Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 25/03/19
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Hearing on Health Hazards of EPA Chemicals Program
Mar 27, 2019 | Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Environment
Location: 2318 Rayburn / 10:00 AM -
Hearing on the Risks of PFAS
Mar 28, 2019 | Environment and Public Works
Location: 406 Dirksen / 10:00 AM -
(ACC Mentioned) AFPM '19: US PE Industry Seeking Outlets for Rising Production
Mar 23, 2019 | ICIS News
By Zachary Moore
The US polyethylene (PE) industry is seeking outlets for its new production capacities heading into this year’s International Petrochemical Conference (IPC). -
(ACC Mentioned) AFPM '19: Industry Mulls Economy Worries, Sustainability, Oil-to-Chems
Mar 24, 2019 | ICIS News
By Joseph Chang
The chemical industry is starting one of its biggest conferences at a time of continued worries about economic growth, public backlash again plastic waste and increased interest in turning larger amounts of oil into chemicals. -
(ACC Mentioned) AFPM '19: US PVC Sees Mixed Signs for 2019
Mar 23, 2019 | ICIS News
By Bill Bowen
US polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is facing new tests in the market as global demand appears hesitant and the spring surge in domestic demand seems delayed by severe winter conditions and flooding in parts of the country. -
(ACC Mentioned) AFPM '19: US PP Market Faces Lengthy Supply in 2019
Mar 23, 2019 | ICIS News
By Zachary Moore
The US polypropylene (PP) market is facing supply length in 2019 following a year of persistent tightness in supply during 2018 heading into this year’s International Petrochemical Conference (IPC). -
(ACC Mentioned) Hawaii Eyes Strictest US Plastics Ban
Mar 25, 2019 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
Hawaii is actively considering a wide-ranging ban on single-use plastics in restaurants and government purchasing, but after passing the state Senate the measure hit a roadblock March 20 when lawmakers, in the face of more opposition, took out some of its toughest requirements. -
Second Court Dismisses EPA Science Advisor Policy Suit
Mar 22, 2019 | Inside EPA
Another federal district judge has dismissed a suit from environmentalists over the Trump EPA's policy barring scientists who are receiving EPA research grants from serving on any of its advisory committees, this time finding that the plaintiff, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), did not have standing to sue. -
(ACC Mentioned) Country Focus: USMCA Pushes Mexico into Comprehensive Chemical Management
Mar 25, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins
Mexico’s chemical regulation is amorphous, run by a hodge-podge of internal departments — health, environment, agriculture, energy — with no overarching law like TSCA or REACH. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Releases List of 40 Chemicals Undergoing Prioritization for Risk Evaluation
Mar 23, 2019 | National Law Review
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released on March 20, 2019, a list of 40 chemicals for which EPA is initiating the prioritization process for risk evaluation. -
(ACC Mentioned) Federal Oversight of Toxics Under Bipartisan Scrutiny
Mar 25, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Courtney Columbus
A duo of hearings this week will scrutinize the administration's approach to chemicals oversight and its plans to remedy claims of contamination. -
(ACC Mentioned) Monsanto Roundup Trials May Lead to More Local Regulation
Mar 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Adam Allington
The same day that a federal jury found that Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide was a “substantial factor” in causing a California man’s cancer, Los Angeles County placed a moratorium on the use of Roundup by county employees. -
EPA Releases Previously Private Health Data on Pigment (1)
Mar 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Previously confidential details on the health effects associated with exposure to a paint pigment were released by the EPA March 22 following pressure from Democratic legislators and environmental health advocacy groups. -
‘Forever Chemicals’ No More? These Technologies Aim to Destroy PFAS in Water
Mar 25, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Kerri Jansen
At the Sweeney Water Treatment Plant in North Carolina, engineers are finalizing designs for a new system aimed at removing a mix of persistent industrial chemicals from their drinking water. -
Air Force Seeks To Preserve Federal Test Case On State's PFAS Enforcement
Mar 22, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
The Air Force is urging a federal judge to reject calls from New Mexico officials to remove its challenge to a waste permit governing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) to a state court, an effort aimed at preserving a suit that could become a test case on federal agencies' attempts to limit state regulation of PFAS in the absence of EPA standards. -
EU Prepares to Review Controversial Herbicide Glyphosate—Again
Mar 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
The European Union is preparing to once again assess the safety of glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide. -
Oil Execs Boasted of 'Unprecedented Access' to Trump Officials: Report
Mar 23, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Rachel Frazin
A newly reported recording reveals that oil lobbying executives boasted in 2017 about having "unprecedented access" to Trump administration officials, including "direct access" to a former oil industry lobbyist tapped to fill a top role in the Interior Department. -
MATS Proposal Spurs Legal Debate On Co-Benefits, Air Toxics Rule’s Fate
Mar 22, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA’s proposal to scrap the Obama-era finding that its power plant air toxics rule was “appropriate and necessary” while leaving the overall rule in place is spurring debate over expected legal challenges to the plan, suits that could set new precedents on issues including “co-benefit” cost-benefit analysis and the fate of the utility regulation. -
Lawmakers to Vote on Energy-Water Nexus Bill
Mar 25, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Ariel Wittenberg
The House Science, Space and Technology Committee will consider legislation Wednesday meant to boost research into how energy technologies can conserve water. -
Utilities to Go Carbon Free by 2045 Under Law in New Mexico
Mar 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brenna Goth
New Mexico power companies must cut their carbon emissions to zero by 2045 under a new law that also addresses the closing of a coal plant in the northwestern part of the state. -
EPA Proposes New Source Review Accounting Change
Mar 22, 2019 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
EPA, after an ad hoc attempt to rework one facet of the New Source Review permitting program quickly ran into a lawsuit last year, now appears to be pursuing the same objective through a formal rulemaking. -
Another 'Black Eye' for America's Energy Capital
Mar 25, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Edward Klump
The fire-fueled plume that darkened a swath of the Texas sky last week was just the beginning of an unfolding disaster in this U.S. oil and petrochemical hub. -
Fed Review Could Stymie Race to Export Texas Oil
Mar 25, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
The Army Corps of Engineers is planning a full-blown environmental review of a major oil export project in Texas — a development that could delay its construction at a time when producers and the Trump administration are pushing to send crude overseas. -
No Timetable for Reopening Texas Ship Channel Following Leak
Mar 25, 2019 | AP (In The New York Times)
Officials have no timetable for reopening a portion of the Houston Ship Channel, one of the busiest commercial waterways in the country, after another setback caused flammable chemicals to seep into the water near a fire-ravaged petrochemical tank farm, a Coast Guard commander said Saturday. -
AFPM ’19: US Ethane Supply Likely to Be Sufficient for Cracker Operations - CP Chem Exec
Mar 25, 2019 | ICIS
By Joseph Chang
US ethane supply is improving and is likely to be sufficient for existing petrochemical operations and the new crackers expected to start up in 2019, a senior executive from Chevron Phillips Chemical said on Sunday. -
Are Oil Majors Serious About Cutting Emissions?
Mar 25, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Storrow
Oil and gas companies have long touted their efforts to curb methane emissions from leaky oil-field equipment. -
Senators Urge More Action on Ethylene Oxide Monitoring (1)
Mar 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Joyce
The Environmental Protection Agency should expand air monitoring activities to more Illinois industrial sites emitting ethylene oxide after agency data appeared to show links between the probable carcinogen and a facility emitting the gas, the two senators from the state said. -
Houston Disaster Zone Reignites, Casting New Plume Over City
Mar 23, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joe Carroll and Rachel Adams-Heard
The chemical disaster site outside of Houston temporarily reignited on Friday afternoon, with multiple sections of the complex belching smoke and flames, and sending a new black plume over the fourth-largest U.S. city. -
Texas Petrochemical Fire Prompts Hundreds to Visit Health Clinic
Mar 25, 2019 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Collin Eaton
Hundreds of neighborhood residents of a petrochemical plant that burned for three days and briefly emitted cancer-causing benzene into the air brought their coughs, headaches and other symptoms to a mobile clinic on Friday set up by local health officials. -
Our Crumbling Infrastructure is Failing Small Businesses
Mar 24, 2019 | The Hill - Opinion
By Ed Mortimer
Daniel Speer had a simple task: Visit three clients of his home remodeling company in and around Washington, D.C. -
Child Care is Infrastructure. We Should Treat it That Way
Mar 25, 2019 | Roll Call
By Linda K. Smith and Sarah Tracey
Millions of American parents dropped their children off at a child care facility this morning. -
Colorado Aims for Paris Climate Goals With Bill to Cut Emissions (1)
Mar 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tripp Baltz
Colorado would have to cut its greenhouse gas emissions significantly by 2050 in line with goals set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement under legislation the state’s lawmakers will consider. -
BGOV Bill Summary: S. J. Res. 8, Green New Deal
Mar 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Adam M. Taylor
The U.S. would achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions within 10 years under S. J. Res 8.
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News
TSCA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
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Hearing on Health Hazards of EPA Chemicals Program
Mar 27, 2019 | Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Environment
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Mar 28, 2019 | Environment and Public Works
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(ACC Mentioned) AFPM '19: US PE Industry Seeking Outlets for Rising Production
Mar 23, 2019 | ICIS News
By Zachary Moore
The US polyethylene (PE) industry is seeking outlets for its new production capacities heading into this year’s International Petrochemical Conference (IPC).
Supply has been lengthening since the second half of 2018 as new plants which came online in 2017 started ramping up to normal production rates.
This has pushed inventories to multi-year highs and created some downward pressure on pricing.
With more new capacity set to come online in 2019 and into the next decade, the industry is now searching for outlets for its expanded production.
US PE demand is considered mature and is not expected to grow beyond the expansion of GDP in the coming years. Accordingly, the industry has always anticipated that most of the new PE being produced in the country would need to be exported.
According to ICIS data, the US is set to increase its PE capacity by a total of 6.5m tonnes/year by the end of 2019 while capacity additions may reach 12m tonnes/year by 2022 assuming all announced projects start-up on time into the beginning of the next decade.
Recent trade tensions between the US and China as well as the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other protectionist moves by the Trump administration have resulted in shifts in trade flows for US material.
Product that would most likely have been targeted to China is now being moved towards Southeast Asia and Europe while US producers are also looking to expand their already strong presence in Latin American markets.
US producers succeeded in raising export volumes throughout 2018, with most grades of PE seeing exports up by at least 30% and exports nearly doubling for some grades, according to data from the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and Vault Consulting.
There is some concern that some of the countries currently receiving significant new volumes of US material might implement tariffs of their own if US exports begin to threaten the health of the domestic industries in the affected countries.
The industry will therefore be closely following trade talks between the US and China in hopes that China, with its large PE deficit, will be able to soak up some of the expanded production from US plants.
Major US producers of PE include Chevron Phillips Chemical (CP Chem), DowDuPont, LyondellBasell, ExxonMobil, Formosa, INEOS, Total Petrochemicals and Westlake.
Hosted by the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), the IPC takes place on 24-26 March in San Antonio, Texas.
https://www.icis.com/explore/resources/news/2019/03/23/10338321/afpm-19-us-pe-industry-seeking-outlets-for-rising-production
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(ACC Mentioned) AFPM '19: Industry Mulls Economy Worries, Sustainability, Oil-to-Chems
Mar 24, 2019 | ICIS News
By Joseph Chang
The chemical industry is starting one of its biggest conferences at a time of continued worries about economic growth, public backlash again plastic waste and increased interest in turning larger amounts of oil into chemicals.
It's a lot to contemplate during the International Petrochemical Conference (IPC), which starts on Sunday.
At this point in the year, companies expected that the industry would be showing signs of recovering from the slowdown in demand that took place in the fourth quarter.
That slowdown has several causes. Rising interest rates made automobiles and housing more expensive to finance, causing sales to fall. Growth in Europe started to slow.
China attempted to rein in debt, which tightened lending and slowed growth. The tariffs resulting from its trade dispute with the US aggravated the downturn.
Concerns about global demand led to a sharp decline in oil prices. During such steep drops, petrochemical buyers typically delay purchases and rely on their inventories to meet their needs, in a phenomenon called destocking. This caused demand for petrochemicals to fall.
Companies acknowledged all of this during their Q4 earnings calls and said the factors were in place for chemical demand to recover – a sentiment repeated by an economist at a recent conference.
European monetary policy remains loose, which should stimulate demand. China has changed course on its campaign to reverse interest rates and has introduced a multi-pronged stimulus programme that lowered bank-reserve requirements and taxes.
The Federal Reserve has halted its campaign to raise interest rates in the US.
Few economists expect a recession this year, although the chances increase substantially in 2020 and even more so in 2021.
Despite this relative optimism for 2019, signs point to more trouble.
US-listed shares of chemical companies fell sharply on Friday, and they have lagged behind the recovery in the overall stock market this year. The slowdown could be worse than expected.
The yields on 3-month and 10-year US Treasurys inverted for the first time since 2007. Inverted yield curves often preclude a recession by several months.
Among chemical companies, US-based Huntsman expects Q1 adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) to be 10% lower versus Q4 2018 on weaker construction and auto markets in the US, as well as “softer demand patterns” in most large European economies.
US-based Eastman Chemical on 15 March announced a “modest and targeted reduction” in its workforce” and a delay in salary increases for most employees on a weakening outlook, specifically in China and Europe.
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In addition to a shaky recovery, the industry will also face growing public backlash against plastic waste.
Plastics consumption has increased sharply in emerging economies, which often lack the capacity to collect waste. Plastic packaging end up in mountains of waste or in rivers that feed oceans.
Graphic photographs of plastic waste have created backlash against plastics around the world, leading to regulations that restrict or ban plastic straws, bags and other items that are used one time before being discarded.
Trade groups and other non-governmental organisations are setting goals to adopt increasing amounts of recycled material in plastics.
Chemical companies have a legitimate concern that regulations and sentiment could reduce or even wipe out demand for many applications.
Worries about bisphenol A (BPA) leaking into food and beverages led to companies to find replacements. Phthalate-based plasticizers were replaced in toys. In the US, methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) was replaced by other octane-boosters in gasoline.
Chemical companies and trade group have spent much of the past year talking about sustainability, their industry's role in achieving it, and what they can do to reduce waste.
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has its own goal, calling for all plastic packaging to be reused, recycled or recovered by 2040.
Plastic producers have teamed up with converters, consumer group and waste-management firms to create the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW).
https://www.icis.com/explore/resources/news/2019/03/24/10338490/afpm-19-industry-mulls-economy-worries-sustainability-oil-to-chems
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(ACC Mentioned) AFPM '19: US PVC Sees Mixed Signs for 2019
Mar 23, 2019 | ICIS News
By Bill Bowen
US polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is facing new tests in the market as global demand appears hesitant and the spring surge in domestic demand seems delayed by severe winter conditions and flooding in parts of the country.
Worse, prices in Asia took a nosedive on 19 March when Formosa Plastics in Taiwan announced its April export offers at a discount of $50/tonne to China and $60/tonne lower for India.
That is the grim market scenario ahead of the International Petrochemical Conference in San Antonio.
Slowing exports and a halting of the usual demand cycle in the US has cast a cloud over the US market. PVC demand is tied to construction activity and is often a leading indicator of a slowing economy.
That is what market participants don’t want. Slowing economic growth is going to hurt PVC demand.
The year started with US domestic sales shown flat for 2018 compared with 2017, a sign that US construction demand was not as firm as expected.
Price trends have been softer as US producers expected the usual demand surge in March, but have yet to see signs of it.
Efforts to lift spot export prices have been unsuccessful to a cautious buyer market.
Domestic sales in the first two months of 2019 are down 2.5% from the same period last year in the US and Canada, according to figures from the American Chemistry Council.
In 2018, US and Canada exports were up 3% from 2017, and are up 7.5% for the first two months of the year, compared to weak volumes in February 2018.
The headwinds have prompted some worry against the backdrop of trade tensions between the US and China and other geopolitical noise.
"You would expect that this time of year would see a demand pick-up," said a representative of a US producer, bemoaning the soft activity in February.
However, Albert Chao, president and CEO of Westlake Chemical, told analysts in mid-February that he is optimistic.
"We believe that the global supply-demand balance will return," he said.
Chlorine production in February was pretty strong with an 88% effective plant utilisation rate for the month and a 2% uptick from January output, according to new figures from the Chlorine Institute.
A rise of chlorine production as PVC demand stalls may mean excess upstream feedstock ethylene dichloride (EDC). That could spur some spot sales for the chlorine derivative.
Vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) has been silent in recent months on little trade activity outside of established contract routes.
Major US producers of caustic soda include Olin, Occidental Chemical, Westlake Chemical, Shintech and Formosa Plastics.
Hosted by the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), the IPC takes place on 24-26 March in San Antonio, Texas.
https://www.icis.com/explore/resources/news/2019/03/23/10338358/afpm-19-us-pvc-sees-mixed-signs-for-2019/
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(ACC Mentioned) AFPM '19: US PP Market Faces Lengthy Supply in 2019
Mar 23, 2019 | ICIS News
By Zachary Moore
The US polypropylene (PP) market is facing supply length in 2019 following a year of persistent tightness in supply during 2018 heading into this year’s International Petrochemical Conference (IPC).
US PP supply was tight throughout most of 2018 as propylene monomer availability was limited while several plants experienced unanticipated production problems.
This resulted in significant volatility in PP prices, with contract prices rising or falling by at least 5 cents/lb ($110/tonne) in seven of the twelve months of 2018.
2019 has opened with price volatility giving way to months of consecutive price decreases. No major plant outages have been seen thus far while production capacity rose across the industry as a result of debottlenecking projects completed in 2018.
Monomer supply has also lengthened significantly, with propylene inventories hitting record highs early in 2019, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).
These factors have caused contract prices to decline by a cumulative amount of 22 cents/lb ($485/tonne) between the months of November and February.
The US position in global PP trade has also shifted with the change in US production and inventory levels.
US PP exports plunged by more than 30% in 2018 due to production shortfalls as well as unfavourable arbitrages between the US and other global regions, according to data from the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and Vault Consulting
Imports of PP to the US rose during 2018 as high prices for domestic material encouraged many buyers to include a greater variety of overseas material in their product mix.
2019 has seen a steep drop in import purchases as domestic product is now competitive versus material from other regions while exports have also been growing as producers seek fresh outlets for their production.
Exports have primarily focused on nearby countries such as Mexico, which is accessible by bulk truck from the US, although more sellers are currently seeking deepwater destinations as they seek to pare down inventories.
Major US PP producers include Braskem, ExxonMobil, Formosa, INEOS, LyondellBasell, Phillips 66 and Total Petrochemicals.
Hosted by the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), the IPC takes place on 24-26 March in San Antonio, Texas.
https://www.icis.com/explore/resources/news/2019/03/23/10338332/afpm-19-us-pp-market-faces-lengthy-supply-in-2019/
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(ACC Mentioned) Hawaii Eyes Strictest US Plastics Ban
Mar 25, 2019 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
Hawaii is actively considering a wide-ranging ban on single-use plastics in restaurants and government purchasing, but after passing the state Senate the measure hit a roadblock March 20 when lawmakers, in the face of more opposition, took out some of its toughest requirements.
The bill, which would make Hawaii the first state to ban many single-use plastics in restaurants, had passed the state Senate on a 23-1 vote earlier in March.
But after lengthy public comments on both sides, including many from restaurants saying it would raise prices, legislators in Hawaii's lower House hit the pause button and voted March 20 to take out some of the strictest provisions in favor of more dialogue.
They removed bans on single-use plastic bottles, utensils and polystyrene foam containers for businesses by 2022 and plastic bags by 2023, in restaurants and government offices, according to a summary on a state government website.
In its place, House lawmakers said they wanted a study group to develop a statewide policy on single-use plastics and work with businesses and others to address concerns about lack of suitable alternative products and health and safety concerns.
The House legislators did say they were still looking at banning those single-use plastics but postponed implementation to an "unspecified date."
The legislation remains alive and will next be considered by a House finance committee.
Ahead of the March 20 votes in other House committees, industry groups argued to lawmakers that alternatives to plastics could cost more and have the same or higher environmental impacts, and that state efforts should focus on more general waste reduction and recycling.
The American Chemistry Council, for example, said the Senate legislation "appears to be drafted under the false assumption that alternatives to these products are environmentally preferable."
ACC Senior Director of State Affairs Tim Shestek said in prepared comments to state legislators that PS foam cups weigh two to five times less than paper cups and require 50 percent less energy to produce.
And he argued that another alternative, compostable foodservice containers, can only biodegrade in an industrial composting facility, which Hawaii does not currently have.
In comments after the vote, Shestek said ACC was still awaiting more details on the changes. But he echoed earlier ACC comments against focusing on single-use plastics in favor of considering "all materials and technologies" around waste reduction.
"I'd say the committee took a thoughtful approach to these proposals, including the potential impact on local businesses," Shestek said. "I'm hopeful any future working group will look at how best to increase the recycling, recovery and composting of all materials so that any legislative proposal that may surface will actually reduce waste, rather than simply result in replacing one type of trash with another.GabbardBan advocates point to waste problem
Supporters of the bans, however, argue they're needed to reduce plastic trash on the state's beaches and in the broader environment, where they can pollute the ocean and get into food chains after being eaten by fish and birds.
Sen. Mike Gabbard, sponsor of the state Senate bill, said that 90 percent of sea birds have some plastic in their stomachs.
"Plastic is a huge problem in our oceans, our wildlife, our environment as a whole and in human health," said Gabbard. His daughter Tulsi Gabbard is a member of Hawaii's U.S. Congressional delegation and a candidate for president.
Local governments face cleanup costs from plastic waste, making bans both a financial and public welfare priority, according to Rebecca Villegas, a member of the Hawaii County Council.
"I believe we need to be more proactive," she told the legislators. "It has been reported that most polystyrene foam and plastic bags are the top two contributors to the local waste stream and must be regularly removed from storm drains."
Local governments in the state currently ban some plastic products. Four counties ban plastic shopping bags — and those counties effectively cover the entire state — and two, Maui County and Hawaii County, either ban PS foam containers or are about to.
The state legislation attracted extensive public comments from many sides, filling up a 454-page document of statements released ahead of the March 20 hearing.
Environmental groups and local residents argued in favor of the bans, with some noting that 200 eateries in the state have joined an "ocean-friendly restaurants" program, where they have committed to not using PS foam or plastic bags and having reusable tableware available.
But many other restaurants and other residents objected to the proposed bans, with many smaller eateries saying that alternatives to EPS are significantly more expensive and don't work as well, leaving customers frustrated and their profit margins suffering.
The Hawaii Restaurant Association said the bans were too aggressive and alternative packaging is not fully developed, but it did note that it supports the legislation's goal of a state-level group examining plastics source reduction.
National chains like Starbucks and McDonald's are working toward fiber-based packaging and investing in research on new packaging like the NextGen Consortium, the trade group said.
"The alternate industry is in its infancy and that's why we at the Hawaii Restaurant Association urges you, our representatives to be patient with these aggressive deadlines for implementation," HRA said.
One local bottled water company, Hawaiian Water and Packaging, said it has tried to find environmentally responsible packaging. It currently uses bottles made from recycled PET, after earlier trying unsuccessfully to use refillable glass bottles and plastic bottles made from plants rather than petrochemicals.
"We learned that these bioplastic materials do not yet work for beverage bottles that must be sealed for consumer safety," said Jason Donovan, founder of the Hawaii Volcanic beverage brand, noting problems like the plant-based plastics cannot handle high temperatures in shipping and that they can pose problems for existing plastics recycling streams.
https://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20190322/NEWS/190327635/hawaii-eyes-strictest-us-plastics-ban
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Second Court Dismisses EPA Science Advisor Policy Suit
Mar 22, 2019 | Inside EPA
Another federal district judge has dismissed a suit from environmentalists over the Trump EPA's policy barring scientists who are receiving EPA research grants from serving on any of its advisory committees, this time finding that the plaintiff, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), did not have standing to sue.
Judge William Pauley, III, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York March 21 dismissed NRDC v. Wheeler, finding the plaintiffs did not meet the injury prong of the standing test.
“On balance, the NRDC’s objective of ensuring scientific integrity, which the Directive allegedly harms, is no more than an 'abstract concern with a subject that could be affected by an adjudication [that] does not substitute for the concrete injury required by [Article III],'” Pauley writes, citing the 1976 Supreme Court case Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization.
Pauley's ruling follows the February dismissal of a similar suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Physicians for Social Responsibility v. Wheeler, where Judge Trevor McFadden found that Physicians for Social Responsibility and co-plaintiffs -- including two former EPA advisors -- had standing but dismissed that suit on the merits.
The plaintiffs in that case are weighing an appeal.
A third suit, Union of Concerned Scientists et al v. EPA, pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, also has a co-plaintiff who served as a member of a science advisory board. The federal court in Boston is currently weighing EPA's motion to dismiss.
At issue is former Administrator Scott Pruitt's policy directive “Strengthening and Improving Membership on EPA Federal Advisory Committees,” that bars scientists that receive EPA grants from serving on agency advisory committees. Once issued, the directive forced several advisers to choose between receiving agency grants or giving up their advisory slots.
Pruitt and his supporters justified the move, saying it was intended to end conflicts of interest posed by those who receive agency grants, who they charge are biased in favor of regulations. The directive drew widespread concerns and criticisms from agency staff, congressional Democrats and others, as well as lawsuits.
But the plaintiffs are so far struggling.
In the latest decision, Pauley rules that NRDC lacks standing because it does not show an “injury in fact,” one of the necessary findings in a three-pronged legal test to demonstrate standing. Plaintiffs must show they have suffered an injury, that it is “traceable to the challenged conduct of the defendant,” and that a court ruling could address the harm.
“NRDC does not allege . . . that it diverted any other resources from its activities (specific or otherwise) because of the Directive,” Pauley writes. “Moreover, it is not evident how the NRDC’s ability to pursue its advocacy and litigation activities would be impaired by the Directive...”
Further, Pauley concluded that NRDC did not have standing because of an injury to its reputation, writing that “[b]ased on the NRDC’s conclusory allegations as to a generalized, hypothetical harm, this Court is not persuaded that its members have suffered reputational injury of the sort that courts deem cognizable.”
And Pauley noted an important difference between the case before him and the suit in Washington, DC, where the plaintiffs proved standing. There, two plaintiffs had been removed from EPA advisory committees because they had EPA grants.
NRDC did not offer such an argument because of a loss of professional opportunity, though Pauley says that “EPA conceded at oral argument that the NRDC’s members have sustained a constitutional injury to the extent they relinquished advisory committee membership or EPA grants.”
Noting the ruling in the federal court in Washington, DC, Pauley writes that “this Court has an 'independent obligation to consider the presence or absence of subject matter jurisdiction sua sponte,'” citing a 2017 ruling by the Second Circuit, In re Tronox Inc.
“The Supreme Court has reiterated that Article III’s 'cases and controversies' restriction 'requires that the party invoking federal jurisdiction have standing -- the “personal interest that must exist at the commencement of the litigation.”’”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/second-court-dismisses-epa-science-advisor-policy-suit
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(ACC Mentioned) Country Focus: USMCA Pushes Mexico into Comprehensive Chemical Management
Mar 25, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins
Mexico’s chemical regulation is amorphous, run by a hodge-podge of internal departments — health, environment, agriculture, energy — with no overarching law like TSCA or REACH.
So, when Mexico began renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), Mexico’s trade partners in the US were eager to influence the country’s regulation scheme.'This is an opportunity to shape what could be a chemical management regime formation effort in Mexico'
"This is an opportunity to shape what could be a chemical management regime formation effort in Mexico in the future," said Ed Brzytwa, director for international trade at the AmericanChemistry Council (ACC).
The resulting document – the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) – contains a sectoral annex on chemical substances that was absent in the original Nafta. It promotes a risk-based approach to regulation, directing the three countries to align their risk assessment and management measures within their legal frameworks.
Chemical industry groups in the US (ACC), Mexico (ANIQ) and Canada (CIAC) applauded its inclusion. A starting point
Mr Brzytwa said the annex, and the significant industry discussion that prompted its inclusion, is a starting point for Mexico and for the development of a North American model of chemical regulation.
"These provisions of the USMCA are not creating a chemical management regime in Mexico; they are guideposts," he said in an interview with Chemical Watch. "So if Mexico does move in that direction, they will have a stronger foundation now."
Despite Mexico’s uncertainty over chemical regulation – made all the more so by a self-described "revolutionary" president who took office in December – the signing of USMCA is a major step toward a broader regulatory framework. The ACC describes it as an opportunity to encourage Mexico to build that potential framework in the US's image.
"We were in constant communication with ANIQ," said Mr Brzytwa. "They know that their government could be taking steps to build a chemical management regime and they felt that having these provisions in the USMCA was an important starting point."
Mexico’s chemical exports are valued at $2.36bn per year, according to 2017 figures from Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography.
Much of Mexico’s chemical regulation is in the hands of the environment ministry (Semarnat) and specifically the climate change institute (Inecc, which is within Semarnat), but the country does not have one agency or regulation that governs the sector.
"Chemicals are managed by many different agencies [with] many different approaches'' but none of these are harmonised, said Nidia Calvo, the Americas chemical regulatory compliance programme manager at Hewlett-Packard.Background to USMCA
The final version of USMCA – which has yet to be ratified – is the result of almost two years of negotiation by industry groups.
In a 2017 joint statement by the ACC, ANIQ and CIAC, the Nafta revision was described as an opportunity for a North American model in contrast to the "hazard-based approaches rising elsewhere".
The ACC’s Greg Skelton told the US trade representative that the revision could be a chance to extend the TSCA and Canadian Chemicals Management Plan (CMP) models to Mexico. And, in the final draft, industry wishes have been largely granted.In addition to promoting a risk-based approach to regulation, other potential areas of cooperation include:implementation of the UN Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of classifying and labelling of chemicals;coordination of safety data sheets and how confidential business information (CBI) is relayed;compatibility of chemical inventories;coordination on chemical risk assessment and risk management methodologies, tools, and models, and on the development of specific chemical assessments; andscientific criteria and data sharing.Changes to the Mexican status quo
USMCA is not the only factor driving change in Mexico’s chemical sector.
Mexico previously had a duel labelling and safety data sheet requirement to meet domestic and international requirements. However, ANIQ, which represents 95% of Mexico’s chemical manufacturers, requested the voluntary option of using the GHS system as an alternative in 2011. The mandatory fifth revision of the GHS standard came into force in October 2018.
Also in autumn, Mexico catalogued its chemical substances with information from producers and importers, which will be updated regularly by Inecc. The effort prioritises using a single nomenclature for identifying substances.
Despite the massive effort of cataloguing chemicals, there has not been a high level of interest in the chemical sector, either in Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration, which oversaw the endeavour, or in the new president’s, Ms Calvo said. There also isn't a lot of information about chemical management available from Semarnat or Inecc, the two main organisms in charge of the sector, she adds.The Obrador variable
Mexico’s leftist president Andres Manuel López Obrador took office on 1 December 2018, promising "revolution" after decades of corruption and deteriorating trust in the government.
USMCA was signed by all parties on 30 November, just one day before Mr Obrador became president. But Rodrigo Favela, a partner at HCX, a consulting firm in Mexico City, said the president was very involved in its negotiation: no changes to the agreement are expected to come from his office.
Some argue his involvement in the negotiations illustrates the new president’s desire to have a hand in every change in Mexico.
Mr Obrador "wants to have control over everything," said Jeremy Martin, vice president for energy and sustainability at the Institute of the Americas.
However, the new president has specifically highlighted environmental sustainability as a priority for his administration, which is compatible with the priorities put forth by USMCA.
'We view having a sound chemical management regime as a way to improve the environment and foster more sustainable practices around chemicals'
"We view having a sound chemical management regime as a way to improve the environment and foster more sustainable practices around chemicals," said Mr Brzytwa.Wildcards
The ACC and others fear that the Canadian and US governments may prove to be even bigger wildcards than Mexico’s new president in the long run, however.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau must hold a federal election by 21 October and government officials have said anger over US steel and aluminum tariffs could prevent Canada from ratifying USMCA.
Ratification in the US is also not guaranteed. Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in November, expressing concerns about insufficient labour and environmental provisions in the trade deal.
Meanwhile, US president Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of Nafta in order to pressure Mexico and Canada into either choosing between the new trade deal or the pre-Nafta conditions.
Mr Brzytwa called a potential early withdrawal "a difficult proposition for many members of Congress, and for industry for that matter".
Industry on both sides of the US-Mexico border accept that ratifying USMCA will take time and effort. But just having the text of the deal – especially one that reflects the regulatory alignment the ACC, ANIQ and CIAC have pushed for – gives them a starting point for discussion.
"We are able as an industry to talk very openly about the contents of that text," said Mr Brzytwa, and that conversation is "another opportunity to acclimate these Mexican officials to the North American, risk-based model."
https://chemicalwatch.com/75287/country-focus-usmca-pushes-mexico-into-comprehensive-chemical-management?q=%22american+chemistry+council%22
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Releases List of 40 Chemicals Undergoing Prioritization for Risk Evaluation
Mar 23, 2019 | National Law Review
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released on March 20, 2019, a list of 40 chemicals for which EPA is initiating the prioritization process for risk evaluation. Section 6(b)(2)(B) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) requires that, as of three and a half years after enactment (by December 22, 2019), at least 20 high-priority chemicals be undergoing risk evaluations and at least 20 low-priority chemicals be designated by EPA. In a March 21, 2019, Federal Register notice, EPA provides a general explanation of why it chose these chemical substances and information on the data sources that EPA plans to use to support the designation. EPA is providing a 90-day comment period during which interested persons may submit relevant information on these chemical substances. Comments are due June 19, 2019.High-Priority Candidate Chemical Substances
As reported in our October 3, 2018, memorandum, “EPA Releases Working Approach for Identifying Potential Candidate Chemicals for Prioritization under TSCA,” on September 28, 2018, EPA released the general approaches that the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT) may use to identify potential candidate chemicals for prioritization under TSCA. To identify candidates for designation as high-priority substances, EPA states in the Federal Register notice that it “primarily looked to the TSCA Work Plan for Chemical Assessments: 2014 Update (2014 TSCA Work Plan).” EPA surveyed the information and checked quality data elements in a step-wise approach intended to ensure “responsible and timely completion of the process according to TSCA timelines.” Additionally, EPA opened dockets for each of the 2014 TSCA Work Plan chemicals, and an additional docket for non-2014 TSCA Work Plan chemicals, to allow for public comment on the prioritization of these chemicals.
The sources of information included:
Type 1 Sources: Existing databases (and dashboards) that allow the user to sift through information using a graphical user-interface, a direct query such as Structured Query Language (SQL), or web service Application Programming Interface (API). EPA’s National Center for Computational Toxicology’s Chemistry Dashboard is one of the several examples of a Type 1 source;
Type 2 Sources: Additional details from existing information from public and nonpublic (i.e., confidential business information (CBI)) sources that are maintained by competent authorities -- this includes supporting information from other EPA program offices and state and federal agencies, including assessments or evaluations from various U.S. and international organizations (e.g., including but not limited to EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) Assessments, EPA’s Office of Water, EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, EPA’s High Production Volume (HPV) Challenge Program, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), National Toxicology Program (NTP), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal EPA)); and
Type 3 Sources: Initial searches of additional sources of information within the public and gray literature domains that are not available from Type 1 and 2 sources (e.g., searches in PubMed, ToxNet, other U.S. government and international websites).
EPA evaluated the information across several data elements and reviewed the chemical substances for data availability across all data elements (e.g., hazard, exposure, uses, physicochemical, and environmental fate and transport properties). According to EPA, it considered chemical similarity, similar identified functions (e.g., solvents, phthalates, flame retardants), existing OPPT work (e.g., experience gained from the first ten chemicals to undergo risk evaluation), and other information as identified in available assessments (e.g., IRIS and the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA)) and public literature.
EPA notes that in the absence of measured data on chemicals being evaluated, it may use alternative means or new approach methods (NAM) to obtain relevant data. These NAMs can reduce vertebrate testing, consistent with TSCA Section 4(h)(1)(A). EPA states that it intends to use this approach to the extent practicable and scientifically justified.
To identify chemical substances, EPA considered information such as the 2016 Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) reported uses and products as a surrogate for complexity of information to inform prioritization and risk evaluation. EPA considered the release and use information for these chemicals and screened them according to the types of industrial uses and types of products where the chemicals were used, as reported in the 2016 CDR. According to EPA, it “considers a chemical with fewer unique uses as a lower work load and a chemical with multiple uses reported as a higher work load.”
EPA is initiating the prioritization process for the following 20 chemicals as candidates for designation as high-priority substance candidates, as listed and with the status provided on EPA’s web page, “List of Chemicals Undergoing Prioritization”:Chemical NameCAS NumberDocket NumberStatus*p-Dichlorobenzene106-46-7EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0446Initiated1,2-Dichloroethane107-06-2EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0427Initiatedtrans-1,2- Dichloroethylene156-60-5EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0465Initiatedo-Dichlorobenzene95-50-1EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0444Initiated1,1,2-Trichloroethane79-00-5EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0421Initiated1,2-Dichloropropane78-87-5EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0428Initiated1,1-Dichloroethane75-34-3EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0426InitiatedDibutyl phthalate (DBP) (1,2-Benzene- dicarboxylic acid, 1,2- dibutyl ester)84-74-2EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0503InitiatedButyl benzyl phthalate (BBP) - 1,2-Benzene- dicarboxylic acid, 1- butyl 2(phenylmethyl) ester85-68-7EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0501InitiatedDi-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) - (1,2-Benzene- dicarboxylic acid, 1,2- bis(2-ethylhexyl) ester)117-81-7EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0433InitiatedDi-isobutyl phthalate (DIBP) - (1,2-Benzene- dicarboxylic acid, 1,2- bis-(2methylpropyl) ester)84-69-5EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0434InitiatedDicyclohexyl phthalate84-61-7EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0504Initiated4,4'-(1-Methylethylidene)bis[2, 6-dibromophenol] (TBBPA)79-94-7EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0462InitiatedTris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP)115-96-8EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0476InitiatedPhosphoric acid, triphenyl ester (TPP)115-86-6EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0458InitiatedEthylene dibromide106-93-4EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0488Initiated1,3-Butadiene106-99-0EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0451Initiated1,3,4,6,7,8-Hexahydro-4,6,6,7,8,8-hexamethylcyclopenta [g]-2-benzopyran (HHCB)1222-05-5EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0430InitiatedFormaldehyde50-00-0EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0438InitiatedPhthalic anhydride85-44-9EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0459Initiated
*Status is listed as either:Initiated -- The first step of the prioritization process, and the chemical is currently undergoing a screening-level review of reasonably available information to inform its priority designation;
Proposed -- The second step of the prioritization process, when EPA proposes a chemical’s designation as either high or low priority for risk evaluation; or
High/Low -- The final step of the prioritization process. This chemical has been designated as high or low priority for risk evaluation.
Low-Priority Candidate Chemical SubstancesAccording to EPA, it began with over 30,000 chemicals listed as active on the April 2018 interim update of the TSCA Chemical Inventory. EPA then applied a series of filtering steps to identify potential low-priority substance candidates. EPA identified potential low-priority substance candidates “based on low-hazard, across a range of endpoints, as the initial criterion since EPA knew the data on hazard would be the most readily available.”
EPA then narrowed the candidate pool to chemicals that had been evaluated by a government body like EPA or an OECD member nation. EPA’s Safer Chemicals Ingredients List (SCIL) and Chemical Assessment Management Program (ChAMP), as well as the OECD Screening Information Data Sets (SIDS), served as sources of government-evaluated chemicals.
EPA states that as a next filtering step and to increase confidence in the information on hazard, conditions of use, and exposure, it filtered the pool of approximately 1,600 chemicals to approximately 200 substances having discretely defined structures. According to EPA, “[d]ata on chemicals with discrete structures, as opposed to those with variable structures, are more reliable and easily compared because of the certainty a definitive molecular structure provides in assessing hazard, conditions of use, and exposure.” EPA further filtered the chemicals with discrete structures and selected those with the most available data, narrowing the pool to about 75 chemicals “with low-hazard status among an internationally accepted set of endpoints.” EPA applied a final screen by conducting a literature search to update and verify candidate information for reliability, completeness, and consistency. With a set of high-quality data relevant to a potential designation as a low-priority substance, EPA states that it reduced the candidate pool to 20 chemical substances. According to the Federal Register notice, EPA will make transparent literature search documentation available at the proposal phase for the 20 low-priority substance candidates. EPA intends to update and refine its initial review based on data sources identified by the public during the comment period and, where permitted by TSCA Section 14 and subject to EPA confidentiality regulations at 40 C.F.R. Part 2, Subpart B, intends to make this information publicly available for the 20 initiated chemicals at proposal.
EPA used the following data sources to obtain “reasonably available” information for evaluating candidate low-priority substances consistent with TSCA Section 6(b)(1)(B) and implementing regulations. EPA encourages submission of additional information relevant to low-priority substance designation that stakeholders believe may not be found in the sources listed below.
Data Sources: EPA intends to search for and review literature from primary literature databases and gray literature and additional search strategies; and
NAMs and Analogous Chemical Data: In the absence of measured data on chemicals being evaluated, EPA may use alternative means or NAMs to obtain relevant data. These NAMs can reduce vertebrate testing, consistent with TSCA Section 4(h)(1)(A). EPA intends to use this approach to the extent practicable and scientifically justified. EPA will consider closely related, analogous chemicals, or analogs, and use data from these chemicals to demonstrate the suitability of a chemical for proposal as a low-priority substance where appropriate.
EPA is initiating the prioritization process for the following 20 chemicals as candidates for designation as low-priority substance candidates, as listed and with the status provided on EPA’s web page, “List of Chemicals Undergoing Prioritization”:Chemical NameCAS NumberDocket NumberStatus*1-Butanol, 3-methoxy-, 1-acetate4435-53-4EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0106InitiatedD-gluco-Heptonic acid, sodium salt (1:1), (2.xi.)-31138-65-5EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0107InitiatedD-Gluconic acid526-95-4EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0108InitiatedD-Gluconic acid, calcium salt (2:1)299-28-5EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0109InitiatedD-Gluconic acid, .delta.-lactone90-80-2EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0110InitiatedD-Gluconic acid, potassium salt (1:1)299-27-4EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0111InitiatedD-Gluconic acid, sodium salt (1:1)527-07-1EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0112InitiatedDecanedioic acid, 1,10-dibutyl ester109-43-3EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0113Initiated1-Docosanol661-19-8EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0114Initiated1-Eicosanol629-96-9EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0115Initiated1,2-Hexanediol6920-22-5EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0116Initiated1-Octadecanol112-92-5EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0117InitiatedPropanol, [2-(2-butoxymethylethoxy)methylethoxy]-55934-93-5EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0118InitiatedPropanedioic acid, 1,3-diethyl ester105-53-3EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0119InitiatedPropanedioic acid, 1,3-dimethyl ester108-59-8EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0120InitiatedPropanol, 1(or 2)-(2-methoxymethylethoxy)-, acetate88917-22-0EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0121InitiatedPropanol, [(1-methyl-1,2-ethanediyl)bis(oxy)]bis-24800-44-0EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0122Initiated2-Propanol, 1,1'-oxybis-110-98-5EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0123InitiatedPropanol, oxybis-25265-71-8EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0124InitiatedTetracosane, 2,6,10,15,19,23-hexamethyl-111-01-3EPA-HQ-OPPT-2019-0125Initiated
*The status indicators of “initiated,” “proposed,” and high/low” are the same as those described above.Relevant Information
EPA requests that interested persons “voluntarily submit” relevant information, including but not limited to, information that may inform the screening review conducted pursuant to 40 C.F.R. Section 702.9(a) and consistent with the scientific standard of TSCA Section 26(h), as follows:
The chemical substance’s hazard and exposure potential;
The chemical substance’s persistence and bioaccumulation;
Potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations which the submitter believes are relevant to the prioritization;
Whether there is any storage of the chemical substance near significant sources of drinking water, including the storage facility location and the nearby drinking water source(s);
The chemical substance’s conditions of use or significant changes in conditions of use, including information regarding trade names;
The chemical substance’s production volume or significant changes in production volume; and
Any other information relevant to the potential risks of the chemical substance that might be relevant to the designation of the chemical substance’s priority for risk evaluation.
EPA states that if the information is publicly available, citations are sufficient (including, but not limited to title, author, date of publication, and publication source), and the submission does not need to include copies of the information. A person seeking to protect from disclosure as CBI any information that person submits under TSCA must assert and substantiate a claim for protection from disclosure concurrent with submission of the information, in accordance with the requirements of TSCA Section 14. While EPA may consider CBI when conducting its review under 40 C.F.R. Section 702.9(a), EPA “encourages submitters to minimize claims for protection from disclosure wherever possible to maximize transparency in EPA’s screening review.”Commentary
EPA met another of the required milestones under amended TSCA in issuing this notice concerning initiation of prioritization for 40 chemicals. As required by TSCA Section 6(b) and consistent with the prioritization screening review procedure at 40 C.F.R. Section 702.9(a), EPA must undertake a process, including requesting public comment at specific junctures, leading to designation of at least 20 high- and 20 low-priority chemicals for risk evaluation. This process must be completed by December 2019. The March 21, 2019, Federal Register notice initiates this process and interested persons have until June 19, 2019, to comment and to submit relevant scientific information to EPA concerning these 40 chemicals and their suitability for prioritization. Subsequent steps in the process include EPA proposing and taking comment on each designation as a high- or low-priority substance, and then EPA finalizing the chemical designations as high or low priority.
The list of chemicals suggested for high priority consist of several groups of related chemicals (eight halogenated organics, including two dichlorobenzenes, three dichloroethanes, a dibromoethane, a dichloropropane, and a dichloroethylene, and five phthalates) and seven other chemicals, including three flame retardants (both halogenated and non-halogenated), two chemicals used largely as chemical intermediates (butadiene and phthalic anhydride), a fragrance ingredient, and formaldehyde. From our perspective, none of the chemicals is particularly surprising although the decision to include formaldehyde as a prioritization process candidate may strike some as odd given that it has been under intense scrutiny for years by the IRIS program and OPPT completed rulemaking on formaldehyde in wood products in 2016 (81 Fed. Reg. 89724). Nonetheless, the TSCA risk evaluation process is separate and distinct from that under IRIS and it is not unreasonable to start the TSCA process at the beginning looking at all known or reasonably foreseeable conditions of use. Initiation of the TSCA risk evaluation step for formaldehyde requires that EPA designate it as a high-priority substance, an outcome that, while seemingly assured, nonetheless needs to be elicited by the Section 6(b) prioritization process. In conducting the risk evaluation on formaldehyde, EPA can and is expected to use the IRIS assessment along with other existing hazard and exposure assessments.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the notice concerns the 20 low-priority chemicals that EPA has identified for consideration in the prioritization process. We applaud EPA’s focus on low hazard substances. It will be easier to support low-risk conclusions if such conclusions can be based solely on a hazard determination, obviating the need for an exposure assessment. The downside in taking this approach is that EPA has left no margin for error in meeting the deadline requirement for designating 20 low-priority chemicals. Readers may recall that Section 6(b)(1)(B)(ii), concerning low-priority substances, requires that EPA designate a chemical as a low priority “if [EPA] concludes, based on information sufficient to establish…that such substance does not meet” the high-priority standard (emphasis added). As we commented during the legislative process that produced the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, the “sufficient to establish” phrase creates a relatively high bar that must be satisfied in designating a low-priority chemical, a decision that is subject to legal challenge (Section 19(a)(1)(C)). We note that EPA describes the low-priority candidates as “relatively rich in data on hazard”; EPA must be confident that the information available to it on these 20 chemicals when it comes time to issue its proposal and subsequently to release in final such a designation meets the “sufficient to establish” standard. This means that if, at the end of the prioritization process, EPA cannot meet the “sufficient to establish” standard for any of the proposed low-priority substances, EPA will confront having to designate such substances as high priority and proceed with risk evaluation with additional substances (i.e., more than the expected 30 -- the first ten and the 20 proposed high-priority substances). Some readers may recall that Section 6(b)(1)(C) allows EPA to extend the prioritization deadline for three months subject to the additional requirement “that if the information available to [EPA] at the end of such extension remains insufficient to enable the designation of the chemical substance as a low-priority substance, [EPA] shall designate the chemical substance as a high-priority substance.” This provision, however, applies to cases for which EPA has required the development of new information under Section 4(a)(2)(B), a step that EPA has not initiated on any of these low-priority candidates. It is possible, but not likely, that manufacturers of low-priority substances could complete testing to fill in such data gaps within the total 12 months (including an extension) for prioritization.
Time will tell how EPA handles any “close calls” in proposing and then designating the low-priority chemicals. In the future, EPA might only propose potential low-priority substances when it has capacity to review them as high priority if the supporting data set is insufficient. In addition, taking a number of low-priority substances through the process will give EPA better insight into what data will be necessary to support a low-priority designation. EPA may then begin to exercise its new Section 4 authority to require testing on substances that EPA anticipates designating for prioritization to ensure a record exists to support a low-priority conclusion.
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/epa-releases-list-40-chemicals-undergoing-prioritization-risk-evaluation
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(ACC Mentioned) Federal Oversight of Toxics Under Bipartisan Scrutiny
Mar 25, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Courtney Columbus
A duo of hearings this week will scrutinize the administration's approach to chemicals oversight and its plans to remedy claims of contamination.
The House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Environment will review EPA's Integrated Risk Information System program, which assesses the health hazards posed by chemicals.
This week's planned hearing follows a Government Accountability Office report on IRIS released earlier this month.
The report found that from June to December 2018, agency leaders directed employees to stop the program's chemical assessments while priorities were being discussed (E&E News PM, March 4).
New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, last week criticized EPA's list of 40 chemicals to be considered for risk evaluations under the 2016 Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act.
EPA released the list Wednesday. Public health advocates slammed the agency, while the chemicals sector reacted positively (Greenwire, March 20).
"With the announcement of the next set of candidate substances for prioritization, EPA met another important milestone and further demonstrated its commitment to meeting its statutory deadlines for implementing [the statute] in an efficient manner that is consistent with congressional intent," American Chemistry Council spokesman Jonathan Corley said in a statement.
Pallone said the list "raises serious concerns that EPA is failing to prioritize evaluations of the most pressing chemical hazards and undermining the purpose of the Lautenberg Act."
"Instead of addressing dangerous emerging threats like perfluorinated chemicals, which are right now contaminating the drinking water of millions of Americans, the agency is aiming to re-evaluate chemicals like formaldehyde and phthalates — whose risks have already been rigorously evaluated and documented," he continued.PFAS hearing
Separately, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is set to examine the federal response to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are of concern to lawmakers from both parties.
After EPA released a plan last month for dealing with PFAS, Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said the plan was "only a first step" and that the agency needed to "speak clearly" about the public health and environmental risks posed by PFAS (Greenwire, Feb. 14).
Officials from EPA, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Defense are scheduled to testify.
PFAS are used in firefighting foam and a wide range of other consumer and industrial products. They have been detected in water near many current and former industrial sites and military installations, and are not federally regulated.
There are roughly 5,000 types of PFAS. Some have been associated with health problems such as certain cancers and liver disease.
Lawmakers have sent a flurry of letters in recent days that press the federal government to act more quickly on PFAS.
Last week, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and ranking member Gary Peters (D-Mich.) asked Office of Management of Budget Director Mick Mulvaney about reports that disagreement between agencies was delaying EPA groundwater cleanup recommendations for two types of PFAS called perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS). The guidelines have been under review for more than six months, noted the lawmakers.
"Given the significance of this issue, it is essential that [OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs] resolve any remaining interagency conflicts and conclude its review as soon as possible," Johnson and Peters wrote.
The senators asked Mulvaney for information including documents and communications related to the review that were exchanged between OMB and the Department of Defense, EPA, the Small Business Administration or NASA.
The Pentagon has been urging the administration to adopt weaker standards for cleaning up PFAS in groundwater, The New York Times reported earlier this month.
Also last week, a group of senators led by New Hampshire Democrats Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan wrote to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler and acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, urging them to "act in the best interests of affected communities and support efforts to develop groundwater and drinking water standards that will protect the public from the health hazards associated with PFAS contamination."
Schedule: The House hearing is Wednesday, March 27, at 10 a.m. in 2318 Rayburn.
Witnesses:Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, principal deputy assistant EPA administrator for science for the Office of Research and Development and EPA science adviser.Alfredo Gomez, director, natural resources and environment, Government Accountability Office.Bernard Goldstein, professor emeritus and dean emeritus, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.Ivan Rusyn, professor, Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, Texas A&M University; chairman, Interdisciplinary Faculty of Toxicology, Texas A&M; and director, Texas A&M Superfund Research Center.Julie Goodman, principal, Gradient.Wilma Subra, president, Subra Co., and technical adviser, Louisiana Environmental Action Network.
Schedule: The Senate hearing is Thursday, March 28, at 10 a.m. in 406 Dirksen.
Witnesses:Linda Birnbaum, director, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, and director, National Toxicology Program, Department of Health and Human Services.Patrick Breysse, director, National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.David Ross, assistant administrator, EPA Office of Water.Maureen Sullivan, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for environment, Department of Defense.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2019/03/25/stories/1060128137
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(ACC Mentioned) Monsanto Roundup Trials May Lead to More Local Regulation
Mar 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Adam Allington
The same day that a federal jury found that Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide was a “substantial factor” in causing a California man’s cancer, Los Angeles County placed a moratorium on the use of Roundup by county employees.
The county joined more than 50 cities and counties, including Miami, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Vancouver, that have recently banned or restricted glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.
Despite conflicting scientific evidence about Roundup’s toxicity, environmental groups are pointing to the March 19 verdict involving Edwin Hardeman as proof the tide is turning against the herbicide.
“I think there’s a lot of residential areas, urban areas, and neighborhoods that are watching this case and saying we need to pass more resolutions at the city or county level,” said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Another jury reached a similar conclusion about Roundup last year when it awarded $289 million to Dewayne Johnson, a Northern California groundskeeper. The amount was later reduced to $78 million. Bayer plans to appeal the verdict.
“We saw a significant uptick in local ordinances after the Dewayne Johnson trial,” said Kara Cook-Schultz, toxics director for U.S. PIRG, a federation of public interest research groups.
Precedent for ActionIn the 1991 case Wisconsin Public Intervener vs. Mortier, the Supreme Court held that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) doesn’t preempt local governments from issuing their own regulations on pesticide use.
This includes everything from establishing buffer zones and setting conditions of use, to banning a pesticide outright.
“Harm often leads to regulatory changes, as we saw with dicamba in Arkansas, or chlorpyrifos in Hawaii,” said Patti Goldman, an attorney with Earthjustice, an environmental advocacy organization based in San Francisco.
Arkansas banned the use of dicamba on crops in 2018 after the state’s Plant Board received nearly 1,000 complaints of crop damage caused by drift. Starting in Jan. 2019, Hawaii became the first state to ban pesticides containing chlorpyrifos, citing concerns over brain development in children.
Swayed by the JuryBut some regulators say rules themselves shouldn’t be based on jury verdicts.
“I don’t think the fact that a jury may award damages in and of itself is a reason for states to tighten regulations,” said Tina Levine, a former director of the Health Effects Division in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs.
More important, said Levine, is to consider the full weight of the evidence based on the data.
“As regulators we’re often called to testify, or weigh in on public policy,” said Cary Giguere, the agrochemical program manager for Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture.
“Sometimes our job is to also point out the unintended consequences of changing one chemistry for another,” he said. “I still believe glyphosate is one of the preferred active ingredients available.”
Second Trial PhaseHardeman’s case is the first of 765 similar cases collected before U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco. Liability and potential damages will now be decided by the same jury in a second trial phase that began on March 20.
Hardeman’s case against glyphosate is the first of three so-called bellwether, or test trials, used in mass litigation to help both sides assess damages and possible settlement expectations.
Bayer AG—which purchased Monsanto in 2018—said it was disappointed with the jury’s decision, “but we continue to believe firmly that the science confirms that glyphosate-based herbicides do not cause cancer,” the company said in March 19 statement.
“We are confident the evidence in phase two will show that Monsanto’s conduct has been appropriate and that the company should not be liable for Mr. Hardeman’s cancer,” it said.
Safety DebateThe latest verdict comes amid a longstanding debate about the safety of glyphosate, which nearly all of the world’s regulators, including the EPA, Health Canada and the European Chemicals Agency, have registered for use. Bayer points to some 800 studies submitted to EPA that show glyphosate-based herbicides are safe when used as directed.
But in 2017, California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment posted a notice under the Proposition 65 right‑to-know law that glyphosate would be added to a list of more than 1,000 chemicals known to the state to cause cancer. The state cited a controversial 2015 study conducted by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
Manufacturers of glyphosate like BASF, Syngenta, and DowDuPont are likely to face increased pressure to warn consumers of the health risks of their products in the wake of the Hardeman verdict, some scientists say.
Environmental groups and some politicians cite the recent lawsuit as proof of the need for more health restrictions.
“It’s long past time we stopped relying on corrupt corporations with a profit incentive to fund science telling us their chemicals are ‘safe,’” Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), a 2020 presidential candidate, said in a March 22 tweet.
“Victims shouldn’t have to go to trial to get the truth.”
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/monsanto-roundup-trials-may-lead-to-more-local-regulation
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EPA Releases Previously Private Health Data on Pigment (1)
Mar 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Previously confidential details on the health effects associated with exposure to a paint pigment were released by the EPA March 22 following pressure from Democratic legislators and environmental health advocacy groups.
The release did not change the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusions about pigment violet 29, which found that it presents no undue concern.
But the issue go to the heart of the nation’s primary chemicals law: how to balance company claims of confidentiality for trade secrets versus the public’s right to know safety decisions.
Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J), chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Rep. Paul D. Tonko (D-N.Y.), chairman of that committee’s Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change, have repeatedly said the EPA violated the law by refusing to make health and safety data public, as required by the 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act.
The legislators repeated those demands in a March 21 letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.
“The release of these studies is a win for government transparency and the credibility of the TSCA program,” Pallone and Tonko said in a joint statement.
Some Data Still ‘Confidential’The EPA released on March 22 many—but not all—previously withheld details from 24 health and safety studies of pigment violet 29 (PV29). EPA posted some information on PV29’s skin, eye, inhalation, and oral health impacts in test animals.
The reddish-maroon pigment is used to color plastics, ceramics, sporting goods, and other products.
Sun Chemical Corp. was the only U.S. facility that reported manufacturing PV29 (CAS No. 81-33-4) in 2012 and 2016, according to the agency’s Chemical Data Reporting rule. In 2015—the last production year for which numbers are available—Sun manufactured 590,000 pounds of the colorant.
The EPA did not change the preliminary conclusion announced last November, that exposure to the chemical presents no undue concern.
Dropped ClaimsThe group of companies that make or use PV29—who originally claimed the EPA could not release the health and safety studies without violating confidential business information—have dropped most of those claims, the agency said.
The European branches of Sun Chemical and Clariant AG provided the EPA with toxicity and other chemical data originally submitted to European regulators.
A memo the agency released details some of the information made public, and what data remains confidential.
Chemical policy analysts at the nonprofit advocacy organization the Environmental Defense Fund could not be immediately reached for comment March 22.
EDF previously blogged about what it called an “illegal and hypocritical decision to deny the public access to health and safety studies.”
(Updates with statement from Pallone and Tonko in sixth paragraph.)
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/epa-releases-previously-private-health-data-on-pigment-1
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‘Forever Chemicals’ No More? These Technologies Aim to Destroy PFAS in Water
Mar 25, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Kerri Jansen
At the Sweeney Water Treatment Plant in North Carolina, engineers are finalizing designs for a new system aimed at removing a mix of persistent industrial chemicals from their drinking water.
These molecules are troublemakers—wily foes that have evaded capture by traditional water treatment methods. They’re known collectively as PFAS, the family of nonpolymer per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances nicknamed “forever chemicals.”
The plant has been paying special attention to PFAS. The facility supplies water to roughly 200,000 customers, drawing the bulk of that water from the lower part of the Cape Fear River, which researchers in 2016 found to be contaminated with PFAS downstream from a fluorochemical-producing Chemours plant.
The new facility will house four 12 m long beds of granular activated carbon, about 7 m wide and 3.7 m deep, to suck PFAS from the water. These beds are three times as deep as the plant’s existing ones, which it uses to house bacteria that help disinfect the water. Water will trickle through the new beds over the course of 10–20 min before it is considered clean. Every 400 days, the activated carbon, having soaked up a maximum level of contaminants, will need to be replaced—baked in a commercial incinerator to drive out the contaminants, then topped up with fresh carbon before being put back into service.
Related: Polymer network captures drinking water contaminant
Officials estimate construction of the new system will cost $46 million, with yearly operating costs of $2.9 million. Until that project is completed, sometime in 2022, the plant is relying on its existing carbon beds to remove PFAS as well as to disinfect its water. After the new system is operational, those beds will go back to their original purpose. In the meantime, the added burden of cleaning PFAS from the water means that the plant will need to replace the activated carbon more frequently. Some of the existing beds had lasted for as many as 10 years; now, they’ll be replaced every 12 months.
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Such measures, though they may seem extreme, are what many water utilities find necessary to treat the collection of notoriously persistent PFAS. And at the moment, they are the best methods we’ve got.
PFAS have been detected in surface and groundwater in hundreds of locations in the US and around the world. Exposure to some of these chemicals is linked to harmful health effects in the liver, kidneys, blood, and immune system. The compounds are used in many nonstick and stain-repellent household products and can get into the environment when manufacturing waste is improperly disposed of. Although the long-chain PFAS molecules—perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS)—are no longer manufactured in the US, many smaller-chain PFAS are still in use. PFAS also get into the environment through the application of firefighting foams at airports and military bases.
Each PFAS molecule has a hydrophilic “head” and a long, hydrophobic “tail” that contains carbon-fluorine bonds. The carbon-fluorine bond is one of the strongest single bonds in nature, giving the molecules their persistence in the environment and their “forever” moniker. PFOA and PFOS, which are the focus of most water treatment efforts, can, when broken down, form other, smaller-chain fluorinated molecules that persist in the environment and may still pose harm.
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“They’re just a completely different beast,” says Clarkson University’s Michelle Crimi about PFAS. She says removing PFAS is the hardest challenge she’s faced in her 20 years of studying water remediation methods.
Today’s water utilities have limited options for removing PFAS. Reverse osmosis, ion-exchange resins, and granular activated carbon trap PFAS, either in a concentrated liquid, in the case of reverse osmosis, or in a solid, as in the case of the resins and carbon. And those liquids and solids then need to be disposed of.
It’s from this list of options that water officials in North Carolina chose, running several tests in 2017 and 2018 and ultimately settling on the large carbon beds. The US Environmental Protection Agency’s health advisory level for PFOA and PFOS, separately or in combination, currently sits at 70 parts per trillion, a number that may change as regulators grapple with setting enforceable limits for the chemicals. North Carolina officials aimed not just to beat that level but to remove as much PFAS from the water as possible. They expect the new treatment system will be capable of capturing 90% of PFAS from their water.
“There’s no technology that’s really going to remove 100%” of the PFAS, says Carel Vandermeyden, director of engineering at Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, which operates the Sweeney Water Treatment Plant. But no one knows exactly what the combined cumulative health effect is of all the PFAS, he says, “so our approach is to put in the best available technology.”
Related: What’s GenX still doing in the water downstream of a Chemours plant?
But the best on the market still leaves room for improvement. Reverse osmosis, ion-exchange resins, and granular activated carbon, though capable of trapping PFAS, were not designed to specifically bind these newly scrutinized and little-understood pollutants. These technologies can also allow smaller PFAS molecules to slip through and are vulnerable to fouling from other substances in the water, causing them to lose efficiency. Plus, they create a concentrated waste stream.
So now, researchers are not only designing adsorbents that specifically take up PFAS but are also developing treatment methods to completely destroy the molecules rather than merely sequestering them. And they’re doing this with an eye toward making as little long-term waste as possible.The big three
Few technologies exist today for removing PFAS from drinking water. Here are the three most commonly considered by water treatment facilities.Credit: Evoqua Water TechnologiesGranular activated carbon• Mechanism: Long used to remove a variety of contaminants from water, granular activated carbon is typically the least-expensive PFAS treatment option. As water flows through packed beds of the material, PFAS molecules adsorb onto the surface of the porous carbon particles.
• Caveats: Other compounds can also adsorb to the carbon particles, reducing their capacity for PFAS. And smaller-chain PFAS molecules can evade capture by the particles.
• Disposal: Spent carbon can be landfilled or regenerated with high temperatures.Credit: Evoqua Water TechnologiesIon-exchange resins• Mechanism: Based on polymers, ion-exchange resins come in granular form and can be installed in packed beds similar to granular activated carbon. The positively charged material binds negatively charged PFAS molecules as they pass through.
• Caveats: Like granular activated carbon, conventional ion-exchange resins can bind molecules other than PFAS, reducing their capacity for PFAS. Some newer varieties have been designed to target PFAS specifically, increasing their efficiency.
• Disposal: Single-use resins are landfilled. Regenerable resins can be cleaned with a chemical flush and reused. The leftover liquid from the flush must then be managed, which can be expensive.Credit: Designua/Shutterstock/C&ENReverse osmosis• Mechanism: Contaminated water is pressurized, forcing it through a semipermeable membrane that filters out PFAS.
• Caveats: Reverse osmosis is energy intensive. Some water utilities have also found that the method strips minerals from drinking water that are important for corrosion control in pipelines.
• Disposal: A liquid waste stream of concentrated PFAS is generated that must be disposed of or discharged as wastewater, returning contaminants to the environment.A BETTER MOUSETRAP
The first step in any water treatment is to figure out what exactly is in the water, says Detlef Knappe, an environmental engineer at North Carolina State University. That means understanding the contaminant itself, yes, but also the other components of the water. Water—especially river water and other surface water—contains compounds like naturally occurring carbon from soil and decaying plants that are much more prevalent than the contaminants and that also bind to adsorbent material. They can block PFAS from sticking to adsorbents and make materials such as granular activated carbon less efficient.
“It’s like we’re trying to pull needles out of a haystack, but the haystack also sticks to the filter,” Knappe says.
Most current data on PFAS removal, he notes, apply to groundwater, which is relatively clean compared with surface water, like that in the Cape Fear River. So his team is analyzing how other compounds in surface water affect different filtration media. The group is studying whether efficiency can be improved by tweaking the pore structure and surface chemistry of these materials.
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This is a process that Francis Boodoo, director of applied technologies at the water treatment supply company Purolite, refers to as “making a better mousetrap”—developing treatments that do a better job trapping and holding on to contaminant chemicals. Purolite developed a single-use ion-exchange resin specialized for removing PFAS. Like many ion-exchange resins, it’s built on a chemical backbone of polystyrene and divinylbenzene, modified with a proprietary mix of functional groups that give the copolymer a higher affinity for certain molecules. The goal, Boodoo says, was to bind a PFAS molecule’s hydrophobic tail more strongly, along with binding to the hydrophilic head of the molecule, which standard ion-exchange resins can already do.
Boodoo reports that the company’s resin can reduce PFOS and PFOA in treated water to levels below the detection limits of standard instruments for a period of about 2–3 years before needing to be replaced. The business is now working to develop a second generation of ion-exchange resins that targets a broader range of PFAS molecules. The resin is more expensive up front than activated carbon, but it requires a smaller footprint for installation, Boodoo says. Purolite has installed the PFAS-specialized resin in 10–15 municipalities around the world so far, Boodoo adds.
Will Dichtel, a chemist at Northwestern University and a founder of a water treatment technology company called CycloPure, is also developing improved adsorbents that are more specific to PFAS than today’s treatment methods. His adsorbents are based on cyclodextrin—a ring of sugar molecules—that’s been cross-linked with rigid aromatic groups containing multiple fluorines. These macrocycles create hydrophobic pockets that can specifically trap PFOA.
Because cyclodextrin is already on the market and is inexpensive, “we’re optimistic about the cost,” Dichtel says. It takes just one step to make his adsorbent material from cyclodextrin, he adds.
Dichtel and colleagues recently demonstrated that the polymer networks can be attached to cellulose nanocrystals, forming particles that could be installed in treatment plants in a packed bed, similar to granular activated carbon (ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2019, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.8b22100). Early tests suggest the material is less prone to fouling than activated carbon, and the group has also developed a new variety of cyclodextrin polymer that can trap a wider range of negatively charged PFAS, Dichtel says.
Filtration methods remove PFAS from water without any chemical transformation of the molecules, leaving them intact. One option for dealing with this waste, which both Dichtel’s group and Purolite are investigating, is regenerating their filter materials, potentially by flushing them with a chemical rinse. Some ion-exchange resins available today can be rinsed in this way, resulting in a small volume of highly concentrated liquid waste, which needs to be disposed of. Spent filter materials can also be landfilled, requiring long-term management of the compounds.
Physical adsorption technologies like carbon and these polymers may offer the fastest route to specialized PFAS treatment. And that appeals to many water utilities that are looking to get PFAS out of their water as soon as possible. These utilities have customers who aren’t interested in waiting for more sophisticated technologies to mature. But scientists are still pursuing long-term strategies.Nationwide contamination
A map of PFAS water contamination in the US. Blue circles represent locations where PFAS have been detected in tap water as of 2016. The circles' diameter roughly corresponds to the size of the population served by a contaminated drinking-water system. Red dots represent contaminated industrial or military sites as of July 2018. Locations are approximate. View the full interactive map here.Credit: Environmental Working Group/Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute/Northeastern UniversityLET’S BREAK IT DOWN
At the moment, the only way to truly get rid of PFAS molecules is by incinerating the filter material they are stuck to at temperatures above 1,000 °C. In theory, this process uses enough energy that it can break the molecules into their component elements, a process called mineralization.
Several scientists C&EN spoke with, however, expressed concerns about the lack of data around incinerating PFAS. Do the molecules really break down completely? How do they change during the incineration process? Incompletely degraded molecules could simply form smaller PFAS molecules that are still potentially harmful, says York University atmospheric scientist Cora J. Young.
“Incineration of PFAS, if it’s going to be done on a large scale, should be explored to make sure the PFAS is fully mineralized,” she says, noting that incompletely degraded compounds released from an incinerator would be put directly into the atmosphere, where they might spread widely.
Related: US EPA unrolls plans to address PFAS pollution
With urgency growing around PFAS and without an ideal disposal method, researchers are exploring more controlled ways of destroying the sturdy molecules. Most scientists are focusing on treating highly contaminated water, such as landfill leachate, wastewater stockpiles, and groundwater near military sites where PFAS-containing firefighting foams were used heavily. Left untreated, the PFAS in those locations—with levels that can be hundreds of times as high as the levels found in tap water—could potentially spread to drinking-water sources. On the other hand, treating the PFAS in those locations via traditional activated carbon and single-use ion-exchange materials would use those adsorbents up too quickly to be practical.
To clean these PFAS-laden waters, some researchers are instead developing electrochemical, thermal, and ultrasonic treatment methods that could fully degrade PFAS molecules, working alone or in combination with other techniques.Credit: Derrick Turner/MSUCory Rusinek (right) and Michigan State University graduate student Mary Ensch use electrodes coated with a diamond-boron film to degrade PFAS in water.
“You have all of these people developing adsorbents, and they all might work well, but every single one of them is going to need a destructive technology behind that,” says Cory Rusinek, an electrochemist at Fraunhofer USA Center for Coatings and Diamond Technologies, on the campus of Michigan State University. His group is among those developing electrochemical methods to destroy PFAS molecules.
Rusinek’s technology involves a series of niobium electrodes coated with a diamond-boron film, which makes the electrodes resistant to oxidation. Applying high voltage and current to the system causes oxidation of the PFAS molecules, leading to their defluorination. Although Rusinek and his team know the technique breaks down the molecules, they aren’t yet clear on whether the PFAS molecules need to come into direct contact with the anode or merely come close. That’s something the group is figuring out, along with the by-products the process may produce. Ideally, the system would drive PFAS compounds to mineralization, producing only fluoride ions, carbon dioxide, and water.
The attractiveness of the approach, Rusinek says, is that PFAS could be removed completely from a water sample.
Tests with a lab-scale system reduced high concentrations of PFAS—2 ppm—by three orders of magnitude in 4 h, Rusinek reports. The system draws too much energy to be cost effective in a large-scale municipal water treatment plant, but it could be effective for lower volumes of highly contaminated water, he says. His team is working to make the process faster and is developing a system for lower concentrations of the contaminants.
Plasma, on the other hand, can break down PFAS molecules much faster but may not degrade them completely. At Clarkson University, chemical engineer Selma Mededovic Thagard and her colleague Thomas M. Holsen are developing a water treatment system that uses electricity to generate highly reactive species from argon gas. These species can degrade long- and short-chain PFAS and other organic compounds in a matter of minutes.Credit: Courtesy of Selma Mededovic ThagardA plasma reactor (left) developed by researchers at Clarkson University zaps PFAS with plasma (right) to break down the molecules.
The team pumps argon gas into a large tank of contaminated water. As the gas rises through the water, it picks up the contaminants and concentrates them at the surface of the water in the tank. With a push of a button, the researchers generate plasma between a series of electrodes located above the water’s surface and ones slightly below the water’s surface. The argon ions and electrons generated by the plasma break down PFAS contaminants.
“The C-F chain is sticking up in the plasma, and the hydrophilic part is just in the water,” Mededovic Thagard says. “So you have argon ions and electrons continuously hitting on that hydrophobic tail and just chopping it off,” removing carbons one by one until a fluoride ion is formed. Currently, the system can treat about 7.5 L/min, drawing about the same amount of energy as a microwave oven. But more research is needed on the by-products it produces, Mededovic Thagard says. Early tests treating PFOS and PFOA detected some remaining smaller-chain PFAS molecules in the water after treatment (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2019, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.8b07031). The group is working with the US Air Force to perform field tests of the system at contaminated sites this year.
Other researchers are pursuing methods that involve applying ultraviolet light to contaminated water, potentially with a photocatalyst or other sensitizing compound to encourage degradation of PFAS. The molecules can also be broken down with intense heat and pressure, an approach that Timothy Strathmann, an environmental engineer at the Colorado School of Mines, is pursuing. His team’s pressure-cooker technology heats concentrated contaminated water to around 350 °C while compressing it to about 150–200 times atmospheric pressure at sea level. The method destroys a broad array of PFAS molecules, he says, with few fluorinated by-products. His team is trying to understand how the molecules break down so the researchers can optimize their conditions.
For groundwater, Clarkson University’s Crimi considers leaving it in the ground the simplest treatment option. This saves the energy that would otherwise be expended to pump it out for treatment, clean it, and then put it back. Her team is developing a system that would be installed underground and that would emit sound waves to degrade PFAS molecules in the water.
At a frequency in the hundreds of kilohertz—higher than the frequencies that humans are capable of hearing—sound waves applied to an underground reservoir of groundwater would create lots of tiny bubbles. When the bubbles collapse, they produce localized energy, which blasts PFAS molecules apart and also breaks down water into free radicals. These radicals can degrade the contaminants further, Crimi says. Her team has tested a prototype and is looking for field-testing opportunities.
In some cases, these destruction technologies—sound waves, plasma, and the like—that are being developed for highly contaminated water might be paired with a filter material like granular activated carbon or an ion-exchange resin to eliminate the problem of long-term waste when treating larger volumes of less-contaminated water. For example, an ion-exchange resin could be regenerated with a solvent rinse, then the concentrated rinse solution treated with plasma or an electrochemical approach to destroy the PFAS.
Chris Higgins of the Colorado School of Mines, who studies emerging contaminants like PFAS, says he sees these “treatment trains” as key in the future of PFAS treatment. The availability of multiple efficient technologies to remove and destroy PFAS would enable water utilities to customize their treatment systems according to their unique water chemistry, contaminant levels, and technological needs.
“There’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all solution,” Higgins says.
Of course, as multiple scientists noted to C&EN, the ideal scenario to ensure clean water would have been to stop PFAS from ever entering the environment.
“The best solution is to not pollute in the first place,” Northwestern’s Dichtel says. “But here we are.”
https://cen.acs.org/environment/persistent-pollutants/Forever-chemicals-technologies-aim-destroy/97/i12
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Air Force Seeks To Preserve Federal Test Case On State's PFAS Enforcement
Mar 22, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
The Air Force is urging a federal judge to reject calls from New Mexico officials to remove its challenge to a waste permit governing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) to a state court, an effort aimed at preserving a suit that could become a test case on federal agencies' attempts to limit state regulation of PFAS in the absence of EPA standards.
In a March 14 brief filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, the federal government in United States v. New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) says the federal district court has jurisdiction to oversee the litigation and should not refrain from exercising that jurisdiction.
It charges that legal doctrines the state had cited to justify its removal motion governing deferrals to state court do not apply in this case.
In the litigation, the Air Force is challenging the renewal of a hazardous waste disposal permit that NMED issued to Cannon Air Force Base, located in Curry County, NM, in December.
While the Air Force is challenging the definition of hazardous waste in that permit, it does not specify how the definition exceeds the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act's (RCRA) sovereign immunity waiver.
But the state permit, which governs contamination investigation and remediation at the base, defines hazardous waste as including contaminants such as PFAS, munitions constituents, perchlorate and other chemicals.
The state's permit -- and the Air Force's challenge -- underscores the difficulties state regulators face as they seek to address PFAS contamination in the absence of an EPA standard. While several states have begun to set enforceable regulatory limits, EPA has not, resulting in a patchwork of requirements.
Moreover, the military services face significant environmental cleanup liability at their bases for PFAS as the chemicals have been used in fire fighting foam they have used in training or fighting fires at military properties across the country. While New Mexico officials have battled the Air Force over PFAS contamination stemming from two bases, in Georgia the Air Force has also declined to address off-site contamination from three bases in part because neither EPA nor the state regulates the substances.
Marten Law policy adviser Nathan Frey and senior associate Jennifer Hammitt argue in a post last month that the pending litigation may become a test case on federal agencies' attempts to limit state regulation on PFAS. The case “may provide additional insight into the viability of state regulation in the absence of federal rules."
The United States filed the challenge Jan. 17, asking the federal court for “declaratory and injunctive relief alleging that certain terms of the Permit exceed NMED's authority,” the March 14 brief says.
The federal government simultaneously filed a protective notice of appeal to challenge the permit in state court, but the United States says it will seek to stay state proceedings pending resolution of the federal litigation.
New Mexico officials though, in response, last month asked that the federal district court dismiss the case, saying the state court should preside over it. The state asked the federal court to abstain from exercising its jurisdiction and defer to the New Mexico Court of Appeals.
The state also asked for a “more definite statement of the alleged inconsistencies between the permit, RCRA and the [state Hazardous Waste Act (HWA)]."
'Sufficient Factual Detail'
But in its March brief, the United States rejects NMED's request that the court dismiss the complaint “for failing to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, and alternatively for a more definite statement,” according to the U.S. brief.
The government says it “included sufficient factual detail to allege a cause of action challenging the definition of hazardous waste in the final permit, and the complaint is sufficiently detailed to allow the defendants to respond."
Further, it says, “NMED was able to identify in its motion that the United States alleges that the definition of hazardous waste in the issued Permit . . . is inconsistent with the HWA and its implementing regulations and so exceeds the scope of RCRA's sovereign immunity waiver."
It continues, “The specific arguments regarding how the definition of hazardous waste in the Permit is unlawful and exceed RCRA's sovereign immunity waiver are legal arguments, and NMED will have an opportunity to respond to those arguments later in this litigation.”
The U.S. government also says that none of the abstention doctrines -- based on the cases Younger v. Harris,. Railroad Commission of Texas v. Pullman Co. and Colorado River Water Conservation District v. United States -- that the state cited in its motion is applicable to this challenge.
It points to Sprint Communications, Inc. v. Jacobs, a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that held Younger only applies to ongoing state criminal cases, civil enforcement proceedings akin to criminal proceedings and civil cases that implicate a state court's ability to conduct its judicial functions. The federal government notes that this does not fit either of the first two types of cases, and the third factor does not apply because the Air Force is not asking the district court to enjoin or address an ongoing state proceeding.
“Under governing Supreme Court precedent, Younger abstention is thus inappropriate here,” the United States says.
It also says NMED's arguments that the federal court must abstain under Younger for other reasons -- such as if the issue involves significant state interests -- ignore the limits that Sprint put on Younger and that have been recognized by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.
The United States says the state also fails to specify how the Pullman and Colorado River abstention doctrines apply, noting that the former does not apply as there is no constitutional challenge to a state law here. Further, this case “does not implicate the issues of judicial economy relevant to Colorado River abstention,” it says.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/air-force-seeks-preserve-federal-test-case-states-pfas-enforcement
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EU Prepares to Review Controversial Herbicide Glyphosate—Again
Mar 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
The European Union is preparing to once again assess the safety of glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide.
The active ingredient in a range of pesticides, glyphosate is currently authorized in the EU until Dec. 15, 2022, after the bloc granted a short-term reapproval in 2017.
To get reauthorized to sell the herbicide after 2022, companies must apply by Dec. 15 this year—meaning they, and the regulators who will assess their application, are preparing now.
The Glyphosate Task Force, which represents a group of companies including Bayer, Nufarm GmbH & Co KG, and Syngenta AG, will submit a glyphosate reauthorization application.
Glyphosate has been dogged by concerns it causes cancer. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015 labeled it a probable carcinogen, and on March 19, Bayer AG lost the first phase of a trial in California over claims the glyphosate-based Roundup weedkiller caused an individual’s cancer.
But EU regulators have said glyphosate doesn’t present a cancer risk, though a number of EU lawmakers and some countries in the bloc opposed the substance’s 2017 reauthorization.
New Risk AssessmentThe new reauthorization bid will involve a new risk assessment of glyphosate.
This will proceed in two stages. A group of EU countries—France, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Sweden—will work jointly on an initial assessment before passing the dossier to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
EFSA will make its own assessment and provide an opinion to the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, which will make the decision based on votes in a committee of EU member country representatives.
The new assessment could also involve the European Chemicals Agency, which might be asked to carry out a new evaluation of the classification of glyphosate, EFSA spokesman Flavio Fergnani told Bloomberg Environment in an email.
Glyphosate is currently classified in the EU as toxic to aquatic life and potentially causing serious eye damage, but not as a carcinogen, a classification confirmed by the European Chemicals Agency in 2017.
Companies ConfidentThe new assessment of glyphosate by a group of countries will also depart from standard EU procedure. Normally, a single country is appointed to be the “rapporteur” for an application to authorize a pesticide. The rapporteur, which may be chosen by the applicant, is the country that checks and initially assesses an application before passing it on to food safety agency.
Assessment of the application by a group of countries would be welcome, though “any proposed change to the EU regulatory assessment procedure should aim to strengthen the scientific nature of the process and the independence of its regulatory authorities,” the Glyphosate Task Force said in a statement to Bloomberg Environment.
Assessment of an application by a group of countries requires a minor change to EU law, which is expected to be approved at a regulatory committee meeting May 21-22, said Euopean Commission spokeswoman Anca Paduraru.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/eu-prepares-to-review-controversial-herbicide-glyphosate-again
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Oil Execs Boasted of 'Unprecedented Access' to Trump Officials: Report
Mar 23, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Rachel Frazin
A newly reported recording reveals that oil lobbying executives boasted in 2017 about having "unprecedented access" to Trump administration officials, including "direct access" to a former oil industry lobbyist tapped to fill a top role in the Interior Department.
The recording, obtained by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, reportedly features Dan Naatz, political director of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), and a group of oil and gas producers at a June 2017 meeting in southern California.
Naatz reportedly told about 100 energy executives gathered at a hotel there that David Bernhardt, then serving as deputy secretary of Interior, would help prioritize the group's interests.
"We know him very well, and we have direct access to him, have conversations with him about issues ranging from federal land access to endangered species, to a lot of issues," Naatz said, according to the audio reported by Reveal.
An Interior Department spokesperson denied that Bernhardt has communicated with Naatz or IPAA CEO Barry Russell, who was also mentioned in the report.
"Acting Secretary David Bernhardt has had no communication or contact with either Barry Russell or Dan Naatz," the spokesperson said in a statement sent to The Hill.
Russell reportedly said at the meeting that he had contact with then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and then-EPA chief Scott Pruitt.
"Last week we were talking to Secretary Pruitt, and in about two weeks we have a meeting with Secretary Zinke. So we have unprecedented access to people that are in these positions who are trying to help us, which is great,” he said, according to Reveal.
The IPAA and EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the report on Saturday.
Zinke and Pruitt have both since left the administration.
The Trump administration has rolled back several Obama-era environmental protections, including limits on fracking and methane gas releases.
Before entering government, Berhardt worked for Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP as a lobbyist. He represented companies including Eni Petroleum, Sempra Energy, Halliburton Energy Services, Targa Energy, Noble Energy and the Westlands Water District in this role. Last month, President Trump announced he would nominate Bernhardt to permanently serve as secretary of Interior. Bernhardt has been serving as acting secretary since January, when Zinke resigned amid scrutiny over numerous allegations of violating ethics rules while in office.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/435437-oil-execs-boasted-of-unprecedented-access-to-admin-report
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MATS Proposal Spurs Legal Debate On Co-Benefits, Air Toxics Rule’s Fate
Mar 22, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA’s proposal to scrap the Obama-era finding that its power plant air toxics rule was “appropriate and necessary” while leaving the overall rule in place is spurring debate over expected legal challenges to the plan, suits that could set new precedents on issues including “co-benefit” cost-benefit analysis and the fate of the utility regulation.
Top Clean Air Act lawyers are split over whether EPA could successfully defend in court a final decision to scrap the finding and also leave the mercury and air toxics standards (MATS) rule in place. Several lawyers agree with Democratic-led states and environmentalists that this approach is legally vulnerable and risks killing MATS, while others are confident EPA will prevail in defending both MATS and the decision to scrap the finding.
In its December proposal, EPA announced its intent to rescind the Obama EPA’s finding, which is a legal prerequisite to the MATS rule. Although the agency is taking comment on scrapping MATS as well, the agency’s preferred option is to scrap the finding but leave the broader air toxics rule in place.
Opinion is sharply divided, however, over whether EPA can achieve these seemingly contradictory goals when near-inevitable litigation over the rule begins, should EPA finalize it as proposed. Some sources regard EPA’s rule as “super-vulnerable,” but others regard states’ likely argument as “just a clear loser.”
Also, one industry source says the agency likely does not regard the rule as a “high priority” to finalize in President Donald Trump’s current term -- meaning any new litigation could be delayed, or prevented entirely in the event that Trump loses the 2020 election.
EPA’s approach partially reflects the wishes of most of the utility sector, which has fully implemented MATS and spent millions of dollars on compliance. Should MATS be vacated, utilities stand to lose financially because MATS compliance is already factored into electricity rate decisions.
EPA argues it can leave the rule in place by relying on the precedent set by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in its 2008 ruling in New Jersey v. EPA. In that suit, the court rejected an attempt by the George W. Bush EPA to regulate power plant toxics under an emissions trading program established under a different Clean Air Act section than MATS. The court found that to do this, EPA must “de-list” power plants as a source category of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), and that EPA failed to meet stringent criteria for de-listing.
Because it does not propose de-listing, and could not meet the high bar for doing so, EPA now contends that MATS is safe. In this way, agency air policy chief Bill Wehrum -- a former Bush EPA air official -- can strike down the underlying finding, which he says insufficiently addresses implementation costs.
Critics say this is disingenuous, and that EPA is merely inviting lawsuits to remove MATS itself. Indeed, coal firm Murray Energy is already suggesting it will resume litigation to try and kill MATS entirely. Some also believe Wehrum’s true goal is to set a precedent excluding consideration of “co-benefits” in air rules. The Obama EPA relied heavily on co-benefits of reducing particulate matter (PM), which is not a HAP, to justify the 2011 MATS rule.
States’ Arguments
At a recent public hearing, in Washington, D.C., the Massachusetts attorney general’s office signaled legal arguments it is likely to raise against EPA’s rule once it is finalized. The state will likely lead a coalition of at least 23 other states, sources say, working closely with New York.
The states will argue that the de-listing criteria in New Jersey apply not just to any effort to rescind MATS, but also to the effort to strike down the “appropriate and necessary” finding.
Another argument raised in comments by states and environmentalists is that EPA based its proposal on outdated estimates of MATS’ costs and benefits, using figures from the original 2011 MATS rule. Since then, critics say, the costs have proven vastly lower than predicted, and new methods and studies show the true benefits of HAP reduction are orders of magnitude greater than originally foreseen. As such, the rule can be justified based on cost even without counting co-benefits, some argue.
One environmental lawyer argues that Massachusetts’ position is correct. EPA is attempting to do “exactly what the D.C. Circuit in New Jersey said they can’t do,” by failing to meet the de-listing criteria, which requires that EPA explain why HAPs from power plants are no longer a threat to human health or the environment.
Nor has EPA attempted to analyze costs and benefits for the appropriate and necessary finding using current information. Back in 2010, when EPA crafted its estimates for MATS, the agency did not believe it had to quantify costs for that finding, the source notes. The Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Michigan v. EPA required EPA to consider costs in its appropriate and necessary finding, though the ruling does not specifically require a cost-benefit analysis. “We think this part of the rule is super vulnerable,” the source says.
The Michigan ruling requires EPA to consider every relevant factor, including co-benefits, the source argues. “Co-benefits is a big deal.” While the source says states’ position is correct, should EPA prevail, the agency will open the door to a fresh Murray Energy suit targeting MATS and its health protections.
The lawyer further suggests industry is split on whether the MATS rule is a suitable vehicle to seek a precedent limiting consideration of co-benefits in future rules, because of the unique nature of power plant air toxics regulation. Air law section 112, which governs regulation of HAPs from the sector, requires an appropriate and necessary finding for power plants, but other air rules do not require a similar finding.
Joseph Goffman, a former top Obama EPA air counsel and now a Harvard University law professor, tells Inside EPAthat the states’ position on delisting is “a very smart, and correct, argument, reflecting the statutory scheme of the Clean Air Act.”
Further, “If the agency really does want to preserve the standards in the face of a Murray Energy challenge, it may well have to embrace the Massachusetts argument and rely on it to confirm the appropriate and necessary finding, as opposed to insisting, as the proposal does, that the cost-benefit comparison is all that matters.”
The “criteria for de-listing are specific and stringent. It’s hard to de-list, especially for high-emitting sectors like power plants,” Goffman says. A Murray Energy victory, scrapping MATS itself, would be harmful to public health because power plants would run their controls less often, Goffman suggests.
A Murray win would not have much effect on other air rules because of the unique nature of section 112, he notes.
However, a victory for either Murray Energy or EPA could have lasting effects on how the agency considers costs and benefits, including co-benefits. There is a “a pretty vivid trend in recent cases and very clearly in the Trump EPA’s actions to read the consideration of cost into a statutory provisions and, even more so, to chip away at the consideration of the benefits of reducing air pollution,” Goffman says.
An industry lawyer representing labor groups says that EPA’s disregard of co-benefits is a key weakness of its proposal. “My sense is that the D.C. Circuit will not buy the ‘appropriate and necessary’ arguments that EPA set out,” the source says. The source says EPA has adopted a “myopic focus” on counting mercury benefits only, when MATS achieves real reductions of other emissions, such as PM and acid gases.
Legal Risks
But another legal expert and former EPA air official sees the agency’s position as sound. The states’ argument on de-listing “makes no sense whatsoever,” the source says. The New Jersey decision “makes a very clear distinction between reversing the finding” and the de-listing that would be required to rescind MATS. So the states’ argument “is just a clear loser.”
The source says that the arguments raised by states and environmentalists over the need for up-to-date cost-benefit estimates fall afoul of administrative law principles, which require that the agency review the appropriate and necessary finding based on the original administrative record. “You can’t go outside that record,” the source says. Hence, this is “not a legal weakness at all.” Also, the source says states lack standing to sue because MATS remains in place and they cannot claim injury necessary to prove standing.
However, EPA’s position is not without risk. Murray Energy’s position is “at least a credible argument. I do think there is some legal risk to EPA.” The risk is mitigated by the D.C. Circuit precedent in New Jersey, which could only be overturned by the whole court ruling en banc, or by the Supreme Court. Murray Energy, unlike states, has clear standing, because MATS reduces the market for its product -- coal -- the source says.
In the D.C. Circuit, Murray Energy will “probably lose,” the source says. There is broad political backing to keep MATS in place from industry, environmentalists and lawmakers of both parties, as well as the Trump EPA. “Judges are certainly aware of that.” The source does not foresee the high court accepting a fresh challenge either, given the politics supporting keeping MATS in place.
The co-benefits impact of fresh MATS litigation is likely limited, this source argues, given the unique nature of section 112 power plant regulation, but the issue “is going to come up in other places.”
Also, potential litigants should not assume EPA will finalize the proposal as is, the source says. “I’m not sure this is going to be a high priority to finalize” during Trump’s first term.
Even if Murray Energy were to win a potential lawsuit -- “a long shot” -- there is a “very remote possibility” that utilities would opt to run pollution controls less, since the cost of running controls is “very low.” States would probably step in with their own regulations should MATS ever be rescinded, the source suggests.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/mats-proposal-spurs-legal-debate-co-benefits-air-toxics-rule%E2%80%99s-fate
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Lawmakers to Vote on Energy-Water Nexus Bill
Mar 25, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Ariel Wittenberg
The House Science, Space and Technology Committee will consider legislation Wednesday meant to boost research into how energy technologies can conserve water.
The "Energy and Water Research Integration Act," H.R. 34, is sponsored by Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas).
The bill calls for the Department of Energy's research and demonstration programs to include water conservation and use.
Johnson introduced the measure in January, explaining on the House floor that while much attention is paid to energy and water conservation separately, more effort must be made to highlight how water contributes to energy production and vice versa.
"Not many people are aware of the importance of water to energy generation and, similarly, the crucial role that energy plays in the delivery of safe, sanitary water to our constituents," Johnson said (E&E Daily, March 4).
Schedule: The markup is Wednesday, March 27, at 2 p.m. in 2318 Rayburn.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2019/03/25/stories/1060128073
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Utilities to Go Carbon Free by 2045 Under Law in New Mexico
Mar 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brenna Goth
New Mexico power companies must cut their carbon emissions to zero by 2045 under a new law that also addresses the closing of a coal plant in the northwestern part of the state.
Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who took office this year, signed the legislation March 22 after campaigning on bringing more renewable energy to the state. Supporters say the requirements will make New Mexico a national leader alongside California and Hawaii, which have similar standards.
The Public Service Company of New Mexico, the state’s largest electric utility known as PNM, supported the bill and the provisions for retiring the San Juan Generating Station it operates near the Colorado border.
The carbon-free timeline will challenge the utility, but the company is already positioned to reduce coal and gas use in the coming years, said Raymond Sandoval, director of corporate communications.
“It makes for a soft landing, if you will, for our exit from fossil fuels,” he said.
Republican lawmakers who opposed the legislation argued it will raise electricity costs. They also raised concerns over the impact on workers from closing the PNM coal plant.
Coal Plant Replacement TargetedThe law provides a major boost to New Mexico’s previous requirement that utilities produce 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020. That standard changes to half by 2030 and 80 percent by 2040.
Rural electric cooperatives have slightly different targets than investor-owned utilities. The law, known as the Energy Transition Act, also introduces requirements for replacing the energy production that will be lost if the San Juan Generating Station closes.
Majority owner PNM plans to retire the station in 2022 based on the economics of running it. The utility can now use bonds with lower interest rates to shut it down, and must provide some bond proceeds to help workers and the surrounding community.
The company is already on track to provide 70 percent carbon-free electricity in just over a decade, Sandoval said.
Environmental groups that pushed the bill are celebrating requirements to bring more wind and solar development to the state, said Sanders Moore, director of Environment New Mexico.
“We’re the perfect state to take that lead,” she said.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/utilities-to-go-carbon-free-by-2045-under-law-in-new-mexico
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EPA Proposes New Source Review Accounting Change
Mar 22, 2019 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
EPA, after an ad hoc attempt to rework one facet of the New Source Review permitting program quickly ran into a lawsuit last year, now appears to be pursuing the same objective through a formal rulemaking.
Yesterday, the agency advanced a proposed rule on the theme of "project emissions accounting" to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for a standard review, according to a government website.
According to an accompanying synopsis, the proposal would condense the process for predicting emissions increases from a plant expansion or other significant changes at factories and other industrial pollution sources.
Those forecasts are critical to gauging whether such changes amount to a "major modification" that would warrant a New Source Review pre-construction permit accompanied by pollution control requirements.
While EPA has not released the text of the proposed rule, then-Administrator Scott Pruitt similarly sought to compress the forecasting process in a memo issued last March (E&E News PM, March 13, 2018).
Under a two-step process used up to then, companies had to first calculate whether a particular project would lead to a significant emissions increase. The second step then entailed determining whether the project would still lead to a noteworthy pollution boost, once emissions increases or decreases related to other factors were accounted for. Pruitt's memo allowed firms to consider both potential pollution increases and decreases at that first step.
While industry trade groups hailed the changes as a useful streamlining, environmental groups said it could lead to more pollution.
Last May, the Environmental Defense Fund and two other organizations challenged the change in a lawsuit filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In their suit, they also questioned whether EPA had violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to give the public advance notice and the chance to comment on the change (Greenwire, June 5, 2018).
In July, however, the three groups asked to put the litigation on hold, saying in a joint motion that EPA planned to propose a formal rule that would cover "the same subject matter as that addressed" by Pruitt's memo.
In a January status report, EPA told the court that it was still working on the proposal. The agency's latest roundup of planned rulemakings does not say when officials there hope to put a final regulation in place.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2019/03/22/stories/1060128085
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Another 'Black Eye' for America's Energy Capital
Mar 25, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Edward Klump
The fire-fueled plume that darkened a swath of the Texas sky last week was just the beginning of an unfolding disaster in this U.S. oil and petrochemical hub.
The problems are centered east of Houston, where crews are trying to contain dangerous materials unleashed by tank fires at an Intercontinental Terminals Co. (ITC) facility. They've dealt with spiking levels of benzene, which can cause cancer; fires that reignited; and the breach of a dike that led to the partial closure of the Houston Ship Channel.
On Friday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) announced a suit against ITC on behalf of Texas regulators, saying the state will hold the company accountable for environmental damage. Lawmakers are demanding answers, and the U.S. Chemical Safety Board has disclosed plans for a probe.
"ITC has a history of environmental violations, and this latest incident is especially disturbing and frightening," Paxton said in a statement. "No company can be allowed to disrupt lives and put public health and safety at risk."
Residents and businesses remain on edge, but the event goes beyond any one suburb or neighborhood.
The incident strikes at the heart of Greater Houston's ability to offer a safe environment for the roughly 7 million people who live in and around this longtime energy capital. The region's cluster of industrial plants and storage sites is vulnerable to accidents, natural disasters and intentional attacks.
The ITC fire started March 17 and morphed into a made-for-TV event that, like flooding after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, put the region's issues before a national audience. The advocacy group Environment Texas, citing regulatory filings, said the ITC incident appeared to release more pollution than Houston-area facilities emitted in unauthorized releases in all of 2017.
"It definitely puts a black eye on our city," said Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston.
Industrial problems aren't uncommon in the region, as an Exxon Mobil Corp. fire illustrated this month (Energywire, March 18).
The ITC disaster stands out because of its length and visibility, from multiple days with a plume and odor in various areas to localized pollution issues after fires initially were extinguished last Wednesday.
The company said tanks involved in the incident contained products such as naphtha and xylene, which are components in gasoline, and toluene, which is used to produce nail polish remover and paint thinner.
ITC reported progress yesterday in some cleanup efforts at the site. But pollution in and around the Houston Ship Channel hampered movement of industry products over the weekend.
Texas state Rep. Briscoe Cain (R) called events surrounding the ITC fire "devastating to our community." He requested a hearing.
"The nation has been captivated by dramatic images of flames and smoke plumes, but our community has had to deal with the very real questions about air and water quality while waiting for information from ITC," Cain said in a statement.'Pretty egregious'
In an online post last week, Eric Berger of Space City Weather, a popular website for local forecasts, called the incident "pretty egregious."
Elected officials should be held accountable, Berger wrote, for people they appoint to agencies such as the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), "which theoretically should be preventing accidents like these, monitoring them, and ensuring they don't happen again."
"The chemical industry provides many good paying jobs for the Houston region," he said, "but that doesn't mean we should accept accidents such as these as part of the bargain."
Houston has sought to project a modern image in recent years that includes a downtown makeover and an ability to host major events, from the Super Bowl to the annual CERAWeek by IHS Markit energy conference. The region also continues to seek ways to reduce flooding worries, though it will take years to bolster resilience as much as leaders say is needed.
Clint Pasche, senior vice president of marketing and communications for the Greater Houston Partnership, described concern about residents' health and the region's image in a statement about the ITC fire. He said he was relieved that the "smoky plume" was no longer over parts of the city.
"Even if the recall of such an incident by people outside of Houston is relatively short-lived, and I suspect it will be, it does detract from our efforts to position Houston in a positive light — not only as the home of oil & gas, but also as a leader in renewable energy, digital tech, and life science, to name a few," Pasche said.
The ITC fire highlighted industrial exposure in Texas, which in 2017 included flooding and explosions at an Arkema chemical facility northeast of Houston in the wake of Harvey (Energywire, May 25, 2018).
With the ITC fire, much of everyday life in and around Houston has continued even as social media saw dramatic photos and questions about where pollution might end up.
Still, some school districts canceled classes for days, and the Houston Independent School District took steps to limit outdoor exposure for students. Experts said the region didn't see more initial air problems from last week's tank fires in part because the plume often was several thousand feet in the air. But that gave way to worries about localized pollution after water and foam helped to extinguish the fires.
Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), whose district includes the affected area, pledged via Facebook "to do all within my authority as a federal official to ensure a thorough investigation into the cause so we can obtain the information needed to prevent similar accidents in the future."Economy and health
Rice University's Cohan said it's important for TCEQ and EPA to be strict in monitoring events, "so that you keep these accidents to a minimum and so that the public has a reason to trust."
Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas, said there are questions about TCEQ and its reliability. He noted gaps in monitoring data as the ITC event unfolded, and he expressed support for legislative efforts to make sure polluters are penalized when they break the law.
If TCEQ had a more robust regulatory enforcement regime, Metzger said, "we might have prevented this and similar accidents from happening." On Twitter, he noted the state's lawsuit over the recent incident and said Texas should seek a "massive penalty" as well as an overhaul of how companies such as ITC operate.
TCEQ has faced questions about a decision not to use potential NASA assistance in monitoring air quality after Harvey in 2017. The Texas commission recently defended its decision in a letter to lawmakers (Greenwire, March 20).
In a recent news release, TCEQ described work with an environmental contractor and the Coast Guard to contain runoff from the ITC site via booms and storage containers. TCEQ also noted periods with high levels of benzene.
Last week, the Houston Chronicle reported that various regulators had hit ITC with penalties over the years.
In a recent editorial, the Houston newspaper argued that Texas agencies should do more than deliver another "paltry fine" if investigations show ITC regulatory violations were a factor in the fire.
"We shouldn't have to choose between a thriving economy and our health," the editorial said. "Responsible companies can and should deliver both."
Ed Hirs, an energy economist with the University of Houston, questioned the coordination between industry and government once the fire started. He was surprised the fire lasted several days.
The event reinforced Hirs' view about the strategic vulnerability of the Houston Ship Channel and surrounding facilities. An attack on the area that's widespread could be devastating, he said.
If companies aren't willing to make expenditures to maintain an effective first response team, Hirs said, Harris County government will have to take it on. He said that could mean levying "some sort of tax on these entities."
For now, ITC has a website in place as a way for people to submit business and individual claims related to the event.
More details are expected to emerge about the incident and its aftermath. The Texas attorney general's court filing cites ITC in pointing toward a leak in a pipe.
Cohan said last week that authorities will need to get to the bottom of what allowed the fire to happen.
The risk of a serious incident looms in the Houston area, Cohan said, "even if 99.9 percent of the facilities and tanks are doing fine."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/03/25/stories/1060128131
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Fed Review Could Stymie Race to Export Texas Oil
Mar 25, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
The Army Corps of Engineers is planning a full-blown environmental review of a major oil export project in Texas — a development that could delay its construction at a time when producers and the Trump administration are pushing to send crude overseas.
The Port of Corpus Christi has been working with the Carlyle Group on a $1 billion plan to build docks that will handle the largest class of supertankers, which would require deepening the Corpus Christi ship channel to 75 feet.
The Carlyle Group has said the project will be dredged to the full depth by the end of 2021. But the environmental impact statement process, which takes as much as two years, could delay the start of construction until the middle of 2021, pushing the completion date back by months.
Preparing an EIS also will require the Army Corps to study the dredging project's effects on water quality, marine life and other aspects. Although it's rare, the corps could rule that the project causes too much harm to be built.
The project would make Corpus Christi the deepest harbor on the Texas coast and one of the deepest in the country, Bob Heinly, deputy director of the regulatory section at the Army Corps' district office in Galveston, Texas, said in an interview.
"It felt like it was fairly simple to say an EIS would be required," he said.
Carlyle, through its Lone Star Ports LLC subsidiary, is in discussions with the Federal Infrastructure Permitting Improvement Steering Council to shorten the timeline of the EIS or get the project approved with a less-rigorous study known as an environmental assessment, Ferris Hussein, a managing director for the private equity firm, said in an interview.
The ship channel is already being dredged to 54 feet under an EIS that was completed in the mid-2000s. Even if a second EIS is required to deepen the channel to 75 feet, the dredging contractor will be ready and much of the work will already be done, Hussein said.
"The timeline they gave us from 54 to 75 feet — it's a six-month job," Hussein said.
The timing is crucial because there are at least eight projects that have been proposed to expand oil exports along the Texas coast, and observers have said only a handful are likely to be completed (Energywire, Feb. 27). Easing oil transport constraints is a top goal for both the oil and gas sector and the Trump administration as part of its "energy dominance" agenda. There are enough pipelines to get oil to ports like Houston and Corpus Christi, but there may not be enough dock spaces.
Most harbors in Texas are too shallow to accommodate so-called very large crude carriers, a class of tanker that can carry 2 million barrels of oil.
Corpus Christi was shaping up to be the winner in that race, since it's the closest harbor to the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford Shale oil fields, and there are pipeline projects headed to the port that will expand its export capacity.
At least two of the competing projects, including one under consideration about 25 miles from Corpus Christi, involve building offshore loading platforms connected to the shore via pipelines. Those projects wouldn't require dredging.
The Carlyle Group, which is splitting the cost of the export docks and dredging project with the port authority, has already lined up six shippers for the export terminal, Hussein said. Any delays could be costly because the firm has contracts with its shippers that require the 75-foot channel to be ready by the end of 2021.Brewing environmental fight
The EIS process could provide some leverage to opponents of the Corpus Christi dredging project.
A Texas appeals court issued an injunction last week temporarily blocking the port authority from approving a lease with Carlyle, after an opponent said the port's commissioners hadn't provided adequate public notice of the vote.
Residents in Port Aransas, a resort town at the mouth of the ship channel, are concerned that the dredging project would harm the sport fishing and tourism industries their community relies on.
Sport fishing is so popular in Port Aransas that some restaurants in the town offer to cook fish their customers have caught.
"This is one of the most productive and environmentally sensitive estuaries in the entire Gulf Coast," John Donovan, an organizer for the Port Aransas Conservancy, said in an interview. "If there were an oil spill, it would kill the fishing industry."
The conservancy supports the idea of building an offshore loading system, Donovan said, since it would reduce the chance of an oil spill near the beach.
The docks for the project are planned for Harbor Island, which is just across the ship channel from Port Aransas. The island was previously home to an oil storage depot, but most of the Carlyle project's tanks and equipment will be farther inland, Hussein said.
"Harbor Island will have less infrastructure on it than it historically has," he said.
Sean Strawbridge, chief executive officer of the Corpus Christi port authority, said the dredging project will be a boon to the overall U.S. economy, since it will allow for more oil to be exported. And building an export terminal at the port would be safer than an offshore platform because ships would be shielded from weather and rough seas during the loading process.
"It is important that the terminal be operational as quickly as possible to take full advantage of the American taxpayer's investment in the Corpus Christi ship channel improvement project," Strawbridge said in an email.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/03/25/stories/1060128103
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No Timetable for Reopening Texas Ship Channel Following Leak
Mar 25, 2019 | AP (In The New York Times)
Officials have no timetable for reopening a portion of the Houston Ship Channel, one of the busiest commercial waterways in the country, after another setback caused flammable chemicals to seep into the water near a fire-ravaged petrochemical tank farm, a Coast Guard commander said Saturday.
Coast Guard Capt. Kevin Oditt said during a news conference that work was underway to contain and absorb benzene and other contaminants after a dike failed adjacent to the farm operated by the Intercontinental Terminals Company in Deer Park, southeast of Houston.
The breach occurred Friday. As of early Saturday, more than 40 vessels — oil tankers, container ships and other crafts — were either trying to move south out of the channel or north toward awaiting terminals, according to Coast Guard petty officer Kelly Parker. The channel is a critical waterway that connects oil refineries between the Port of Houston and the Gulf of Mexico.
ITC was planning Saturday to resume pumping some 20,000 barrels of product from a tank heavily damaged by the fire, which began Sunday, March 17, and was extinguished Wednesday, but flared again on two occasions. The most recent flare-up on Friday took an hour to suppress and disrupted the pumping, ITC executive Brent Weber said.
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The tanks that caught fire contained components of gasoline and materials used in nail polish remover, glues and paint thinner.
Residents already alarmed by a large plume of black smoke that billowed for days from the farm were further shaken by an order Thursday to remain indoors after elevated levels of benzene were detected in the air. Schools in the region also were shuttered and waterfront parks were closed to the public as a precaution. The chemical evaporates quickly and can cause drowsiness, dizziness, rapid heartbeat, and headaches, with worse symptoms at higher levels of exposure.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against ITC, saying Friday that Texas had to hold the company "accountable for the damage it has done to our environment." The company has had a history of environmental violations, Paxton said.
ITC spokeswoman Alice Richardson declined to comment on Paxton's claims, citing the pending litigation.
Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mouton Jr. has spent days giving assurances that company and public officials are working in a transparent manner to provide the latest updates to anxious residents.
"Everything doesn't always work the way it's planned," he told reporters Saturday.
"Everybody out here is doing the best they can," Mouton said, later adding, "They're trying to address every situation to the best of their ability."
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/03/23/us/ap-us-petrochemical-fire-texas.html
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AFPM ’19: US Ethane Supply Likely to Be Sufficient for Cracker Operations - CP Chem Exec
Mar 25, 2019 | ICIS
By Joseph Chang
US ethane supply is improving and is likely to be sufficient for existing petrochemical operations and the new crackers expected to start up in 2019, a senior executive from Chevron Phillips Chemical said on Sunday.
“With the Enterprise Shin Oak pipeline, we’re seeing higher ethane content in raw mix streams we’re collecting. The odds are that there will be sufficient ethane to keep the system balanced,” said Ron Corn, senior vice president of petrochemicals for Chevron Phillips Chemical.
Corn spoke to ICIS on the sidelines of this year’s International Petrochemical Conference (IPC).
Midstream company Enterprise Products Partners put its Shin Oak natural gas liquids (NGL) pipeline from Orla, Texas, to the NGL fractionation hub of Mont Belvieu, Texas, in February.
And Targa Resources plans to put its Grand Prix pipeline from the Permian Basin and Midcontinent region to Mont Belvieu into operation in the third quarter of 2019, while starting up new fractionation capacity in the second quarter.
The Enterprise pipeline is already having a material impact on ethane supply, as the average ethane content of the NGL mix has risen from the mid-30% range to above 40%, said Corn.
This means less ethane is being rejected, he noted.
“At least the transportation constraint has been relieved. Most fractionators can run at 45% ethane so it has filled out the existing pipeline capacity. We saw higher levels of ethane rapidly,” said Corn.
Hosted by the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), the IPC takes place on 24-26 March in San Antonio, Texas.
https://www.icis.com/explore/resources/news/2019/03/24/10338548/afpm-19-us-ethane-supply-likely-to-be-sufficient-for-cracker-operations-cp-chem-exec/
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Are Oil Majors Serious About Cutting Emissions?
Mar 25, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Storrow
Oil and gas companies have long touted their efforts to curb methane emissions from leaky oil-field equipment. They have taken a decidedly dimmer view of government attempts to reduce leaks of the planet-warming gas.
So it was to considerable fanfare earlier this month that BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC announced their support for federal efforts to regulate methane (Energywire, March 13).
The news followed a similar announcement from Exxon Mobil Corp. in December, when it informed EPA of its support for federal methane standards on new oil and gas wells.
"We recognize methane emissions are a critically important climate issue," Shell President Gretchen Watkins said earlier this month at CERAWeek by IHS Markit, an industry conference in Houston. "We support and participate in many impactful voluntary programs. But, in this instance, I believe we can do more. I want to make clear Shell's support for the direct regulation of new/modified and existing onshore oil and gas sources in the United States."
The rhetoric represents a potential watershed moment for the industry, which fought former President Obama's efforts to plug leaky oil-field equipment and cheered President Trump's early efforts to roll those back.
But whether the announcements portend a real shift in the industry's position on climate policy or whether they're merely an attempt to generate positive headlines remains an open question.
The upside of the trio's methane commitments for climate action is tremendous. BP, Exxon and Shell not only account for a significant portion of global oil and gas production but are among the most technologically and engineering-savvy companies in the world. Advancements made by the group could help cut the cost of methane mitigation and soon be adopted across the sector.
And if their efforts result in support for methane regulation from the American Petroleum Institute, the industry's leading trade group and a longtime opponent of federal climate efforts, the impact on U.S. policymaking could be substantial, industry observers said.
"Savvy folks in industry will acknowledge that without a level playing field not all people are likely to come along," said Ben Ratner, a senior director at the Environmental Defense Fund. "Even if you had some companies that were proactively reducing emissions in their own operations, emissions are likely to remain unacceptably high. That is a black eye for the entire industry and the perception of natural gas and any credibility it might have in the energy transition."
The majors' growing focus on methane nevertheless comes with a long list of questions, not least of which is their commitment to attacking leaks in the oil field.
Just as BP announced its support for federal methane efforts, Greenpeace released a reportdetailing the company's lobbying efforts to weaken the Obama-era standards. The environmental group's findings were soon corroborated by the Financial Times.
BP said it was simply seeking to eliminate redundancy. It supports efforts by EPA to regulate methane but not by the Bureau of Land Management. Still, the incident illustrated the lingering distrust of an industry that has long sought to block emission-reduction policies.
"One way to address that is to acknowledge that you need to move forward to fix it," said Robert Howarth, a researcher who tracks oil-field methane emissions at Cornell University. "But when it is an odorless, colorless gas that people can't see, they can claim they are working hard to contain emissions but there is no way to verify it. It may not be more than marketing."Voluntary efforts
Oil companies' methane commitments come at an important time for American climate policy. Methane is the primary component of natural gas, which has emerged as an ever-growing part of the country's energy mix. Advancements in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have unlocked a torrent of cheap gas from U.S. shale formations in recent years.
As a result, gas has overtaken coal as the leading source of electricity generation in the United States, helping to send carbon emissions from the power sector plummeting. Its market share is projected to grow to 37 percent by 2020, up from 28 percent in 2013, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Whether the fuel can be part of a broad climate solution for the United States is very much open to debate, however.
Last year, a large increase in new natural gas plants was accompanied by an uptick in power-sector emissions. The increase may be an anomaly, owing to a sizzling economy, a cold winter and a hot summer. It nonetheless illustrated the limits of the fuel as a carbon-cutting device.
Methane is an even bigger challenge for the industry. The gas accounts for roughly 10 percent of America's greenhouse gas emissions, according to federal estimates, but its warming potential is 34 times greater than carbon dioxide, making it a disruptive force in the planet's atmosphere. EPA estimates that nearly a third of U.S. methane emissions come from the oil and gas sector.
The industry has long held up companies' voluntary efforts to reduce methane emissions as a sign that federal regulations are unnecessary.
In 2014, a group of oil companies including BP and Shell formed the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, which has dedicated $1 billion toward investments in methane reduction. Exxon joined in 2018. BP and Shell have each committed to reducing methane emissions intensity 0.2 percent by 2025, while Exxon has committed to cutting methane emissions 15 percent and flaring 25 percent by 2020.
And companies have pointed to EPA figures showing consistent declines in methane emissions as evidence their efforts are working. Methane emissions were down 15 percent between 1990 and 2017, despite the fact gas production increased 50 percent over that period, Erik Milito, an API executive, wrote in a blog post last week.
The trade group has continued to push for weakening federal methane rules, even as some of its largest members call for standards. In comments to EPA on its new source rule, API called for limiting semiannual inspections of well sites proposed under the Obama administration to once a year. It has also proposed exempting low-production wells from methane limits, arguing they would be economically burdensome.
Environmentalists say those moves would significantly weaken the Obama-era standards.
"We support controlling methane through a cost-effective regulatory framework, innovation and industry action like the Environmental Partnership," said Reid Porter, an API spokesman, referring to an industry collaboration focused on improving the sector's environmental performance. "Our industry is action-oriented and results-driven."What oil companies want
It's not entirely clear where the majors' support for API's position begins and ends. BP and Exxon have echoed the group's call for cost-effective regulation.
At the same time, all three companies have said they support regulations on both new and existing wells, a shift from the Obama years when the industry vigorously fought attempts to regulate existing production facilities.
Exxon did not say in its letter to EPA whether it supported the proposals outlined by API but did express support for "maintaining the key elements of the underlying regulation."
Ryan Jackson, a BP spokesman, did not answer questions on whether the company supported limiting annual inspections or providing exemptions for low-production wells. Instead, he pointed to the company's internal efforts and repeated its call for federal standards, saying, "Natural gas has a critical role to play in helping the world transition to a low-carbon future, but it can only play its part if we control methane emissions."
Shell went a step further than its peers. The company supports biannual inspections at well sites, along with a pathway to annual inspections at sites that can demonstrate methane emissions are under control, said Curtis Smith, a Shell spokesman.
Environmentalists say more comprehensive standards are needed. EPA's methane figures are not based on actual oil-field emissions, but the projected rate of emissions from oil-field equipment. They are also self-reported by companies and not independently verified, though companies face the prospect of fines for lying to federal regulators.
A growing body of academic research suggests EPA's figures consistently underestimate U.S. methane emissions. Where the agency estimates 1.4 percent of American natural gas production is lost to leaks, a study by the Environmental Defense Fund puts that figure at 2.3 percent. Howarth, the Cornell researcher, thinks the number could be higher still, at around 5 percent of U.S. natural gas production.
The small percentage-point difference is consequential. Natural gas has long been touted as a cleaner alternative to coal, but it loses its greenhouse gas advantage over the black mineral when methane leaks exceed 3 percent of production, according to the Carbon Disclosure Project.
The economic incentive for companies to reduce leaks, meanwhile, only goes so far. Small methane leaks can be expensive to plug but are still detrimental to climate, said Daniel Raimi, a researcher who studies the oil and gas sector at the University of Michigan.
And, in the case of oil production, it's often cheaper for companies to flare off associated gas than capture it.
Raimi described the dynamic like this: "I have an economic incentive to pick up a penny on the ground, but it may not be worth my time. If it's a $10 bill, I'm going to pick it up. Companies have an incentive to reduce emissions, but they are only going to do it if it's profitable for them."'Much faster than they anticipated'
The change in tone by the majors on methane reflects growing acknowledgment of the science, analysts said. It also follows increased scrutiny from investors, who have pressed companies to disclose their emission figures and demonstrate their commitment to reducing methane leaks, analysts said.
Oil companies increasingly realize they cannot be on the wrong side of the climate debate and are under pressure to offer solutions for reducing emissions, said Arvind Ravikumar, who studies oil-field emissions at Harrisburg University.
"There are a lot of things coming together right now, and companies are compelled to make statements and even take action on climate change," he said. "I think a lot of them are seeing it and realizing this is going to come much faster than they anticipated."
A bigger question is what role the majors' announcements will have on the industry at large. In the United States, the major oil companies have taken a back seat to independent oil and gas producers in the so-called Shale Revolution, meaning much of the new production in America today is not covered by the majors' methane targets.
There's also this: Production sites are only a piece of the methane puzzle. Methane leaks occur along pipelines, at processing facilities and in utility gas distribution systems, yet to date federal efforts have largely focused on well sites.
Downstream gas operations accounted for 18 percent of the industry's methane emissions, according to International Energy Agency data compiled by the Carbon Disclosure Project.
"I think that this is early," said Deborah Gordon, a senior fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute. "It is a really important problem, and we're just starting to get a handle on what it is and how to fix it."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/03/25/stories/1060128099
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Senators Urge More Action on Ethylene Oxide Monitoring (1)
Mar 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Joyce
The Environmental Protection Agency should expand air monitoring activities to more Illinois industrial sites emitting ethylene oxide after agency data appeared to show links between the probable carcinogen and a facility emitting the gas, the two senators from the state said.
Ethylene oxide is a flammable, colorless gas used to sterilize medical equipment and make products such as antifreeze. According to the EPA, breathing air containing elevated levels of the chemical over many years increases the risk of some types of cancers, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma and breast cancer.
EPA data released March 21 showed ethylene oxide emissions levels at each of the 10 EPA air monitoring sites near a Willowbrook, Ill., facility operated by Sterigenics U.S. LLC decreased at the end of February, compared to the beginning of the month and to January.
The facility, which uses ethylene oxide to sterilize medical equipment, was effectively shut down by the Illinois EPA Feb. 15 when the agency issued a seal order prohibiting use of the gas at the facility.
Call for More MonitoringSens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Tammy Duckworth (D-ill.) both issued statements saying the data should compel the federal EPA to expand its monitoring activities to two additional facilities in Illinois that use the gas.
The U.S. EPA is using a variety of tools to learn about potential risks near Lake County facilities that may have elevated risks, the agency said in a statement sent to Bloomberg Environment March 22. But it is not currently conducting any more ambient monitoring.
The data suggest Sterigenics is the main source of ethylene oxide emissions at the Willowbrook facility, putting families at risk, Duckworth said in a string of tweets.
“EPA must start collecting data at facilities using this same sterilizer in Lake County. Illinoisans deserve to know whether public health dangers exist in their communities,” Durbin said in a tweet.
Sterigenics said in a statement that the continued detection of ethylene oxide at monitoring sites, even after its facility was shuttered, proves the existence of ethylene oxide in the ambient air in Willowbrook.
The company has said its facility complies with all state and federal permitting requirements and emits less than 0.1 percent of the ethylene oxide used during its process of sterilizing medical equipment.
Detection Levels PlummetThe EPA air monitoring test results released March 21 showed that monitoring stations recorded much lower emissions after the plant was shut down compared to earlier, suggesting the emissions were linked to the facility.
For instance, one monitoring station registered ethylene oxide concentrations of 14.2 micrograms per cubic meter on Jan. 15 and 26.4 on Feb. 5, versus less than one microgram per cubic meter on Feb. 22 and Feb. 26, after the facility was shut.
The senators wanted additional testing focused on Lake County facilities operated by Medline Industries Inc. and Vantage Specialty Chemicals Inc.
Medline spokeswoman Stacy Rubenstein said in a March 22 statement the company’s Waukegan, Ill. facility sterilizes more than 16,000 surgical packs each day used by a majority of Illinois hospitals.
“We are proactively working to install best-available abatement technology that will control all sources of emissions and will increase the efficiency of current controls to the highest level possible,” she said, adding that the company currently meets or exceeds all state and federal requirements.
(Adds further detail and background from ninth paragraph.)
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/senators-urge-more-action-on-ethylene-oxide-monitoring-1
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Houston Disaster Zone Reignites, Casting New Plume Over City
Mar 23, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joe Carroll and Rachel Adams-Heard
The chemical disaster site outside of Houston temporarily reignited on Friday afternoon, with multiple sections of the complex belching smoke and flames, and sending a new black plume over the fourth-largest U.S. city.
The latest blaze erupted just hours after a wall holding back almost a million gallons of toxic, flammable liquids collapsed, and just two days after the original conflagration was suppressed. Intercontinental Terminals Co., which owns the storage facility in suburban Deer Park, said two tanks and a drainage ditch were alight before firefighters suppressed the flames about 90 minutes later.
At least one of the tanks involved in the new blaze contained xylene, a toxic byproduct of the oil-refining process. Deer Park officials said on Twitter they were holding off on ordering residents to shut windows and remain indoors. Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit accusing ITC of violating clean air laws.
About 700 people have been treated at a mobile clinic set up in Deer Park, 15 of whom were sent to emergency rooms for severe symptoms, said Umair Shah, executive director of Harris County Public Health.
People at nearby industrial sites and a state war memorial had already been warned to take cover when the key containment wall failed, prompting the U.S. Coast Guard to shut part of the Houston Ship Channel, which abuts ITC’s complex.
The channel is one of the busiest commercial shipping facilities in North America, connecting Houston’s manufacturing and oil-refining nexus to Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.
South Texas’ gateway to the Gulf of MexicoSheela TobbenAlthough the ship channel is a key maritime thoroughfare, it’s not a source of drinking water for Houston or its suburbs. After the wall failed, officials issued take-shelter warnings to neighboring companies and visitors to the San Jacinto battlefield,site of the 1836 fight that won Texas independence from Mexico.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been testing water samples from the containment area surrounding the tanks that burned. Adam Adams, a coordinator for the agency, said earlier this week that results would be released Friday; several calls to the EPA’s regional office in Dallas were not returned.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board announced late Thursday it will be investigating the blaze. The Texas National Guard dispatched troops to assist local authorities with air monitoring after cancer-causing benzene wafted across the area, prompting take-shelter alerts and road closures.
ITC is a unit of Mitsui & Co.
—With assistance from Mike Jeffers, Kevin Crowley, David Wethe, Catherine Traywick and Sheela Tobben.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/houston-disaster-zone-reignites-casting-new-plume-over-city-2
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Texas Petrochemical Fire Prompts Hundreds to Visit Health Clinic
Mar 25, 2019 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Collin Eaton
Hundreds of neighborhood residents of a petrochemical plant that burned for three days and briefly emitted cancer-causing benzene into the air brought their coughs, headaches and other symptoms to a mobile clinic on Friday set up by local health officials.
While some of the symptoms people complained of are consistent with exposure to chemicals, health officials said they treated a wide variety of ailments, including the anxiety that comes with living near an industrial accident.
"The community is literally right next door to the plant," said Les Becker, director of operations for Harris County Public Health, at the clinic which was set up near the site of the blaze. "It’s natural and normal to be afraid.”
The blaze from 11 burning fuel tanks at Mitsui unit Intercontinental Terminals Co, which began on Monday, sent up a plume of black smoke that obscured part of the sky until it was put out on Wednesday.
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On Thursday, however, residents of Deer Park and nearby Galena Park, both just east of Houston, were told to shelter in place for about eight hours after reports of high levels of benzene or other volatile organic compounds were detected. No injuries were reported.
The fire re-ignited on Friday, but was quickly put out.
One woman who came to the clinic, Marlene Beltran, 20, a University of Houston student, complained of headaches, dizziness and light-headedness.
“I’ve lived here for 13 years and it’s never been a concern, she said. "I always thought things were under control. This has never happened.”
A man who came to the clinic, Walter Levine, 53, a former truck driver, complained of headaches, coughing and nausea.
The American Cancer Society website says long-term exposure to benzene, a colorless chemical with a sweet odor, is known to cause cancer, in particular leukemia, as well as anemia and other blood ailments.Editors’ PicksA Deadly Blaze in the Alps Made a Biker a Hero and Tunnels Safer for AllA Handyman Asks: After Servicing a Home, Can I Get Paid to Service My Clients’ Other Needs?I Deleted Facebook Last Year. Here’s What Changed (and What Didn’t).
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Symptoms commonly associated with exposure to benzene and other chemicals include coughing, difficulty breathing, burning, headaches, nausea, dizziness and irritation to eyes, ears, nose and throat, Harris County Public Health spokeswoman Elizabeth Perez said.
She said officials were still analyzing patients' data.
"People came in for a wide variety of reasons," Perez said by telephone. "There were individuals who could have showed up because of some respiratory issues. But it didn't mean that it was because of this event.”
The mobile unit, one of nine that county officials use to provide free health services, was visited by 300 people in Deer Park on Thursday and 500 on Friday, officials said.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/03/22/us/22reuters-texas-energy-houston-health.html
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Our Crumbling Infrastructure is Failing Small Businesses
Mar 24, 2019 | The Hill - Opinion
By Ed Mortimer
Daniel Speer had a simple task: Visit three clients of his home remodeling company in and around Washington, D.C.
While conversations with each client averaged only 15-30 minutes, the total time invested in those three conversations totaled more than six hours, due to traffic, poor road conditions and aging infrastructure — challenge that affect Speer’s business operations every day.
Multiply that inefficiency by the 50 trucks in Speer’s fleet, and it’s easy to see why he says that the state of infrastructure today “makes it difficult to do business.”
Speer’s frustrations are a microcosm of challenges felt by small businesses across the United States, according to results of the most recent MetLife & U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Index.
The survey was conducted among 1,001 small business owners in all 50 states. For the first time, the survey asked small-business owners about their views on American infrastructure, including highways, roads, railroads, ports, communications, and Internet infrastructure.
The input was not good.Most American small businesses see local transportation as average at best, and many consider it downright poor.About half of small businesses worry that U.S. infrastructure is falling behind competing nations, at a time when they consider such infrastructure as strategically critical to their business operations.Small-business owners consider improvements to local transportation systems (local roads, highways, bridges and mass transit) as more important for success than national transportation systems like airports, railroads and ports, and harbors.
When America developed its transportation infrastructure in the 1900s, it was the envy of the world. Now, much of it has reached the end of its lifespan — and without action from the federal government, we will continue to Band-Aid an antiquated system. All this while other countries, including China, India and Spain, are adding modern, 21st century infrastructure.
This infrastructure will incorporate new, emerging technologies such as 5G, sensors, autonomous vehicles, and drones. These technologies will help link delivery systems, ports, rails, highways, and public transportation in new, unique ways. In turn, this cutting-edge infrastructure will attract highly-skilled millennial workers into valuable and rewarding jobs worldwide.
So, what should be a priority?
In the index, small-business owners had a few ideas on where policymakers could focus, prioritizing local roads as needing the most improvement (69 percent), followed by highways (44 percent), bridges (30 percent), and mass transit (25 percent). And across the board, small business owners also see improving high-speed Internet as a clear priority.
Many others have confirmed what Speer and small businesses nationwide know about the state of American infrastructure. In its “2017 Infrastructure Report Card,” the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation’s infrastructure a D+, with the transit sector earning a miserable D-. ASCE estimates that failing to close the infrastructure gap will cost the U.S. economy $7 trillion by 2025.
If we do nothing, we’ll lose trillions of dollars without ever breaking ground. But those dollars, those missed opportunities and those lost jobs never make it into a government end-of-year report, or a business balance sheet, or a Small Business Index. They are truly lost: things that could have been if our infrastructure had only been up to snuff.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There are solutions. And though some of these solutions must come from the private sector or state governments, the federal government should help.
The U.S. Chamber believes one way the federal government can help is by enacting an infrastructure modernization plan. Just like Dwight Eisenhower developed the interstate highway system, we need to develop a vision for a 21st century infrastructure — one that enables all American businesses to compete and win in an increasingly high-tech, globalized economy. Every year we delay making these investments, small businesses will suffer due to lost productivity, and the eventual cost to modernize will only grow.
To solve this problem, the U.S. Chamber has put forward four key recommendations for rebuilding America’s infrastructure:modestly increase the federal motor vehicle fuel user fee;facilitate greater public and private investment;streamline America’s permitting process; andtake steps to address the skilled-worker shortage.
This is not a partisan issue. These are common-sense solutions we can work on together to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. It’s also a great opportunity to show those outside Washington we can still work together to solve one of the nation’s most pressing problems.
The status quo simply won’t work. American’s small businesses have enough to do, and they’re looking to us for a solution. It’s up to us to take the next step and make a 21st century infrastructure a reality.
Let’s get to work.
Ed Mortimer is vice president of transportation and infrastructure policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/435344-our-crumbling-infrastructure-is-failing-small-businesses
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Child Care is Infrastructure. We Should Treat it That Way
Mar 25, 2019 | Roll Call
By Linda K. Smith and Sarah Tracey
Millions of American parents dropped their children off at a child care facility this morning. Chances are many of those facilities don’t meet basic health and safety standards. Though we know the quality of a facility, whether a formal center or a family home care site, is directly linked to a child’s development and well-being, we also know most places are far from optimal.
This is yet another way America’s child care system is failing families today.
Recent findings have been dire. A series of surveys conducted in 2013 and 2014 by the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general found that 96 percent of child care programs inspected across 10 states had at least one potentially hazardous condition, such as broken or unlocked gates, water damage, or chemicals within reach of children.
In Massachusetts, a statewide study commissioned by the Children’s Investment Fund found excessive levels of carbon dioxide in child care facilities as well as insufficient ventilation systems and furnishings containing formaldehyde. Moreover, 80 percent of programs lacked classroom sinks, which can negatively affect children’s hygienic practices and infection control. Exposure to lead and other toxins has detrimental impacts on young children, yet only eight states and New York City require child care facilities to test their drinking water for lead.
Working parents, already faced with the challenges of finding and paying for high-quality child care, are frequently forced to accept a poor-quality facility because it’s the only option they have. One parent told us during a recent meeting that dropping her children off at a child care center is like “bungee jumping.” She’s right: for many, it is a leap of faith.
The country is finally having a serious conversation about how best to care for children during their first five years before they enter school. What is missing from that conversation, however, is an acknowledgement of the abysmal conditions of many of our child care facilities and a commitment to fixing the problem. Parents should be able to leave their children in child care with the understanding that they are in safe and healthy learning environments that support their development — and this is just not happening.
Luckily for these families, some states are starting to recognize the link between quality of facilities and quality of care. The Preschool Development Birth Through Five grant competition is one new opportunity for states to consider the needs of early learning programs — including facilities — to improve overall quality in their state. Over half of states address early learning facilities in their grant applications, and eight — Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire, New York and Oregon — indicate that they will specifically assess facility-related needs through the 2019 grant funding.
As these states begin to identify problems with child care infrastructure, the time to raise federal awareness of the need for increased investments in child care facilities is now. The issue is especially relevant as discussions of the need to strengthen the nation’s aging infrastructure take place. Child care is an essential part of communities, allowing parents to participate in the labor force and supporting economic growth. In fact, the Committee for Economic Development found that in 2016 the child care industry in the United States produced revenue totaling $47.2 billion, with additional spillover revenue of $52.1 billion in other industries.
The Bipartisan Policy Center, working with more than 40 stakeholders across multiple sectors, developed the Early Learning Facilities Policy Framework. This framework identifies several principles that should guide policy and investments in child care facilities, including the critical importance of child care facilities to communities themselves and the national economy.
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Congress must recognize that investments in child care facilities are investments in the nation’s infrastructure. To support children’s development, child care facilities need to move beyond the bare minimum — beyond “good enough” — and focus on components that can help children thrive.
The evidence is clear: child care programs across the country are facing a problem. Providers, especially those who run small center-based programs or family child care, do not have the financial resources to update, rehabilitate or expand their facilities. Furthermore, the profit margin for most child care programs is minimal at best, leaving very little room for providers to take on debt.
To move beyond the culture of low expectations, child care providers need more support. As Congress considers the entirety of the educational system from birth to post-college training, it should consider the physical assets that underlie that system. Just as our bridges and roads are crumbling, so too are our child care options. Child care facilities are a vital part of America’s communities. Let’s stop ignoring them.
Linda K. Smith is director of BPC’s Early Childhood Initiative and was a key architect of the military child care system.
Sarah Tracey is a senior policy analyst at BPC.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/opinion/child-care-facilities-infrastructure
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Colorado Aims for Paris Climate Goals With Bill to Cut Emissions (1)
Mar 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tripp Baltz
Colorado would have to cut its greenhouse gas emissions significantly by 2050 in line with goals set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement under legislation the state’s lawmakers will consider.
The bill (H.B. 1261), with House Speaker KC Becker (D) as its chief sponsor, would set statewide goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, at least 50 percent by 2030, and 90 percent by 2050.
“Climate change is real. It’s happening. And we have a moral and economic imperative to act now,” Becker said March 21 when introducing the bill in the state General Assembly.
The bill would direct the state’s Air Quality Control Commission to promulgate rules to reduce multi-sector greenhouse emissions, to provide incentives for renewable energy development, and to establish ways to track emissions sources. The bill would put the Colorado’s carbon reduction goals into law and direct the state to work with industry on the rulemaking.
Neither Becker nor Shelby Wieman, spokeswoman for Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D), returned Bloomberg Environment’s calls on whether the governor supports the bill.
Democrats in Colorado have identified climate change as a top policy priority, and they hold majorities in both chambers of the state General Assembly.
“We can cut carbon pollution and create good-paying jobs at the same time,” said Rep. Dominique Jackson (D), chair of the House Energy and Environment committee, where the bill will get its first hearing.
(Updates with more reporting beginning in the fourth paragraph. )
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/colorado-aims-for-paris-climate-goals-with-bill-to-cut-emissions-1
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BGOV Bill Summary: S. J. Res. 8, Green New Deal
Mar 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Adam M. Taylor
The U.S. would achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions within 10 years under S. J. Res 8.
The measure, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), outlines the “Green New Deal,” a reference to climate change and the post-Depression policies of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The text of the measure credits federal efforts during World War II and the New Deal with creating “the greatest middle class that the United States has ever seen,” but says that many communities were excluded from those benefits.
Despite introducing it, McConnell opposes the resolution. Its language was drawn from nonbinding resolutions (H.Res. 109, S. Res. 59) introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
“This dangerous fantasy would burn through the American people’s money before it even got off the launch pad,” McConnell said March 13.
McConnell introduced the joint resolution using procedures to bypass committee consideration and force a vote to put Green New Deal supporters on the record. Senate Democrats have opposed the move, and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called on Democrats to vote “present,” Bloomberg News reported.
“By calling for this cynical vote, Republicans want to block the public hearings,” Markey said in a Feb. 14 news release.
“They want to block this historic debate and continue to deny the science of climate change,” he added.
Green New DealThe resolution would establish as policy that the U.S. has a duty to meet five core goals:Achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a transition fair to all.“Create millions of good, high-wage jobs” and ensure economic security for all.Invest in sustainable industry and infrastructure.Secure clean air and water, climate resiliency, healthy food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment for future generations.Promote justice and equity by ending and undoing the effects of discrimination against marginalized groups, including indigenous peoples, communities of color, deindustrialized and depopulated communities, the poor, women, the elderly and the young, persons experiencing homelessness, and those with disabilities.
The measure would lay out several policies to achieve the goals, including by meeting all U.S. demand for electricity with “clean, renewable, and zero-emission” sources. Other policies include:Investments to build resiliency against climate change.Rebuilding infrastructure to eliminate pollution and guarantee access to clean water.Upgrading the energy and water efficiency of every building in the country and promoting distributed and “smart” power grids.Collaborating with farmers and ranchers to decarbonize the agricultural sector. Overhauling the transportation sector through investments in public transit, high-speed rail, and zero-emission infrastructure and manufacturing.Enforcing labor and environmental protections in trade rules, procurement standards, and border adjustments to keep jobs in the U.S.Removing greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere through “proven low-tech solutions” such as land preservation and creating new forests on treeless land.Promoting international adoption of similar policies through exchange of technology, expertise, and funding.
The resolution would also call for providing everyone in the U.S. with health care, housing, and economic security.
It includes provisions to support the creation of a jobs guarantee with “family-sustaining” wages and benefits, strengthened collective bargaining rights, and increased protections against “unfair competition and domination by domestic or international monopolies.”
Climate BackgroundThe largest focus of the resolution is preventing and counteracting climate change, which it calls a direct threat to U.S. national security.
The resolution’s findings cite conclusions from an October 2018 United Nations report and a November 2018 federal climate assessment that human activity is the dominant cause of climate change. The reports said that major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and achieving global net-zero emissions by 2050 will be required to prevent global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels, which scientists say would have devastating effects.
The resolution calls for “massive growth in clean manufacturing in the United States and removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing and industry as much as technologically feasible.”
The resolution doesn’t include an outright ban on fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, which remain the largest source of electric power generation, though it would call for deriving 100 percent of U.S. power from “clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.”
Omitting a fossil-fuel ban could make the proposal more acceptable to labor unions and Democratic presidential candidates, Bloomberg News reported, though unions connected to the energy sector have been skeptical of the resolution (see below).
Regulating CarbonStrategies to regulate emissions through a cap-and-trade regime or a carbon tax aren’t mentioned in the resolution.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the cap-and-trade bill the House passed in 2009 (H.R. 2454 in the 111th Congress), when Democrats last controlled the chamber, could be the starting point for climate legislation this year. Under that framework, limits on greenhouse gas emissions would be imposed and a market for permits to exceed them would be created.
While Pelosi hasn’t endorsed the specifics of the Green New Deal, she praised its “enthusiasm.”
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) introduced a bill (H.R. 763) this year to impose a price on carbon emissions, which would be paid to the government and rebated to households. That measure had 20 Democrats and one Republican as cosponsors as of March 21.
Carbon fee-and-dividend, also called tax-and-dividend, programs are widely supported by economists as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Bloomberg News reported.
Read More: The Green New Deal & Climate Legislation: BGOV OnPoint.
Economic ProvisionsThe resolution’s findings describe several “related crises” in the U.S., including declining life expectancy, wage stagnation, erosion of workers’ bargaining power, and income inequality. It states that climate change and other environmental degradation have exacerbated existing “systemic injustices” that disproportionately affect vulnerable and marginalized groups.
It would call for prioritizing programs to target economic, social, and environmental benefits in marginalized and deindustrialized communities that might otherwise be negatively affected during the process of decarbonizing the economy.
It would also call for providing everyone in the U.S. with high-quality health care, affordable housing, and economic security.
The resolution wouldn’t define specific programs that would achieve its goals. For instance, it doesn’t specify the means by which Congress should ensure all Americans have health-care coverage — whether through expansion of the Affordable Care Act or through a variant of “Medicare for All,” or by some other means.
Several Democrats have discussed proposals under the “Medicare for All” name, though there isn’t agreement on a particular plan or definition. Some proposals would expand Medicare coverage to include anyone 50 or older, or allow anyone under 65 to enroll in the program by paying a premium, while others would create a single-payer health-care system similar to Canada or the United Kingdom.
More: ‘Medicare for All’ to Revamp Health Care: BGOV Closer Look
Environmental Groups SupportiveClimate advocacy and progressive groups including Sierra Club, the Sunrise Movement, Center for American Progress, and Indivisible SUPPORT pursuing a Green New Deal.
“America has a choice to make: We can come together to create high-quality jobs in the industries of the future, protect our communities from extreme weather and economic damage, and build a better and more equitable country for our children and grandchildren—or we can stick our heads in the sand,” Neera Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, said in a Feb. 7 news release.
Markey’s office has compiled a list of additional supporters here.
Several Democratic Presidential Candidates on BoardSeveral Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential election are SUPPORTING the resolution as cosponsors, including Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand(D-N.Y.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Unions SplitLabor groups SUPPORTING the Green New Deal include the Service Employees International Union and National Nurses United, Bloomberg Law reported.
“This is an opportunity to tackle economic inequality, re-industrialize America with a green economy, with jobs that, with the right training, can provide career ladders for many low-wage workers who struggle to afford the high cost of living,” Hector Figuero, president of 32BJ SEIU, a union for property service workers, said in a news release from Markey’s office. “For the first time, our elected officials recognize that our climate and economic crises are both intertwined and can only be solved with bold and effective government action.”
Those service-sector unions, largely based in coastal metropolitan areas, are “more likely to have members that are in the neighborhoods that are devastated by climate change and extreme climate events,” Todd Vachon, a researcher with the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations told Bloomberg Law.
The energy committee of the AFL-CIO, an umbrella group comprising dozens of unions, OPPOSES the resolution. “It is not rooted in an engineering-based approach and makes promises that are not achievable or realistic,” according to a letter signed by ten unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO including United Mine Workers of America, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and United Steelworkers.
The letter highlighted the unions’ support for addressing climate change, increasing investment to reduce carbon emissions and make buildings and communities more resilient, and promoting greater labor rights. However, “we will not accept proposals that could cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families,” they wrote.
Green Energy Companies CautiousSolar and wind power companies haven’t endorsed the Green New Deal, citing its feasibility as well as political concerns, Reuters reported.
“If you just broadly endorse the Green New Deal, you are liable to upset one side of the aisle or the other. And that’s not constructive,” Tom Werner, CEO of solar firm SunPower Corp., said.
“We love the enthusiasm the Green New Deal has brought to the climate issue,” Dan Whitten, the Solar Energy Industries Association’s vice president of public affairs, said in the report. “But we need to operate in political reality.”
Business Groups, Conservatives OpposedThose OPPOSED to increasing federal investment to counter climate change and pursue other goals in the resolution include the American Enterprise Institute and U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
“This is not some run-of-the-mill progressive policy — it is a Trojan Horse for socialism,” wrote Thomas J. Donohue, president and CEO of the Chamber, in a post on the group’s website.
American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Mike Sommers said the proposal is “not realistic at all in terms of what our future energy needs are going to be.”
Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, expressed “serious concerns about the potential adverse economic and employment impacts of” the policies falling under the Green New Deal during his opening remarks at a Feb. 6 Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee hearing.
“The Green New Deal, just like proposals for free college or Medicaid for All, is nothing but an empty promise that leaves American taxpayers on the hook,” Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said.
Previous ActionMcConnell introduced S. J. Res. 8 on Feb. 13. He moved to limit debate on his motion to proceed to the measure March 14.
Markey introduced S. Res. 59 on Feb. 7 with 10 Democrats and Sanders, who caucuses with the Democrats. Ocasio-Cortez introduced H. Res. 109 the same day and it had 90 Democrats as cosponsors as of March 21.
ProspectsThe Senate could hold the procedural vote on S. J. Res. 8, which would require the support of 60 senators, as soon as the week of March 25.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/bgov-bill-summary-s-j-res-8-green-new-deal
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