Preview Newsletter
PM ACC Clips Report - March 15, 2019
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Dems Introduce Bill to Protect Science Research from Political Interference
Mar 14, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Rachel Frazin
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) introduced legislation on Thursday to prevent political interference with public science research amid what they called "President Trump's multi-agency assault." -
(ACC Mentioned) Plans in Place to Eliminate TSCA New Chemicals Backlog
Mar 15, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The US EPA has plans in place to reduce the backlog of TSCA new chemicals reviews over the next six months, according to Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention assistant administrator Alexandra Dunn. Since the... -
(ACC Mentioned) Successful New Chemical Submissions Could Take US a Year to Complete
Mar 15, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins
Successful new substance applications under TSCA may take significantly more time to prepare than industry is accustomed to, delegates at a recent American Chemistry Council conference heard. Last week, GlobalChem... -
(ACC Mentioned) Busting Industry-Perpetrated Myths about New Chemicals and Worker Protection under TSCA
Mar 15, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
This week the House Energy & Commerce Committee held a hearing on EPA’s failures to protect workers from chemical risks. It featured a number of compelling testimonies from worker representatives: auto workers, firefighters... -
House Subcommittee Holds Hearing on “Mismanaging Chemical Risks: EPA’s Failure to Protect Workers”
Mar 15, 2019 | JD Supra
By Bergeson & Campbell, P.C.
On March 13, 2019, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change held a hearing on “Mismanaging Chemical Risks: EPA’s Failure to Protect Workers.” The hearing examined the U.S... -
Environmental NGOs Push for PFAs-Free Airport Firefighting Foams
Mar 15, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins
A group of 40 national and state environmental health organisations are pushing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to allow the use of firefighting foams that do not contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs). -
Report: Military Pushing EPA To Set Lenient PFAS Standards
Mar 15, 2019 | New Hampshire Public Radio
By Annie Ropeik
As federal regulators consider new drinking water standards for toxic PFAS chemicals, military officials are reportedly pushing for less stringent rules. The Environmental Protection Agency is planning new standards for testing... -
Construction of New Storm Sewers Planned to Stem PFAs Flow from Buick City
Mar 15, 2019 | MLive
By Paula Gardner
A large-scale replacement of the storm sewers at one of Michigan’s largest urban redevelopment sites will start by this fall, prompted by the need to halt the flow of PFAS chemicals from the former auto factory. More monitoring wells... -
Scientists Found Worrisome New Evidence About Roundup and Cancer
Mar 14, 2019 | Mother Jones
By Tom Philpott
The long-simmering debate about whether the world’s most widely used herbicide causes cancer has bubbled up anew. Glyphosate is the key component of weedkillers such as Monsanto’s Roundup. On March 12, attorneys made closing... -
Tight Regulation of Chemours’s GenX Chemical Proposed in EU
Mar 15, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Cheryl Hogue
Chemours’s GenX chemical, a polymer-processing aid, would become a candidate for strict regulation in the European Union under a proposal from the Dutch government. GenX is used to produce nonstick coatings and other products. -
GOP Senators Revive Small-Scale Export Push
Mar 15, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Geof Koss
A trio of Republican senators this week reintroduced legislation that would ease the export of small quantities of liquefied natural gas. The bill, S. 816, offered by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), John Kennedy (R-La.) and Marco Rubio... -
EPA Raises Procedural, Substantive Bars to EAB Fracking Permit Case
Mar 15, 2019 | Inside EPA
EPA is urging the Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) to dismiss a trio of petitions seeking more stringent consideration of potential environmental hazards and equity concerns in a hydraulic fracturing well permit, arguing that the... -
LNG Industry Eyes Natural Gas Being Flared in the Permian Basin
Mar 15, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Sergio Chapa
The liquefied natural gas industry wants to become an outlet for the record amount of methane being produced in the Permian Basin, where much of it is being burned off due a lack of pipelines to move it out of the West Texas shale play. -
Industry Momentum Builds for Nationwide Methane Regulation
Mar 15, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Ben Ratner
Oil and gas companies in the United States are the latest to add their voices to the broad set of stakeholders supporting federal regulation of methane emissions from the oil and natural gas sector. These companies have a major... -
Chamber Names New Acting Energy Head
Mar 15, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jeremy Dillon
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has named a former George W. Bush administration official as its acting president and CEO of its Global Energy Institute. Christopher Guith, who at one time served as a Department of Energy political... -
Northam Vetoes Bill Opposing Cap and Trade
Mar 15, 2019 | AP (E&E - Greenwire)
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has vetoed legislation aimed at limiting his authority to institute a carbon cap-and-trade plan. Northam, a Democrat, said yesterday he had killed a bill that requires legislative approval before Virginia can...
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Dems Introduce Bill to Protect Science Research from Political Interference
Mar 14, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Rachel Frazin
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) introduced legislation on Thursday to prevent political interference with public science research amid what they called "President Trump's multi-agency assault."
The lawmakers said in a press release that political interference has been a "longstanding concern that has taken on newfound urgency" in the current administration.
Provisions in the "Science Integrity Act" intend to make it so that political considerations do not factor into scientific conclusions, to prohibit the suppression of scientific findings and to allow scientists to answer media inquiries about their work without prior agency approval.
“Independent, rigorous scientific research is one of the most powerful tools we have for advancing the public interest and keeping the American people safe,” Tonko said in the statement.
“President Trump’s multi-agency assault on environmental standards has hinged on efforts to distort, bury and even rewrite credible public scientific findings, including his absurd denial of the growing climate crisis and efforts to cover up evidence that the American people are being exposed to dangerous toxins," he added.
Schatz in the statement said that we are facing "unprecedented times" for science.
"While it’s not the first time it has been under attack, this time feels worse," he said. "That’s why we need to answer the call of our times and stand up for science.”
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/434157-dem-lawmakers-introduce-bill-to-protect-science-research-from
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(ACC Mentioned) Plans in Place to Eliminate TSCA New Chemicals Backlog
Mar 15, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The US EPA has plans in place to reduce the backlog of TSCA new chemicals reviews over the next six months, according to Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention assistant administrator Alexandra Dunn.
Since the passage of the Lautenberg Act amended TSCA in 2016, the pace of new substance reviews has slowed and the EPA has fought to keep at bay a ballooning number of cases undergoing review.
But speaking last week at the American Chemistry Council’s GlobalChem conference, Ms Dunn said that agency staff have "just presented to me a schedule to reduce the backlog over essentially the next six months."
"We want to make hitting the 90 days the rule, not the exception", she added, on the subject of the agency’s statutory requirement to complete its reviews to this schedule.
Characterising the approach as "very aggressive", Ms Dunn said the agency is looking to streamline and more closely track each pre-manufacture notice (PMN) from the day it is submitted until it is cleared.
"We will try to do better and we will," she said.
Strategies and priorities
Speaking in a panel session, Jeff Morris, the EPA’s director of the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), discussed operational updates that the agency is considering to improve its review processes.
Generally speaking, Dr Morris said, the same scientists who are reviewing existing chemicals are also reviewing new chemicals. Therefore, the agency is working to identify ways it can "provide adequate space for people to focus on one or the other, to the extent that makes sense given their particular capabilities and focus areas".
With regards to how the agency is prioritising its new substance reviews, he said there is a focus on making sure that new submissions are meeting the 90-day review timeline. But he said the agency is also working the other end of the queue to bring down the backlog, even for those reviews that have passed the deadline.
Dr Morris added that, within the next decade, the agency is looking to have "a workforce that is appropriately sized to do the job, running a process that is efficient enough that the workload for all of us – whether you’re a submitter or a reviewer – is manageable."
It is three years since TSCA was amended, he added, and the EPA is "still in very much a growth and learning mode.
"But we’re all committed to making the process more effective and efficient," he said.
https://chemicalwatch.com/75054/plans-in-place-to-eliminate-tsca-new-chemicals-backlog
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(ACC Mentioned) Successful New Chemical Submissions Could Take US a Year to Complete
Mar 15, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins
Successful new substance applications under TSCA may take significantly more time to prepare than industry is accustomed to, delegates at a recent American Chemistry Council conference heard.
Last week, GlobalChem spotlighted the pre-manufacture notice (PMN) process, as concerns linger over the EPA’s persistent backlog of new substance cases; reviews are routinely taking more than the statutorily required 90 days to complete.
Rebecca Bernstein of specialty chemicals manufacturer Arkema said the company has struggled to make process changes that would enable it to get new chemicals through the system. She encouraged industry to provide extra detail to ease the EPA’s task of making a safety determination.
"If the agency doesn’t have the specific information either on hazard or exposure, they now must make assumptions. And those assumptions, by and large, are not going to be to our advantage," Ms Bernstein said. "It is in our best interest to develop additional information that will potentially rebut those assumptions."
Meanwhile, lawyer Mark Duvall of Beveridge & Diamond pointed out that, before the Lautenberg reforms to TSCA, a company could just scrape together a PMN with whatever data happened to be available, sometimes in under 30 days.
However, he said that the additional information required now to ensure a chemical is cleared for market will take substantially more time and resources. "Successful PMNs in the future will increasingly take at least a year to prepare," he said.
"This means that within companies, the [environment, health and safety] group needs to pay increasing attention to TSCA, devote more resources to it, and make TSCA, among many other priorities, one of the key factors to the company’s future success."
Agency advice to industry
EPA officials told industry to submit as much information on their new chemical as possible when completing PMNs. Lack of detail, said former agency official Kelly Mayo-Bean, will lead to delays.
Areas of particular concern, she said, include: chemicals that are in powder or dust form, or spray-applied, present potential inhalation risk; and any manufacturing activity that leads to potential water release presents ecological concerns.
Rebecca Edelstein, who leads the EPA’s PMN team, added that the agency will now be assigning programme managers to PMN cases earlier in the process.
And Alexandra Dunn, the head of the agency’s chemical safety office, encouraged the GlobalChem audience to schedule a pre-notice consultation with the EPA’s technical staff before even submitting a PMN.
Doing so, she said, will ensure a timely review and eliminate the "imperfections" in PMNs that cause delays in the process.
https://chemicalwatch.com/75038/successful-new-chemical-submissions-could-take-us-a-year-to-complete
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Mar 15, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
This week the House Energy & Commerce Committee held a hearing on EPA’s failures to protect workers from chemical risks. It featured a number of compelling testimonies from worker representatives: auto workers, firefighters, teachers, and farmworkers. It also featured testimony from a former Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) official, who made the case for why it is so critical that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) comply with the mandates and use the enhanced authorities Congress gave the agency under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to protect workers exposed to chemicals. He detailed why OSHA is unable to do so, describing OSHA as “outmatched” and having “exhausted its capacity” in the face of decades of severe budget cuts and limited legal authority.
Unfortunately, the hearing also included testimonies from two chemical industry representatives who painted a highly deceptive picture of what EPA has done to protect workers under the new TSCA and the adequacy of OSHA regulations regarding chemical risks in the workplace and the extent of compliance with them. This and future posts will address the damaging myths these witnesses are perpetuating, which have unfortunately taken a firm hold in the Trump EPA.
Myth #1: EPA is committed to protecting workers when reviewing new chemicals under TSCA.
One of the industry witnesses was Beveridge & Diamond’s Mark Duvall, currently a primary outside counsel to the chemical industry’s main trade association, the American Chemistry Council (ACC), and before that a longtime Dow Chemical attorney. In his testimony, Duvall asserted EPA is thoroughly protecting workers when reviewing new chemicals. As support, he presented a wholly misleading set of statistics on how many of EPA’s decisions on new chemicals have included worker protections since the 2016 amendments to TSCA. Based on this, he concluded that “almost 4 out every 5 PMN [premanufacture notification] substances that receive a final determination are regulated.”
Manipulating statistics on EPA new chemical decisions: What Duvall failed entirely to mention, however, is that his statistics lump together decisions on new chemicals EPA made during the first period after passage of the new TSCA – when it was largely complying with the new law’s legal requirements – and the more recent decisions it has made under new, still not public, policies that made radical changes in the agency’s approach to reviewing new chemicals. Decisions under the new approaches began to issue in late July 2018; we blogged extensively at the time about the first of these.
We have tracked each decision EPA has made since late July 2018, and in a recent blog post we noted how many of these decisions are throwing workers under the bus, allowing unfettered market access to chemicals even where EPA has identified serious potential risks to workers. As explained in our earlier blog post, EPA relied on ineffective, nonbinding documents to “expect” those risks out of existence.
Here is the breakdown of EPA’s decisions since the dramatic shift in its policies: Of the 75 premanufacture notifications (PMNs) on which EPA has made final determinations using the new policies since late July 2018, 62 of them have asserted that the new chemical is “not likely to present an unreasonable risk.” That means that over the last seven and a half months EPA has green-lighted without regulation 83% of the new chemicals subject to its new policies – a complete reversal from what Duvall claimed in his testimony.
Duvall’s omission of any mention of this critical distinction and wholesale reversal by EPA drastically misrepresented the current situation and borders on the dishonest.
Masking his and his clients’ relentless push for EPA to rely on purely voluntary workplace protections: Duvall’s effort to blur the distinction I just described is both ironic and the height of hypocrisy. First, Duvall knows full well that EPA reversed course because of relentless chemical industry pressure demanding that EPA stop regulating so many new chemicals under TSCA. Yet now he seeks to laud and take credit for EPA’s initial, relatively heavy regulation of new chemicals in order to assert that the Trump EPA is committed to and is protecting workers.
Touting EPA’s past imposition of mandatory workplace controls he and his clients oppose: Second, Duvall’s testimony provides statistics on how often EPA has imposed worker protection requirements for various categories of EPA decisions. For example, he says that most consent orders EPA has issued include “worker protection requirements.” He also discusses EPA’s use of significant new use rules (SNURs) to extend the reach of those consent orders, noting (emphases added):
Over the years, EPA has adopted 463 final SNURs that incorporate by reference worker protection provisions listed in 40 C.F.R. § 721.63, such as particular kinds of respirators, gloves, and protective clothing. In these SNURs, EPA has supplemented applicable OSHA requirements to mandate particular kinds of respirators and protective clothing. In some cases, it has set exposure limits and related monitoring requirements if companies can establish that exposure levels are low enough that respirators are not necessary.
EPA has adopted 404 final SNURs that incorporate by reference hazard communication requirements listed in 40 C.F.R. § 721.72. In these SNURs, EPA has gone beyond OSHA’s general hazard communication standard to mandate identification of particular hazards and protective measures.
So, let’s get this straight. Duvall cites these statistics to demonstrate how often EPA has imposed workplace protections through consent orders and SNURs – the very instruments EPA has all but stopped issuing under its new policies. He fails to acknowledge that both were largely abandoned in direct response to the chemical industry’s loud complaints to EPA that it doesn’t like consent orders and SNURs. Duvall himself co-authored comments submitted to EPA by ACC conveying those complaints.
He then glosses over the fact that it is only through the use of such instruments that EPA can impose binding requirements for companies to employ worker protection and hazard communication measures or, in the case of SNURs, to require notification to EPA of any intent to depart from them. If EPA only issues a “not likely” finding – as it is now routinely doing – any such measures are purely voluntary.
The regulatory provisions Duvall cites in the excerpt above are incorporated into EPA’s general SNUR regulations, so that EPA need only cross-reference them when issuing a SNUR. Adding to the irony of his citing these regulations, Duvall notes (see the emphases in the excerpt above) that these provisions go beyond OSHA requirements. Yet he, his industry clients, and others in the industry are not only calling on EPA to abandon these binding instruments, but also to defer to OSHA requirements or to instead rely on Safety Data Sheets – documents called for by OSHA regulations but that do not impose any binding requirements on employers to actually protect their workers.
It should be noted that in a handful of recent cases where EPA issued a “not likely to present an unreasonable risk” determination, EPA also proposed a SNUR for the same substance. However, in a striking departure from most of the SNURs EPA has issued in the past, these new proposed SNURs do not incorporate the worker protection and hazard communication requirements that Duvall cites to support his contention that EPA adequately protects workers. In other words, not only did these chemicals get unfettered market access because of their “not likely” determinations, in issuing proposed SNURs for these chemicals EPA opted not to impose any of the binding requirements for “protection in the workplace” or “hazard communication” available to it in its general SNUR regulations.
In my next post, I’ll delve into a second industry-perpetrated myth espoused by both Duvall and the other industry witness at this week’s hearing: That OSHA regulations already provide ample protection to workers from chemical risks.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2019/03/15/busting-industry-perpetrated-myths-about-new-chemicals-and-worker-protection-under-tsca/
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House Subcommittee Holds Hearing on “Mismanaging Chemical Risks: EPA’s Failure to Protect Workers”
Mar 15, 2019 | JD Supra
By Bergeson & Campbell, P.C.
On March 13, 2019, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change held a hearing on “Mismanaging Chemical Risks: EPA’s Failure to Protect Workers.” The hearing examined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) assessment and management of risks to workers from toxic chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and other laws. The Subcommittee focused on EPA’s implementation of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (Lautenberg Act), particularly how it conducts risk evaluations and considers legacy uses and susceptible subpopulations, as well as how EPA has addressed specific chemicals of concern such as asbestos, chlorpyrifos, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and methylene chloride.
Representative Paul Tonko (D-NY), Chair of the Subcommittee, began the hearing by noting that despite the authority of new TSCA, EPA has failed to protect workers. As of December 2018, according to Tonko, EPA seems to have abandoned banning asbestos. Tonko stated that EPA’s implementation of new TSCA has led to the systematic exclusion of risks to workers, the TSCA “framework rules” omit consideration of worker exposure, and EPA’s risk evaluation rule leaves out legacy uses.
According to Representative John Shimkus (R-IL), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, Congress may need to examine the overlap between the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and EPA and their responsibilities. The Lautenberg Act focused only on EPA’s responsibilities. Congress needs to ensure that new chemicals are vetted effectively because they may be better and safer than existing chemicals. Shimkus concluded that, almost two years after the enactment of the Lautenberg Act, now is the right time to have a hearing, and hopefully Congress will have more.
Representative Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), Chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, stated that one of the most important protections in the Lautenberg Act was the new requirement that EPA protect vulnerable populations, including workers. Pallone criticized EPA’s asbestos risk evaluation, stating that it ignores legacy uses. To ensure that the public will be protected from asbestos, on March 7, 2019, Pallone introduced the Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act of 2019 (H.R. 1603), to amend TSCA to prohibit the manufacture, processing, and distribution in commerce of asbestos and asbestos-containing mixtures and articles. Pallone expressed hope that Congress can work together in a bipartisan way to protect workers.
The Subcommittee heard from the following witnesses: Patrick Morrison, Assistant to the General President for Health, Safety, and Medicine, International Association of Firefighters, written testimony; Tom Grumbles, CIH, FAIHA, Former President, American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA), Past President, Product Stewardship Society, on behalf of AIHA, written testimony; Adam Finkel, Sc.D., CIH, Clinical Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, University of Michigan School of Public Health, written testimony.McGinnis testified that chemicals must be tested before manufacturers commit to using them in the workplace and that implementation of the Lautenberg Act must be a priority. Morrison stated that he was pleased that EPA selected asbestos and hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD), a flame retardant, as two of the first ten chemicals selected for risk evaluation. Morrison described the risks that fire fighters face from chemicals present in building materials, such as asbestos and HBCD. Morrison noted that despite the risks that asbestos poses to fire fighters, EPA failed to include fire fighters as a susceptible subpopulation in its problem formulation document. EPA’s problem formulation document for HCBD was more general. According to Morrison, under new TSCA, EPA must evaluate chemicals throughout their entire lifecycle. Removing legacy uses from review will skew results, particularly as they relate to workers. While Congress recently noted the dangers associated with PFAS, which are used in firefighting foams, there are still existing stocks of these foams in use.
Hutchison testified regarding asbestos removal in Baltimore schools, as well as teachers and students who may be exposed to asbestos in schools where it has not yet been remediated. She also described the presence of lead in the drinking water in Baltimore schools, noting that as the school district improves school buildings, it installs water filtration systems or upgraded plumbing. Older schools rely on bottled water, however.
Kashkooli highlighted that farm workers are excluded from OSHA oversight and that EPA is the only agency responsible for farm worker safety and health through its regulation of pesticides. He noted the bipartisan support of congress for protecting farm workers as evidenced in its passage of the Pesticide Registration Improvement Extension Act of 2018 (S. 483) (PRIA 4), which addressed worker protection matters. Kashkooli asked that PRIA 4 be enforced and that Congress support the Ban Toxic Pesticides Act of 2019 (H.R. 230), which would ban the use of chlorpyrifos.
Grumbles addressed the misperception that safety data sheets (SDS) are not followed by employers. According to Grumbles, when an employer receives an SDS, it develops a hazard assessment that informs the need for additional training, workplace labeling, changes in standard operating procedures, additional engineering controls, and personal protection equipment (PPE). Grumbles stated that SDSs have improved dramatically since OSHA implemented revisions to the Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) that include the use of the Globally Harmonized System for Classification and Labeling (GHS) to drive content and format, hazard classification, and hazard communication through labels and symbols.
Duvall testified that the Lautenberg Act made worker protection an even higher priority for EPA by requiring it to consider potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations, which include workers, when making determinations concerning risk. Once EPA makes a risk determination, it must take steps to protect potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations in light of the applicable conditions of use. Regarding new chemicals, Duvall stated that EPA has always made and continues to make worker protection one of its key considerations. Since enactment of the Lautenberg Act through February 10, 2019, EPA has made 564 final determinations for premanufacture notification (PMN) substances, not including PMNs that were invalid or withdrawn. According to Duvall, EPA issued TSCA Section 5(e) or 5(f) orders restricting 441 of those substances, or 78 percent, and many of these orders include worker protection requirements. For 123 substances, EPA determined that the PMN substance is not likely to present an unreasonable risk.
Finkel testified that EPA should begin its risk assessment and management in the workplace because that is where the risk begins. According to Finkel, the EPA Administrator has complete discretion to decide when to confer with OSHA, and suggesting that EPA consult with OSHA before taking risk reduction measures will only delay protections. Finkel stated that he thinks EPA’s forthcoming methylene chloride rule will not adequately protect workers as, rather than a targeted ban on commercial uses, it will initiate a process leading to a “training, certification and limited access program,” an approach rejected in the proposed rule. He also stated that the rule will not protect consumers if small containers will still be available.
During questions from Committee and Subcommittee members, several of the witnesses reiterated that EPA is not doing enough to protect workers through its risk evaluation process. According to Finkel, when considering worker exposure, noncompliance with PPE requirements is the definition of a reasonably foreseeable risk. Morrison suggested that EPA misunderstands their occupation and how fire fighters are exposed to asbestos. Duvall stated that while EPA and OSHA meet monthly to discuss process safety issues, they reportedly have met “several times” to discuss TSCA issues, and the agencies should be encouraged to develop a more regular and transparent line of communication. Other questions from Subcommittee members also explored the need for more constructive engagement between EPA and OSHA. Grumbles noted that development by OSHA of permissible exposure limits (PEL) has been a struggle and that OSHA needs to find a better way to protect workers from chemical risks. He also noted that EPA’s new chemicals process included a document that describes EPA’s approach to developing new chemical exposure limits (NCEL) that are comparable to PELs, but he is not sure if it is sufficiently detailed and transparent.Commentary
This hearing was the opening gun for what is likely to be continuing oversight in the House of EPA’s implementation of amended TSCA. The hearing signals that this oversight will focus on EPA’s perceived failure to implement TSCA as understood by the majority. The hearing produced some areas of agreement, for example, that the respective roles of EPA and OSHA in the occupational arena are clear, that OSHA should do more but that this is a difficult challenge for several reasons, and that EPA and OSHA should generally work together more closely and more transparently. The point was also made that EPA and OSHA officials need to be brought into the debate and that both agencies should be fully funded.
The discussion ranged widely across TSCA, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) (particularly chlorpyrifos), the Clean Air Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and others. At the same time, none of the majority witnesses brought a working knowledge of TSCA and how it operates in practice with the result that when TSCA-related questions were asked of them by the majority members, many struggled to respond. There also seemed to be a dearth of minority members at the hearing (the point was made that other House activities were underway in parallel) and, for a while towards the end of the hearing, all of the questions came from the majority.
At the close of the hearing, Subcommittee Chair Tonko identified a series of submissions for the record including from Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, Assistant Administrator of EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), numerous environmental and public health interest groups (both national and local groups), unions, the recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on TSCA implementation, several from pesticide industry groups, and one from the TSCA New Chemical Coalition (NCC). We did not note any other submissions from industrial chemical industry groups. The statements for the record will be available on the hearing website in the coming days once Committee staff have had a chance to go through them. While we recognize that this is only the start of an oversight process, it is our hope that industry groups will in the future be more demonstrative in sharing their views on these critically important TSCA implementation issues than what Mr. Tonko reported today.https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/house-subcommittee-holds-hearing-on-68165/?
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Environmental NGOs Push for PFAs-Free Airport Firefighting Foams
Mar 15, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins
A group of 40 national and state environmental health organisations are pushing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to allow the use of firefighting foams that do not contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs).
The move comes after Washington state banned the sale of PFAS firefighting foams last year, with some exemptions. One such exemption is for federally mandated uses, such as at airports.
At present, the FAA requires airports to use foams containing the fluorinated chemicals, which have flame retardant properties. However, in light of mounting evidence of groundwater and other environmental contamination by PFASs, Congress passed legislation in October directing the FAA to remove that requirement within three years.
The organisations sent a joint letter to FAA administrator Daniel Elwell, urging the organisation to begin that process. They encourage the FAA to do the following:provide a timeline and plan to allow the use of PFAS-free foams; allow airports to invest in PFAS-free foams now, in order to show they comply with FAA aircraft rescue and firefighting equipment requirements; issue guidance for airports on using PFAS-free foams; and help airports transition to PFAS-free foams before any regulatory changes.
https://chemicalwatch.com/75055/environmental-ngos-push-for-pfas-free-airport-firefighting-foams
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Report: Military Pushing EPA To Set Lenient PFAS Standards
Mar 15, 2019 | New Hampshire Public Radio
By Annie Ropeik
As federal regulators consider new drinking water standards for toxic PFAS chemicals, military officials are reportedly pushing for less stringent rules.
The Environmental Protection Agency is planning new standards for testing, treatment and cleanup of PFAS contamination.
But The New York Times reports the Department of Defense is pushing for PFAS limits that are far higher than the EPA's current health advice – and even that advice is far higher than what other federal science suggests may be safe.
At a U.S. Senate hearing Thursday, New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen urgedacting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan to look into the matter.
"I don't understand how you and the Department of Defense could be trying to reduce the standards that affect drinking water for literally millions of people around the country,” Shaheen said.
Shaheen cited concerns about the former Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth. It's one of around four hundred military sites nationwide thought to be contaminated with PFAS.
https://www.nhpr.org/post/report-military-pushing-epa-set-lenient-pfas-standards#stream/0
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Construction of New Storm Sewers Planned to Stem PFAs Flow from Buick City
Mar 15, 2019 | MLive
By Paula Gardner
A large-scale replacement of the storm sewers at one of Michigan’s largest urban redevelopment sites will start by this fall, prompted by the need to halt the flow of PFAS chemicals from the former auto factory.
More monitoring wells also are being drilled on what’s still known as Buick City in Flint, despite the demolition of the buildings used for a century by the former General Motors Corp.
The two moves are the latest in a year-long environmental investigation after high levels of the per- and poly-fluorinated chemicals were found in groundwater and moving through storm sewer pipes into the Flint River.
“We’re going to abandon that entire sewer,” said Grant Trigger, Michigan cleanup manager for RACER Trust, on Thursday during a public meeting at Metropolitan Baptist Tabernacle to discuss the effort. “We’ll re-route the storm water flow.”
The work will involve closing off the existing storm water sewer lines that environmental crews believe have cracks that allow groundwater into them. New ones that are sealed will be installed, starting along Industrial Avenue at the western edge of the 400-acre former factory site and extending to the Flint River.
Without the leaks, Trigger said, “contaminated groundwater won’t get in and taken to the river.”
Testing for a range of PFAS compounds started in 2018 on the former General Motors Corp. manufacturing and assembly site in northeast Flint. RACER Trust manages the property after GM gave it up, along with dozens of other sites in the US, during its bankruptcy. RACER is charged with cleaning up contamination and selling it for redevelopment.
One outflow showed PFOS, one type of PFAS, at 50 parts per trillion (ppt), while the second reached 120-ppt. The state of Michigan requires cleanup of surface water at 12-ppt.
None of the PFAS from Buick City appears to be making its way into the municipal water system, Trigger said. In addition, the water intake used until October 2015 when the city switched to river water for is north of these outflows.
However, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality notified RACER this week that it now wants it to test the only Buick City outflow that is located upstream from the former city drinking water intake, Trigger said. That may indicate whether PFAS was an issue when the city used the river for drinking water.
The DEQ is among several state agencies looking at the impact of PFASon Michigan. The “forever chemicals” are linked to adverse health effects and travel through water, making drinking water systems and wells vulnerable to contamination. Dozens of closed and active manufacturing sites in the state are linked to PFAS in Michigan’s surface water and groundwater.
Beyond the storm sewer contamination at Buick City, tests indicated PFOS in multiple groundwater locations:
· The old GM wastewater treatment plant on Stewart Avenue, at 4,800 ppt.
· The former pickling and enameling site just south of Leith Street, at 4,600 ppt.
· A former assembly/paint area near Hamilton with 4,800 ppt.
· The building 44 paint shop on Hamilton, north of the new Lear facility: 27,580-ppt.
However, Trigger said there appears to be no PFAS on the Lear property, based on testing. The auto supplier bought a portion of Buick City in 2017 and opened a $29 million factory in 2018.
Buick City is one of 89 former General Motors Corp. properties, totaling 44 million square feet of space, left behind when the automaker filed for bankruptcy.
Michigan has been severely impacting by the closing of these GM sites, said Patricia Spitzley, deputy redevelopment manager for RACER Trust, at the opening of the meeting.
“You got that right,” one woman said from audience of about 50 people. Buick City once employed 28,000, a number that had fallen to about 1,200 by the time it closed in 2010.
The meeting was called to update the community on PFAS, but questions from an engaged crowd – one that actively recalled dissatisfying meetings during the Flint water crisis – touched on the history of the site, its potential for redevelopment and other contamination.
It also made the audience raise lingering concerns about the Flint water crisis, particularly about the health effects of the drinking water pulled from the Flint River in 2014.
“It’s a serious issue here,” Arthur Woodson said.
The work on the site, Trigger said, started in 2011. RACER Trust has a budget of $35 million for environmental cleanup at the property and efforts go beyond PFAS.
“We removed thousands of pounds of gasoline,” Trigger said, “… and 26,000 pounds of PCB-contaminated soil about three months ago.”
But PFAS is the impetus for additional work on the site that likely will culminate by fall. Until the storm sewers can be replaced, oil absorbers have been put into the outfalls leading to the Flint River, and bulkheads that completely block storm water flow were installed at multiple locations within the system.
RACER officials - who were joined by a representative of the Environmental Protection Agency and Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services at the meeting - said they believe they’re on track to find solutions, but the chemicals’ characteristics make it difficult.
They told the community to watch the webpage that RACER set up to track Buick City work, and promised to organize a tour of the property before the next meeting in summer.
“We don’t know all the answers,” Spitzley said. “… We have to do more investigation; we have to do more testing.”
https://www.mlive.com/flintwater/2019/03/construction-of-new-storm-sewers-planned-to-stem-pfas-flow-from-buick-city.html
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Scientists Found Worrisome New Evidence About Roundup and Cancer
Mar 14, 2019 | Mother Jones
By Tom Philpott
The long-simmering debate about whether the world’s most widely used herbicide causes cancer has bubbled up anew. Glyphosate is the key component of weedkillers such as Monsanto’s Roundup. On March 12, attorneys made closing arguments in San Francisco on the first phase of a closely watched lawsuit against German chemical giant Bayer, which acquired Monsanto last year. Plaintiff Edwin Hardeman claims his use of Roundup caused him to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), a type of cancer.
The jury is expected to decide Friday whether glyphosate-based weedkillers were a “substantial factor” in causing Hardeman’s cancer, as US District Court Judge Vince Chhabria put in his instructions to jurors. If they rule unanimously in Hardeman’s favor, the trial’s second phase will consider Monsanto’s liability in the case. A split decision from the jury will result in a mistrial and likely trigger a new trial for Hardeman.
Major regulatory agencies in the United States and Canada have concluded that glyphosate is not carcinogenic. But the chemical remains under scrutiny. Just weeks before the start of the Hardeman trial, several researchers who once served on a government panel assessing glyphosate’s safety released a new study suggesting people exposed to large doses of the chemical have a heightened risk for NHL. Two of the expert witnesses in the Hardeman case cited the study during their testimony.
The researchers performed a meta-analysis of the epidemiological research around glyphosate and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In a meta-analysis, scientists combine and analyze data from multiple studies and look for broad trends in the research. The team found a “compelling link” between exposure to glyphosate-based weedkillers and NHL. The study concluded that people exposed to glyphosate at the highest levels have 41 percent higher risk of contracting non-Hodgkin lymphoma than people who aren’t, a measure known as “relative risk” in epidemiology.
Rachel Shaffer, a co-author of the paper and a PhD student in environmental toxicology at the University of Washington, put that number into context in a blog post: The results suggest that people who are highly exposed to glyphosate have a roughly 2.8 percent risk of contracting NHL, versus about 2 percent for the overall population.
A spokeswoman for Bayer flatly disputed the study’s findings, writing in an emailed statement that it contains “no scientifically valid evidence that contradicts the conclusions of the extensive body of science demonstrating that glyphosate-based herbicides are not carcinogenic.”
Agencies including the US Environmental Protection Agency, Health Canada, and the European Food Safety Authority have concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer, and they continue to allow its widespread use. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, on the other hand, decided in 2015 that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” That finding prompted charges that IARC had reached that conclusion by willfully ignoring then-unpublished research that might have exonerated glyphosate, a controversy my colleague Kiera Butler laid out here. IARC, in turn, has pushed back against those allegations.
Monsanto grew into one of the globe’s largest agribusiness firms largely on the strength of its blockbuster glyphosate weedkillers and associated products. In buying the smaller US company, Bayer inherited not only those assets but also lawsuits from approximately 11,200 plaintiffs claiming “personal injuries resulting from exposure to those products, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma and multiple myeloma,” Bayer noted in its 2018 annual report. Last August, a California jury awarded $289 million in damages to a groundskeeper who argued glyphosate exposure gave him NHL. (A judge later reduced the award to $78 million, but didn’t strike down the jury’s judgement that Monsanto had acted with malice—a ruling Bayer is appealing.) Bayer stock has lost nearly 30 percent of its value since last August’s big jury award—a possible measure of just how much the question of glyphosate’s status as a carcinogen hangs over the company.
Glyphosate has had a rocky road through the US regulatory process, a journey all too familiar to three of the new NHL study’s co-authors: Berkeley toxicologist Luoping Zhang, Mount Sinai epidemiologist Emanuela Taioli, and University of Washington biostatistician Lianne Sheppard. All three scientists served on the EPA Scientific Advisory Panel that evaluated the chemical in 2016. While the EPA ultimately declared the herbicide non-carcinogenic, the 15-member panel was divided, as the EPA’s final report on the panel’s feedback and the transcript of its December 2016 meetings show.
Judging the carcinogenic potential of a pesticide is tricky. For one, you can’t ethically dose people with potentially harmful chemicals and then see what happens. And even if you could, cancers can take years to develop. So researchers generally take a three-pronged approach: They study populations known to have been exposed to the chemical and look for disease patterns, a practice called epidemiology; they study the effects on animals like rats or mice dosed with the chemicals; and they test whether the chemical shows potential in a lab setting to harm a cell’s DNA and thus potentially cause cancer, also called genotoxicity.
The EPA’s scientific advisory panel was charged with sifting through studies of all three types and making a judgement based on the weight of evidence. On all three fronts, dissenting voices emerged. The final report noted that based on studies of populations known to be exposed to the herbicide, “some Panel members believed that there is limited but suggestive evidence of a positive association between glyphosate exposure and risk of NHL.” On animal research, the report found that in “the view of some Panel members, there are sufficient data to conclude glyphosate is a rodent carcinogen.” On genotoxicity, members pointed to “remaining uncertainty” about several potential ways glyphosate might damage cells.
“Far from settling the matter” of the carcinogenicity of the chemical, “eight of the 15 experts expressed significant concerns about the EPA’s benign view of glyphosate, and three more expressed concerns about the data,” Bloomberg Businessweek reported in 2017. Ultimately, the EPA “tied themselves in knots to reach the conclusion that they reached—the evidence and the conclusions just didn’t align well at all,” Sheppard, a panel member and co-author of the new NHL study, told me.
Frustrated by the process, Sheppard and co-panelists Zhang and Taioli decided to band together and investigate what they thought was a particular point of concern in the existing epidemiological research: whether glyphosate might be linked to increased risk to non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Three previous recent meta-analyses had detected an association—see here, here, and here. (All three surfaced in testimony during the Hardeman trial.) When Sheppard and her co-authors embarked on their own meta-analysis, they were able to incorporate an important cache of data that the earlier studies had not: the latest results of the Agricultural Health Study, a large, multi-decade project led by scientists at the US National Cancer Institute to track health outcomes among US agricultural workers and their families.
The AHS results had previously been analyzed by a research team led by Gabriella Andreotti of the National Cancer Institute for a 2018 paper that found “no association” between glyphosate and cancer, “including NHL and its subtypes.”
Sheppard’s team focused on one subset of the same AHS data: the study participants who were exposed to the chemicals at the “highest biologically relevant” levels, with a long-enough time lag for cancer to develop. In their statistical analysis, Andreotti and her team sorted participants who had been exposed to glyphosate into two groups—those with a 20-year lag since exposure, and those with a five-year lag. Among those groups, they broke them into four groups, from least exposed to most exposed. Sheppard and her team used data from the highest-exposed, 20-year-lag subset. This group showed a 12 percent relative risk for NHL. That finding is “not statistically significant” on it own, Sheppard said. But when averaged with data from the five other studies in their meta-analysis, it contributed to their finding of a “compelling link” between glyphosate herbicides and NHL, she said.
A Bayer spokeswoman called the paper a “statistical manipulation” and accused it of having a “number of serious methodological flaws.” Bayer’s statement claims the study “cherry-picks data” and “combines incompatible data” from the studies under review to get the result.
Sheppard disagreed with the claims, including the suggestion that the team cherry-picked data. She noted that the researchers state in their hypothesis that they planned to focus on “the highest exposed groups,” an established way to test for carcinogenicity. The charge of “combining incompatible data,” she said, could be leveled at any meta-analysis—which, by definition, combines data from multiple studies with different structures.
In an interview, Laura Beane Freeman, senior investigator for the National Cancer Institute and a co-author of the 2018 AHS paper, said the Sheppard team was “very transparent in the numbers that they chose” and deemed their study “relatively consistent with the other published meta-analyses on the topic.”
However, she added, the assumption that NHL typically requires a 20-year latency period is “probably not as well established as they assert in their meta-analysis.” She also noted that the 20-year lag group did not show a consistent pattern of cancer rates increasing with exposure rates. Beane Freeman’s team put glyphosate-exposed participants into four groups, from least exposed (group 1) to most exposed (group 4)—the group Sheppard and her team chose. Group 1 showed a relative risk of 1.22, which is higher than group 4’s 1.12. “Usually, with cancer, you would sort of expect the more exposure you have, the higher the risk that you have,” Beane Freeman said.
So what to make of all of this? Of the dozen epidemiologists and cancer researchers I reached out to for an independent assessment of the Sheppard team’s paper, only one other scientist agreed to speak to me: University of California-San Francisco’s Tracey Woodruff, who studies how exposure to environmental chemicals affects early development. She called the Sheppard team’s study an “important addition to the literature” and a “well-done study that brings new insight into the relationship between glyphosate exposure and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
In a March 7 order denying Bayer’s move to have the Hardeman case dismissed, the presiding judge, Vince Chhabria, wrote that the company relied “almost entirely on the epidemiological data” to claim that Hardeman’s legal team “have failed to present ‘competent evidence’ that any risk from glyphosate was ‘known or knowable’ by the scientific community at the time the plaintiffs used Roundup.” But, Chhabria wrote, “the epidemiology is far from undisputed,” and he cited a 2003 study that’s part of the Sheppard team’s meta-analysis to underline his point. The company “cannot prevail on a motion” to dismiss the case “by simply ignoring large swaths of evidence,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, as questions about glyphosate’s carcinogenicity loom, use of the chemical continues unabated. The US agricultural sector went from applyingless than 25 million pounds of the stuff in 1992 to nearly 300 million pounds in 2016. In 2019, the US Department of Agriculture expects farmers to plant more than 177 million acres of corn and soybeans—covering a land mass roughly equivalent in size to around 1.75 Californias—the great bulk of them treated with glyphosate-based herbicides.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/03/glyphosate-roundup-cancer-non-hodgkin-lymphoma-epa-panel-hardeman-lawsuit/
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Tight Regulation of Chemours’s GenX Chemical Proposed in EU
Mar 15, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Cheryl Hogue
Chemours’s GenX chemical, a polymer-processing aid, would become a candidate for strict regulation in the European Union under a proposal from the Dutch government. GenX is used to produce nonstick coatings and other products. It is an ammonium salt that hydrolyzes into hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (HFPO-DA), which is persistent in the environment and mobile in water. The Dutch proposal says HFPO-DA “adversely impacts human health” at intake levels that could be as low as 21 ng/kg of body weight per day. Animal tests with the chemical have shown harm to the liver, kidneys, blood, and immune system. In contrast, the US Environmental Protection Agency in November proposed a safe daily level for ingestion of 80 ng/kg per day for GenX and HFPO-DA combined. After a public comment period on the Dutch proposal, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) will determine whether GenX, HFPO-DA, and related compounds meet criteria for “substances of very high concern” under the EU Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals law. If so, they will become candidates for phaseout in the EU, with their further use allowed only if ECHA authorizes it.
https://cen.acs.org/environment/persistent-pollutants/Tight-regulation-Chemourss-GenX-chemical/97/i11
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GOP Senators Revive Small-Scale Export Push
Mar 15, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Geof Koss
A trio of Republican senators this week reintroduced legislation that would ease the export of small quantities of liquefied natural gas.
The bill, S. 816, offered by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), John Kennedy (R-La.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), would expedite LNG exports equal to or less than 51.1 billion cubic feet per year by having them automatically qualify as meeting the "public interest" test that the Department of Energy must conduct before approving such shipments.
Nations that have trade deals with the United States already meet the public interest requirement, but DOE must weigh the implications of exports to non-trade partners when considering applications.
The legislation would codify a DOE rule finalized last year that expedited applications to export smaller quantities of LNG to U.S. non-trade partners, primarily in the Caribbean, Central America and South America (Energywire, July 25, 2018).
Enshrining the rule in statute would ensure "long-term stability" for investors, the sponsors said in a statement yesterday.
Cassidy, who has long touted the economic and environmental benefits of natural gas, echoed both themes in announcing the bill (E&E Daily, Feb. 15).
"This bill unleashes American natural gas potential, creating well-paying jobs with good benefits for families in Louisiana," said Cassidy. "Increasing small-scale natural gas shipments creates American jobs, improves Caribbean energy security and lowers greenhouse gas emissions as nations transition to clean burning natural gas."
Rubio said the measure would boost U.S. ties to Caribbean and Latin American countries while ensuring that regional "bad actors, including the criminal regimes in Venezuela and Cuba, do not benefit from expedited access to American energy exports while they continue to undermine democracy and commit human rights atrocities."
The bill, according to Kennedy, "is about one thing: Louisiana jobs."
"A market has developed to export small-scale LNG shipments from the U.S. to the Caribbean, Central America and South America," he said. "To help that market flourish, we need to remove some red tape. I want Louisiana to be able to tap into this emerging industry and create even more opportunities for Louisiana families."
Cassidy and Rubio offered the measure in the last Congress, where it passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) is the lead House sponsor of a companion bill.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/03/15/stories/1060127445
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EPA Raises Procedural, Substantive Bars to EAB Fracking Permit Case
Mar 15, 2019 | Inside EPA
EPA is urging the Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) to dismiss a trio of petitions seeking more stringent consideration of potential environmental hazards and equity concerns in a hydraulic fracturing well permit, arguing that the challenges suffer from a litany of procedural and substantive flaws.
The agency in a March 12 brief says the three Michigan residents challenging a Safe Drinking Water Act underground injection control (UIC) permit for a fracking operation near Gladwin County, MI, failed to meet basic requirements for legal attacks on EPA-issued permits, and that even if the board reaches the substance of their claims it should reject them as unproven.
“[W]hile the Board may relax some of the more technical pleading standards for pro se litigants such as the Petitioners, even under this more liberal standard a petitioner must still identify the elements at issue in the permit and articulate how the Region erred or how it exercised its discretion in a manner that warrants Board review,” says EPA’s filing in the case, In the matter of: Jordan Development Co.
The residents are asking EAB to hold that EPA in the permit for Jordan failed to weigh the potential impacts of corrosive fracking fluid on nearby groundwater, as well as impacts of underground injections on seismic activity.
They also point to low average income and education levels in the region as grounds for EPA to treat it as an environmental justice (EJ) community, which would require evaluating the permit for impacts on vulnerable populations such as the poor.
If EAB backs any of those claims, it would raise the bar for EPA or states to issue new UIC fracking permits.
But EPA says some of the arguments in the petitions never arose in public comments on the permit, which would mean they cannot be part of a legal challenge to its merits, while at other points the petitioners merely repeat claims from the comment process without addressing the agency’s counterarguments in its response to comment (RTC) document.
“[A] Petitioner may not simply repeat an argument that was made during the public comment period with[out] engaging with or refuting the Region’s explanation” for maintaining its position, the agency’s filing says.
Targeting the EJ arguments raised by petitioner Emerson Joseph Addison III in particular, EPA says his filing ignores the agency’s equity analysis and thus fails to show any flaws in its reasoning.
“Because the RTC indicates that the Region specifically considered low-income population and education level among other factors in its EJ screening, and the Addison Petition fails to cite to such response, let alone demonstrate with specificity why such response was clearly erroneous or otherwise warrants review, the Petition should be denied for failure to meet the threshold procedural requirement,” EPA says.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-raises-procedural-substantive-bars-eab-fracking-permit-case
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LNG Industry Eyes Natural Gas Being Flared in the Permian Basin
Mar 15, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Sergio Chapa
The liquefied natural gas industry wants to become an outlet for the record amount of methane being produced in the Permian Basin, where much of it is being burned off due a lack of pipelines to move it out of the West Texas shale play.
Methane is the main component of natural gas. During a discussion of Permian Basin pipelines at CERAWeek by IHS Markit, Matt Schatzman, CEO of the Houston LNG terminal developer NextDecade, said flaring is not a long-term option for handling the natural gas produced as a byproduct oil.
LNG export terminals proposed along the Gulf Coast, he said, could become an outlet for much of the volume.
NextDecade is one of several liquefied natural gas companies seeking to build export terminals along the Gulf Coast. The company is seeking permission to build Rio Grande LNG in the Port of Brownsville and Galveston LNG in Texas City.
"LNG is going to be a major part of helping to resolve this gas issue so producers can attain flow assurances so they can produce the much more valuable oil, which is driving the economics of the entire development in the Permian," Schatzman said.
Houston pipeline operator Kinder Morgan is already building two pipelines to move natural gas from the Permian to the Gulf Coast. The company's Gulf Coast Express Pipeline is expected to begin moving 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day in October while its Permian Highway Pipeline would move another 2 billion cubic feet per day starting in October 2020.
Some of that natural gas would be shipped on Kinder Morgan pipelines to markets in Mexico. Kinder Morgan Natural Gas Pipelines Gas Group President Tom Martin said exports to Mexico are expected to grow by 2 billion cubic feet per day over the two or three years.
The San Diego company Sempra Energy is developing the Costa Azul LNG export terminal near Ensenada, Baja California that will receive natural gas from the Permian Basin and export it to customers around the world.
The Houston office of Mexico Pacific Limited recently awarded service contracts to move forward with plans to build a pipeline that will move natural gas from the Permian Basin to an LNG export terminal the company is developing in Puerto Libertad, Sonora.
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/LNG-industry-eyes-natural-gas-being-flared-in-the-13685835.php
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Industry Momentum Builds for Nationwide Methane Regulation
Mar 15, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Ben Ratner
Oil and gas companies in the United States are the latest to add their voices to the broad set of stakeholders supporting federal regulation of methane emissions from the oil and natural gas sector. These companies have a major responsibility to reduce methane emissions, a key step in the energy transition. This week in Houston, at CERAWeek, Shell, ExxonMobil and BP took important steps to support nationwide direct methane regulation, with Shell urging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to not deregulate methane emissions and to even tighten standards.
There is more opportunity than ever before to regulate and reduce emissions in ways that work for industry and the environment. As ExxonMobil wrote, federal methane regulation “helps build stakeholder confidence, and provides long-term certainty for industry planning and investment while achieving climate related goals.”
The federal regulation of methane emissions is an essential effort that builds on proven state regulatory models and positive efforts that dozens of companies are already practicing as part of sound business operations.
It’s time for more companies to speak up, because without nationwide methane regulation, industry is only as strong as its weakest link.
Companies moving forward with methane management and technology
A growing group of companies, including many who have not spoken up yet about federal methane regulations, are already taking steps to monitor and reduce emissions both for compliance and as part of good business practice. Continued innovation in methane sensing technology supports the efforts already underway in sites across the country.
For example, infrared cameras that enable visual identification of methane leaks are a relatively recent innovation, providing a steep change in efficiency over some prior techniques. Companies with leak detection and repair programs like Anadarko and ConocoPhillips already utilize infrared cameras as part of surveys of oil and gas facilities. Use of such cameras is a key component of leak detection standards that are already working to deliver emission reductions across multiple jurisdictions. Technological advancements pave the way for standards to realize greater methane reductions at even lower costs.
Industry momentum builds for nationwide methane regulationCLICK TO TWEET
Many companies are already experimenting with drones to monitor and enhance operations for a range of safety, environmental and operational reasons. Increasingly, operators also trial drone-based methane inspection, with the potential to reach dispersed assets, manage labor costs and enhance detection speed.
Other approaches for deploying sensors—from aerial, to truck-based, to satellite—round out a diverse mix of emerging strategies that will make it even more cheap and efficient to monitor and reduce emissions. This means that well-crafted regulations—drawing on elements already included in several standards—can harness the sensor revolution within a pragmatic and effective regulatory solution.
Predicting leaks before they start
Digitalization—another key discussion topic at CERAWeek—offers the promise of helping operations become safer, more efficient and cleaner. Executives are investing in digitalization as they prepare their companies to adapt and compete. At EDF, we believe in the power of innovation to empower people to take action. We are collaborating withAccenture Strategy to help industry discover new ways to use digital tools like machine learning to help with predictive maintenance and other techniques that will keep more natural gas in the pipelines.
We hope to hear from companies interested in exploring opportunities in the digital methane space. For starters, we are pleased to work with BP to scope and announce a methane digitalization project in 2019. EDF and BP are committed to making public the progress, outputs and learnings of this work, for the benefit of the broader industry.
The digital methane field is nascent, and there is a lot we look forward to learning together. But what we know now is that digital solutions will make it easier to reduce even more emissions at even less cost. That creates a potential win-win-win for companies, regulators and the environment in the years to come.
Enabling innovation for regulatory compliance
We often hear from companies that regulations should be designed to support innovation. After all, the regulations of tomorrow shouldn’t lock in the technologies and techniques of yesterday. At EDF, we agree. We’ve advocated for state and federal standards to include pathways that recognize and incentivize the development of advanced technologies that can perform even better than what’s available today. And we’re starting the next step—collaborating with BP, Colorado State University and a range of stakeholders—to foster demonstration of the effectiveness of these new technologies and methods.
Rigorous standards that protect climate and public health, combined with transparent pathways for innovation, can deliver environmental results while creating a conducive environment for American ingenuity. From developing analytical models that support demonstrations of environmental effectiveness, to designing field pilots that can show the capabilities of new technologies, it is a busy 2019. We also look forward to engaging with the regulatory community in this process to help foster the flexibility and innovation to deliver workable and effective emission reductions.
The road ahead
At EDF, we are grounded in science and economics. While scientific inquiry alerted us to the methane challenge, the economics of the marketplace’s methane solutions give us confidence not just in the cost effectiveness of today’s solutions, but in the potential for more innovation. We look forward to more companies supporting the EPA methane regulations that offer certainty, address risk and strengthen performance across the entire industry.
http://blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/2019/03/15/industry-momentum-builds-for-nationwide-methane-regulation/
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Chamber Names New Acting Energy Head
Mar 15, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jeremy Dillon
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has named a former George W. Bush administration official as its acting president and CEO of its Global Energy Institute.
Christopher Guith, who at one time served as a Department of Energy political appointee, will take over the top spot of the chamber's lead energy policy wing on an acting basis.
He replaces Karen Harbert, who is heading to the American Gas Association as its new leader (Greenwire, Feb. 12).
A former deputy assistant secretary for DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy, Guith has worked as a senior vice president for the Global Energy Institute for more than a decade, joining the chamber in 2008.
His time at the U.S. Chamber has focused on nuclear policy as well as better ways to unleash U.S. oil and natural gas resources. Guith led the chamber's Shale Works for US campaign, a coordinated effort to promote the growing shale industry.
Guith spent much of the Bush administration working as an important voice in DOE's nuclear energy strategy, as well as a chief representative in the negotiations on the Energy Policy Act of 2005. He also spent time working as a deputy assistant secretary for congressional affairs.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/03/15/stories/1060127443
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Northam Vetoes Bill Opposing Cap and Trade
Mar 15, 2019 | AP (E&E - Greenwire)
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has vetoed legislation aimed at limiting his authority to institute a carbon cap-and-trade plan.
Northam, a Democrat, said yesterday he had killed a bill that requires legislative approval before Virginia can participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade program among Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states that mandates emission reductions in the power sector.
Northam has made implementing the plan a top priority, saying it's needed to fight climate change. State regulators have said joining RGGI could add significant costs to electric bills.
The governor also vetoed a similar bill related to limiting carbon emissions from cars.
Both bills narrowly passed the GOP-led General Assembly. Republicans have virtually no chance of getting the needed two-thirds majority to override the veto.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/03/15/stories/1060127435
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