provisions Congress added to the Toxic Substances Control Act, when the law was amended in 2016, required that the EPA consider potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations, Tonko, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Environment and Climate Change subcommittee, said during a March 13 hearing on workers.
“The law explicitly identifies infants, children, pregnant women, workers, and the elderly as high-risk groups,” he said.
“I have many criticisms of this administration’s failure to properly implement the law, but its failure to protect these groups is near the top of my list,” Tonko said.
“Make no mistake, we are seeing a clear pattern: The systematic failure of our Environmental Protection Agency to protect workers under TSCA and other EPA programs, against the spirit and letter of the Lautenberg Act and the fundamental mission of the agency,” he said. The Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act overhauled TSCA in 2016.
The Trump administration’s failure to take action against the ever more extreme weather resulting from climate change also is making workers and communities vulnerable, said Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) chairman of the full committee.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/democrat-says-epa-not-protecting-people-as-it-oversees-chemicals
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EPA Deters Safer Chemicals from Market, Rep. Shimkus Warns
Mar 13, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Delays in the EPA’s reviews of new and often safer chemicals are keeping more concerning compounds on the market, Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) said March 13.
“I’m particularly concerned about making sure more effective, efficient, and safe new chemicals enter the market,” said Shimkus, the top Republican on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee, during opening remarks at a subcommittee hearing.
If those new chemicals can replace existing compounds that may pose health or environmental risks, “wouldn’t it be better to get the new chemicals to market?” he said.
Shimkus’ concerns about the EPA’s delayed reviews on new chemicals was echoed in a March 4 Government Accountability Office report on the agency’s implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Because of lengthy delays that chemical manufacturers face with new chemicals reviewed under the act, companies are deciding to introduce those new compounds in other countries, the GAO said.
Shimkus urged Subcommittee Chairman Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.). to hold a hearing on the EPA’s new chemicals program.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-deters-safer-chemicals-from-market-rep-shimkus-warns
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EPA, Chemical Industry Version: Killing Workers Is Job One
Mar 13, 2019 | Natural Resources Defense Council
By Daniel Rosenberg
When he was a candidate for President, Donald Trump (in)famously said that he could stand in the middle of fifth avenue and shoot somebody, and he wouldn’t lose any voters. While he hasn’t taken that particular step, his Administration has not been shy about demonstrating its disregard for human life—and particularly workers—in other ways. When it comes to protecting workers, as well as the general public, from exposure to dangerous and even deadly toxic chemicals, the Trump EPA has bent over backwards to ensure that workers are not protected, from unsafe exposures to hazardous materials.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment & Climate Change is holding a hearing today on the Trump EPA’s failure to protect workers from toxic chemicals. There is a long list of examples the committee could choose from. Here are just a few of the most egregious:Failure to ban Methylene Chloride (MC) and NMP in paint strippers
At least four deaths have occurred since the Trump Administration refused to finalize a ban on consumer and commercial uses of methylene chloride (MC) and N-methylpyrollidone (NMP) in paint strippers that had been proposed under the Obama Administration. In the face of lawsuits and consumer demand, more than a dozen retailers including Lowe’s, Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Amazon have committed to pulling the products from their shelves. Despite this show of public and retailer demand for safer paint stripping products, the Trump EPA is poised to execute a smoke and mirrors stunt that will both undercut retailers and ensure that workers and consumers will continue to be exposed to these dangerous products.
EPA’s final rules—expected possibly by the end of this week—will “ban” consumer uses of MC (but not NMP) in paint-strippers but allow its continued commercial use; a loophole that will leave commercial products on the shelves for anyone to purchase, including non-commercial users and thereby making even the consumer ban meaningless. Although EPA is announcing a future program for the training and certification of workers to safely use the NMP and MC paint strippers; this was previously proposed by the chemical industry and rejected as ineffectual and unenforceable by the Obama EPA. Nobody should be fooled: injuries and deaths will continue for workers and consumers with these loophole rules, made by and for industrial chemical manufacturers.Failure to ban Chlorpyrifos
In one of his first acts as EPA Administrator, corrupt and disgraced Scott Pruitt announced that EPA would rollback the Obama EPA proposed ban on agriculture uses of chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxic pesticide made by Dow Chemical and linked to acute worker poisonings and lasting neurological problems in prenatally exposed children. NRDC and our partners including Pesticide Action Network and Earthjustice are using the law and science to compel EPA to finalize protections. Sadly, the Trump EPA seems to consider harm to kids, workers, even whole communities as just the price of doing business.Attempts to weaken protections for pesticide applicators
Another early Trump Administration initiative was to weaken existingprotections for pesticide applicators. The Farm Bureau and the pesticide manufacturers—two lobbying groups that predictably attack any restraints on agrochemicals—announced plans to reverse those protections, some of which were designed to protect workers under the age of 18. However, after some heroic advocacy by Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) and others, Trump EPA caved. Thankfully, the worker protections remain in place, but the immorality of Trump EPA’s attempt is no less stark.Pretending that workers will be protected from the dangers of new chemicals
One of the most “in the weeds” but insidious decisions taken by the Trump EPA on behalf of the chemical industry is its approach to reviewing the safety of proposed new chemicals under the recently revised Toxics Substances Control Act (TSCA). Under the law, EPA is required to review applications for new chemicals, and ensure that each one is not likely to pose an unreasonable risk to human health and the environment, with a specific obligation to account for the safety of particularly susceptible populations, including pregnant women, children and workers. If EPA can’t make a determination that the proposed chemical isn’t likely to pose an unreasonable risk, it must impose restrictions that will be sufficient to protect the public (or the environment), up to and including rejecting a proposed new chemical.
The new TSCA requirements enacted by Congress in 2016 establish a process under which EPA is both authorized and obligated to protect the public—and it has particular consequences for workers because they are most likely to be exposed to new chemicals. But the Trump EPA instead adopted a chemical-industry crafted fiction: the presumption, despite evidence to the contrary, that workers will be protected from new chemicals because they will always use the personal protective equipment (things like gloves, eye protection, dust masks, respirators etc.) that is recommended in safety data sheets prepared by chemical manufacturers, and that it will always fit and function effectively. As an example of how misguided this is, the respirators recommended for working with methylene chloride will degrade upon exposure to methylene chloride, thus rendering them ineffectual. Rather than impose mandatory requirements on chemical manufacturers to protect workers as Congress intended (including engineering controls that are more effective and reliable than personal protective equipment), or preventing the introduction of new dangerous chemicals, EPA is pretending there is no problem. It’s a move both cynical and deadly.Shoddy efforts to determine worker exposure to existing chemicals
The recent revisions to TSCA also require EPA to review the safety of a limited number of “existing” chemicals and determine whether they pose an unreasonable risk—including to workers and other susceptible populations (if they do EPA must take steps to address the risk). Thus far, EPA has only issued one of its draft “risk evaluations”—for a chemical known as pigment violet 29 (PV29). EPA is supposed to be doing a thorough analysis of both the toxicity of the chemical as well the amount of exposure to the chemical via its various uses (“conditions of use”). My colleague Dr. Jennifer Sass has blogged about the draft evaluation of PV29. There are numerous fundamental flaws with EPA’s approach, but here I’ll just note that EPA’s sole effort to document the degree of exposure to PV29 is reported by EPA as “personal communication” with someone at a PV29 manufacturing company that provided a verbal, undocumented, unverifiable, single numeric value for an exposure estimate. Whether this is secret science or no science, it is clearly unacceptable for risk assessment. EPA is now proposing that the chemical poses no unreasonable risk—which means that EPA plans to take no action to regulate its use. EPA has 9 more chemicals to assess by the middle of 2020. Once the evaluations are final they are ripe for legal challenge, and if the other evaluations do as shoddy of a job assessing exposure to workers (and others), it would be reasonable to expect that EPA will end up having to defend those decisions on court. Workers deserve better than EPA’s legally suspect cursory and disinterested efforts to determine the amount of toxic exposures in the workplace.Excluding epidemiology studies
Historically, epidemiologic studies of human populations—and particularly occupational epidemiology of workers—are among the most important ways of determining the harm from toxic chemical exposures. Sadly, while these studies are critical to our understanding, they represent a failure to prevent harm since each “data point” in the study is a person—a parent or spouse or child—who suffers preventable diseases or death. Effective workplace health and safety protections should be in place to ensure that no worker dies in the course of earning a living and supporting a family. Nonetheless, it is unconscionable to disregard the human lives that were lost to chemical exposures by disregarding and discarding epidemiologic studies.
It has been a long-term agenda item for the chemical industry to weaken or eliminate the use of epidemiologic studies as a means of identifying potential risks and regulating chemicals to protect workers and the public. That agenda item quickly moved to the top of the Trump EPA’s To Do list, resulting in the widely-condemned “Censoring Science” rule which would largely eliminate EPA’s reliance on or consideration of these data. Think about it: EPA is proposing a policy to not learn about the deaths of workers, to ensure that it doesn’t have to take action to avoid future workers’ deaths. Could the Trump EPA really go any lower?Conclusion
If a worker goes into his workplace and shoots the boss, it’s murder. If the boss poisons the worker a little bit each day, it is accepted as part of the job. Yet, although it takes longer, eventually the worker is just as dead. These half dozen examples are all appalling, and they speak to both the utter callousness of the Administration and its unwavering fealty to Dow, DuPont, Monsanto and other giant chemical manufacturers. And, these are just a few examples out of dozens that could be used to make the point.
Donald Trump may never actually shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, but his Administration has repeatedly shown that it will fight any new protections—or eliminate existing protections—for workers from dangerous toxic chemicals. It’s exactly what you would expect from the Chemical Industry Version of EPA and it calls for strong Congressional oversight and public resistance.
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/daniel-rosenberg/epa-chemical-industry-version-killing-workers-job-one
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(ACC Mentioned) Global Goal for Chemicals Will Not Be Achieved, Says UN Report
Mar 12, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
The global goal to minimise adverse impacts of chemicals and waste will not be achieved by 2020, according to a major UN report.
The 2020 goal was set out in 2006 under the UN’s global non-binding chemicals programme, the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (Saicm).
But a summary version of the second Global Chemicals Outlook (GCO II) report says, despite international agreement, reached at high-level UN conferences, and significant action already taken, "scientists continue to express concerns regarding the lack of progress" made.
Despite international agreement, reached at high-level UN conferences, and significant action already taken, 'scientists continue to express concerns regarding the lack of progress' made
The 68-page summary report, which follows on from an earlier policy makers report, was published yesterday at the Unea-4 conference in Nairobi. It comes just weeks before the full report is due to be released during the Saicm Open Ended Working Group (OEWG) meeting in Montevideo next month. This is being held to establish whether the programme should continue beyond its 2020 mandate, or be replaced with an alternative framework.
The GCO II summary - which sets out 10 key findings - finds that despite "significant progress" made, major implementation gaps remain. In particular, developing countries, and economies in transition, still lack basic chemicals and waste management systems.
It highlights that the Globally Harmonised System (GHS) for classification and labelling has not been implemented in more than 120 countries, mostly developing nations and economies in transition.
Many, it says, still lack pollutant release transfer registers (PRTRs), poison centres and capacities for hazard and risk assessment and risk management.
Gaps remain in managing industrial chemicals and consumer products, with regulations on lead in paint being a "revealing indicator". As of September 2018, only 37% of countries had confirmed they have legally binding controls on lead in paint. And, even if regulations on specific chemicals are in place, implementation and enforcement may pose challenges, it says.
Progress remains insufficient, the summary says, and there is an "urgent need to take concerted action to develop basic chemicals management systems in all countries".
Chemical production and consumption is shifting to emerging economies, in particular China. The Asia-Pacific region is projected to account for more than two-thirds of global sales by 2030 and cross-border e-commerce is growing 25% annually.
With such growth expected, the report says industry’s involvement in global chemicals management has "not been sufficient".
"While industry is involved through programmes such as [the international Council of Chemical Associations'] Responsible Care programme, universal coverage is yet to be achieved," it says.
However, speaking on behalf of the ICCA, vice president of regulatory and technical affairs at the American Chemistry Council (ACC), Mike Walls, told Chemical Watch recently that he does not agree with this conclusion on the 2020 goal, saying that "we've made significant progress".
"A more appropriate approach to the discussion is considering what we have achieved and how we can continue to build on successes as opposed to bemoaning the fact that we haven't completely achieved the 2020 goal as articulated in the Rio declaration," he added.
The ICCA is pushing for a "reinvigorated" Saicm programme.Saicm
The 2018 independent evaluation of Saicm found that it is "unique in its ambition as an inclusive multi-stakeholder, multi-sector voluntary policy framework".
The evaluation also found that the programme creates a "collaborative space for raising awareness, increasing knowledge and reducing risks".
However, it points out weaknesses, such as:insufficient sectoral engagement;the capacity constraints of national focal points;lack of tools to measure progress; andlimited financing of activities.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74963/global-goal-for-chemicals-will-not-be-achieved-says-un-report
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PFAS Plaintiffs Urge 3rd Circuit to Reject Navy Rehearing Bid
Mar 13, 2019 | Inside EPA
Pennsylvania residents who want the Navy to fund third-party medical monitoring costs due to their exposure to perfluorinated chemicals are urging a federal appeals court to reject the military's request for rehearing of a ruling that allowed the residents claims to proceed, arguing the Navy is misreading the court's holding that its sovereign immunity is waived.
“Rehearing en banc is unwarranted because the Navy fails to present an issue of exceptional importance; indeed, both bases for the Navy’s request--that the Court did not fully analyze [the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act's (RCRA)] waiver provision and issued an unduly broad holding--are unsound,” the plaintiff-appellants in Kristen Giovanni, et al., and Dorothy Palmer, et al. v. Navy say in a March 11 brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.
“Nor would granting the Petition affect the outcome of the appeal: this Court correctly held that RCRA’s waiver applies here. Rehearing en banc therefore should be denied,” the brief adds, saying there is also no basis for a rehearing by the same three-judge panel that decided the case “because the Panel did not overlook or misapprehend points of law or fact that affected the outcome of the appeal.”
In its precedential ruling last year, a three-judge panel of the 3rd Circuit found the Navy waived its sovereign immunity pursuant to RCRA section 6001(a) and therefore is not immune from suit for the costs of private party medical monitoring.
The court also found medical monitoring of per- and polyfluoroakyl substances (PFAS) conducted by a private party at a contaminated Navy site is a form of injunctive relief and is not prohibited by the Superfund law's bar on challenges to cleanup actions.
The Navy has asked the 3rd Circuit to reconsider its ruling, arguing the court erred when it found RCRA unequivocally waived sovereign immunity to allow such a remedy. In part, the Navy says the three-judge panel, like the plaintiffs, “never grappled with statutory text that limits the scope of RCRA’s waiver.”
But the plaintiffs counter that Judge Stephanos Bibas specifically asked questions about the text of RCRA waiver during oral argument. “Just because the Opinion did not discuss in detail every phrase of what the Court described as the 'wordy' sovereign immunity waiver provision--because the Navy did not put them all at issue--does not mean the panel ignored any of them,” the plaintiffs brief says.
The Navy in its request for rehearing also argued the panel's decision is at odds with the statutory language of RCRA and that it opens the Navy to scores of medical monitoring claims in the area covered by the 3rd Circuit -- Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the Virgin Islands.
But the plaintiffs dispute the ruling interpreted RCRA's waiver too broadly.
“The Panel did not interpret RCRA’s waiver provision to mean something “'[t]hat is not what the statute says.' Rather, the Navy interprets the Opinion as saying something other than what it says and tries to set off alarm bells based on that misreading,” the plaintiffs say.
Although the court used the phrase “environmental laws” to summarize “the upshot” of the “wordy” section 6001(a), the court explained that this section had other limiting factors, such as applying only to federal agencies dealing with solid or hazardous waste, the plaintiffs say.
Additionally, the court in a footnote warned that its holding is limited to characterizing claims for private party medical monitoring under a [Pennsylvania state law] for purposes of the RCRA waiver of sovereign immunity. We do not decide today how to characterize claims for relief outside those limited circumstances."
“Because no en banc review should revisit dicta, the Navy’s Petition should be denied,” the plaintiffs say.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/pfas-plaintiffs-urge-3rd-circuit-reject-navy-rehearing-bid
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PFAS: States Not Waiting For EPA
Mar 13, 2019 | Lexology
By Daniel J. Grucza
EPA has shown a little love for states wanting action on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). On February 14, 2019, EPA announced its PFAS Action Plan, calling it “the most comprehensive, cross- agency action plan for a chemical of concern ever undertaken by the Agency.” The Action Plan consists of 23 priority action items with the majority identified as short-term or generally taking place or expected to be completed in the next two years.
EPA’s PFAS Action Plan
The Plan includes:
Drinking Water: establishing maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) for Perfluorooctane Sulfonate (PFOS) and Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA)
Cleanup: listing PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances and issuing interim groundwater cleanup recommendations
Enforcement: using available enforcement tools to address PFAS exposure in the environment
Monitoring: considering PFAS chemicals for listing in the Toxics Release Inventory
Research: developing new analytical methods to detect more PFAS chemicals
Risk Communications: creating a PFAS risk communication toolbox
States Aren’t Waiting
However, many states are not satisfied and have indicated that they will push forward with their own policies. Seventeen states have formal policies addressing PFAS. Much like the bipartisan congressional call for EPA to act on PFAS, the states that plan to move forward are not just the blue states but are joined by some red states as well.
Maximum Contaminant Levels
The regulatory process to establish a MCL under the federal Safe Water Drinking Act typically takes years. Concerned with the possibility of further delays, at least seven states have developed policies or are pursuing policies with standards stricter than EPA’s current health advisory of 70 parts per trillion (ppt) for PFOA and PFOS. They include Alaska, California, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Vermont.
New Jersey has a MCL for Perfluorononanoic Acid (PFNA) of 13 ppt and is proposing MCLs for PFOA and PFOS at 14 and 13 ppt, respectively.
In New York, an advisory council recommended a MCL for PFOS and PFOA at 10 ppt.
Vermont currently has a health advisory for any combination of five PFAS—PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, PFHpA and PFNA—at 20 ppt. The state is planning to propose an MCL for the five chemicals at the same level.
As a likely precursor to MCLs, California established nonbinding drinking water notification levels for PFOA at 14 ppt and PFOS at 13 ppt and a combined PFOA/PFOS combined response level at 70 ppt.
North Carolina has set a target of 140 ppt for GenX in drinking water.
Other Notable State Actions
Firefighting Foam: Seven states, including Washington, Minnesota, Michigan, Kentucky, Virginia, New York and Connecticut, have taken steps to prohibit PFAS in firefighting foam.
Food Packaging: Washington, Kentucky, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont have taken steps to prohibit PFAS in food packaging.
Reporting: Washington, Florida, California and Vermont are also taking steps to address reporting of PFAS discharges or use in products. Oregon passed a law requiring the Oregon Health Authority to establish and maintain a list of designated high-priority chemicals of concern for children’s products.
Health Effects: To address health effects, California and Michigan have established or required monitoring of water systems.
Purchasing Guidelines: New York has established purchasing guidelines as part of the New York State Green Procurement program.
While the EPA Action Plan and Congressional hearings on PFAS may grab national headlines, companies need to be aware of and understand the actions states are taking and the potential impacts to their operations.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=7a671821-210a-4657-b8cc-66d33477b256
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Member States Begin Checks on Hazardous Chemicals in Imported Products
Mar 13, 2019 | Chemical Watch
National enforcement authorities (NEAs) in 16 EU member states have started inspections on imported goods to check for the presence of substances of concern.
Coordinated by the Echa Enforcement Forum, the pilot project targets REACH and CLP obligations for the products and is performed in cooperation with customs authorities. It began in March and will run until the autumn.
Inspectors and customs teams will check whether imported products comply with certain restrictions under REACH regarding hazardous chemicals, such as:cadmium;nickel; orlead.
They are also verifying that chemical products are labelled with the required safety information.
Where products are found to be non-compliant, the import will be stopped and any future imports will not be allowed to enter the EU market. "The tighter collaboration between inspectors and customs authorities will also further enhance the protection of EU citizens from hazardous substances," Echa said.
The final report for the pilot project is expected around mid-2020.
At the beginning of the year Echa’s Enforcement Forum released its work programme until 2023. This identified imports of articles containing substances of concern and cooperation with customs as a priority area.
The release came six months after the EU Commissioner for environment, maritime affairs and fisheries urged Echa to assess the need for a restriction of SVHCs in imported articles earlier in the regulatory process.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74989/member-states-begin-checks-on-hazardous-chemicals-in-imported-products
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Brexit Prompts UK’s CBA to Sell Regulatory Compliance Business
Mar 13, 2019 | Chemical Watch
The UK’s Chemical Business Association (CBA) has sold its specialist regulatory compliance company Regulatory Facilitation Company (ReFaC) to Germany-based consultant and services provider CSB.
The CBA represents the UK chemical supply chain, with distributors, traders, logistics and transport companies among its members.
After the referendum outcome signalling the UK’s future withdrawal from the EU, CBA developed a contingency plan to relocate ReFaC to another member state to guarantee continuity of the company’s services.
ReFaC’s clients, in the UK and elsewhere, can use CSB’s REACH and only representative (OR) services to ensure compliance with the EU chemical regulatory framework. CSB also provides safety data sheet authoring, as well services under REACH, GHS and biocides Regulations.
The company has long criticised the UK government’s handling of Brexit for failing to provide certainty in the chemicals industry, and attacked its plans for mirroring REACH legislation.
ReFaC was formed in 2006 to provide UK companies with a "low-cost method" of meeting their compliance obligations under the impending REACH legislation, the CBA said. It was formed by the industry for industry, with CBA member companies as its original shareholders, the association added. The company traded until 2015 when CBA acquired all of its share capital.
Lars Dobbertin, CSB general manager, said the company will continue to deliver ReFaC’s compliance services from its UK office to its existing clients selling into EU markets.
"We are now also in an excellent position to offer clients the full regulatory support for the UK after Brexit. Our plan is to grow the business by helping companies comply with both UK and EU chemical regulations through an enhanced service portfolio."
On 12 March Echa opened its REACH IT window to enable UK companies to make changes and transfer their REACH registrations to EU-based entities. If an only representative (OR) is not appointed, the EU27/EEA importers will have to submit their own registrations. The window will close on 29 March – the day the UK is due to leave the EU.
On 12 March Prime Minister Theresa May’s EU withdrawal deal was defeated for a second time. MPs will today decide if they want to block a no-deal scenario. If this passes, they will reconvene tomorrow to vote on extending Article 50 and thereby delay the country’s exit from the trade bloc.
https://chemicalwatch.com/74991/brexit-prompts-uks-cba-to-sell-regulatory-compliance-business
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Fracking 2.0 Was a Financial Disaster, Will Fracking 3.0 Be Different?
Mar 12, 2019 | DeSmog (Blog)
By Justin Mikulka
Two years ago, the U.S. fracking industry was trying to recover from the crash in the price of oil. Shale companies were promoting the idea that fracking was viable even at low oil prices (despite losing money when oil prices were high). At the time, no one was making money fracking with the business-as-usual approach, but then the Wall Street Journal published a story claiming all of this was about to change because the industry had a trump card — and that was technology.
Today, frackers are again relying on technology as a financial savior, but this time, they are looking to Microsoft.
As ExxonMobil embarks on an ambitious move into fracking in the Permian oil fields of West Texas, it has announced a partnership with Microsoft to use cloud technology to analyze oil field data and optimize operations. Exxon claims the move could generate “billions in net cash flow.”
Time will tell if the Microsoft cloud will make Exxon rain profits in the Permian. Fracking 2.0
In March 2017, the Wall Street Journal ran an article with the headline, “Fracking 2.0: Shale Drillers Pioneer New Ways to Profit in Era of Cheap Oil,” which detailed the ways the shale industry expected technology could help it finally deliver profits. The article mentioned “longer, supersize wells” and said, “The promise of this new phase is potentially as significant as the original revolution.”
The article highlighted EOG Resources (as in, Enron Oil and Gas), a company often touted as the “Apple of oil,” and quoted the company’s chief information officer saying that technology advances allowed its employees to work at the “speed of thought.”
It also reported that Chesapeake Energy was betting on these new supersize wells as part of its “turnaround strategy.” Chesapeake needed to “turnaround” from losing money and move in the direction of profits.
In June 2017, investment website Seeking Alpha trumpeted “The Arrival of Super-Laterals” as a technological accomplishment for the shale oil industry. (“Laterals” are the industry term for the horizontal wells used in the fracking of shale oil and gas). That article featured Chesapeake Energy’s new achievements in drilling longer lateral wells.
But supersized wells weren't the only solution for keeping shale drillers from losing more money. Another was more wells per drilling pad. A year ago shale company Encana announced plans for “cube development,” in which it would drill 64 wells on one gargantuan drilling site in the Permian oil fields of West Texas.
The same thing was happening in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, where top natural gas producer EQT Corporation had plans for drilling 40 wells per pad. The company recalled the early days of fracking when drilling three wells per pad was seen as a significant breakthrough. As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported at the time, the higher number of wells per pad required “creative geometry,” which “ensures that the wells don’t crowd each other underground.”
The Post-Gazette also quoted Dave Elkin, a senior vice president of asset optimization at EQT, touting the ever-increasing lengths of horizontal wells, as saying the “economic and technological limit” for those in the Marcellus Shale was 21,000 feet, or just shy of 4 miles.
With more advanced technology delivering longer horizontal wells and creative geometry packing them into smaller areas, profits seem like the next logical step.
But Fracking 2.0 was a financial disaster, and shale drillers' desperate attempts to make money any way they can is coming back to haunt them in a big way.Frac Hits and Technological Limits
EQT did indeed drill the longest wells but also lost a lot of money in the process. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The decision to drill some of the longest horizontal wells ever in shale rocks turned into a costly misstep costing hundreds of millions of dollars.”
EQT started 2019 with a round of layoffs. Chesapeake’s supersized wells meant that in 2018 the company spent $600 million more than it made to produce oil and gas.
But that wasn’t the really bad news for the fracking industry, which was learning that its “creative geometry” was mostly creating losses. Encana — the company with the super pad of 64 wells — also announced layoffs. In a letter to the Texas Workforce Commission, Encana said, “The company intends to gradually separate employees between now and May 31, 2019,” moving from creative geometry to creative ways of describing layoffs.
And while those are just three companies that tried to push the limits of fracking technology, the issue of packing too many wells on the same pad could greatly alter the economics of the fracking industry. As I wrote in August 2018, when oil and gas wells are too close to each other, the fracking process can damage nearby wells — a process known as “frac hits.” The result can cost drillers money and greatly reduce the amount of oil they can pump from these wells.
Two years after its Fracking 2.0 story, the Wall Street Journal published one titled, “Shale Companies, Adding Ever More Wells, Threaten Future of U.S. Oil Boom.” The article details how packing too many wells on a drilling pad is “turning out to be a bust.”
According to the Journal, this reality could lead to an “industrywide write-down if they are forced to downsize the estimates of drill sites they have touted to investors.” For a highly leveraged industry on a decade-long money losing streak, that isn’t good news.
Industry analysts at Wood MacKenzie started to warn about the limits of technology's ability to deliver more oil in the Permian in 2017. In the Wall Street Journal, Robert Clarke, research director at Wood Mackenzie, said, “Unless there is a massive technological breakthrough, those child wells are going to be smaller.” Child well is the industry term for the multiple wells drilled on a pad around the first “parent” well.
Once again, unless technology can change the financial equation, the fracking industry is in trouble.
Which brings us to Fracking 3.0 …Fracking 3.0: Exxon Bets on Microsoft to Solve the Problem
Despite the past financial disasters and failure of new technology to deliver profits for frackers, the oil industry's biggest players are now getting in on the game in the prolific Permian oil fields. And the solution to fracking's profits problem — according to the likes of ExxonMobil — is Microsoft. Apparently cloud technology has been the missing ingredient in the Permian.
In the past week, Exxon and Chevron have both announced plans for major investments in the Permian Shale, which they promise will deliver large increases in both oil production and profits.
Much like in 2017, current headlines have been touting Exxon’s plans and its partnership with Microsoft to use technology to finally figure out how to make money fracking in the Permian.
It appears to be an effective public relations push by Exxon — which was much needed. A year ago Exxon’s poor financial performance was linked to its failure to make a big move into fracking shale for oil. At the time, CNN wrote, “ExxonMobil missed the invitation to America's big oil party.”
While this latest promise of profits from fracking now has some of the world's largest companies behind it, these plans are nothing more than a press release at this point. Which makes this a good time to revisit when Exxon made a big move into natural gas in 2010. Exxon bought natural gas producer XTO for $40 billion, and while the U.S. is producing record amounts of natural gas in 2019, this deal is viewed as one of the worst in the history of the energy industry.
“That was one of the worst acquisitions in the history of the energy business. It was exquisitely poorly timed,” Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst at Raymond James, told CNN in 2018. “…It was essentially $40 billion down the drain.”
Perhaps Exxon’s big move into shale oil won't repeat history, and the oil giant will finally unlock the secret to profits while fracking for shale oil with improved technology.
For some perspective, however, it helps to look at how EOG — the “Apple of oil” — is doing these days.
For that, let's turn to Art Berman, a leading industry analyst with a strong track record on many aspects of fracking for oil and gas. In February he published an analysis showing that 2015 was the best year for EOG’s well performance for its Eagle Ford wells in Texas and that 2018 might be the worst.
Technology apparently isn't delivering great results for the “Apple of oil” — but perhaps Microsoft has the answers.
https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/03/12/shale-oil-drilling-financial-disaster-fracking-3-0
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Shell, BP, Exxon Press EPA to Regulate Methane
Mar 13, 2019 | Energywire
By Hannah Northey and Mike Lee
Three of the world's biggest oil companies are pushing for federal regulation of methane emissions from energy production, punctuated by a warning yesterday from BP CEO Bob Dudley.
"You may not know, a few days from now there will be a major global event that exemplifies what I'm talking about," Dudley said to an audience of energy leaders at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference. "Around the globe, tens of thousands of young people, maybe even hundreds of thousands, will take part in what is being called a youth-led climate strike."
"These are young people on the cusp of being able to vote," he continued. "They're tomorrow's legislators, regulators, jurists, and consumers, of course."
Dudley said the oil and gas industry needs to engage with its critics, including policymakers "talking about the Green New Deal" in the United States and shareholders challenging companies on how their business strategies measure up against climate goals of the Paris Agreement.
"There's a rising tide of concern on many fronts about the lack of progress on climate issues, and I would say not just concern, but anger," he said.
Dudley's remarks came on the same day that executives from Royal Dutch Shell PLC endorsed — and as Exxon Mobil Corp. subsidiary XTO Energy Inc. reaffirmed its commitment to — federal methane regulations. It's a strategy change for the supermajors, who fought the idea of methane regulations during the Obama administration and generally cheered the Trump administration's rollbacks of environmental rules.
The move could help the industry build credibility with the public for other climate change solutions such as carbon capture and sequestration, which are expensive and untested, said Mark Brownstein, senior vice president for energy at the Environmental Defense Fund.
Having one agency in charge of regulations is preferable to a patchwork of 50 individual states with their own rules, Dudley said in his speech.
Dudley dismissed a report in yesterday's Financial Times that the company had worked to undermine federal U.S. regulation of methane, commenting, "We actually support regulation of methane here in the U.S." (see related story).
Gretchen Watkins, Shell's president for upstream operations, said during a panel discussion at the conference in Houston that the company's decision is part of its effort to stay profitable through energy transitions spurred by the global response to climate change.
"We're really concerned about what the EPA is doing around methane emissions," Watkins said. "We think the U.S. should not strip methane regulations out of the Clean Air Act."
Shell is urging EPA to include both existing sources of methane and future sources, Watkins added.
A Shell spokesman said Watkins' comments signify the first time the oil major has publicly called on EPA to reverse course and proceed with regulation of methane from new oil and gas operations.
"It's also the first time Shell has made public our support for the direct regulation of methane from existing sources and expressed Shell's view that this EPA should propose that rule," Curtis Smith, a spokesman for Shell, told E&E News.
The Trump administration last year moved to dial back key elements of the Obama-era methane rule. EPA officials at the time called the proposed changes "targeted improvements" and noted that reductions in monitoring and record-keeping will save oil and gas companies $484 million through 2025 (Energywire, Sept. 12, 2018).
In public comments on the proposed rules, the oil and gas industry laid low, with many companies staying out of the fight. The American Petroleum Institute told EPA that changing the rule would "reduce the burden of overlapping regulatory requirements that have little environmental benefit and make sensible revisions based on real-world field data" (Energywire, Dec. 19, 2018).
Shell's news was applauded by Sarah Smith, program director for the Clean Air Task Force, who pointed to strong statements that Matt Kolesar, regulatory manager at Exxon Mobil Corp.'s XTO Energy Inc. affiliate, made yesterday in a blog post authored by the Environmental Defense Fund.
Kolesar said he supports regulations that focus on "reduction measures that have an impact in reducing emissions from operational components," and that "smart regulation that takes into account new and existing sources as well as their differences, allows industry to continue to thrive while resulting in environmental benefits."
Smith in an email said the blog reflected the "strongest language I've seen from ExxonMobil on support for continued direct regulation of methane, including a call to address emissions from existing sources."
Other companies also appear to be moving toward tackling methane emissions.
Houston-based oil producer EOG Resources Inc. is setting targets to reduce methane emissions from its oil and gas wells.
The company's decision to do so was revealed in a resolution on Trillium Asset Management's website.
Trillium revealed that EOG — which once stood for Enron Oil & Gas — was facing shareholder pressure to reduce emissions and is now moving forward with setting "both qualitative and quantitative methane emissions reduction targets in the coming years."
Trillium, according to the website, withdrew its resolution seeking methane limits in light of EOG's commitments. Axios first reported the company's plans.
EOG in an email declined to provide details about the standards being set or when they would be released.
"We can confirm that the announcement is accurate, but do not have any additional information to provide at this time," EOG spokesman Creighton Welch wrote. "Our 2017 Sustainability Report, which is posted on our website, addresses our approach to environmental topics."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/03/13/stories/1060127133
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(ACC Mentioned) Keep Track of Senate Breaches, Duo Advocates
Mar 13, 2019 | Politico - Morning Cybersecurity
By Tim Starks
QUICK FIX
Should the Senate compose an annual calculation of the number of times it's attacked? A pair of senators says “yes.”
— Three committees examine different aspects of cybersecurity today. Cyber Command, election security and small business cyber defenses are all on the agenda.
— POLITICO did a Q&A with former FBI general counsel James Baker, now with the R Street Institute. He talked about cyber technology and surveillance, among other subjects.
HAPPY WEDNESDAY and welcome to Morning Cybersecurity! Send your thoughts, feedback and especially tips to tstarks@politico.com, and be sure to follow @POLITICOPro and @MorningCybersec. Full team info below.
CONGRESS
TALLY OF MISERY — A pair of U.S. senators today is asking the Senate sergeant-at-arms to produce an annual accounting of the number of compromised Senate computers and when hackers compromise sensitive Senate data by other means. The bipartisan duo pointed out that while companies and executive agencies have to comply with a variety of data breach disclosure laws, Congress has no such obligation. “We believe the lack of data regarding successful cyber attacks against the Congress has contributed to the absence of debate regarding congressional cybersecurity," wrote Sens. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, and Tom Cotton, a Republican.
SENATE SMALL BUSINESS COMMITTEE GETS BUSY — Sen. Marco Rubio will introduce two pieces of legislation today during a Senate Small Business Committee hearing this afternoon. A spokeswoman for the senator’s office told MC that Rubio plans to roll out the SBA Cyber Awareness Act, co-sponsored by top panel Democrat Ben Cardin, which would direct the Small Business Administration to develop a cyber strategy, report on breaches to Congress and more. He also plans to introduce the Small Business Cyber Training Act, co-sponsored with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, which would require small business development centers to have a set number of employees certified in “explaining cyber strategy.”
MONEY QUIZ — Two panels today take a look at Trump administration fiscal 2020 cybersecurity budget requests. The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security convenes a hearing on securing federal networks and state election systems. “DHS goals for the 2020 election cycle include improving the efficiency and effectiveness of election audits, continued incentivizing the patching of election systems, and working with states to develop cybersecurity profiles utilizing the NIST framework,” the director of the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, will tell the committee in prepared testimony.
The House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities also comes to order to dig into the Pentagon’s digital operations. Subpanel chairman Jim Langevin will use his opening statement to commend Cyber Command’s role protecting the midterms but also warn against complacency. “Much like the traditional battlefield, we must measure the impact of our operations to assess our warfighting effectiveness towards the larger objectives and ensure our strategic vision reflects the realities of engagement in cyberspace,” he will say. The Trump administration’s budget requested $9.6 billion for DoD cyber operations. Cyber Command is expected to ask for around $610 million in fiscal 2020, close to the amount it is expected to spend this fiscal year.
CYBER ‘WINTER IS COMING’ — POLITICO sat down with James Baker, the new director of National Security and Cybersecurity at R Street Institute and former top lawyer at the FBI, to chat about expanding the organization’s cyber program, suggestions to empower states ahead of the 2020 election and recommendations for next steps on expiring provisions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. When asked about cybersecurity implications of emerging technologies, he joked, “Winter is coming.” Read the full Q&A here.
LEAVE THE MALWARE, TAKE THE CANOLI — From our friends at Morning Energy: The mafia is ready to hack our infrastructure — or at least, the companies that run it. Cybersecurity experts speaking at CERAWeek in Houston on Tuesday said that while much of the focus is on nation-states, organized crime also plays a big role in hacking. “Most of the attacks are financially driven, and most of them driven by organized crime,” said Taher Elgamal, chief technology officer for security at Salesforce. "They’re not random things.” Elgamal said criminal organizations, from the mafia to overseas gangs, have developed full-fledged business models using phishing attacks to break into systems and then hold information for ransom or simply sell off intellectual property or financial data.
But this kind of attacker is unlikely to try to shut down the grid or cut off gas supplies by hacking a pipeline. ”Commodity malware where there’s scraping data, where they can turn that into money, that’s where organized crime comes in,” said Michael Lester, cybersecurity director for Emerson Electric. “I haven’t seen any intel that would make me believe they were after turning off the switch.”
MORE HELP, FEWER CHECKS — A representative of the chemical industry on Tuesday told a House panel that DHS should do both more and less on cyber. DHS plans to expand Terrorist Screening Database vetting from the highest-risk plants to more than 3,000 lower-risk plants “will needlessly create a security risk by exposing thousands of individual records to loss or cyber theft," Kirsten Meskill, the director of corporate security at BASF appearing on behalf of the American Chemistry Council, told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Innovation.
Chemical plants covered under regulations known as the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards also want additional info from DHS. “ACC believes that DHS could do a better job in sharing cyber threat information with CFATS facilities,” Meskill said in prepared testimony. “This data would be very helpful for facilities to prioritize risk evaluation and security planning.” Additionally, she said, “DHS inspectors should also be trained in the latest trends in cybersecurity threats against chemical operators and handlers so those trends can be shared with regulated facilities and plans can be adapted accordingly.”
EGADS, E-VOTING — The Swiss government and the company behind its online voting platform are downplaying research that exposed a flaw in how the system authenticates vote data. On Tuesday, researchers at the University of Melbourne reported that malicious actors could trick Switzerland’s e-voting system into approving altered votes. “There is no modification of the audit process that would make it possible to detect if a manipulation happened,” the researchers wrote. They added that they hadn’t fully tested the e-voting system and that “there may be other unnoticed problems.”
Switzerland’s postal service, which is overseeing the project, blamed the e-voting vendor, Scytl, which did not fix the problem as promised after it was first identified in 2017. “Swiss Post regrets this and has asked Scytl to make the correction in full immediately, which they have done,” the agency said. “The modified source code will be applied with the next regular release.” The flawed feature, known as universal verifiability, has not been activated in the four cantons already using the system. In its own statement, Scytl thanked the researchers for spotting the flaw and said security and transparency were its “cornerstone” values.
RECENTLY ON PRO CYBERSECURITY — A large voting machine manufacturer is clashing with security researchers in New York over a warning about the equipment. … A security researcher also clashed with the makers of a conservative app over a vulnerability he identified, but the app-makers claim his public disclosure was politically motivated. … Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she would oppose any legislation in Congress that “weakens” her home state of California’s privacy legislation. … House Republicans introduced legislation intended to safeguard sensitive research against spying. … German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her nation will come up with its own rules for rolling out 5G. … The European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution stating security concerns about Huawei and ZTE. … The Commerce Department is denying tech-related licenses to Chinese nationals living in the U.S.
TWEET OF THE DAY — Stay ahead of the bad guys by skipping to “password8.”
QUICK BYTES
— An eye-popper from The Wall Street Journal on how hacking of the Navy undermines U.S. military power.
— Federal agencies are miscategorizing cyber and IT jobs. Government Accountability Office
— “Report: Russia will meddle in European elections, keep prepping for war with NATO.” NBC News
— A Saudi cybersecurity company tried to buy zero days from a Motherboardreporter.
— Also from The Wall Street Journal: a cyber fight underseas with China.
That’s all for today.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-cybersecurity/2019/03/13/keep-track-of-senate-breaches-duo-advocates-543043
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Judges Appointed by Democrats Thwart Trump Agenda — Report
Mar 13, 2019 | E&E Greenwire
By Niina Heikkinen
A former senior George W. Bush administration official is warning that President Trump's environmental and climate regulatory rollbacks are vulnerable to reversal by the courts.
John Graham, a former head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and dean of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University, analyzed the first two years of the Trump administration.
The president has made cutting regulatory "red tape" a key feature of his presidency and has credited efforts to reverse Obama-era rules for spurring economic prosperity.
But Graham and co-author Keith Belton, director of the Manufacturing Policy Initiative at Indiana University, detail how the administration's efforts are already facing setbacks.
"I think it will be a very tough review process for the Trump administration," said Graham.
The paper is titled "Trump's Deregulatory Record" and was commissioned by the right-leaning American Council on Capital Formation.
Graham and Belton point out not only problems with the process of how the administration is justifying regulatory repeals but also the challenge of defending the changes before district and appellate court judges appointed by Democratic presidents.
The authors analyzed a breakdown of rulemaking-related litigation compiled by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University. Of the 30 cases reviewed, judges favored the administration in only two.
The study looked at who appointed the judges who ruled against the administration in 18 instances. They found that judges picked by Democratic presidents drove those decisions.
In 10 other cases the federal government "capitulated before a judicial decision was issued."
None of the cases challenging rule repeals has reached the Supreme Court, with five of nine justices appointed by Republican presidents.
"It is apparent that the Trump administration must face the reality that, unless a case is heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, the outcome is likely to be influenced by judges that were appointed by Democratic presidents," the authors wrote.Endangerment finding, social costs of carbon, co-benefits
The report authors note the administration has lost court challenges to its deregulation in three main areas.
In most of the 18 cases where judges ruled against the administration, they disagreed with the Trump team's approach of delaying or suspending the effective date of an existing rule pending replacement or repeal.
Courts have also called out the administration for not providing adequate analyses supporting a repeal or replacement of an existing rule and for not adequately considering foregone benefits that result from rolling back a regulation.
The administration's attempts to undo EPA's climate rules are especially vulnerable because the administration's approach has failed to address the agency's 2009 endangerment finding on greenhouse gases.
That finding underpins President Obama's signature actions, including the corporate average fuel economy standards for automobiles and the Clean Power Plan.
Graham noted EPA leaving the endangerment finding in place exposed the agency to legal challenges over rollbacks of rules regulating carbon and methane emissions.
Graham suggested that because the science supporting climate change has strengthened in recent years, courts may require EPA to reopen its endangerment finding to further account for the impact of warming global temperatures on human health and welfare.
Another factor likely to undermine climate rule rollbacks is the way the administration has calculated the social cost of carbon, a metric that puts a dollar value on the harm caused by emitting a metric ton of carbon dioxide.
The report authors suggest the Trump team's calculation could be vulnerable because deregulatory rulemakings don't include "fully coherent explanations" of why the administration heavily favors a domestic calculation of social cost of carbon over the international value, used by the Obama administration.
Finally, rewrites of climate rules and other environmental regulations have altered the approach to "co-benefits."
The Trump administration has faced sharp criticism for arguing it should not justify regulating a pollutant based on the environmental and health benefits resulting from reductions in another pollutant.
The authors recommend federal agencies and OIRA "take a harder technical look at the co-benefit claims being made by federal agencies, especially the extent of scientific uncertainty about those claims."'Defensible deregulation package'
The authors offered some proposals for how the Trump administration might more effectively secure its deregulatory objectives.
They pointed out that, along with pushing deregulation through the 13771 executive order, the administration was also drafting nearly 50 percent fewer "significant" regulations than both the Obama and Bush administrations.
They warned that this slow pace could undermine the administration's objective to review the relevance of existing regulations.
Without many new rules coming in, there isn't the same incentive for agencies to go back and look at existing mandates that are no longer necessary.
The administration would be more effective if it worked to increase the number of appointed officials at regulatory agencies, they said.
Graham noted that the administration needed to foster a close working relationship between appointees and career staff; without that, "it's very unlikely you are going to get a defensible deregulation package."
They also urged the Trump administration to take into account how state and local governments are responding to the rule repeals.
While the administration has argued that it is easing economic burdens on American businesses and industry, Graham noted that outright repeal of rules could create uncertainty for industry as some states draft their own rules, particularly on regulating chemicals and climate change.
"If you are selling products across state lines, having five or 10 different state regulations could be worse than having one regulation for the whole country. In some cases, if they have a modest regulation, it can encourage some states not to regulate at all," Graham said.
He noted the administration is treating regulatory rollbacks as if they are solely a consideration for the federal government.
"They need to be working in collaboration with states and local governments; that will lead to uniform national solutions," Graham said.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/03/13/stories/1060127187
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UN Report: Environmental Damage Could Cause Millions of Deaths by 2050
Mar 13, 2019 | Politico Pro - Whiteboard
By Ginger Hervey
“Unsustainable” human activity is “endangering the ecological foundations of society,” according to a massive report published today by the United Nations.
The Global Environmental Outlook is the U.N.’s most comprehensive assessment of the state of the environment over the last five years, and is carried out by scientists from more than 70 countries.
It predicts that unless environmental protections are dramatically increased, health risks caused by environmental damage will cause millions of premature deaths by 2050, mostly in developing countries.
“Damage to the planet is so dire that people’s health will be increasingly threatened unless urgent action is taken,” the U.N. said in a press release accompanying the report.
The report says water pollution will lead to anti-microbial resistance being a leading cause of death by 2050, and also said endocrine-disrupting chemicals that affect hormone systems will have a major impact on fertility and children’s development.
At a policy level, the report says governments should shift toward a near-zero-waste economy by 2050, and aim to invest significantly in green projects. At an individual level, the report recommends consuming less meat and throwing away less food, as well as reducing plastic pollution.
The report is released as international environment ministers meet in Nairobi for the U.N. Environment Assembly, which takes place every two years.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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