Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 18/03/19
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(ACC Mentioned) Global Chemicals Production Rose 0.1 In January, ACC Says
Mar 15, 2019 | Chemical Engineering Online
By Scott Jenkins
Data collected and tabulated by the American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) show that global chemicals production rose 0.1 percent in January. -
(ACC Mentioned) Eastman Cutting Jobs Globally, Freezing Some Pay
Mar 15, 2019 | Longview News-Journal
A slowing global economy is causing the owner of Longview’s largest industrial employer to eliminate jobs globally and delay salary increases. -
As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling
Mar 16, 2019 | New York Times
By Michael Corkery
Recycling, for decades an almost reflexive effort by American households and businesses to reduce waste and help the environment, is collapsing in many parts of the country. -
This Is What Happens When Corporations Run the Government
Mar 15, 2019 | Washington Post
By Dana Milbank
This is what happens when corporations run the government. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Bans Consumer, but Not Worker, Uses of Deadly Solvent (2)
Mar 15, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Paint and coating strippers that consumers buy will no longer be permitted to contain a potentially lethal solvent, the EPA’s top chemicals official said March 15. -
(ACC Mentioned) US EPA Bans Methylene Chloride in Consumer Paint Removers
Mar 18, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The US EPA has banned the use of methylene chloride in consumer paint removal products. The move represents the agency’s first regulation of a substance under section 6 of TSCA in 30 years. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Bans Consumer Sales of Toxic Paint Stripper
Mar 15, 2019 | E&E News PM
By Courtney Columbus
EPA today issued a final rule banning consumer sales of paint strippers that contain methylene chloride. -
EPA Leaves Door Open to Address Methylene Chloride's Workplace Risks
Mar 15, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Ariana Figueroa
Facing widespread criticism that its first-time ban on consumer uses of paint strippers containing methylene chloride does not protect workers, the agency's top toxics official is leaving the door open to taking future action to limit workplace risks under the revised toxics law though she stopped short of pledging to ban the chemical's commercial uses that many critics are seeking. -
E.P.A., Scaling Back Proposed Ban, Plans Limits on Deadly Chemical in Paint Strippers
Mar 15, 2019 | The New York Times
By Lisa Friedman
The Environmental Protection Agency announced on Friday new limits on a lethal chemical found in paint stripping products that has been linked to more than 50 deaths since the 1980s. -
Long-Delayed Methylene Chloride Ban Finalized but Still Leaves Workers at Risk
Mar 15, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it has finalized a rule that bans methylene chloride in paint strippers for consumer uses but still allows use of the deadly products in workplaces. -
EPA Paint Stripper Rule Will Leave Workers’ Lives at Risk
Mar 15, 2019 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
By Liz Hitchcock
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will announce its final rule on methylene chloride in paint strippers. -
(ACC Mentioned) California Agency Rejects Industry Spray Foam Petition
Mar 18, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control has denied an industry appeal against its decision to target spray polyurethane foam (SPF) under its Safer Consumer Products programme. -
(ACC Mentioned) Blue States Mull Carbon-Free Mandates • Saving the Whales • CERAWeek Closes
Mar 15, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Chuck McCutcheon
Hawaii was first, then California. -
Study: Elevated Levels of Toxic Chemicals Found in Menstrual Pads and Disposable Diapers
Mar 15, 2019 | Environmental Working Group
By Carla Burns
Many brands of menstrual pads and disposable diapers contain elevated levels of chemicals linked to developmental and reproductive harm, according to a recent study published in the journal Reproductive Toxicology. -
Scientists Back Use Of 2007 Risk Approach For EPA Perchlorate Standard
Mar 15, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Lara Beaven
A team of scientists in an article accepted for publication in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology is backing the American Water Works Association’s (AWWA) call for EPA to rely on a 2005 risk assessment in crafting a perchlorate drinking water standard that could spur a weaker limit than use of an alternative approach. -
Fracking Company Beats One Pennsylvania Claim; Must Face Others
Mar 15, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Mike Leonard
Although Pennsylvania’s unfair trade practices law doesn’t cover antitrust claims generally, it does prohibit deceptive conduct that also harms competition, a divided Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ruled March 15. -
Big Oil Loses a Safe Space in Houston
Mar 15, 2019 | Bloomberg (In The Washington Post)
By Liam Denning
CERAWeek has long been something of a safe space for the oil industry, where delegates trade gossip, do a little business and speculate over drinks and ballroom chicken where their beloved, if mercurial, market might be headed. -
Oil Companies Settle Vermont MTBE Claims for $3.8M (1)
Mar 15, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes and Adrianne Appel
More than two dozen of the nation’s largest gasoline refiners, including BP Products North America Inc., Shell Oil Co. and Exxon Mobil have agreed to pay $3.8 million to settle Vermont’s claims that they contaminated the state’s groundwater with the gas additive MTBE. -
Public Health Advocates Preview Attacks on EPA’s MATS Rollback
Mar 15, 2019 | Inside EPA
Public health advocates are previewing attacks they plan to make at EPA’s March 18 hearing on the proposed rollback of the Obama-era mercury and air toxics standards (MATS) for power plants, including EPA’s failure to conduct a fresh cost-benefit analysis and its disregard of new science on the rule’s benefits. -
Wastewater-Private Equity’s New Black Gold in U.S. Shale
Mar 15, 2019 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
Mike Christensen strides among rows of gleaming steel tanks, pointing to pipelines that arrive from miles around to this corner of former farmland near Midland, Texas, the heart of the largest oil patch in the United States. -
Appeals Court Keeps Pipeline on Ice
Mar 18, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
An appellate court will not allow construction to restart on the Keystone XL oil pipeline. -
Petrochemical Fire Rages Near Houston
Mar 18, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Miguel Bustillo and Katherine Blunt
A large fire that broke out Sunday morning at a petrochemical storage facility near Houston has continued to spread through Monday morning. -
Fires in 2 States Could Boost Gas Prices
Mar 18, 2019 | Bloomberg (In E&E Energywire)
By David Marino and Barbara Powell
The third-biggest refinery in the U.S. suffered a fire Saturday near Houston, hours after a Los Angeles plant was partially shut by a blaze, potentially boosting gasoline prices from Texas to California. -
Young Protesters Worldwide Turn Up Heat on Climate Change Action
Mar 15, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Janna Brancolini
Turnout exceeded expectations as hundreds of thousands of students gathered in front of government buildings from London to Sydney and beyond for the March 15 global climate strike to demand ambitious political leadership on climate change. -
U.S. Youth Rally in Washington Protests Climate Inaction
Mar 16, 2019 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Lee Van Der Voo
Hundreds of youngsters skipped school to rally in Washington on Friday as part of what organizers called an international youth climate strike to seek action on climate change. -
Environmentalists Say EPA Rollbacks Hinder Air Toxics Compliance Priority
Mar 15, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
Environmentalists are warning that EPA’s proposal to extend an Obama-era enforcement priority on reducing hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) is undermined by the Trump administration’s deregulatory push, saying budget cuts will reduce compliance inspections and policy changes are likely to cause a spike in toxic emissions. -
D.C. Girds for Exxon Climate Battle
Mar 18, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
The District of Columbia's top lawyer is preparing for a potential courtroom fight against one of the biggest oil companies in the world.
Congressional Hearings - There are no hearings to report at this time.
Industry and Association News
TSCA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Global Chemicals Production Rose 0.1 In January, ACC Says
Mar 15, 2019 | Chemical Engineering Online
By Scott Jenkins
Data collected and tabulated by the American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) show that global chemicals production rose 0.1 percent in January. This follows a 0.3 percent gain in December, stable activity in November and a 0.1 percent gain in October. During January, production gained in North America, the former Soviet Union (FSU), Africa and the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, was flat in Latin America and fell in Europe. With softness earlier last year, the Global Chemical Producing Regional Index (Global CPRI) was up only 0.5 percent year-over-year (Y/Y) on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis and stood at 116.2 percent of its average 2012 levels.
During January, capacity utilization in the global chemical industry slipped 0.2 points to 83.1 percent. This is down from 85.6 percent last January and below the long-term (1987-2017) average of 86.5 percent.
Among chemical industry segments, January results were mixed on a product basis, with gains in agricultural chemicals, inorganic chemicals, plastic resins, synthetic rubber, manufactured fibers, coatings, and other specialty chemicals offset by weakness in consumer products and bulk petrochemicals and organics. Considering year-earlier comparisons, growth was strongest in coatings, followed by bulk petrochemicals and organics and plastic resins.
ACC’s Global CPRI measures the production volume of the chemical industry for 33 key nations, sub-regions and regions, all aggregated to the world total. The index is comparable to the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) production indices and features a similar base year where 2012=100. This index is developed from government industrial production indices for chemicals from over 65 nations accounting for about 98 percent of the total global chemical industry. This data set is the only timely source of market trends for the global chemical industry and is comparable to the U.S. CPRI data, a timely source of U.S. regional chemical production.
https://www.chemengonline.com/global-chemicals-production-rose-0-1-in-january-acc-says/
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(ACC Mentioned) Eastman Cutting Jobs Globally, Freezing Some Pay
Mar 15, 2019 | Longview News-Journal
A slowing global economy is causing the owner of Longview’s largest industrial employer to eliminate jobs globally and delay salary increases.
Eastman Chemical Co. said last week it is cutting an undisclosed number of jobs globally, citing “the ongoing U.S.-China trade dispute” and an economic slowdown in Europe.
In a statement from company spokeswoman Betty Payne, the chemical and plastics manufacturer said it has seen reduced demand for its products and must do more to manage costs amid “tremendous uncertainty.”
Eastman also said it is delaying salary raises for employees in certain jobs.
Payne declined to share specific details.
“We are operating in a difficult business environment, and we had hoped and expected to see stronger signs of economic recovery by now,” her statement said. “Unfortunately, the ongoing U.S.-China trade dispute and the associated economic slowdown in China and Europe have created tremendous uncertainty, which has resulted in reduced demand for our products.”
Eastman makes chemicals, fibers and plastics for a variety of uses in consumer products, including protective coatings and films used in decorative packaging. The company spun off from Eastman Kodak and became an independent corporation in the 1990s.
Its Longview plant, which opened in 1952, employs about 1,500 people, making it the city’s largest industrial employer. From primary raw materials propane and ethane, it produces more than 40 major chemical and polymer products. It ships nearly 10 million pounds of product per day to customers worldwide.
The company reported $10.2 billion in sales revenue last year, up more than 6 percent from the previous year. But net profit dipped more than 20 percent, to less than $1.1 billion.
CEO Mark Costa said in a Jan. 31 financial report that Eastman had a challenging fourth quarter as demand for specialty products in China fell.
Chemical companies have been caught up in the tariffs battle between the U.S. and China. Hundreds of chemicals and plastics imports from China have been targeted by the U.S., and China has retaliated with tariffs on exports, lobbying group the American Chemistry Council said in September.
Chemical industry tariffs are valued in the billions of dollars on both sides, the council said in a statement. The council calls the tariffs a tax that could lead to increases in prices of consumer products.
“The tariffs will cut off U.S. manufacturers from international supply chains and from importing inputs that help keep them competitive in the global marketplace,” said Ed Brzytwa, the council’s director of international trade.
https://www.news-journal.com/news/business/eastman-cutting-jobs-globally-freezing-some-pay/article_33ee53bc-4746-11e9-ba43-8ff16b962b27.html
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As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling
Mar 16, 2019 | New York Times
By Michael Corkery
Recycling, for decades an almost reflexive effort by American households and businesses to reduce waste and help the environment, is collapsing in many parts of the country.
Philadelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents’ recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy. In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill. And last month, officials in the central Florida city of Deltona faced the reality that, despite their best efforts to recycle, their curbside program was not working and suspended it.
Those are just three of the hundreds of towns and cities across the country that have canceled recycling programs, limited the types of material they accepted or agreed to huge price increases.
“We are in a crisis moment in the recycling movement right now,” said Fiona Ma, the treasurer of California, where recycling costs have increased in some cities.
Prompting this nationwide reckoning is China, which until January 2018 had been a big buyer of recyclable material collected in the United States. That stopped when Chinese officials determined that too much trash was mixed in with recyclable materials like cardboard and certain plastics. After that, Thailand and India started to accept more imported scrap, but even they are imposing new restrictions.
The turmoil in the global scrap markets began affecting American communities last year, and the problems have only deepened.
With fewer buyers, recycling companies are recouping their lost profits by charging cities more, in some cases four times what they charged last year.
Amid the soaring costs, cities and towns are making hard choices about whether to raise taxes, cut other municipal services or abandon an effort that took hold during the environmental movement of the 1970s.
“Recycling has been dysfunctional for a long time,” said Mitch Hedlund, executive director of Recycle Across America, a nonprofit organization that pushes for more standardized labels on recycling bins to help people better sort material. “But not many people really noticed when China was our dumping ground.”
Perhaps counterintuitively, the big winners appear to be the nation’s largest recyclers, like Waste Management and Republic Services, which are also large trash collectors and landfill owners.
Recycling had been one of the least lucrative parts of their business, trailing hauling and landfills. Analysts say many waste companies had historically viewed recycling as a “loss leader,” offering the service largely to win over a municipality’s garbage business.
That equation is starting to change. While there remains a viable market in the United States for scrap like soda bottles and cardboard, it is not large enough to soak up all of the plastics and paper that Americans try to recycle. The recycling companies say they cannot depend on selling used plastic and paper at prices that cover their processing costs, so they are asking municipalities to pay significantly more for their recycling services. Some companies are also charging customers additional “contamination” fees for recycled material that is mixed in with trash.
The higher recycling fees, analysts say, will help bolster the largest companies’ already booming businesses. Waste Management reported strong operating profits in 2018, while Republic reported increased revenue driven by its waste business.
Most of the industry’s landfill increases were driven by economic growth: The more Americans consume, the more garbage they generate. But at least some of the higher volume were recyclables that could not be sold and repurposed, analysts say.
Some municipal leaders say they are growing wary of companies that control virtually every aspect of the waste and recycling system.
“Are these contamination rates truly high, or is it about benefiting their corporate interest?” asked Mike Ryan, the mayor of Sunrise, Fla. “We can’t afford to have inspectors constantly looking over their shoulders.”
Unable to afford the higher costs, Sunrise decided to burn its recycling in a facility that turns waste into energy rather than send it to a landfill.
“It’s not what most people think of as recycling, but it is better than the alternative,” Mr. Ryan said.
For cities like Philadelphia, recycling had long been a point of pride. Over the last decade, Philadelphia went from having one of the lowest recycling rates among big cities to one of the best.
When China was buying cardboard and plastics, recycling made money for the city some years. But last year, Philadelphia was hit with an “outrageously high” price increase, a city spokeswoman said in a statement.
The city came up with what it says will be a temporary solution. It identified the neighborhoods with the most contamination in its recycling bins and started sending their material to an incinerator in nearby Chester, Pa. The rest still send their material to a recycling facility.
The incinerator converts the waste to energy, which can be sold back to the electrical grid, said Carlton Williams, Philadelphia’s streets commissioner. But that has done little to alleviate many residents’ environmental angst and concerns about increased air pollution in Chester.
“Residents say, ‘You are taking all our recycling efforts, and you are burning it?’” Mr. Williams said. “They hear the word ‘burn’ and they think it is an environmental disaster.”
City officials are working to negotiate a more affordable contract that would restore recycling to all of Philadelphia this year.
In Deltona, higher costs were not the only factor behind the decision last month to stop recycling. Even if the city agreed to pay the additional $25,000 a month that its recycling company was charging, there was no assurance that all the plastic containers and junk mail would be turned into something new, Mayor Heidi Herzberg said.
“We all did recycling because it was easy, but the reality is that not much was actually being recycled,” Ms. Herzberg said.
The troubles with recycling have amplified calls for limiting waste at its source. Measures like banning plastic bags and straws, long pushed by environmental groups, are gaining traction more widely.
This month, a lobbying group for Connecticut municipalities, citing the chaos in local recycling programs, urged the governor to focus on restricting plastic bags, straws and packaging.
“The sooner we accept the economic impracticality of recycling, the sooner we can make serious progress on addressing the plastic pollution problem,” said Jan Dell, an engineer who leads Last Beach Cleanup. It’s an advocacy group that works with investors and nonprofits to reduce plastic pollution.
Some large waste producers are still going through the motions of recycling, no matter how futile.
Across Memphis, large commercial enterprises have had to stop recycling for now because of contamination problems. But the airport is keeping its recycling bins in place to preserve “the culture” of recycling among passengers and employees, a spokesman said.
“We want to ensure that we are able to have a seamless transition if and when single-stream recycling returns to the Memphis area,” the spokesman, Glen Thomas, said in an email.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/business/local-recycling-costs.html
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This Is What Happens When Corporations Run the Government
Mar 15, 2019 | Washington Post
By Dana Milbank
This is what happens when corporations run the government.
As the world was grounding 737 Max airliners this week, following the second crash involving the new jet in five months, the Trump administration, serving as a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing, declared “no basis to order grounding.”
This from an administration and president that claim climate change is a hoax, radiation and pesticides are healthy, and that “raking” prevents forest fires.
When President Trump finally buckled to pressure and grounded the 737 Max on Wednesday, he said he “maybe didn’t have to” but thought it important “psychologically.”
And why shouldn’t everybody trust the judgment of a guy who didn’t know the difference between HIV and HPV, proposed that exercise is bad for you and claimed that vaccines cause autism? Trump says he has a “natural instinct for science” because an uncle taught at MIT.
But Trump’s late uncle didn’t tell him to protect Boeing. That was Boeing’s chief executive, a frequent visitor to Trump properties, phoning Trump with a plea not to ground both the 737 Max 8 and Max 9.
That corporations make safety decisions for Trump (himself a failed airline owner) isn’t surprising. The acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration is formerly of American Airlines and of the Aerospace Industries Association, of which Boeing is a prominent member. Trump is expected to nominate a former Delta Air Lines executive for the top FAA job. His acting defense secretary is a former Boeing executive.
In Trump’s broader corporatocracy, a former oil-industry lobbyist acts as interior secretary, a former pharmaceutical executive is health and human services secretary, and a former coal lobbyist runs the Environmental Protection Agency. Fully 350 former lobbyists work, have worked or have been tapped to work in the administration, The Post’s Philip Bump reported , using data from the liberal group American Bridge 21st Century. The 24 at the Transportation Department lag behind only the 31 at HHS and 47 in the executive office of the president.
The swamp has overflowed, with lobbyists employed by Trump quintupling over two years. Boeing, American Airlines and 31 other corporate entities landed at least five former lobbyists apiece. Public Citizen reported that, five months into the administration, nearly 70 percent of top nominees had corporate ties.
The corporate hold over the government hurts U.S. credibility overseas. After the crash of one of its Max 8 airliners, Ethiopian Airlines opted to send the doomed plane’s black boxes not to the United States but to Europe. U.S. resistance to grounding the 737 Max raised worldwide concern about a “defiant” United States (Bangladesh), its credibility “eroded” because government is “too cozy” with business (Hong Kong) and is swayed by “corporate interests . . . to ignore reality” (Australia).
Nobody yet knows whether the Ethiopian Airlines crash had the same cause as October’s similar Lion Air crash in the Java Sea near Indonesia. But, clearly, the procedural fix circulated by the FAA in November was inadequate, and a Boeing software update, which government officials planned for January, never came. The Wall Street Journal reported that the delay was caused, in part, by the government shutdown. The corporate FAA chief denies this, but the pilots’ union had warned that the shutdown suspended safety oversight.
Trump facilitates the corporate takeover by running his administration on autopilot. A disproportionate number of “acting” officials — they hold the FAA’s top three positions, run the Pentagon and Interior Department, and serve as Trump’s chief of staff and budget director — reduces congressional oversight and weakens enforcement.
In addition, the billions of dollars that corporate executives invest in lobbying and campaign contributions have generated healthy returns: a corporate tax cut, an assault on regulations and unrelenting efforts to shrink enforcement. The president, who previously attempted to privatize 30,000 FAA jobs, again proposed slashing the FAA in his budget this week.
Corporate victories keep coming. The Los Angeles Times just obtained emails showing that EPA officials moved to block NASA from monitoring pollution levels. Politico recently obtained data that showed that the Interior Department gave oil drillers nearly 1,700 waivers of safety rules implemented after BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
The Union of Concerned Scientists has documented more than 70 “attacks on science,” many benefiting corporations: censoring scientific language, suppressing studies, weakening advisory panels and such. The group suspects “inappropriate corporate influence” in rolling back fuel efficiency, chemical and methane standards, repealing the Clean Power Plan, suppressing known health risks, expanding oil and gas leasing and bailing out the coal industry, among others.
The American consumer pays the cost. Three days before the crash in Ethiopia, I took a Southwest 737 Max 8 flight to Denver. I knew it was the same model that had crashed in October, but I trusted federal officials’ claims to have addressed the problem with new pilot instructions (which were insufficient) and the promised software fix (which never came).
Like millions of Americans, I long trusted that the federal government tried to protect food, air, water and safety. Trump’s corporatocracy broke that trust.
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Bans Consumer, but Not Worker, Uses of Deadly Solvent (2)
Mar 15, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Paint and coating strippers that consumers buy will no longer be permitted to contain a potentially lethal solvent, the EPA’s top chemicals official said March 15.
The Environmental Protection Agency issued final rule (RIN: 2070-AK07) to “prohibit the manufacture, including import, processing, and distribution of methylene chloride in all paint removers for consumer use,” said Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention.
The EPA’s action would most directly affect companies such as Recochem Inc., Sprayway, Inc., and W.M. Barr & Company, Inc. that have made strippers containing methylene chloride. The rule would help spur demand for related products that don’t contain it, and some of those manufacturers also make paint strippers without methylene chloride.
The rule will be effective 180 days after a date that will be included in the Federal Register notice of the regulation, which should be published next week, Dunn said.
Workers IgnoredThe rule doesn’t address workers’ exposures.
Workers in enclosed, unventilated spaces face steep risks: More than a dozen bathtub refinishers have died from exposure to the solvent. Information about risks has prompted more than 13 major retailers to remove the strippers from store shelves.
Methylene chloride has killed more than 50 people since 1980, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement says, citing information from the EPA and the deaths of four people since the agency proposed a ban in January 2017.
“The Trump EPA is trying to keep commercial uses in place, leaving workers at unacceptable risk,” said Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Commerce, during a March 13 subcommittee hearing on workers and chemicals.
“I urge Administrator [Andrew] Wheeler to change course now and extend this ban to commercial usage,” Sen. Tom Carper (Del.), the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement.
“With each and every use, this chemical will continue to endanger workers’ health,” he said.
EPA Raised Concerns 28 Years AgoThe EPA’s concerns about ways methylene chloride might injure workers prompted it—28 years ago—to host an international conference on “reducing risk in paint stripping.”
That conference focused on concerns about and possible substitutes for stripping coatings on cars, planes, furniture, and other products with methylene chloride.
Since then, the EPA has recognized that short-term, high exposures to methylene chloride, often identified on business forms as CAS No. 75-09-2, can cause dizziness, incapacitation, and even death. Longer, lower-level chronic exposures may harm the liver and cause cancer.
Two ActionsThe EPA announced two actions addressing methylene chloride on March 15.
First, it banned methylene chloride in consumer paint strippers.
The rule is the first Toxic Substances Control Act regulation banning some uses of a chemical that the agency has issued since 1991 when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA overturned the agency’s 1989 rulemaking that would have banned multiple uses of asbestos.
Second, the EPA “will begin a process to gather public input for a future rulemaking that could establish training and limited access programs for methylene chloride for commercial uses,” Dunn said.The public’s ideas will be gathered through a soon-to-be-released “prerule” (RIN: 2070-AK48) or “advanced notice of proposed rulemaking.” However, it may take several years before a proposed and final regulation are published should the agency decide to proceed with regulatory controls.
Substitutes May Pose RisksTwo industry groups, the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance Inc., and the American Chemistry Council, supported the agency’s request for public comment and information for a future rulemaking that could protect contractors and other workers.
Safer Chemicals Healthy Families objected to the agency’s approach. The EPA expressly rejected the option of a training and certification program for workers when it originally proposed a rule banning many paint stripping products from containing methylene chloride, the group said in a statement.
At that time, 2017, the agency also raised concerns about whether such a training program would be feasible and adequately protective, the organization said.
The chemistry council also supported the agency’s ban on methylene chloride in paint removers for consumer use.
The alliance, however, voiced concerns about the safety of chemicals that paint stripper manufacturers may use as substitutes for methylene chloride.
Most substitutes are flammable, which methylene chloride is not, the alliance said.
The EPA’s final rule also said methylene chloride substitutes may be flammable or pose other risks. Its 2017 proposed rule listed some possible alternatives.
New Products, Commercial MarketCalifornia’s regulation, which requires paint stripper manufacturers selling products containing methylene chloride to examine the risks of alternatives.
The EPA’s action, state regulation, and retailers’ voluntary phase-out may stimulate demand for new products. California’s rule may help make new products to contractors and other workers.
Unlike the EPA’s rule, California’s Safer Consumer Product regulation does not distinguish between paint strippers used by consumers, professionals, or industrial workers, said Karl Palmer, acting deputy director of the safer products and workplaces in California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control.
The rule shifts the burden to the manufacturer to develop a safe way to use its products, Palmer said. That safe way could involve switching to other solvents, using a mechanical process like sand or sandpaper to remove the paint, or requiring training for workers when only methylene chloride-containing strippers will achieve a needed function, he said.
“It’s incumbent on the manufacturer to outline what the uses would be and how they would assure safety,” Palmer said.
Lawsuit May ProceedThe lack of worker protections in the EPA’s final rule means the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement and the Natural Resources Defense Council may be able to proceed with a lawsuit they filed Feb. 19, Daniel Rosenberg, an NRDC senior attorney, told Bloomberg Environment March 15.
The groups must also complete their review of the regulations, he said.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, maintains the EPA has violated its obligations to protect people against an unreasonable risk of injury by failing to already have banned methylene chloride.
Broader Ban ProposedThe EPA’s proposal of a broader ban of methylene chloride in the waning days of the Obama administration was shelved until late 2018, when the agency submitted its final rule and advanced notice of proposed rulemaking to a White House office that must clear regulations before finalization.
While the EPA delayed, consumer advocates pressured major retailers.As of Feb. 28, 13 retailers including Lowe’s, Amazon, and Home Depot had already agreed to take strippers with methylene chloride and another solvent, n-methyl-2-pyrrolidone,off their inventories.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/epa-bans-consumer-but-not-worker-uses-of-deadly-solvent-2
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(ACC Mentioned) US EPA Bans Methylene Chloride in Consumer Paint Removers
Mar 18, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The US EPA has banned the use of methylene chloride in consumer paint removal products. The move represents the agency’s first regulation of a substance under section 6 of TSCA in 30 years.
The ban will cover the manufacture, import, processing and distribution of the products. A prohibition on retail sales – including for e-commerce and distribution establishments that serve consumers – will take effect within 180 days of the rule’s effective date.
In announcing the rule, the agency confirmed the solvent poses "unreasonable" risk to consumers. Acute exposures can rapidly cause dizziness, loss of consciousness and death, due to nervous system depression, it said.
The final action, however, comes more than two years after a ban was initially proposed in the final days of the Obama administration. Use of the products, meanwhile, has caused several deaths.
In the intervening time, consumer advocacy groups have twice sued the agency for its delayed action and dozens of retailers have committed to stop selling the products in the face of mounting concerns.
The final rule deviates from the proposal in that it does not also address the alternative solvent N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP), nor does it cover commercial uses.
"While EPA proposed a determination of unreasonable risk from the use of methylene chloride in commercial paint and coating removal, EPA is not finalising that determination in this rule," says the rule.
Instead, the agency has requested comments to inform "a future rulemaking that could establish a training, certification, and limited access programme for methylene chloride for commercial uses".
Methylene chloride toxicity
The section 6 rule is based on a 2014 TSCA work plan assessment of methylene chloride that showed it can cause a range of adverse health effects or death in workers and consumers, including harm to the central nervous system, liver and kidney toxicity, and cancer.
Following 2016 amendments to the law, the EPA named methylene chloride – along with NMP – among its first ten chemicals subject to risk evaluation.
Final risk evaluation on all ten substances are due by the end of this year. If the agency determines that any of these pose an unreasonable risk, it is required to immediately begin a rulemaking process to address the identified concern.
‘Absolutely unacceptable’
Consumer advocacy groups were quick to denounce the rule as inadequate for its failure to address commercial exposures.
Liz Hitchcock, director of Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, said it is "absolutely unacceptable that EPA is finalising a rule that will do nothing to protect the thousands of workers whose lives and health are in danger."
Environmental Working Group legislative attorney Melanie Benesh agreed: "The Trump administration will be partly to blame when the next worker is injured or dies as a result of being exposed to this extremely dangerous chemical."
In a meeting with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during the interagency review period, the Environmental Defense Fund argued that the EPA is legally obligated under TSCA to mitigate the unreasonable risk with respect to methylene chloride that it identified in a 2014 risk assessment. A ban, it said, is the only option that provides "sufficient protection".
Further, it argued that without a commercial ban, the agency cannot ensure that consumers will not get access to the product.
Methylene chloride manufacturers have continued to defend their products and have argued that alternatives are less effective and carry other hazards, such as flammability.
The American Chemistry Council said it supports the EPA’s approach of banning sales to consumers and exploring a future programme to address workplace uses.
Section 6 rulemaking
One of the primary motivations for amending the TSCA law in 2016 was to address the agency’s authority to regulate substances of concern. Prior to reform, section 6 of the law – which covers existing chemicals, including evaluating the risk they pose and implementing restrictions or bans to address those – was hamstrung by a court’s ruling to overturn a 1989 ban on asbestos.
Many have looked to three section 6 rules proposed in the final days of the Obama administration – two addressing uses of the solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) and the other focused on paint removers containing NMP and methylene chloride – as an early test of the updated law’s effectiveness.
But several NGOs – many of which have been critical of the direction that TSCA implementation has taken since the Trump administration came into office – saw the latest development as further cause for concern.
EDF senior scientist Richard Denison said: "It speaks volumes that the first restriction on a chemical finalised by this administration under the newly strengthened TSCA is a watered down version of the ban as first proposed.
"The administration found a way to take what started as a far more health-protective ban, delay any action for two years, and then strip out any protections for workers, those most at risk from these products," he added.
And Daniel Rosenberg, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, added that the agency is "writing loopholes into its own standards for the benefit of the chemical industry.’
https://chemicalwatch.com/75127/us-epa-bans-methylene-chloride-in-consumer-paint-removers
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Bans Consumer Sales of Toxic Paint Stripper
Mar 15, 2019 | E&E News PM
By Courtney Columbus
EPA today issued a final rule banning consumer sales of paint strippers that contain methylene chloride. The agency cited "acute fatalities" as the reason for the ban.
"After analyzing the health impacts and listening to affected families, EPA is taking action to stop the use of this chemical in paint removers intended for consumers," EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement.
"Today's decision reflects EPA's commitment to ensure that chemicals in the retail marketplace are safe for the American public."
The rule does not ban the use of methylene chloride in commercial settings.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, criticized the move and called for Wheeler to also ban commercial use of the chemical.
"While a ban on consumer uses of paint strippers containing methylene chloride is a step in the right direction, it falls far short of what former Administrator Pruitt announced almost a year ago, and of what my office was assured in writing would be a ban that protected both consumer users and workers from this deadly chemical," he said in a statement.
Environmental groups say the agency's action is a step forward but still leaves workers at risk.
"Nobody should be fooled. In issuing this weaker rule, knowing the dangers of these toxins, EPA is consciously allowing for more injuries and deaths among workers and consumers," Daniel Rosenberg, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council's Healthy People and Thriving Communities program, said in a statement.
"The agency is writing loopholes into its own standards for the benefit of the chemical industry," said Rosenberg.
More than 50 deaths have been linked to methylene chloride, and several groups have sued EPA for failing to ban it. The chemical can cause death if it is being used in an area that isn't properly ventilated (E&E News PM, Feb. 19).
Many major retailers, including Lowe's Cos. Inc., have voluntarily committed to taking paint strippers that contain methylene chloride off their shelves (Greenwire, Jan. 25).
The ban will start 180 days after the effective date of the final rule, EPA said in a news release.
EPA is also seeking public input for a "future rulemaking that could establish a training, certification, and limited access program for methylene chloride for commercial uses," the news release noted.
In a statement, the American Chemistry Council said it supports the actions EPA is taking.
"We also support EPA's request for public comment and information for a future rulemaking that could establish a federally-enforceable training, certification and limited access program for methylene chloride for commercial uses," ACC spokesman Jon Corley said.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/stories/1060127467/search?keyword=%22american+chemistry+council%22
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EPA Leaves Door Open to Address Methylene Chloride's Workplace Risks
Mar 15, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Ariana Figueroa
Facing widespread criticism that its first-time ban on consumer uses of paint strippers containing methylene chloride does not protect workers, the agency's top toxics official is leaving the door open to taking future action to limit workplace risks under the revised toxics law though she stopped short of pledging to ban the chemical's commercial uses that many critics are seeking.
“We are very concerned about exposures in the workplace, however this chemical has been used in the workplace,” Alexandra Dunn, EPA's toxics chief, told reporters on a March 15 conference call.
But she added that if EPA finds that methylene chloride is “unreasonably dangerous for workers,” then the agency “will make a legal finding” under the revised Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) to “take steps to mitigate those [concerns].”
Her comments come as the agency released its long-awaited final rule, issued under TSCA section 6, “to prohibit the manufacture (including import), processing, and distribution of methylene chloride in all paint removers for consumer use.”
The rule marks the first time that the agency has used its section 6 authority to ban use of an existing chemical -- a substance that was in commerce when the law was first authorized in 1976 -- since Congress amended the law in 2016.
The ban will go into effect 180 days after the final rule is published in the Federal Register for 60 days.
A proposed version of the rule, issued by the Obama administration, sought to prohibit commercial uses, after a 2013 risk assessment found the use of methylene chloride in paint strippers posed unreasonable risks to workers and consumers.
But the final version of the rule issued by the Trump administration only targets consumer uses.
Rather that regulating commercial uses, EPA released alongside the final rule an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) that would create a “training, certification and limited access program” for commercial users of the substance.
“We understand the concerns with the workplace applications and that is why today we are looking at a training program,” Dunn told reporters.
But the agency's decision drew widespread criticisms from Democrats, environmentalists and others -- and is already facing litigation.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, says the ban on methylene chloride falls short of what former Administrator Scott Pruitt had promised.
And he said it will undercut steps that many retailers have already taken to remove products containing the chemical.
“Many of the nation’s biggest hardware store chains and paint manufacturers -- those which arguably profit the most from selling methylene chloride-based products -- have already removed or announced plans to remove this harmful type of paint stripper from their shelves,” Carper said in a statement. “This decision undermines those retailers’ good faith efforts to protect people from this dangerous product.”
He says the “chemical will continue to endanger workers’ health” and urged Administrator Andrew Wheeler to extend the regulation to workplace uses.
And Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), one of the revised law's authors and the top Democrat on EPA's appropriations subcommittee, charged that it is at odds with the statute.
“The Trump administration has again failed to live up to the letter and spirit of the historic bipartisan reform of TSCA that Congress passed in 2016,” Udall said in a March 15 statement. “In that law, we explicitly authorized EPA’s work to ban methylene chloride-based paint strippers because of their dangerous effects on both workers and the public.”
Litigation Threats
Udall’s statement underscores legal arguments that environmentalists and their supporters are already making.
Groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Earthjustice and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) have already filed lawsuits in federal courts, charging that EPA’s failure to ban the chemical violates TSCA and the Administrative Procedure Act by allowing workers to be exposed to the chemical despite unreasonable risk.
For example, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Earthjustice filed a Feb. 19 lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking to require EPA to finalize the ban and take any other steps necessary to protect workers from imminent hazards from exposure.
“Latino and immigrant workers are more likely to perform jobs that use deadly paint strippers,” LCLAA executive director Hector Sanchez Barba said in a March 15 statement. “We deserve as much protection as every other group and should not be exposed to a chemical we know is deadly. Methylene chloride must be banned immediately.”
And Adam Finkel, a clinical professor of environmental Health Sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and a former EPA advisor and OSHA official, told Congress earlier this week that EPA's approach is legally vulnerable and may impose more costly requirements on industry than a ban.
In his written testimony at a March 13 House Energy and Commerce hearing on EPA's TSCA implementation, Finkel said that training workers to protect against harmful exposures would likely encourage increased use of respirators. But “in most cases” the only respirators that provide any protection against methylene chloride, known as supplied-air respirators, “require more expensive retrofits of the workplace than the engineering controls that would reduce concentrations below OSHA's permissible exposure limit (PEL). “So, training workers in this setting is not likely to reduce exposure and risk unless EPA requires actual controls instead of placing the onus on the worker.”
Additionally, he said EPA has already considered and rejected this approach in the proposed rule the Obama administration issued, the approach is vulnerable to a legal challenge as the agency must now justify its new approach.
He also says the approach the agency has taken appears to “run afoul” of TSCA section 9(d), which requires EPA to avoid duplication with OSHA measures.
“Whereas a use ban on [methylene chloride] for paint and coating removal, as proposed . . . would not . . . have run afoul of the TSCA §9(d) requirement to avoid duplication with OSHA, a training program does duplicate various provisions of [OSHA's 1997 methylene chloride] rule, and would therefore seem less compliant with TSCA than what EPA proposed in 2017,” he said.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-leaves-door-open-address-methylene-chlorides-workplace-risks
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E.P.A., Scaling Back Proposed Ban, Plans Limits on Deadly Chemical in Paint Strippers
Mar 15, 2019 | The New York Times
By Lisa Friedman
The Environmental Protection Agency announced on Friday new limits on a lethal chemical found in paint stripping products that has been linked to more than 50 deaths since the 1980s.
Chemical safety activists called the plan a significant scaling-back of the ban that the Obama administration had proposed. In 2017 the Obama administration concluded the chemical, methylene chloride, represented an “unreasonable risk” and moved to ban it from commercial as well as consumer use.
Andrew Wheeler, the E.P.A. administrator, on Friday signed a rule that prohibits the manufacture and use of consumer products containing methylene chloride, but did not ban it for commercial use. The agency is also considering a proposal for a certification and training program for workers who use the chemical commercially.
“Families have lost loved ones in tragic and heartbreaking circumstances,” said Alexandra Dunn, the E.P.A. assistant administrator for chemical safety. “We answered the call for many affected families to ensure that no other family experience the death of someone close to them from this chemical.”
Stores will have 180 days to stop selling products containing methylene chloride. After that, violators will face fines or possible imprisonment.
Ms. Dunn said the E.P.A. expected retailers to comply “much more quickly.” So far, at least 13 retailers have announced that they have removed or will remove from their shelves paint stripping products that contain the chemical.
Relatives of three men who died from exposure after working with paint strippers containing methylene chloride met in early 2018 with Scott Pruitt, then the administrator of the E.P.A. Among them was Brian Wynne, the brother of Drew Wynne, who died in 2017 after stripping paint from the floor of his coffee company in Charleston, S.C.
Another was Wendy Hartley of Nashville, Tenn., whose son Kevin died at age 21 after refinishing a bathtub for the family’s business. Ms. Hartley said on Friday that she had declined to meet with E.P.A. officials ahead of the agency’s announcement because the ruling does not ban the chemical outright.
“I am deeply disappointed that the E.P.A. has watered down the ban on methylene chloride as it was originally proposed,” she said in a text message. “Workers like my son Kevin who use MC are left unprotected.”
Lindsay McCormick, project manager for chemicals and health at the Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental group, said while the chemical is a threat to people who use paint strippers in their homes, the majority of deaths associated with methylene chloride have been work-related. She called the E.P.A. decision “a step in the right direction” but added, “I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that this is only addressing a portion of the population, and we really need to protect all Americans.”
E.P.A. officials did not say why the agency had opted against a ban, but suggested that one could still be imposed based on the comments the agency receives about its plan to create a certification program.
Faye Graul, executive director for the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, an industry group, said in a statement she was disappointed with the ban on consumer uses of the substance and said the organization had worked with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to improve labeling. “We hope that alternative products offered to consumers, most of which are flammable, do not result in greater fire risk,” she said.
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An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the brother of Drew Wynne, who died after stripping paint from the floor of his coffee company. He is Brian Wynne, not Bryan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/climate/epa-paint-stripper-methylene-chloride.html
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Long-Delayed Methylene Chloride Ban Finalized but Still Leaves Workers at Risk
Mar 15, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it has finalized a rule that bans methylene chloride in paint strippers for consumer uses but still allows use of the deadly products in workplaces. Instead of banning commercial uses, as it originally proposed to do more than two years ago, EPA is merely starting a process to gather input on what a possible future certification and training program might look like – delaying any action for years.
While EDF welcomes the long-overdue protection of consumers, it falls far short of what is needed to protect all Americans. EPA has acknowledged that these products present unreasonable risks to consumers, yet workers are even more at risk. The agency has also acknowledged that alternative products are readily available, so it is all the more distressing that EPA’s action leaves out workers.
Getting a consumer ban happened only because of the courageous efforts by families that have lost loved ones to these products, the leadership shown by major retailers that committed to pull products from their shelves, and pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and advocacy organizations.
“While it is an important step to bar consumer use of methylene chloride-based paint strippers, EDF is alarmed that EPA has abandoned its earlier proposal to protect those most at risk – the many workers, including owners and employees of small businesses, who are exposed to these deadly products on the job,” said Lindsay McCormick, Chemicals and Health Project Manager at Environmental Defense Fund. “Most reported deaths from these products are of workers, and so we will continue to fight for their protection, demanding that EPA do its job and protect all Americans.”
Methylene chloride is highly neurotoxic, and acutely lethal. It is highly volatile and can kill within minutes of inhalation. There have been over 50 reported deaths from acute exposure in recent years – though many more likely have gone unreported.
For two years, EDF and others have urged this administration to finalize EPA’s 2017 proposed ban on these deadly products. This action was directly authorized under the bipartisan overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in 2016. The agency based its proposed ban on a robust risk assessment demonstrating both the lethal risks from acute exposure and a host of other acute and chronic adverse health impacts.
In the time since the ban was originally proposed, people have continued to lose their lives to these products. The family members who have lost loved ones since the ban was proposed have bravely come forward to share their stories and urge the agency to take swift action to finalize the ban. Their advocacy efforts, the support of lawmakers, and action by retailers, including Lowe’s, Walmart, and Home Depot, have been instrumental in drawing national attention to this issue and forcing EPA action. Unfortunately, those exposed on the job still will not be protected by the scaled-back ban.
“After hearing my son’s story and promising action on methylene chloride, I am deeply saddened to see this administration go back on its word,” said Wendy Hartley, who lost her son, Kevin, in April 2017 to a methylene chloride-based paint stripper he was using on the job. “Kevin wouldn’t have been protected by this ban. And the decision to weaken the originally-proposed ban means that all of the other workers who use this – for small family businesses, like Kevin, or at larger companies – will be left unprotected. I will keep fighting until this administration does its job and ensures these deadly products are out of homes, stores, and workplaces.”
“It speaks volumes that the first restriction on a chemical finalized by this administration under the newly strengthened TSCA is a watered down version of the ban as first proposed,” said Dr. Richard Denison, Lead Senior Scientist at Environmental Defense Fund. “The administration found a way to take what started as a far more health-protective ban, delay any action for two years, and then strip out any protections for workers, those most at risk from these products. The Trump EPA is once again prioritizing narrow industry interests over public health and worker protection.”
Based on a pre-rule EPA also announced today, it appears the agency will relegate any actions to address commercial uses of methylene chloride in paint strippers to a lengthy, uncertain process that will take years to complete. EPA is merely inviting input on what a future worker training and certification program should look like – options EPA had specifically considered earlier and rejected as inadequate to address the high risks workers face.
Just this week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on the Environment and Climate Change held an oversight hearing on the Trump EPA’s failure to protect workers from toxic chemicals. Committee members highlighted EPA’s abandonment of worker protections from methylene chloride-based paint strippers as a key example of how the agency has shirked its responsibility under TSCA.
EPA has also abandoned restrictions it previously proposed under TSCA on two other hazardous solvents – trichloroethylene (TCE) and N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP).
In a meeting with OMB concerning the draft final rule, EDF voiced strong concerns over any narrowing of the original proposed rule and urged the office to ensure the ban protects workers as well as consumers. Additionally, since January, more than 13,000 concerned Americans sent over 39,000 messages to their Members of Congress demanding EPA and OMB finalize a ban covering both consumer and most commercial uses.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2019/03/15/long-delayed-methylene-chloride-ban-finalized-but-still-leaves-workers-at-risk/
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EPA Paint Stripper Rule Will Leave Workers’ Lives at Risk
Mar 15, 2019 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
By Liz Hitchcock
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will announce its final rule on methylene chloride in paint strippers. The Trump administration’s final rule will ban consumer uses and sales of these dangerous paint strippers while continuing to allow commercial sales to contractors and other professionals.
This half a loaf isn’t even crumbs for workers who don’t really have a choice whether to use the materials their employers choose on the job.
It’s been more than two years since EPA first proposed a ban on deadly paint strippers containing methylene chloride. In that time, at least four people have died from exposure to these products, an unknowable number of workers and bystanders have been exposed to the cancer-causing effects of methylene chloride, and thirteen national retailershave committed to stop selling these products at more than 30,000 stores.
Because of the Trump EPA’s ongoing failure to use the tools that it was given under the 2016 reform of the nation’s chemical law, the Toxic Substances Control Act, it’s genuinely tempting to say that just preventing consumers from purchasing these dangerous products should be celebrated as “at least a partial victory.” After all, our Mind the Store campaign to convince retailers like Lowe’s and The Home Depot to stop selling these products to both consumers and professional contractors regardless of whether EPA acts deserves some credit for getting EPA Administrator Wheeler to even take this step.
Let’s resist that temptation and hold off on that victory lap. Families who may lose loved ones either from acute or long-term exposure on the job will take no comfort in knowing that consumers can’t buy these products but professionals can.
No one should have to risk their life to earn a paycheck. It is absolutely unacceptable that EPA is finalizing a rule that will do nothing to protect the tens of thousands of workers whose lives and health are in danger as they come in contact with methylene chloride on the job. Workers who use methylene chloride paint strippers regularly are at an increased risk of death and long-term health effects such as cancer. EPA’s final rule leaves both consumers and workers in jeopardy.
And let’s not pretend that consumers won’t be able to get the products that “the professionals use.” EPA noted this when the agency proposed the rule in 2017, saying: “(C)consumers can easily obtain products labeled for commercial use. Indeed, for many consumers, identifying a product as being for commercial use may imply greater efficacy. Coupled with the fact that many products identified as commercial or professional are readily obtainable in a variety of venues (e.g., the Internet, general retailers, and specialty stores, such as automotive stores), EPA does not find that this option would protect consumers.“[1]
EPA officials have a mandate to protect all Americans from the dangers of toxic chemicals. In issuing this rule, they are failing to do their job. EPA should re-consider this dangerous decision. We will see them in court to hold them to the standards required under the Toxic Substances Control Act – that they restrict a chemical determined to present an “unreasonable risk of injury, applying such requirements as are necessary so that the chemical substance no longer presents such a risk.”
https://saferchemicals.org/2019/03/15/epa-paint-stripper-rule-will-leave-workers-lives-at-risk/
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(ACC Mentioned) California Agency Rejects Industry Spray Foam Petition
Mar 18, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control has denied an industry appeal against its decision to target spray polyurethane foam (SPF) under its Safer Consumer Products programme.
The decision came with respect to a formal appeal filed by the American Chemistry Council early this year over the DTSC’s 2018 designation of SPF systems containing unreacted methylene diphenyl diisocyanates a priority product.
Under the state’s scheme, this triggered a requirement for manufacturers selling products on the California market to either reformulate their products or conduct an alternatives analysis that meets certain programme criteria. The DTSC has the authority to impose regulations at the end of the process.
Last year the ACC stayed enforcement of the requirements through an informal protest, which the DTSC subsequently rejected. Industry’s formal petition in January again paused the programme requirements coming into force.
But the DTSC has now ended the delays by issuing a final determination denying the ACC’s request.
In a 25 February letter, DTSC chief Bruce LaBelle wrote that neither the ACC’s formal appeal nor its earlier documents "provide any new information that refute the scientific, regulatory and procedural record".
"The letters and supporting information provided by the ACC do not contain any information that demonstrates that there exists no potential for exposure, or no potential for significant or widespread adverse impacts" associated with the products, he added.
The agency has set a deadline of 26 April for companies to notify their intent to develop an alternatives analysis.‘Unclear goal’
Lee Salamone, senior director for the ACC’s Center for Polyurethanes Industry, told Chemical Watch the group was disappointed by the decision.
"Over the past five years, the industry has developed and submitted information which demonstrates … industry’s success and dedication to product stewardship and that the administrative record does not support the priority product listing."
The group has concerns, she added, that "the lack of transparency within the listing process requires improvement and drives the expenditure of public and private resources to conduct an alternatives analysis with an unclear goal."Updates to California green chemistry laws?
The California legislature recently reviewed the effectiveness of the state’s green chemistry programme ten years after the law authorising it was adopted. Stakeholders identified several areas of weakness "that have impaired the ability of the California Green Chemistry Initiative to live up to its potential".
The California Senate is considering a bill (SB 392) that would make several changes to the SCP programme, such as expanding the DTSC’s authority to collect data and allowing it to bypass the alternatives assessment process and proceed directly to imposing regulations.
The legislation also proposes to remove the option of using the dispute resolution process.
https://chemicalwatch.com/75094/california-agency-rejects-industry-spray-foam-petition
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(ACC Mentioned) Blue States Mull Carbon-Free Mandates • Saving the Whales • CERAWeek Closes
Mar 15, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Chuck McCutcheon
Hawaii was first, then California. Now other states are joining or looking to join the 100 percent carbon-free electricity mandate club.
New Mexico lawmakers this week passed a bill—which Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is expected to sign—requiring public utilities to obtain all their electricity from zero-carbon sources, excluding nuclear energy, by 2045, and for electric cooperatives to go carbon-free by 2050. Similar proposals are pending in Washington state, New York, and several other states.
“It feels like there’s a lot of momentum now,” says Doug Vine, a senior energy fellow at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.
But the concept has been limited to blue states, not red or even purple ones.
“We’d like to see it become a completely nonpartisan issue, but we’re not there yet,” says Noah Long, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
SAVE THE WHALES: Canada and Washington state are the scenes of separate efforts to save the whales—namely, killer whales or orcas.
In Canada, an environmental group warns that the National Energy Board would have a major endangered species problem if it were to support the construction of an expanded Trans Mountain crude oil pipeline to the Pacific Ocean. The project would vastly increase the number of large oil tankers using the southern resident killer whales’ habitat.
The result would be a near constant exposure to ship noise for the remaining 74 members of the species, an impact that makes whales’ feeding patterns much harder, says Misty MacDuffee, a biologist with the Rainforest Conservation Foundation.
And in Washington state, a bill that would give regulators the power to ban toxic substances in an effort to protect critically endangered killer whales is drawing protests from the chemicals industry.
The bill “gives the Department of Ecology unchecked authority to regulate products sold in the state and the creation of another list of chemicals, without allowing stakeholder engagement,” American Chemistry Council spokesman Andrew Fasoli says.
CERAWEEK CLOSES: IHS Markit’s CERAWeek winds down in Houston with Alaska GOP Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn, and Makan Delrahim, the Justice Department’s antitrust chief.
A panel on energizing energy innovation also will include Conner Prochaska, chief commercialization officer and director for the Energy Department’s Office of Technology Transitions, and Vijay Swarup, Exxon Mobil Research & Engineering Co.'s vice president of research and development.
Other Stories We’re Covering
· The U.N. Environment Assembly wraps up in Nairobi.
· School Strike for Climate, an international protest by youths seeking action on climate change, will include events at schools around the U.S.
· Senators head home for a weeklong recess in which they will prepare for an upcoming vote on the Green New Deal.
Quote of the Day
Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah).
Photographer: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
“Tantamount to genocide. That may be an overstatement, but not by a whole lot.”
—Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, the House Natural Resources Committee’s top Republican, slamming the Green New Deal resolution.Around the Web
· Florida Power & Light is proposing the nation’s largest community solar program.
· Sea ice didn’t appear in an area of the Bering Sea last winter, and scientists say it’s too early to tell if the sea is likely to be ice-free. But one oceanographer says, “I think it’s the beginning of change.”
· Miami Beach may follow Key West and the state of Hawaii in banning the sale of sunscreens containing two chemicals believed to harm coral reefs.
· Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam makes good on his earlier threat to veto Virginia Republicans’ bid to block the state’s intention of joining a Northeastern greenhouse-gas trading initiative.
Today’s Events
· 8:30 a.m. • Climate • Environmental Business Council of New England holds forum in Boston on lessons learned from the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) grant program to help communities plan local climate change resiliency projects.
· 11 a.m. • Tribal Fund • Grid Alternatives holds webinar on the Tribal Solar Accelerator Fund, an initiative providing funding to Indian tribes to support renewable energy projects.
· Noon • Utility Economics • National Capital Area Chapter of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics holds luncheon with the CEO of Sagewell, Inc., which provides utility smart meter data analytics software, strategic electrification programs and consulting services to utilities.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/blue-states-mull-carbon-free-mandates-saving-the-whales-ceraweek-closes-52
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Study: Elevated Levels of Toxic Chemicals Found in Menstrual Pads and Disposable Diapers
Mar 15, 2019 | Environmental Working Group
By Carla Burns
Many brands of menstrual pads and disposable diapers contain elevated levels of chemicals linked to developmental and reproductive harm, according to a recent study published in the journal Reproductive Toxicology.
The study, by a team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, looked at 11 brands of menstrual pads and four brands of disposable diapers sold in the U.S. and several European and Asian nations. The brands, which were not identified, were tested for four kinds of phthalates and three kinds of volatile organic chemicals, or VOCs.
Babies and women of reproductive age – the groups that most use these products – are particularly susceptible to exposure to chemicals that may harm developmental and reproductive health. The researchers noted: “As sanitary pads and diapers are in direct contact with external genitalia for an extended period, there is a probability that a considerable amount of VOCs or phthalates could be absorbed into the reproductive system.”
Two phthalates – di-n-butyl phthalate, or DBP, and di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate, or DEHP – were detected in all of the brands of diapers and pads tested. Both are classified by California regulators as reproductive and developmental toxicants. European authorities also classify them as toxic to reproduction, noting that exposure to DBP may cause harm to the developing fetus. The highest concentration of DBP detected was much higher than what is found in common plastic goods, such as packaged film and plastic cups.
The researchers also detected potentially harmful VOCs in the products tested. Xylene was found in all 11 of the menstrual pad brands tested, toluene in nine, and methylene chloride in two. Toluene and xylene were detected in all four diaper brands tested. Exposure to these and other VOCs have been linked to dizziness, skin irritation and allergic reactions, and even damage to kidneys and the central nervous system, according to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Previous research has detected toxic chemicals in diapers. Recently, ANSES, the French agency for food, environment and occupational health and safety, tested French diapers and found a number of hazardous chemicals, including formaldehyde and glyphosate. Formaldehyde is a VOC that has been classified as a known human carcinogen. Glyphosate is a pesticide classified as a probable human carcinogen
ANSES’ risk assessment showed that the concentration of many of the detected chemicals could pose a threat to infant health. Because of these results, the agency recommended that manufacturers of disposable diapers stop using fragrance in their products, since it can include a number of skin-sensitizing components along with other ingredients of concern.
The Food and Drug Administration does not currently classify baby diapers as a medical device. Diaper manufacturers do not have to disclose ingredients on packages, and diapers do not have to be tested to be proven safe for infants to wear. Menstruation management products, such as pads and tampons, are considered medical devices, but the FDA does not require manufacturers to disclose ingredients to consumers.
To avoid these and other potentially harmful chemicals in diapers and menstrual products, EWG recommends that you choose those without fragrance, plastic components or both. If you are not sure whether your product is made with ingredients of concern, contact the manufacturer to see if it contains phthalates or fragrance. If you are concerned about pesticides, consider an organic menstrual product or organic diapers.
https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysis/2019/03/study-elevated-levels-toxic-chemicals-found-menstrual-pads-and-disposable
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Scientists Back Use Of 2007 Risk Approach For EPA Perchlorate Standard
Mar 15, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Lara Beaven
A team of scientists in an article accepted for publication in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology is backing the American Water Works Association’s (AWWA) call for EPA to rely on a 2005 risk assessment in crafting a perchlorate drinking water standard that could spur a weaker limit than use of an alternative approach.
The recommendation from the team of five is at odds with findings from a peer review panel that in 2018 advocated for a modeling method that could justify a more-stringent perchlorate limit.
The article by the team of five says that while EPA's 2017 biologically-based dose-response (BBDR) model “represents a valuable research tool, the lack of supporting data for many of the model assumptions and parameters calls into question the fitness of the extended BBDR model to support quantitative analyses for regulatory decisions on perchlorate in drinking water.”
It was written by Harvey H. Clewell, III, a principal consultant with the company Ramboll, and others including fellow consultants and Eric Hack, a research scientist with the company ScitoVation.
The team says that until more data can be developed to address uncertainties in the current BBDR model, EPA should continue to rely on the 0.7 microgram per kilogram bodyweight per day reference dose (RfD) the National Academy of Sciences recommended in 2007, the article says.
AWWA, which represents drinking water utilities, funded the analysis but was not involved in writing the article. The group has previously argued in favor of using the RfD in developing a future EPA perchlorate standard rather than alternative approaches.
EPA is under a judicial deadline of April 30 to propose a health-based maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG) and related enforceable drinking water standard for the rocket fuel ingredient perchlorate that takes into account technical feasibility and cost.
The article's findings differ from a contractor-run peer review panel that last year concluded in its final report, “Overall, the panel agreed that the EPA and its collaborators have prepared a highly innovative state-of-the-science set of quantitative tools to evaluate neurodevelopmental effects that could arise from drinking water exposure to perchlorate. While there is always room for improvement of the models, with limited additional work to address the committee’s comments below, the current models are fit-for-purpose to determine an MCLG.”
At a public meeting prior to the peer reviewers' report, one of the reviewers, Hugh Barton, reacted with surprise when AWWA Manager of Federal Relations Kevin Morley in public comments suggested that “the best available science goes back to the RfD . . . as most suitable for regulatory development.”
After questioning Morley about the traditional calculation for a drinking water standard from an RfD, based on adult consumption and weight estimates, Barton said, “I'd be concerned that at a public drinking water [level of 24.5 parts per billion] that perchlorate would become the next Flint, Michigan.”
Barton expanded on his concerns of using the RfD to form the basis for the MCLG at the end of the meeting, noting that EPA's proposed analysis in 2012 discussed various consumption rates and body weights for infants, children and/or pregnant women to set a standard protective of the most sensitive subpopulation -- the fetuses of women with hypothyroxinemia, or low iodine levels. Iodine is necessary for crucial neurodevelopment, and the fetus is dependent upon the mother for iodine.
Barton noted that EPA's 2012 analysis resulted in as much as a 10-fold difference in potential drinking water standards “because of the volume [of water consumed] per bodyweight.” Of most concern to him, the analysis resulted in the same potential standard for pregnant and non-pregnant women, despite the difference in their iodine needs. “The simple calculation from the RfD that says they're the same is not particularly credible.”
Authors’ Findings
But Clewell and his co-authors say that while the hormone component of the BBDR model is “a scientific improvement in terms of incorporating the available biology, there is a lack of data to provide critical validation in multiple steps of the proposed approach and to support several assumptions/parameters within the BBDR model.”
While no major structural defects in EPA's model were identified, there are uncertainties in the model parameterization that call into question its use for predicting very small changes in clinical hormone values, such as a 1 percent change in free tetraiodothyronine (fT4) that may result in an increase in the prevalence of hypothyroxinemia in pregnant women, the article says. Hypothyroxinemia is often associated with hypothyroidism, or low concentrations of fT4, despite increased concentrations of thyroid stimulating hormone.
While the model prediction for a 1 percent change in fT4 would yield a point of departure, or starting point for later analysis of the dose-response curve, lower than EPA's RfD, “that level of precision is a not supported by the comparison of the model predictions with available data,” the article says. Comparing the point of departure from EPA's 2005 Integrated Risk Information System assessment of perchlorate with the points of departure calculated by the BBDR model shows the RfD “is protective for all of the endpoints from epidemiological studies and is consistent with a change in population fT4 levels of less than 5%.”
The fundamental underpinning of the agency’s risk assessment approach has been the use of an obligatory precursor as a conservative basis for protecting against downstream health effects, the article says.
But “[u]nless perchlorate concentrations in the blood are sufficient to disrupt iodine uptake, there is no plausible basis for suggesting an effect of perchlorate on thyroid hormone homeostasis or subsequent events leading to developmental or (in the rat) carcinogenic effects. The recent studies suggesting a relationship between perchlorate exposure and decreased fT4 do not impeach this causal relationship.”
Therefore, until the significant uncertainties in the current BBDR model and draft MCLG approaches can be addressed, EPA should continue to rely on the RfD approach based on inhibition of thyroidal iodine uptake for any further regulatory action, the article says.
The EPA “RfD includes an intraspecies uncertainty factor of 10 'to protect the most sensitive population, the fetuses of pregnant women who might have hypothyroidism or iodide deficiency.' None of the predictions of the BBDR model suggest that this uncertainty factor is inadequate,” the article says.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/scientists-back-use-2007-risk-approach-epa-perchlorate-standard
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Fracking Company Beats One Pennsylvania Claim; Must Face Others
Mar 15, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Mike Leonard
Although Pennsylvania’s unfair trade practices law doesn’t cover antitrust claims generally, it does prohibit deceptive conduct that also harms competition, a divided Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ruled March 15.
Pennsylvania may therefore proceed with claims that Anadarko drove down royalties to property owners living above the Marcellus Shale—an underground natural gas formation that covers much of the state—by misleading them about “the open market’s true appetite for mineral rights leases.”
The court also rejected Anadarko’s argument that the unfair trade practices law only protects small buyers from predatory merchants, not small sellers like landowners from large buyers like fracking companies.
The statute was meant to equalize bargaining power, ensure fairness of market transactions, and prevent deception and exploitation, Judge Ellen Ceisler wrote, citing the state Supreme Court’s ruling last year in Danganan v. Guardian Protective Services.
That part of the decision also resolved a question of first impression.
But the appellate court did rule for Anadarko on one issue, holding that the law “is not designed to render all antitrust violations actionable.” The statute bars only those anti-competitive activities that involve conduct the law independently designates as unfair or deceptive, Ceisler said.
That part of the decision effectively dismissed claims against Anadarko for seeking to divide up the Marcellus Shale with Chesapeake Energy Corp., a competitor.
Judge Anne E. Covey dissented from most of the ruling, saying the unfair trade practices law is a consumer protection statute, not a merchant protection statute. Where royalty leases are concerned, the consumer is the energy company, not the property owner, she said.
Anadarko is represented by Cozen O’Connor PC.
The case is Anadarko Petrol. Corp. v. Commonwealth, Pa. Commw. Ct., No. 58 C.D. 2018, 3/15/19.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/fracking-company-beats-one-pennsylvania-claim-must-face-others
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Big Oil Loses a Safe Space in Houston
Mar 15, 2019 | Bloomberg (In The Washington Post)
By Liam Denning
CERAWeek has long been something of a safe space for the oil industry, where delegates trade gossip, do a little business and speculate over drinks and ballroom chicken where their beloved, if mercurial, market might be headed.
This year’s get-together, the 38th and organized as usual by IHS Markit, was called “New world of rivalries: Reshaping the energy future.” CERAWeek’s headline themes have shifted over the years, with energy security and growth prominent in boom times and risk coming to the fore after the 2008 crash. Since the start of the dislocation in 2014, however, the consistent element is change.
The encroachments of the wider world were evident this week. While the sponsor list featured familiar faces such as BP Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp., it was topped by names such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. CERAWeek’s Agora technology sub-conference continued its expansion, now filling a distinct space of its own, replete with white-leather chairs, purple accent lights and a robot dispensing espresso. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put in a feisty appearance. Later that same evening, BP’s CEO Bob Dudley told the dinner crowd “we are operating in a world that is not on a sustainable path.”
Emerging out of all this – at least 44 public sessions on Monday alone, by my count – is a sense that the physics of energy are changing. Three constants in the market can no longer be taken for granted, regardless of any cyclical swing.
The first constant is that cycle itself. It isn’t dead; rather, it’s hyperactive. U.S. shale has become the dominant force in global oil-supply growth. Shale, a scaleable business where access to capital is the defining variable and development is measured in months rather than years, reacts more quickly to prices. That shortens the cycle dramatically – as was amply demonstrated last year by exploration and production companies busting through spending budgets on the back of a short rally, thereby ensuring it remained short. The relative lack of long discussions about the oil price at CERAWeek was striking (prevailing attitude: Let’s just talk about how we live in a $60-ish world, barring some shock).
That said, the other two constants turning squishy represent shocks of their own. Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, began his press conference Monday morning on a topic about which, he said, “it is rare you hear from us”: geopolitics. He duly mentioned the likes of Venezuela and Iran, but his main topic was a projection that could have been headlined “America First.” The IEA expects the U.S. to account for 70 percent of the increase in non-OPEC oil supply through 2024:
The following evening, “America First” segued into something akin to “Team America” with Pompeo’s speech:
We’re not just exporting American energy, we’re exporting our commercial value system to our friends and to our partners … Our model matters now, frankly, more than ever in an era of great power rivalry and competition where some nations are using their energy for malign ends, and not to promote prosperity in the way we do here in the West. They don’t have the values of freedom and liberty, of the rule of law that we do, and they’re using their energy to destroy ours.
Regardless of your personal feelings about freedom-fracks, we are watching the U.S. ditch its (mostly) market-oriented strategy for energy security in favor of pledging to use oil and gas as tools of raw geopolitical power. This is a fundamental change.
It’s one not lost on a country singled out by Pompeo: China. Which brings us to the third constant: demand.
CERA founder Daniel Yergin interviewed Hou Qijun, vice president at China National Petroleum Corporation, on stage. Asked about China’s oil demand, Hou began by noting the country depends on imports for roughly two thirds of it. He went on to say 2018 was a “turning point” for electric vehicles in China and suggested annual oil demand there might peak at around 700 million tonnes, or roughly 14 million barrels a day (the IEA projects it will use 13.5 million barrels a day this year).
Whether or not Hou’s forecast is realistic, the point is he framed Chinese oil demand first and foremost in strategic terms. Beijing’s evident concern about relying on the Middle East, and the U.S. Navy, for its energy supply should weigh very heavily in discussions about the shape and timing of peak oil demand.
So should, of course, climate change. That subject was inescapable at CERAWeek, either directly in speeches like Dudley’s or indirectly in, say, rampant enthusiasm for natural gas (with methane emissions checked, of course). There was even an F-150 truck with a prototype higher-efficiency internal combustion engine, sporting the Aramco logo of Saudi Arabian Oil Co., aimed at countering the threat of electrification.
Parameters dictate pathways, and while many of the delegates at CERAWeek are used to riding energy’s cycles, changing physics requires true evolution. Advantage lies chiefly in flexibility, with the oil and gas pricing, trade, and demand outlook more uncertain than they’ve been in a generation, possibly ever. Hence, we’ve seen majors such as Exxon and Chevron Corp. go all-in on short-cycle shale and smaller exploration and production companies struggling to remain relevant to investors.
Their arch-challenge is climate change, impacting not just their balance sheets but also their license to operate. Maarten Wetselaar, integrated gas and new energies director at Royal Dutch Shell Plc, summed up the complexity of this, commenting that even if oil companies position themselves to be profitable as demand slows and peaks, “there’s a risk that you’ll be seen eventually as a profitable part of the problem.”
But the incumbents most at risk in this environment are OPEC countries, which were less prominent than at last year’s gathering. With ironic, and tragic, timing, as the latest CERAWeek was kicking off, large parts of founding OPEC member Venezuela were in darkness.
The IEA’s supply projection implies OPEC will cede market share for the foreseeable future. It’s a mainstream view found both in BP’s recently-published Energy Outlook and, remarkably, OPEC’s own forecasts released last September. Not for nothing did secretary General Mohammad Barkindo, who was at CERAWeek, observe that the group’s efforts to rebalance the oil market via supply cuts, penciled in originally for six months, remain “a work in progress” in their third year.
Perhaps more than anyone else in this market, OPEC is a creature of a world in which oil cycles are long, the U.S. guarantees security of trade (and of the organization’s core members in the Arabian peninsula), and demand only goes up. Most members have built their economies around that arrangement of forces. And those countries now constitute the biggest risk of dislocation in global energy as those forces are transformed.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy, mining and commodities. He previously was editor of the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote for the Financial Times’ Lex column. He was also an investment banker.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/big-oil-loses-a-safe-space-in-houston/2019/03/14/6cf7b56a-4677-11e9-94ab-d2dda3c0df52_story.html?utm_term=.28ada4de1f67
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Oil Companies Settle Vermont MTBE Claims for $3.8M (1)
Mar 15, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes and Adrianne Appel
More than two dozen of the nation’s largest gasoline refiners, including BP Products North America Inc., Shell Oil Co. and Exxon Mobil have agreed to pay $3.8 million to settle Vermont’s claims that they contaminated the state’s groundwater with the gas additive MTBE.
The settlement resolves a suit filed in 2014 that alleged violations of Vermont’s Groundwater Protection Act and the Consumer Protection Act. It also asserted design defect, failure to warn, public and private nuisance, trespass, negligence, and civil conspiracy.
The Vermont Supreme Court ruled many of those claims untimely in May 2016.
The trial court in 2015 further trimmed the claims, dismissing claims for sites where contamination hadn’t been detected. That left the state to pursue claims related to 61 sites.
The agreement calls for the dismissal of all state claims. Second Largest
The settlement was the second largest for the environmental division of the attorney general’s office, Robert McDougall, assistant attorney general, said.
The state alleged that, given a nationwide history of leaks and the water-seeking properties of MTBE, the defendants should have expected that MTBE would leak into the environment in Vermont, McDougall said.
The state has conducted “extensive” testing for MTBE in groundwater and so far, none has been detected in drinking water, McDougall said.
Private counsel that represented the state will split 23 percent of the total payment.
Among the other companies included in the settlement are Atlantic Richfield Co., Chevron U.S.A. Inc., CITGO Petroleum Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., Hess Corp., Motiva Enterprises LLC, Sunoco, Inc., and Valero Energy Corp.
Requests for comment from Shell, Chevron, BP and weren’t immediately returned.
Baron & Budd, PC, Weitz & Luxenberg PC, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, and the Law Office of L. Michael Messina PA, assisted the State of Vermont.
Dinse, Knapp & McAndrew, PC, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, Holland & Knight LLP represented Exxon Mobil Corp., ExxonMobil Oil Corp. and Mobil Corp.
The case is Vermont v. Atl. Richfield Co., Vt. Super. Ct., No. 340-6-14, 3/15/19.
(Updated with McDougall comment beginning in the sixth paragraph.)
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/oil-companies-settle-vermont-mtbe-claims-for-3-8m-1
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Public Health Advocates Preview Attacks on EPA’s MATS Rollback
Mar 15, 2019 | Inside EPA
Public health advocates are previewing attacks they plan to make at EPA’s March 18 hearing on the proposed rollback of the Obama-era mercury and air toxics standards (MATS) for power plants, including EPA’s failure to conduct a fresh cost-benefit analysis and its disregard of new science on the rule’s benefits.
EPA is holding the hearing in Washington, D.C., to receive public input on its December proposal to rescind the finding underlying MATS that it is “appropriate and necessary” to regulate air toxics from power plants. The agency claims it can leave the rule itself in place, as sought by environmentalists and much of industry, but critics warn that removing the appropriate and necessary finding makes the overall rule vulnerable to a legal challenge.
To justify its position, the agency relies on the precedent of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which in prior litigation over Bush-era powerplant regulation set a very high bar for EPA to “de-list” power plants as a source category for air toxics regulation. De-listing would be required to scrap MATS, EPA says.
But health groups note that the proposal also takes comment on scrapping MATS itself. Further, they believe that EPA’s preferred option of scrapping only the underlying “appropriate” finding, if finalized, would still open the door to fresh lawsuits from opponents of MATS seeking to kill the rule entirely.
“It is not benign. It is an existential threat to the rule,” said Paul Billings, senior vice-president for advocacy with the American Lung Association (ALA) on a press call March 14 ahead of the hearing.
“The benefits of reducing mercury are much greater than previously stated,” said Billings. Health advocates on the call cited studies conducted since EPA issued MATS in 2011 that put the true benefits of MATS from air toxics reduction at $4.8 billion or more per year, while EPA at the time estimated those benefits only in the millions of dollars. The true costs of MATS implementation are only about $2bn per year, compared to EPA’s original estimate of $9bn per year, said Charles Driscoll, a professor environmental engineering at Syracuse University on the call.
EPA’s original regulatory impact analysis (RIA) estimating costs and benefits for MATS relied overwhelmingly on “co-benefits” of reducing particulate matter (PM). The Trump administration in its proposal said the excessive reliance on benefits of reducing pollutants not targeted by MATS demonstrates that regulating the sector is not “appropriate and necessary.” But in doing so, the agency relied on its 2011 RIA -- a key mistake that will be raised in public comments, and likely in litigation against the rule once finalized, health advocates say.
Billings also said the proposal ignores a longstanding executive order on protecting the health of children. “This proposal most certainly poses a disproportionate risk to children,” he said.
The cost and benefit estimates by Billings are similar to those made in a study by the Harvard School of Public Health in December, which found that the actual compliance costs are greatly exaggerated by EPA.
On the benefit side, the Harvard school cites $4.8 billion as the benefit of avoided neurocognitive deficits associated with methylmercury exposure in the U.S., using 2017 data.
But this does not capture the full range of MATS benefits, even of only air toxics reductions, the school says in a March 14 statement reprising the 2018 findings. “Even with these more complete estimates, substantial benefits of reducing mercury and other air toxics remain unquantified due to data limitations,” the school says.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/public-health-advocates-preview-attacks-epa%E2%80%99s-mats-rollback
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Wastewater-Private Equity’s New Black Gold in U.S. Shale
Mar 15, 2019 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
Mike Christensen strides among rows of gleaming steel tanks, pointing to pipelines that arrive from miles around to this corner of former farmland near Midland, Texas, the heart of the largest oil patch in the United States.
His company is one of dozens opening sites like this one that handles, not the lucrative oil, but the shale industry's dirty secret: wastewater.
While U.S. oil production has reached record levels on account of the shale revolution of the last decade, much of the supporting infrastructure has failed to keep up, including how to transport the large quantities of water used in the hydraulic fracturing process and the water that is produced from wells alongside oil and gas.
Once managed individually by energy producers, the job of supplying, collecting and disposing of water is a rising cost, and has spawned a $34 billion a year business in the U.S. that has lured investors including TPG Capital, Blackstone Energy Partners LP and Ares Management Corp to back these firms.
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Oil production in the Permian basin that spans West Texas and southeastern New Mexico is expected to rise to rise 35 percent to 5.4 million barrels of per day (bpd) by 2023, requiring even more water supply and disposal, said analysts. In two New Mexico counties, firms produced 505 million barrels of oil from 2016-2018, and five times that in water, a Reuters analysis of state production data showed.
"You can’t bring production online until you have a solution for the water," said James Lee of Riveron Consulting.
There are 5,500 Permian wells to be drilled, requiring 2.75 billion barrels, or 115 billion gallons to complete, a Morgan Stanley report estimated.
While much of the water in the Permian is transported for high fees by trucks, which also exacerbate traffic congestion around production sites, midstream companies build and use pipelines which energy producers pay to utilize.
Christensen's company, On Point Oilfield Holdings, owns a water disposal network that this year will take up to 375,000 bpd of wastewater. Some of that water will be recycled, but millions of gallons will eventually be sunk deep underground in West Texas. "Water was always an afterthought for producers," said Christensen, who stretches him arm and draws a 360-degree arc to show the locations of lines carrying oilfield bilge to the site. "Now it's a business plan in itself."Editors’ Picks‘One Day at a Time’ and Why Netflix Is Not Your FriendWhen the Dominatrix Moved in Next DoorHow to Avoid the Next Real Estate Downturn
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Raising cash at a time when the industry is under pressure to restrain spending and improve returns has also fueled the trend, prompting some producers to cash in on their water projects.
In December, Hess Corp got $225 million for some of its water handling assets from a joint venture with Global Infrastructure Partners, while Halcon Resources received $200 million in cash and up to another $125 million over five years from WaterBridge Resources LLC for its water infrastructure assets.
"When capital discipline is higher on the priority list, it's very attractive to monetize" water management assets, said Benjamin Shattuck, an analyst at consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
$14 BILLION WATER BILL AND RISING
The average frack job now consumes 13 million gallons (49 million liters), up 40 percent in two years, according to a Reuters analysis of Permian producers' data reported to FracFocus.org.
That translates to water bills in the Permian Basin soaring 17 percent this year to $14 billion, according to consultancy IHS Markit, more than three times what North American producers spent last year on sand to frack their wells.
That lure is attracting investors who once viewed oil and gas as the prize.
TPG last week agreed to pay $930 million for a majority stake in Goodnight Midstream's water pipeline network, which consists of more than 420 miles (670 km) in three U.S. shale basins.
Other private equity firms, including ARM Energy Holdings and Ares Management, have committed $4 billion to buy or start water management firms over the last four years, according researcher Global Water Intelligence. {nFWN1UM0IP]Subscribe to With Interest
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Water management at this scale is in its infancy compared with the business of moving oil and gas by pipeline, but more private equity firms are looking for investments, said Jim Summers, chief executive of Houston-based water company H20 Midstream.
A FRACTION OF THE COST
Acquiring and disposing of water costs between 50 cents and $4 per barrel, depending on whether it moves by pipelines or more expensive trucks, and can be a steep cost for producers when oil dips as low as $40 a barrel in the Permian, as it did late last year.
The cost has inspired some companies to shift gears.
ARM Energy formed a company, Salt Creek Midstream, to gather oil and gas and was quickly pulled into offering water management, said CEO Zach Lee. By hiring Salt Creek, shale producer Lilis Energy expects its water disposal costs to fall to 48.5 cents per barrel from $2.
Not all producers, however, want to let go of their water management.
Diamondback Energy Inc is considering selling shares in a subsidiary that manages its water, oil and gas transport, but would retain control of the subsidiary.
"If I have to wait on somebody to get a pipeline built or a saltwater disposal system put in place, that is going to be a bad day. I need to be in control of that, not the other way around," said Diamondback's CEO Travis Stice.
Parsley Energy Inc spent $150 million to develop a water system that can handle up to 1 million bpd, which helped cut its wastewater costs by two-thirds, to 50 cents per barrel, CEO Matt Gallagher said.
"If you want to be a good shale operator you have to be excellent at water sourcing and management," said Gallagher. Otherwise, "the whole operation could come to a screeching halt," he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/03/18/business/18reuters-usa-shale-water.html
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Appeals Court Keeps Pipeline on Ice
Mar 18, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
An appellate court will not allow construction to restart on the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday rejected TransCanada Corp.'s request to stay a lower court's decision blocking field work on the project to connect Canada's oil sands to the Gulf of Mexico (Energywire, Feb. 22).
"The record shows that the district court carefully considered all applicable factors in denying the stay of its injunction," ruled a two-member panel featuring Senior Judges Barry Silverman and Richard Tallman, both Clinton appointees.
Construction on the project will remain on hold while the courts evaluate the State Department's environmental review supporting the pipeline's crossing of the U.S.-Canada border.
U.S. District Court for the District of Montana Judge Brian Morris, an Obama pick, froze work on the project last year until the Trump administration could properly justify its approval of the pipeline (Energywire, Nov. 9, 2018).
Environmental groups celebrated the 9th Circuit's decision, noting earlier statements by TransCanada that the injunction has stalled construction deadlines this year.
"It's been over a decade since this dirty tar sands pipeline was proposed, and TransCanada just keeps doing the same thing and hoping for a different result," Sierra Club senior attorney Doug Hayes said in a statement.
"Keystone XL would be a bad deal for the American people, and it's never been more obvious that it will never be built," he said.
TransCanada said it is reviewing the order and evaluating next steps.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/03/18/stories/1060127497
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Petrochemical Fire Rages Near Houston
Mar 18, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Miguel Bustillo and Katherine Blunt
A large fire that broke out Sunday morning at a petrochemical storage facility near Houston has continued to spread through Monday morning.
The fire at the Intercontinental Terminals Co. facility in Deer Park, Texas, was initially reported around 10:30 a.m. local time, authorities said. It was still raging overnight, and Deer Park officials had ordered residents in the city of about 33,000, located about 18 miles east of Houston, to shelter in place.
ITC said that by 1:30 a.m. Monday morning, the fire had spread to a total of seven storage tanks containing chemicals used as components of gasoline and oil products. No injuries had been reported.
The company and local authorities were monitoring air quality from the fire, which was emitting a huge plume of thick black smoke visible for miles. The company said in a statement that “no detectable amounts of the chemicals” had been found outside of its fence line but urged residents to remain indoors, close doors and windows and turn off air conditioning and central heating units.
The fire initially began burning in a tank containing naphtha, a petroleum byproduct that is a component in gasoline, and then spread to a second storage tank containing the petrochemical xylene. The five additional tanks contain gas blend stocks used in gasoline and oil used in machine lubricants.
“At the moment, we have no reports of conditions that might require residents to evacuate,” the company said in a statement, adding that “pollution levels remain undetectable.”
The Deer Park Office of Emergency Management said it would look to lift the shelter-in-place order Monday morning if conditions allowed.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said Sunday that preliminary tests had found air quality to be standard but that officials were taking necessary precautions.
"Right now, it is a preventative measure,” she said of the city’s order to keep residents sheltered.
County Commissioner Adrian Garcia said county officials were providing support and preparing in the event residents need to be moved.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said state emergency management officials were closely monitoring the fire.
“I have ordered that all state resources be made available to local and industry officials and urge residents to continue heeding the warnings of local officials,” he said in a statement.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/petrochemical-fire-rages-near-houston-11552868447?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1
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Fires in 2 States Could Boost Gas Prices
Mar 18, 2019 | Bloomberg (In E&E Energywire)
By David Marino and Barbara Powell
The third-biggest refinery in the U.S. suffered a fire Saturday near Houston, hours after a Los Angeles plant was partially shut by a blaze, potentially boosting gasoline prices from Texas to California.
Exxon Mobil Corp.'s Baytown, Texas, refinery was fighting a furnace fire at a gasoline hydrofiner, which removes sulfur from fuel to meet clear air regulations, people familiar with the matter said. Phillips 66 shut a crude unit Friday night at its Carson plant after a fire.
The fires, which come at a time when gasoline inventories are in decline with a number of refineries closed for seasonal maintenance, threaten to further increase gasoline pump prices that have already risen 31 cents a gallon since early January to edge above year-ago levels.
Los Angeles prices are especially sensitive to disruptions at local refineries because the area relies on a special California-blended fuel, and the state is largely isolated from the bulk of the U.S. refining system.
The crude unit remains shut for a damage assessment and the company doesn't want to speculate on how long it will be down, Phillips 66 spokesman Dennis Nuss said Saturday in an email. The rest of the Carson and Wilmington plants continue to operate, he said. Exxon's emergency response teams are working to put out the fire in Texas, company spokeswoman Sarah Nordin said in an email. There were no injuries reported in either incident.Carson fire
The California fire occurred at about 7:30 p.m. local time Friday, was "knocked down" about two hours later and eventually put out at around 10:30 p.m., said Michael Pittman, a supervising firefighter at the Los Angeles county fire department.
Crude oil leaked from a reflux line resulting in the fire, although the exact cause is being investigated, Phillips 66 said in a filing to California regulators. Firefighters arrived at the facility and found crude pumps burning and set about ensuring that the flow of oil ceased, Pittman said.
In December, wholesale prices in the area surged to their highest relative to New York futures in three years after disruptions at two refineries in the area. Pump prices in Los Angeles were $3.37 a gallon as of Saturday, compared with the nationwide average of $2.54 nationwide, according to AAA. Houston prices were $2.34 a gallon.
Exxon's Baytown refinery, which can process 560,500 barrels a day of crude oil into gasoline, diesel and other fuels, is conducting maintenance on its largest crude unit and related units that was expected to continue through March, according to people familiar with the matter. It trails Motiva Enterprises LLC's Port Arthur and Marathon Petroleum Corp.'s Galveston Bay refineries, also in Texas, as the nation's largest.
Phillips 66's entire Los Angeles refinery system includes plants at Wilmington and Carson with a combined capacity of 139,000 barrels a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/03/18/stories/1060127477
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Young Protesters Worldwide Turn Up Heat on Climate Change Action
Mar 15, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Janna Brancolini
Turnout exceeded expectations as hundreds of thousands of students gathered in front of government buildings from London to Sydney and beyond for the March 15 global climate strike to demand ambitious political leadership on climate change.
They called on politicians and citizens to face the facts on climate change and take action.
“The scientists have been very clear about what we need to do to tackle climate change,” 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg wrote in an editorial published the morning of the strike. “We are uniting behind the scientists. We are only asking that our leaders do the same.”
In all, 2,083 events were planned in 125 countries to commemorate Week 30 of what started as a solitary strike in front of the Swedish Parliament by Thunberg, who was nominated March 14 for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Way, way over 10,000 students out in [the] rain in Stockholm today,” Thunberg tweeted.
Planet ‘Hotter Than Ryan Gosling’In Milan, organizers said they were hoping for about 5,000 to 7,000 students for the international climate change strike. Instead, tens of thousands showed up, according to police estimates.
“None of us imagined anything like this,” strike organizer Sarah Marder said.
“I’m here because it’s pointless for us to study for a future that isn’t guaranteed,” Milan high school student Asia Penatti, 17, who was holding a sign reading “The planet is hotter than Ryan Gosling,” told Bloomberg Environment.
“I don’t think any government has ever taken the data and calculations, and passed laws that are effective based on that,” she said.
In the U.S., Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a member of Senate Democratic leadership, told Bloomberg Environment, “This is incredibly important to a generation who knows that they have to solve this issue.”
Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey (D), said, “I think this is just the beginning [of protests] by Americans who are just starting out in life becoming more aware of public policy and big issues. I do think it’s building.”
Commission EncouragementThe European Commission “welcomed the engagement” of the young people in Europe worldwide who were calling on politicians to provide ambitious climate action, a spokeswoman said.
“Our message to the youth is that we hear you and we are doing exactly what the youth is calling for,” Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, European Commission spokeswoman for Climate Action and Energy, said during a midday press conference in Brussels.
Europe is the only major economy that has enacted legislation to meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement, and the bloc urged political parties to make climate action part of their platforms during the upcoming European elections in May, she added.
Scientists Show SupportScientists, however, said that many individual European states are not on track to meet their targets. In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, more than 23,000 scientists have signed a petition supporting the students.
“Young people rightly demand that our society focus on sustainability without further hesitation,” the group, Scientists for Futuresaid in a statement. “Without profound and consistent change, their future is in danger.”
Countries aren’t living up to the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change to keep global warming no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, student, scientists, and others said.
Many of those striking were visibly angry at this environmental outlook. In Italy, students with megaphones led a chorus of expletives directed at the governing League Party, which has proposed increasing domestic natural gas production while cutting green building incentives.
“It makes me angry that for 40 years we’ve been talking about climate change,” said Alessandra Sommacampagna, 29, a nurse who attended the Milan strike with her 6-year-old son.
Still, she said, she was happy with the turnout for the March 15 strikes: “But better late than never.”
—With assistance from Dean Scott.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/young-protesters-worldwide-turn-up-heat-on-climate-change-action
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U.S. Youth Rally in Washington Protests Climate Inaction
Mar 16, 2019 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Lee Van Der Voo
Hundreds of youngsters skipped school to rally in Washington on Friday as part of what organizers called an international youth climate strike to seek action on climate change.
Chanting "climate action now!", some 1,500 students joined the event in front of the Capitol Building, where Congress sits, while similar rallies were held in 46 states.
The demonstrations, which demanded politicians take action to combat climate change, backed measures including the Green New Deal, an ambitious Democratic environmental proposal that has become a lightning rod for Republican criticism.
"This is the only Earth that we have. There is no Planet B. There is no other place we can go so we need to save it," said Elise Haverland, a 16-year-old from Silver Spring, Maryland.
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Protesters carried colorful homemade placards bearing slogans such as "Our planet, our future," "Let us Live," and "Don't frack up our Earth."
The students also held an 11-minute silence, one for each of the years that a United Nations report said the world has remaining to get climate change under control.
School children across the world held demonstrations to demand action on climate change on Friday.
The protests are the offspring of youth strikes in Europe that were inspired by Greta Thunberg, a lone 15-year-old picketer at the Swedish Parliament. Organizers said they hope staging the event during the school day will signal the importance that students attach to fighting climate change.
"Adults come fight with us!" 12-year-old Haven Coleman of Denver, one of three youth organizers of the protest in the United States, said from the stage.
The two other leaders of the U.S. movement are Isra Hirsi, the 16-year-old daughter of newly-elected Democratic U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar, of Minneapolis, and Alexandria Villasenor, 13, of New York.Editors’ PicksWhen the Dominatrix Moved in Next Door‘One Day at a Time’ and Why Netflix Is Not Your FriendWhat Does Misogyny Look Like?
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The group is calling for a "national emergency" on climate change and for the United States to stop all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The scientific community broadly agrees that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced to net-zero by 2050 to halt the catastrophic effects of climate change.
Most of the declared Democratic candidates for the White House have already voiced support for the Green New Deal, a measure proposed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - a sweeping 10-year blueprint for combating climate change that involves reducing carbon emissions and retrofitting infrastructure.
Republicans have dismissed the proposals as unreasonably expensive and disruptive to the U.S. economy. They have tried to use some of the measures to sow discord within the Democratic party, painting their political rivals as shifting to the left and embracing extreme policies.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/03/16/world/europe/16reuters-climate-change-youth-usa.html
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Environmentalists Say EPA Rollbacks Hinder Air Toxics Compliance Priority
Mar 15, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
Environmentalists are warning that EPA’s proposal to extend an Obama-era enforcement priority on reducing hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) is undermined by the Trump administration’s deregulatory push, saying budget cuts will reduce compliance inspections and policy changes are likely to cause a spike in toxic emissions.
Separately, the National Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA) that represents many state and local air divisions is faulting the agency’s plan to end a long-running enforcement priority for the Clean Air Act’s new source review (NSR) permit program. “This area of the Agency’s effort remains unfinished, and the sources in question have continued harmful impacts on the health of Americans, the economy, and the environment,” NACAA says.
The concerns are detailed in recent written comments on the agency’s February proposal to establish its national compliance initiatives (NCIs) for fiscal years 2020 through 2023.
EPA’s Office of Enforcement & Compliance Assurance (OECA) uses the initiatives to focus its enforcement and compliance resources “on the most serious environmental violations,” according to its website. OECA selected the planned NCIs by either eliminating or modifying existing priorities, and by proposing new emphasis on reducing noncompliance with drinking water standards and reducing children’s exposures to lead.
For the air toxics goal, the agency says it is proposing to extend its focus on cutting hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), such as from leaks, flares, and excess emissions from refineries, chemical plants or other facilities, noting that recent monitoring data shows facilities often emit more HAPs than they report.
EPA says that continuing this NCI will help to achieve objectives in its strategic plan of addressing vulnerable populations and addressing Clean Air Act non-attainment areas
But the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) in March 11 comments argues that EPA’s proposal to extend the Obama-era priority on HAPs is inconsistent with Trump administration budget cuts and deregulation, which reduce grants to states to help implement federal air programs, eliminate monitoring requirements, and undercut the agency’s ability to detect emissions violations.
“The Agency should closely examine the impact that proposed rollbacks will have on EPA’s ability to measure compliance, and explain what alternative methods EPA will use to quantify hazardous air pollutants or ensure that facility emissions are not jeopardizing vulnerable populations,” EIP says.
The groups cite the Trump administration’s January 2018 repeal of the “once in, always in” policy on maximum achievable control technology (MACT) air toxics regulation. The long-running policy said facilities subject to strict MACT controls must always meet those standards even if they reduce emissions below the threshold for regulation as a “major” source under the Clean Air Act. But the Trump administration scrapped that policy in a memo from EPA air chief Bill Wehrum, allowing sources to escape MACT regulation if they cut emissions to the level of smaller “area” sources under the air law.
EIP warns that some area source rules do not ensure monitoring of emissions, and even when monitoring is in place “it will be very hard for EPA enforcement to know whether the HAP emissions are low enough to qualify a major source for the new exemption.”
Compliance Assistance
EIP also faults EPA’s Feb. 6 proposed priorities for advancing the Trump administration’s shift to greater compliance assistance, marked by renaming the agency’s National Enforcement Initiatives to NCIs. EIP also disagrees with the agency’s plan to stop targeting specific industry sectors and focus on environmental and public health risks.
The group says given that recent budget cuts have reduced EPA enforcement staff 15 percent in five years, EPA cannot afford to shift resources from prosecuting serious civil and criminal violations to boosting compliance assistance efforts -- concerns others have raised over President Donald Trump’s proposed FY20 budget for the agency that would cut funding from its roughly $8 billion level to $6.1 billion.
EIP cites multiple cases that have gone unaddressed despite regulators’ knowledge of serious violations and argues that timely enforcement and significant penalties are necessary to deter noncompliance.
They also say EPA should not grant benefits through its audit policy for violations discovered by regulators rather than voluntary disclosure.
And EIP says targeting specific industry sectors bolsters enforcement by improving agency expertise.
“Many of the most important environmental regulations are expressly designed for certain sectors, e.g., petroleum refineries or steel mini-mills, and EPA enforcement is more effective when Agency staff are able to develop a thorough
understanding of the industrial processes subject to these regulations,” environmentalists say.
EPA last month proposed scrapping OECA’s past emphasis on reducing air pollution from the largest sources, and continuing its focus on cutting HAPs from refineries, chemical plants or other facilities. The agency is also continuing a priority on Reducing Toxic Air Emissions from Hazardous Waste Facilities, saying it has found that air emission violations associated with the improper management of hazardous waste remain widespread.
The agency is also planning to shift a focus on “Keeping Industrial Pollutants Out of the Nation’s Waters,” which the Obama administration added to the FY19-NEIs, to an NCI on “National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Significant Non-Compliance (SNC) Reduction."
NACAA’s Concerns
Meanwhile, NACAA is offering support in its written comments for extending the existing priority on cutting HAPs, but opposes the agency’s plan to retire its focus on reducing air pollution from the largest sources through enforcement of NSR and related prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) permits.
EPA says that its rules that impose requirements for certain new and existing facilities to install air pollution controls have achieved significant emissions reductions in recent decades, so that the NCI no longer presents a significant opportunity to affect vulnerable populations or areas violating federal air standards.
But NACAA opposes ending the enforcement priority, arguing that further emissions cuts are needed, and that EPA has not demonstrated the successes it is claiming. “This area of the Agency’s effort remains unfinished, and the sources in question have continued harmful impacts on the health of Americans, the economy, and the environment.”
“The proposal asserts that EPA has taken significant action under this NCI, but does not provide an analysis on which to form a conclusion that air pollution from large sources is no longer a serious concern."
NACAA argues that investigations into the renovation of old coal-fired power plants have found high rates of noncompliance with NSR and PSD, and that expansions of or process changes at certain chemical manufacturing facilities also have led to high noncompliance rates.
“Absent data showing otherwise, this NCI remains a critical tool to facilitate improvement in the EPA’s strategic goal of positively affecting nonattainment areas,” NACAA says. “This NCI should be retained and a stronger commitment made to assuring compliance in this arena, either through federal action, assistance to state
and local agencies, or through joint activity.”
The push for greater EPA and state collaboration is a running theme of NACAA’s comments. The group emphasizes that the Clean Air Act contemplates a lead role for states in controlling air pollution and says that EPA should consider state expertise when setting enforcement priorities and focus on efforts that its state partners cannot undertake.
NACAA also urges EPA to consider an additional NCI targeting mobile sources. Such a priority would focus on vigorously enforcing emissions from mobile sources and fuel standards through investigations of all models of diesel engines to detect any strategies for avoiding pollution controls.
The request comes after EPA and the Justice Department in January settled with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles over the company's use of defeat device software on an estimated 100,000 EcoDiesel Ram light trucks and Jeep Grand Cherokee vehicles from model years 2014 through 2016 that made emissions control equipment operate at less than full efficiency. EPA officials said use of the software resulted in 3,500 tons of excess emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx).
“As a compliance priority EPA could go beyond on-road motor vehicles to ensure compliance by non-road vehicles and engines, such as construction and farm equipment, and marine vessels including enforcement of the Emissions Control Area around the United States Coast, which impact states as far away as the Midwest,” NACAA says.
“Finally, a mobile source NCI could examine excessive rail idling, which not only wastes fuel and causes odors, but
also causes emissions of diesel particulate and ozone precursors.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/environmentalists-say-epa-rollbacks-hinder-air-toxics-compliance-priority
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D.C. Girds for Exxon Climate Battle
Mar 18, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
The District of Columbia's top lawyer is preparing for a potential courtroom fight against one of the biggest oil companies in the world.
Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine (D) last week revealed plans to hire climate lawyers to focus on an investigation and potential litigation against Exxon Mobil Corp. over the company's public disclosures regarding climate change.
Racine tweeted about the climate team Friday, linking to a D.C. government website with a document that for the first time confirms his office's plans to launch a formal inquiry into Exxon's business practices.
Despite the company's research on the issue, "Exxon has failed to inform consumers about the effects of its fossil fuel products on climate change," the document says. "Exxon has also engaged or funded efforts to mislead DC consumers and others about the potential impacts of climate change."
The Democrat has been eyeing Exxon at least since 2016 when he joined a coalition of state attorneys general vowing to investigate fossil fuel companies for allegedly misleading the public and investors on climate impacts.
New York, Massachusetts and the Virgin Islands have launched high-profile public investigations of the oil giant in recent years, but other jurisdictions tend to keep such proceedings under wraps.
The document Racine shared Friday requests proposals for "outside legal counsel for climate change litigation," specifying that the lawyers will focus on Exxon's "potential violations of the Consumer Protection Procedures Act (CPPA) or other District laws in connection with Exxon's statements or omissions about the effects of its fossil fuel products on climate change."
The D.C. consumer protection law prohibits various deceptive business practices.
Exxon's climate research
Racine's efforts are the latest in a high-stakes climate fight already playing out in courts, Capitol Hill and the media. Exxon is accused of misleading the public about climate change by concealing in-house research on the impacts of burning fossil fuels.
The company denies the allegations, touting its own efforts to slow warming. It didn't respond to a request for comment on the D.C. investigation.
Racine's new climate counsel job posting outlines his office's appraisal of Exxon's behavior: "Since at least the 1970s, Exxon has been aware that its fossil fuel products were significantly contributing to climate change, and that climate change would accelerate and lead to significant harms to the environment in the twenty-first century."
But, it says, the company failed to inform consumers, including D.C. drivers buying gasoline at Exxon stations in the city.
The office "has determined this conduct should the subject of an investigation or litigation against Exxon to secure injunctive relief stopping violations of the CPPA or other District law, as well as securing consumer restitution, penalties and the costs of any litigation," the document concludes.
The plan calls for a senior climate lawyer, a junior lawyer and a paralegal on a five-year contract with options to extend. They won't get paid unless Exxon coughs up cash in a legal judgment, settlement or arbitration.
Racine's office already has at least one dedicated environmental lawyer, a position funded by New York University's State Energy & Environmental Impact Center. The climate counsel team will not be affiliated with that group.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/03/18/stories/1060127493
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