Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 04/04/19
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(ACC Mentioned) The ABCs and PACs of Campaign Finance
Apr 3, 2019 | San Diego CityBEAT
By Matt Strabone
From Duke Cunningham to Duncan Hunter, San Diego is no stranger to the vagaries of federal campaign finance laws. -
Democrats See Yawning Gap Between Wheeler's Goals, FY20 Budget
Apr 3, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
Capitol Hill Democrats are pressuring EPA chief Andrew Wheeler to reconcile what they argue are yawning discrepancies in his generic support for greater environmental protections and the agency's fiscal year 2020 budget request -- which seeks significant cuts -- and other activities that threaten to undercut such protections. -
Committee Approves Plan to Reverse Cuts at EPA, Other Agencies
Apr 4, 2019 | E&E Daily
By George Cahlink
Billions of dollars could flow to the Interior and Energy departments, as well as EPA, reversing spending cuts proposed by the Trump administration under a plan backed yesterday by Democrats on the House Budget Committee. -
EPA Suspends Health Hazard Assessments for 10 Chemicals (1)
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
The EPA is suspending work on its assessments of the potential adverse health effects of human exposure to 10 chemicals, including ammonia and formaldehyde. -
EPA Enforcing Health Advisory for Fluorinated Chemicals: Wheeler
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
The EPA is enforcing an advisory level for two ubiquitous chemicals contaminating drinking water across the country, Administrator Andrew Wheeler said April 3. -
Toxicity Study of Chemours’ GenX Expected by Year’s End, EPA Says
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid and Sylvia Carignan
The EPA plans to complete a study by the end of 2019 assessing the toxicity of GenX, a contaminant that has been found in some of North Carolina’s waterways, an agency official said April 3. -
Bi-Partisan Group of Senators Introduce PFAS Action Act
Apr 4, 2019 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
On Friday, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation (S.638) to classify fluorinated chemicals (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as “PFAS”) as hazardous substances under the Superfund law (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act or CERCLA). -
Mich. Democrats to Introduce PFAS Legislation
Apr 4, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Courtney Columbus
Rep. Dan Kildee and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, both Michigan Democrats, are planning to revive legislation to help veterans address health problems caused by exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. -
Maine Proposes Designating PFOS a Priority Chemical
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection has proposed designating perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) a priority chemical under the state’s Toxic Chemicals in Children’s Products law. -
EPA to Release Draft Plan for Methylmercury IRIS Assessment
Apr 4, 2019 | Inside EPA
EPA is slated to release its draft assessment plan for its pending Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment of the human health risks of exposure to methylmercury, providing an update to a 2001 analysis that became the center of a lengthy struggle between EPA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over advice to pregnant women on eating fish. -
EU Proposes Data Check for All Chemicals Above One Tonne by 2027
Apr 3, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
Echa and the European Commission are developing a plan that could see the agency screen data for all REACH registered substances above one tonne by 2027. -
Canada Sets Ministerial Conditions for Paint Ingredient
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
The Canadian government has imposed a ministerial condition on a chemical used in paints and coatings: iron(1+), chloro[dimethyl 9,9- dihydroxy- 3-methyl-2,4-di(2-pyridinyl-κN)-7-[(2-pyridinyl- κN)methyl]- 3,7-diazabicyclo[3.3.1]nonane-1,5-dicarboxylate- κN3, κN7]-, chloride (1:1). -
(ACC Mentioned) Shell's Lobbying Exit — a 'Warning Shot' or Political Play?
Apr 4, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Timothy Cama and Kelsey Brugger
Royal Dutch Shell PLC's high-profile departure from the petroleum refining industry's top lobbying association could embolden more companies to leave groups that they don't think are progressive enough on climate change. -
Colorado Passes Sweeping Overhaul of Oil and Gas Regulations
Apr 4, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Catherine Traywick
Colorado’s legislature passed a sweeping overhaul of the state’s oil and natural gas laws, giving local governments more power to regulate drilling in one of the nation’s top crude-producing regions. -
Apex Wins Dismissal of Colonial Pipeline Spill Claims
Apr 4, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Steven M. Sellers
Apex Companies LLC isn’t liable on landowner claims that a spill from a Colonial Pipeline Co. booster station damaged their properties, a federal court in North Carolina ruled. -
Vatican Is Said to Invite Big Oil Back for Climate Change Talks
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Kelly Gilblom, Chiara Albanese, and John Follain
The Vatican has invited Big Oil bosses for the second time in a year as part of Pope Francis’s campaign to counter climate change, according to people familiar with the plan. -
Some Frack-Sand Miners, Facing Excess Supply, Seek New Markets
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Wethe
For the last six years, Kevin Bowen has made good money selling sand to shale frackers who use it for drilling. It was hard not to. The industry has been booming in the oil fields of West Texas. -
EPA to Ease Air Limits for Alaska Diesel Generators
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith and Amena H. Saiyid
The EPA will issue a rule in June relaxing air pollution standards for diesel generators in remote areas of Alaska, Administrator Andrew Wheeler told senators. -
Mexico’s Gas Dependence on US Pushes Politicians to Consider Fracking
Apr 3, 2019 | Platts
By Marcela Duenas
Mexico’s new president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, has said there will be no fracking during his six-year term, igniting a debate about Mexico’s energy security amid rising gas consumption. -
U.S. LNG to China Will Increase Despite Trade Tension: Cheniere
Apr 4, 2019 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By David Stanway and Meng Meng
Shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States to China will increase over the long term despite ongoing trade tensions, senior executives of Cheniere Energy, the biggest U.S. exporter of the super-chilled fuel, told Reuters. -
Panel Backs Cancellation of Russian Gas Pipeline
Apr 4, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Geof Koss
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday passed a resolution calling for the cancellation of the Russian-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline, adding to growing pressure on President Trump regarding the project. -
Fatal Explosion at Houston Chemical Plant Draws Federal Probe
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
Federal investigators will probe a Houston-area chemical plant where one worker was killed and two were injured in an April 2 fire and explosion. -
The Houston Area Has Had Two Chemical Plant Fires In Two Weeks. Why Do They Keep Happening?
Apr 4, 2019 | Pacific Standard
By Leah Dunlevy
On Tuesday, a fire erupted at a KMCO chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, killing one worker and leaving two others injured. -
Company Will Keep Using Toxic Chemical at Wisconsin Refinery
Apr 3, 2019 | AP (In The New York Times)
Husky Energy says it will invest more than $400 million to rebuild its oil refinery in Superior, Wisconsin, and continue its use of a highly toxic chemical that raised fears in the community of 27,000 after an explosion at the refinery last April. -
Hunting for Clues in Hacking's Cold Cases
Apr 4, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
As employees at nuclear power plants operated by Entergy Corp. showed up for work on a Tuesday morning in February 2018, they got a strange warning: Don't turn on your computers. -
A New Voice for Commuter Rail
Apr 4, 2019 | Railway Age
By William C. Vantuono
“Commuter rail,” says Metra CEO and Executive Director Jim Derwinski, “needs a distinct voice.” -
Paris Climate Bill to Get Vote in Early May, House Chairman Says
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
House leaders are pushing to bring the first Democratic climate legislation of this Congress to the floor in the first week of May, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said April 3. -
Air Quality Panels Cut Because They Took Too Long, EPA Head Says
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith and Amena H. Saiyid
The slow pace of panels of outside scientists charged with helping EPA evaluate air quality standards was hampering the agency’s ability to meet its deadlines, EPA head Andrew Wheeler said April 3. -
States Focus on Chemicals Linked to Warming When Feds Won't
Apr 4, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Storrow
States are stepping up efforts to regulate a group of potent greenhouse gases used in air conditioners, refrigerators and insulating foams. -
Cleveland Meets EPA Particle Pollution Air Quality Standards (1)
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alex Ebert and Amena H. Saiyid
Cleveland’s air is cleaner now, the head of EPA asserted April 3. -
Climate Program Being Revamped, Not Cut, Interior Says (1)
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Lee
The Trump administration is “realigning and restructuring” its climate change research centers, but is not looking to close them down, an Interior Department official told Congress April 3. -
EPA Plans Second Wave Of NSR Revisions In Coming Guidance Memos
Apr 3, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA air policy chief Bill Wehrum is planning a second wave of changes to the new source review (NSR) air permitting program to ease industry compliance, based mostly on non-binding guidance, before the end of President Donald Trump’s current term, according to a top agency air official. -
Pipeline Firm Urges Justices To Decline Suit On Timing Of CWA 401 Reviews
Apr 3, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Lara Beaven
A natural gas pipeline company is urging the Supreme Court to reject a petition from environmentalists to clarify when states' Clean Water Act (CWA) section 401 certifications for natural gas pipelines are final and subject to judicial review, arguing there is no split between and among federal appellate courts on the issue as the petitioners had argued.
Industry and Association News
TSCA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) The ABCs and PACs of Campaign Finance
Apr 3, 2019 | San Diego CityBEAT
By Matt Strabone
From Duke Cunningham to Duncan Hunter, San Diego is no stranger to the vagaries of federal campaign finance laws. Reforming those laws is an idea that seems to work its way back into our national conversation when there’s an election and especially around the time the presidential campaigns begin in earnest. This time is no different thanks in part to a viral video courtesy of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
There is a real sense that fixing the system is something we should study closely. Still, debate clips and soundbites don’t always make for a robust discussion, and there remains a great deal of mystery around the quirks of campaign finance and its impact on our democratic process.
What is campaign finance? How does it work?
In the United States, candidates for elected office must raise money to fund their campaigns. This money pays for hiring staff and conducting polls, as well things like running advertisements on television or other media. The framework within which candidates raise money is supposed to be relatively straightforward: U.S. citizens are able, as individuals, to donate to campaigns of their choosing with a monetary limit of $2,800 per federal campaign. Each campaign must also disclose the identity of its donors for all to see.
The reality, however, is unfortunately nowhere near as simple. Exceptions and workarounds abound, some with questionable but otherwise unenforced legality, like Super PACs and dark money. The end result is an open spigot that allows money to flow into elections from places seen and unseen, leaving at best a convoluted mess of a paper trail that can be impossible for anyone to follow.
What is Citizens United? What are Super PACs? What’s dark money?
Citizens United itself is a conservative nonprofit organization, but the name is most commonly used as a shorthand for a series of Supreme Court cases that dismantled a number of restrictions on expenditures in elections. The upshot of these cases is that there are currently no limitations on how much an individual, corporation, or nonprofit can spend independently on an election, and their holdings rest on two questionable legal premises: that the act of spending money is protected as free speech, and that corporations have the same free speech rights as citizens.
These cases are also responsible for creating the two most common vehicles for those unlimited expenditures. First, there’s what is popularly referred to as a Super PAC. Super PACs are simply pass-through entities that allow any person, corporation, nonprofit, union or other group (perhaps even a hostile foreign power) to raise and spend limitless amounts of money on elections.
Still, Super PACs do face certain limited restrictions. The most important restriction is that Super PACs are forbidden from coordinating their activities with a candidate or that candidate’s official campaign. Money spent by a Super PAC is called an “independent expenditure” for this reason. Thus, a Super PAC is free to spend an unlimited sum to ensure that their preferred candidate is elected but, again, the Super PAC cannot privately engage in any planning or strategizing with that candidate (or campaign staffers) regarding how to spend all that money, nor can the Super PAC simply donate any money directly to the candidate’s official campaign.
Another requirement that Super PACs must meet involves disclosure of their donors. Hypothetically speaking, Acme Corporation can start and fund a Super PAC to spend money in favor of a candidate, but the Super PAC must then file periodic reports with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) showing where its money comes from (in this case, Acme Corporation) and in what amounts. The transparency requirement is the least-worst aspect of Super PACs, but even this has been corrupted by advent of dark money.
“Dark money” refers to the other common vehicle used for unlimited expenditures in elections. These are nonprofits organized under the federal tax code that are officially classified as social welfare organizations and trade associations. These nonprofits can also raise unlimited sums of money but, unlike Super PACs, they do not have to disclose any donor information. There are certain limited circumstances under which dark money nonprofits have to make disclosures to the FEC, but these are rarely enforced, almost never followed, and often bypassed by other means. For instance, a dark money nonprofit can donate directly to a Super PAC and then have the Super PACs make the expenditure. The identities of the donors to the dark money nonprofit thus remaining secret while huge sums of untraceable money get passed around and spent on elections.
Let’s get out of the hypothetical realm, though, and talk about how this can impact your life. One terrifying example is how dark money searches out ways to make the air we breathe and the water we drink a little less clean. The American Chemistry Council (ACC) might sound like a group put together by lab chemists as an excuse to party at an annual convention but in reality, it’s a dark money nonprofit funded by and represents the interests of corporations with ties to the chemicals and plastics business including large multinationals like ExxonMobil and Procter & Gamble. ACC has spent millions (some of it traceable—perhaps they need better lawyers) on U.S. Senate elections and appears to have exacted a price from its beneficiaries via legislation that’s good for their bottom line, and bad for the environment and our overall health.
One such beneficiary has been Joe Manchin, the Democratic candidate who won West Virginia’s open U.S. Senate seat in 2010. Manchin’s campaign was aided by ACC’s first known foray into election spending, in the form of a pro-Manchin television commercial. Once elected, Senator Manchin did not forget ACC’s generosity; early in his first term, he provided the only Democratic support for an otherwise Republican-backed amendment that would have banned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gases under the authority of the Clean Air Act. After his successful re-election—also supported by ACC—Manchin co-sponsored legislation that would have prevented states from enacting more rigorous regulations than the federal government with the respect to the use and disposal of toxic chemicals puts into place, undoing stricter rules already in place in states like California.
Another recipient of ACC’s bounty is Joni Ernst, a Republican who won Iowa’s vacant U.S. Senate seat in 2014. As it had for Manchin’s campaign, ACC took to the airwaves in support of Ernst, and she then proceeded to introduce a resolution to block a new clean water regulation that would have expanded the federal government’s ability to restrict pollution in a broader set of waterways. Lest anyone worry that a vetoed resolution was the extent of her dedication, Ernst later responded to a presidential veto of the resolution by declaring, “I remain committed to identifying new ways to push back against” the proposed new clean water rule.
Why does any of this matter?
As noted above, individuals can only contribute up to $2,800 to a federal candidate’s campaign. That may seem like a consequential sum, but next to the untold millions of secret donors, it’s a drop in the bucket. All of this money dilutes the impact of individual contributions and worse, creates an implied obligation on the part of our elected officials. Once a candidate is elected to Congress, a lobbyist for corporate donors can reveal that the candidate’s victory was thanks in part to that large dark-money independent expenditure. That candidate—now an elected official—might think twice before voting on certain legislation in a way that could upset the corporate donors.
This isn’t a great way to run a democracy. Thankfully, an alternative has been proposed: the U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would bring significant changes to the way we conduct elections, including requiring dark money organizations to disclose their donors and offering candidates 6-to-1 matching funds for each small donation of $200 or less (this would, for example, turn a $25 donation into a $175 one). This is a good start but the bill appears doomed to fail in the U.S. Senate and would surely be vetoed by the current president if it were to pass.
Even more sweeping changes, like moving to a system of strictly publicly-funded campaigns that forbade campaign contributions and independent expenditures, would eliminate the potentially nefarious influence of corporations and special interests on our elections. But this can’t become a reality without a constitutional amendment—which in today’s polarized America is unlikely—or a change in the composition of the Supreme Court that would reverse its previous rulings and declare that money is not speech.
Changes to campaign finance since 2010 have caused Super PACs, dark money nonprofits and their unrestrained political spending to bloom like a red tide. If our democracy is to work, we as voters must move beyond a talking-point understanding of the problem to track how these structures are affecting our society. If we don’t, the voice of the average person will continue to be drowned out amidst the crashing wave of independent expenditures — and the will of the people will continue to go unheard.
Matt Strabone is an ethics, nonprofit, and election attorney and the host of “Show In Progress with Matt Strabone,” a podcast presented by San Diego CityBeat that returns soon.
http://sdcitybeat.com/news-and-opinion/opinion/the-abcs-and-pacs-of-campaign-finance/
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Democrats See Yawning Gap Between Wheeler's Goals, FY20 Budget
Apr 3, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
Capitol Hill Democrats are pressuring EPA chief Andrew Wheeler to reconcile what they argue are yawning discrepancies in his generic support for greater environmental protections and the agency's fiscal year 2020 budget request -- which seeks significant cuts -- and other activities that threaten to undercut such protections.
The effort suggests Democrats in both chambers are trying to ramp up oversight of EPA's deregulatory agenda while also raising the political price of the Trump administration's continued calls to deeply slash EPA's budget -- even as Congress is widely expected for the third straight year to largely resist the administration's proposed funding cuts.
Yet it is not clear whether and how Congress in a final FY20 spending bill would ultimately push back against the administration's deregulatory agenda and a continuing decline in EPA staffing levels in the Trump era.
Wheeler at recent hearings before House and Senate appropriations committees claimed the agency is making progress on air, water, toxics and waste issues, despite the FY20 proposal's call to slash agency funding by 31 percent from current levels.
For example, he told the April 2 hearing of the House Appropriations Interior subcommittee that water issues are “the largest and most immediate environmental and public health issues affecting the world right now.”
Wheeler touted ongoing work at the agency including a new federal action plan to reduce childhood lead exposures as well as an FY20 request for $50 million to create a Healthy Schools Grant Program to minimize children's exposure to air and water pollutants in schools.
Democrats, however, questioned such commitments to water quality by citing Trump's proposed FY20 EPA cuts in other areas, including a proposed cut to state water investment funds by 30 percent, proposed cuts to regional water quality programs, and the proposal's omission of the threat that climate change poses to water suppliers.
“Actions speak louder than words,” said Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA), citing proposed cuts to the Puget Sound and other regional water programs, and alleged inaction on perfluorinated substances (PFAS) in drinking water.
President Donald Trump recently backpedaled from the budget's proposed 90 percent cut to Great Lakes funding, and Wheeler said that the agency was discussing with the White House budget office a possible supplemental request on the issue.
During an April 3 proceeding, Senate Appropriations Interior panel ranking member Tom Udall (D-NM) said it is inappropriate to cherry pick regional programs to receive funding -- including in states critical to Trump's re-election.
“I just don't like the idea of playing favorites,” he said.
More broadly, Udall said he is “relieved that your predecessor is no longer dominating the news cycle with daily scandal,” but he said he doesn't “see much of a change in terms of policy.”
He then ticked off a list of issues that contrast with Wheeler's pro-environment message, including lagging EPA enforcement numbers, scaling back of greenhouse gas rules, a recent consumer ban on methylene chloride but continues to allow workplace uses, and sharp proposed budget cuts including an over 40 percent reduction in research funding and proposed cuts to water infrastructure.
During the House session, Appropriations Interior panel Chairwoman Betty McCollum (D-MN) also slammed the FY20 proposal, arguing that “EPA's under staffing and misguided policy priorities mean that the agency is failing to deliver the basic protections for human health and the environment that the American people expect.”
'Policy Priorities'
Both hearings underscore Democrats' continued discontent with the White House's calls to drastically cut EPA's budget, even as lawmakers of both parties continue to largely spurn such requests.
“Budgets are statements of policy priorities. And proposing cuts of this terrible degree show us in clear print that what this administration is about. Industry comes before public health and environmental protection,” Udall said.
Climate change -- and Trump's de-prioritization of the issue -- remained a central element of Democratic queries during the budget hearing.
“If you want to be taken seriously” as an agency that believes in science, “you would not disappear the climate change website,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) told Wheeler, noting in particular outdated climate “indicators” that the Trump EPA has yet to update since the Obama administration. The comment drew a commitment from Wheeler to look into the issue.
During the House hearing, Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) strongly criticized EPA's proposal to freeze vehicle GHG standards at MY20 levels. “To say that I am concerned about this shortsighted action is an understatement,” she said.
In response to climate-related questions at both hearings, Wheeler downplayed the differences in actual GHG emissions that would occur between the Trump administration's rollbacks and the current Obama-era rules.
The two hearings also allowed lawmakers to press Wheeler on numerous other issues that they say conflict with the Trump administration's claim to support environmental protections, including enforcement trends.
“I know the administration's party line responses that it is focusing on compliance of problems rather than after-the-fact [enforcement], but the numbers don't tell that story,” Udall said, citing EPA data showing that its 10,600 inspections in 2018 were the lowest number in a decade.
Wheeler noted that such data reflects increasing reliance on states -- and a focus on “tons” of pollution reduced.
But Udall questioned how such reliance works given ongoing proposals to slash state funding, and he demanded metrics from Wheeler that show the promised enforcement is continuing.
On air rules, Democrats in both chambers also grilled Wheeler on the agency's move to scuttle a Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) panel on particulate matter and not move forward with a planned ozone subcommittee.
“I am worried about the fact that science is being replaced by political science,” Van Hollen said.
Wheeler responded that the move was motivated by CASAC and EPA repeatedly missing the statutorily required five-year deadline for reviewing national ambient air quality standards, and that the subcommittees are not required by statute.
Toxics, Workforce
Perhaps the most bipartisan pushback at the hearings was on EPA's plans to address PFAS, with Senate Appropriations Interior panel Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) prodding Wheeler for “some estimate” of the timeline for listing PFAS compounds as hazardous.
In response, Wheeler offered assurances that EPA is still enforcing its health advisory of 70 parts per trillion even as it crafts its hazardous waste and groundwater approaches to PFAS while also looking to include the substances in its Toxic Release Inventory.
Sen. John Tester (D-MT), however, pressed Wheeler for an outright ban on such substances. “Why aren't we banning the cause? . . . The point is it is much easier to do preventative medicine than it is to do post.”
Other queries related to toxics included questions at the House hearing by Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) on why Illinois -- rather than EPA -- was the first to shut down a facility in the state emitting cancer-causing ethylene oxide. “The cancer risks were extraordinary, and you still let [Illinois EPA] do the heavy work.”
Wheeler indicated that EPA provided extensive data to the state and that the agency also has to ensure that its actions can hold up in court.
EPA's declining workforce also surfaced at both the budget proceedings, with Wheeler at one point during the Senate hearing acknowledging a major challenge due to the fact that numerous senior staff are eligible to retire over the next five years. Wheeler also noted agency staff have been leaving the agency's Toxic Substances Control Act program as fast as they can be hired.
But Udall and other Democrats call such arguments inconsistent with the Trump administration's budget, which calls for a further reduction of 1,800 staffers across the agency, as part of what the critics see as a strategy to weaken the agency long term both at headquarters and in EPA's regions, despite relatively steady funding from Congress.
“Labor economists have been predicting Baby Boomer retirement effects for decades. Your agency has simply failed to plan and prepare and deal with the staffing deficit,” Udall said. “You promised us you are going to be on top of it, and you have failed on that front.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/democrats-see-yawning-gap-between-wheelers-goals-fy20-budget
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Committee Approves Plan to Reverse Cuts at EPA, Other Agencies
Apr 4, 2019 | E&E Daily
By George Cahlink
Billions of dollars could flow to the Interior and Energy departments, as well as EPA, reversing spending cuts proposed by the Trump administration under a plan backed yesterday by Democrats on the House Budget Committee.
The committee approved legislation 19-17, squarely along party lines, that would raise discretionary spending caps for fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2021, which the White House has used to justify deep domestic cuts.
The measure would do so by lifting funding restraints that were originally put in place by the 2011 Budget Control Act. The bill could be on the House floor as early as next week.
Budget Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) said the plan would stop "extreme cuts from being implemented, helps prevent another government shutdown, gets us past the distraction and politics of the 2020 elections, and achieves stability and responsible governing in the face of recklessness."
Arkansas Rep. Steve Womack, the panel's top Republican, countered that the Democrats' measure ignores rising federal debt, fails to include budget offsets and does not contain any input from GOP lawmakers or the White House.
He said he, too, favors raising the caps, but only "gradually," with a focus on more military spending and mandatory spending restraints.
Several Republican amendments to raise defense spending and freeze domestic spending were rejected by the committee.
The final legislation would set nondefense spending for fiscal 2020 at $631 billion, a 5.7% increase over current spending, and $646 billion for fiscal 2021. Defense spending would be set at $664 billion for fiscal 2020, a 2.6% increase over current spending, and $680 billion for fiscal 2021.
Additionally, defense accounts would be boosted by $69 billion over two years via increases to the Overseas Contingency Operations account, a Pentagon fund used for paying war costs that does not count against budget caps.
Democrats said if the caps are not increased, they would be required by law to cut $125 billion, or 10%, in fiscal 2020 from current spending levels or face automatic reductions, known as sequester.
They also argued the increases are largely equal — a term referred to as "parity" on Capitol Hill — between defense and nondefense accounts when measured against the proposed spending caps.
The legislation only sets overall spending levels, and it would still be up to House leaders to allocate the specific dollar amounts for the 12 annual appropriations bills that fund agencies.
EPA, which is marked for a more than 30% cut under Trump's budget, and Energy and Interior, which face more modest fiscal 2020 reductions, would likely benefit from any increase in domestic spending.
Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), chairwoman of the House Interior-EPA Appropriations Subcommittee, said earlier this week she would seek a "significant bump" for fiscal 2020, a request that could be granted under the proposed domestic spending increase.
But the House Democrats' plan marks only their opening bid in what are expected to be long, tough negotiations with Senate Republicans and the White House regarding final, fiscal 2020 spending.
The Senate GOP unveiled its own fiscal 2020 budget last week. It would keep spending caps in place but included a provision that would allow them to be raised if a bipartisan spending deal is struck.
The White House has said repeatedly it would only support an increase in defense caps.
House Democrats opted to set the spending caps rather than write a full fiscal 2020 budget resolution, which would lay out more detailed funding and revenue goals for the next decade.
Yarmuth conceded that splits in the party over spending priorities, including the Green New Deal, made it too difficult to round up the 218 votes that would have been needed to adopt a budget by the full House.
Womack said the "failure to adopt a budget is a failure to govern," while Yarmuth noted that the GOP, too, had been unable to pass a full 10-year budget when it held the majority.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2019/04/04/stories/1060142387
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EPA Suspends Health Hazard Assessments for 10 Chemicals (1)
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
The EPA is suspending work on its assessments of the potential adverse health effects of human exposure to 10 chemicals, including ammonia and formaldehyde.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Integrated Risk Information System program, also known as IRIS, is shifting its focus away from 10 chemicals to focus its limited resources on other assessments, the agency said.
The agency announced April 2 it will suspend its assessments of ammonia, chloroform, ethylbenzene, formaldehyde, manganese, naphthalene, nitrite, nitrate, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon mixtures, and uranium. The agency is instead shifting its focus toward chemicals of growing concern on the national stage, including poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
In many cases, the agency was re-assessing the chemicals as a result of updated research or to focus on other potential health effects. Without the re-assessments, regulators may rely on information from assessments the agency created in the 1980s or 1990s.
“I think it’s very disappointing,” said Melanie Benesh, legislative attorney for the Environmental Working Group. In the case of the formaldehyde assessment, which has been in progress for decades, the suspension will further delay the release of its findings, she said.
“Communities that have concerns about these chemicals are not going to get answers as quickly as they would like to,” she said.
‘May Be Restarted’The assessments “have been suspended but may be restarted,” according to the agency’s outlook.
State and federal regulators use the IRIS program’s assessments with exposure information to set standards and regulations on air and water pollution, chemicals, and contaminated sites.
The Styrene Information & Research Center, whose members include companies that manufacture or process styrene, commented last year on the EPA’s plan to assess ethylbenzene, which is used to make styrene. Styrene itself can be used to make rubber, latex, and resins, and people are generally exposed to it through inhalation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Jack Snyder, the center’s former executive director, said in 2017 that the EPA’s previous assessment of ethylbenzene was still protective of public health, and didn’t need to be updated. The EPA last assessed the health effects of ethylbenzene in 1984.
The center “continues to believe an IRIS review of ethylbenzene is unwarranted based on the extensive existing data and regulations,” a statement from the center’s spokeswoman said.
(Added comment from Melanie Benesh in fifth and sixth paragraphs.)
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/epa-suspends-health-hazard-assessments-for-10-chemicals-1
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EPA Enforcing Health Advisory for Fluorinated Chemicals: Wheeler
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
The EPA is enforcing an advisory level for two ubiquitous chemicals contaminating drinking water across the country, Administrator Andrew Wheeler said April 3.
The Environmental Protection Agency has come under fire from local, state, and federal lawmakers for not acting quickly to set enforceable limits on poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS, in drinking water.
The PFAS family includes thousands of chemicals, including PFOA (perfluorooctanoate) and PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate). They have been used to manufacture nonstick and stain-resistant coatings in clothing, fast-food wrappers, carpets, and other consumer and industrial products.The EPA advises not consuming more than 70 parts per trillion of PFOA and PFOS in drinking water over one’s lifetime, as established in its 2016 advisory.
“We are enforcing our health advisory of 70 parts per trillion,” Wheeler said in a hearing on EPA’s budget held by the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Interior-EPA panel. “We’ve taken, I believe, eight enforcement actions along with the states.”
The EPA didn’t immediately respond to a question from Bloomberg Environment on where or when those enforcement actions were taken.
Advisory Levels Considered GuidanceThe agency is gauging whether to set an enforceable limit on those chemicals, and a House bill introduced in January (H.R. 535) calls for designating them as hazardous substances under federal law.
Under current EPA policy, health advisory levels are considered to be guidance, and “not to be construed as legally enforceable federal standards.”
Despite that policy, the EPA uses its authority, “including enforcement tools, when appropriate,” to address exposure to PFAS, an agency spokesperson told Bloomberg Environment April 3.
In the meantime, the EPA’s enforcement efforts may include issuing orders to parties responsible for contamination to get the contaminants removed or mitigated.
PFAS compounds may cause adverse health effects at sufficient levels of exposure, including developmental harm to fetuses, testicular and kidney cancer, liver damage, immune system or thyroid effects, and changes in cholesterol, according to the EPA.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/epa-enforcing-health-advisory-for-fluorinated-chemicals-wheeler
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Toxicity Study of Chemours’ GenX Expected by Year’s End, EPA Says
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid and Sylvia Carignan
The EPA plans to complete a study by the end of 2019 assessing the toxicity of GenX, a contaminant that has been found in some of North Carolina’s waterways, an agency official said April 3.
And the agency has started laying the groundwork for developing water quality criteria to protect human health and aquatic life from perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), Deborah Nagle, director of EPA’s Office of Science and Technology within the Office of Water, told a gathering of drinking water and wastewater officials.
PFOA and PFOS are part of a family of toxic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
GenX, was developed by the Chemours Co. to replace PFOA. These compounds are used to make stain-resistant coatings for carpets, rain gear, fast food wrappers, and frying pans.
GenX Action PlanThe Environmental Protection Agency develops national recommended water quality criteria that states can adopt as water quality standards to protect their rivers, lakes, and streams.
The agency’s intentions to assess GenX and develop criteria were spelled out in its Feb. 14 action plan to address the widespread contamination from PFAS chemicals.
North Carolina has found evidence that air emissions from Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility were causing widespread contamination of the state’s waterways, including the Cape Fear River.
PFAS compounds may cause adverse health effects at sufficient levels of exposure, including developmental harm to fetuses, testicular and kidney cancer, liver damage, immune system or thyroid effects, and changes in cholesterol, according to the EPA.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/toxicity-study-of-chemours-genx-expected-by-years-end-epa-says
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Bi-Partisan Group of Senators Introduce PFAS Action Act
Apr 4, 2019 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
On Friday, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation (S.638) to classify fluorinated chemicals (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as “PFAS”) as hazardous substances under the Superfund law (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act or CERCLA). This would prompt requirements to report environmental releases of the chemicals and clean up contaminated sites, and it would allow the government to sue polluters to recover cleanup costs.
The PFAS Action Act was introduced by Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Gary Peters (R-Mich.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).
In response, Safer Chemicals Healthy Families Director Liz Hitchcock issued the following statement:
“Communities across the U.S. are suffering because of PFAS chemical contamination. We applaud the bipartisan group of senators led by Senators Carper and Capito who introduced this critical legislation. We look forward to working with them as they take this important first step toward addressing this public health crisis. The strong co-sponsorship of the bills shows recognition that PFAS pollution is a non-partisan problem that needs a bipartisan solution.”
https://saferchemicals.org/newsroom/bi-partisan-group-of-senators-introduce-pfas-action-act/
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Mich. Democrats to Introduce PFAS Legislation
Apr 4, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Courtney Columbus
Rep. Dan Kildee and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, both Michigan Democrats, are planning to revive legislation to help veterans address health problems caused by exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
The bill, called the "Veterans Exposed to Toxic PFAS Act," would require the Department of Veterans Affairs to pay for treatment of health conditions caused by exposure to PFAS for veterans and affected family members.
PFAS are found in firefighting foam used by the military. They are also used in a wide range of other industrial and consumer products, including nonstick cookware.
There are roughly 5,000 chemicals in the PFAS family, and some have been linked to health problems such as certain cancers.
Stabenow and Kildee also introduced the legislation last year. Numerous PFAS-contaminated sites have been identified in Michigan, causing concern about drinking water quality.
Last month, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) ordered the state's Department of Environmental Quality to come up with drinking water standards for PFAS, saying the state could no longer wait for the federal government to develop regulations (E&E News PM, March 26).
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2019/04/04/stories/1060142207
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Maine Proposes Designating PFOS a Priority Chemical
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection has proposed designating perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) a priority chemical under the state’s Toxic Chemicals in Children’s Products law.
If finalised, this would require manufacturers of children’s products, toys, furniture and food containers containing intentionally added amounts of PFOS to report certain information to the state.
According to the draft proposal, PFOS meets priority chemical criteria because it has been found to be present in the human body, in household dust and indoor air, and in products used in the home, such as some clothing with water repellency.
Priority chemicals already regulated under Maine’s Safer Chemicals in Children’s Products Rule are:bisphenol A (BPA);the flame retardants decabromodiphenyl ether (decaBDE) and hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD);the phthalates di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP) and diethyl phthalate (DEP);formaldehyde;nonylphenol and nonylphenol ethoxylates (NP/NPE);cadmium;mercury; andarsenic.
Comments on the PFOS draft rule chapter will be accepted until 6 May.
https://chemicalwatch.com/75925/maine-proposes-designating-pfos-a-priority-chemical
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EPA to Release Draft Plan for Methylmercury IRIS Assessment
Apr 4, 2019 | Inside EPA
EPA is slated to release its draft assessment plan for its pending Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment of the human health risks of exposure to methylmercury, providing an update to a 2001 analysis that became the center of a lengthy struggle between EPA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over advice to pregnant women on eating fish.
The document, scheduled for release April 4, will include “information on the scoping needs identified by EPA program and regional offices and the IRIS Program’s initial problem formulation activities. Specifically, the assessment plan outlines the objectives for each assessment and the type of evidence considered most pertinent to address the scoping needs,” according to a Federal Register notice scheduled for publication April 4.
The document's release will kick off a 30-day comment period.
The notice also announces a May 15 public webinar to discuss methylmercury and the pending assessment.
The planned update of the 2001 assessment follows the EPA Inspector General's (IG) publication of a report nearly two years ago that recommended EPA review whether it should reassess methylmercury risks, update the agency's risk communication advice for fish advisories for states and tribes, and improve approaches for developing and communicating the advice.
Methylmercury is one of “various forms” of mercury -- a potent neurotoxin children are particularly susceptible to -- “and people are exposed to each in different ways,” according to EPA's webpage on mercury. “The most common way people in the U.S. are exposed to mercury is by eating fish containing methylmercury.”
The IG's report followed the release of EPA and FDA's joint advisory on fish consumption for women of child-bearing age and children in the final days of the Obama administration.
The long-delayed advice was an update to an advisory the agencies crafted in the early 2000s, and had been sought by numerous stakeholders. For the first time, the joint advisory set a floor for fish consumption of eight ounces per week, and also categorized fish species into three groups based on levels of in them.
Some critics of the 2017 advice objected to its reliance on the 2001 methylmercury IRIS assessment, and the reference dose (RfD) therein, calling it outdated for using the years-old RfD as its basis rather than a controversial modeling approach FDA proposed in 2009. The FDA model attempted to consider both the methylmercury risks of exposure to these sensitive populations and the benefits of fish oils and proteins to the developing fetus. Mercury and fish oils are shown to have negative and positive impacts on the same health endpoint, the neurodevelopmental system.
In the April 2017 report, IG indicates that EPA would complete by the end of December 2018 an assessment of whether the methylmercury RfD should be updated.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-release-draft-plan-methylmercury-iris-assessment
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EU Proposes Data Check for All Chemicals Above One Tonne by 2027
Apr 3, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
Echa and the European Commission are developing a plan that could see the agency screen data for all REACH registered substances above one tonne by 2027.
Speaking at Chemical Watch’s Global Business Summit last week in Brussels, Echa’s executive director Bjorn Hansen said the plan "will look at hazard data and ensure that this is sufficient – meaning the minimum requirements under REACH – for all substances on the European market above one tonne."
The action plan, which will be finalised and published in June, was discussed at Echa’s first 2019 Management Board meeting last week. When complete, it will be put to EU member states and industry.
On the proposed 2027 deadline, Mr Hansen said the work will not stop there. "After 2027, there will still be lots to do because, of course, there are lots of chemicals that enter the market. We will continue our work but it will be less intensive."
In a statement to Chemical Watch this week, Echa’s Management Board chair, Sharon McGuinness, said the board welcomed Echa's and the Commission's plan to "improve REACH registration dossier compliance and quality".
"This initiative is necessary in light of the findings of the Refit evaluation and Echa’s previous communications regarding non-compliance with information requirements provided in its annual evaluation reports and reports on the operation of REACH.
"The details of this action plan are still to be finalised and the Management Board will be looking forward to learning more about all elements in due course," she said.
For the REACH 2018 deadline, the number of submitted registrations covered 11,114 substances in the 1 to 100 tonnes per year tonnage band. Overall, the number of all registered substances under REACH is 22,257.
This week, Echa said it has asked national enforcement authorities (NEAs) from EU member states and EEA states to tackle non-compliance around REACH evaluation decisions as a priority. From 1 January Echa started to extend decisions concerning these checks to all registrants, and not just the lead registrant, of a substance.Industry action
Yesterday, the European Chemical Industry Council, Cefic, announced that it is developing an action plan to "effectively and efficiently address data gaps in REACH dossiers".
"We are looking into the exact reasons as to why, despite the industry’s efforts to provide the necessary data, the evaluation done by Echa and national authorities has found shortcomings in many dossiers," said Cefic.
The organisation says it is "cooperating with Echa to identify those areas where data is missing".
It says a preliminary analysis suggests that, for example, many registrants were expected to better justify the use of alternatives to testing chemicals on animals.
When finalised and agreed with Echa, the plan will be published on Cefic's website.
This article was amended on 4 April to say that Echa and the Commission are proposing to screen data, not evaluate the data.
https://chemicalwatch.com/75917/eu-proposes-data-check-for-all-chemicals-above-one-tonne-by-2027
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Canada Sets Ministerial Conditions for Paint Ingredient
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
The Canadian government has imposed a ministerial condition on a chemical used in paints and coatings: iron(1+), chloro[dimethyl 9,9- dihydroxy- 3-methyl-2,4-di(2-pyridinyl-κN)-7-[(2-pyridinyl- κN)methyl]- 3,7-diazabicyclo[3.3.1]nonane-1,5-dicarboxylate- κN3, κN7]-, chloride (1:1).
The government suspects the substance is toxic or capable of becoming so, as laid out in section 64 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 (Cepa).
The conditions will only permit its use in paints and coatings if:the concentration of the substance is 100ppm or less;the paint or coating uses a waterboard or alcohol-based solvent system; andthe paint or coating is not intended for use by children younger than 18.
The government's notice also set out certain record keeping and transfer of possession requirements for the substance’s use.
The conditions entered into force on 13 March.
https://chemicalwatch.com/75922/canada-sets-ministerial-conditions-for-paint-ingredient
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(ACC Mentioned) Shell's Lobbying Exit — a 'Warning Shot' or Political Play?
Apr 4, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Timothy Cama and Kelsey Brugger
Royal Dutch Shell PLC's high-profile departure from the petroleum refining industry's top lobbying association could embolden more companies to leave groups that they don't think are progressive enough on climate change.
In a report this week, Shell cited "material misalignment" between itself and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers on climate, citing the group's lobbying or silence in areas like vehicle fuel efficiency, carbon pricing and methane emissions.
It served as a reminder that big business groups like the American Petroleum Institute, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers have hundreds of members, many of whom favor more aggressive climate policies and openly disagree with the associations' lobbying.
Shell's exit from AFPM — and its warning to other groups that they have "some misalignment" on climate change — could usher in new departures or force associations to better accommodate their more climate-focused members, analysts say.
"Shell is not alone in assessing what associations it wants to be a member of given their evolving position on climate change," said Alex Flint, executive director of the Alliance for Market Solutions, a conservative group that backs a carbon price.
One veteran of trade associations in the energy space said other groups like API and NAM likely heard Shell's breakup with AFPM as a warning to listen more to members or be left in the dust.
"This is a shot across the bow, for sure. Shell has fired a warning shot," the person said. "You can be sure that some of the other associations are watching this very closely."
Big, international oil companies like Exxon Mobil Corp., Total SA and BP PLC have been some of the most outspoken members of major business associations in terms of climate change policy.
Many want the United States to impose taxes on carbon dioxide emissions and are supporting initiatives like the Climate Leadership Council to make their voices heard.
"Over the course of the last several years, there has been a clear shift and growing momentum among corporations for a carbon fee program as the primary way to address climate change," said Greg Bertelsen, vice president of the CLC, which aims to get Republican officials on board with a plan to impose carbon taxes and refund them to taxpayers. "We continue to add companies that are lining up in support of a carbon dividend program."
Big oil companies see carbon taxes as a way to boost demand for natural gas, while providing consistent accounting across the many countries where they operate.
But major Washington, D.C.-based business groups have thus far resisted.
AFPM, for example, issued a statement last year backing a congressional resolution that claimed a national carbon tax would be disastrous to the U.S. economy. The group argued, among other things, a price on carbon emissions would "disproportionately impact middle- and low-income families" (Climatewire, Sept. 26, 2018).
The Chamber of Commerce opposes the Paris Agreement on climate change, though it has stated that it sees climate as a major problem. API opposes the Obama administration's methane rule for oil and gas drillers, along with numerous other greenhouse gas policies.'Purely political reasons'
Shell's exit from AFPM came from a report the company wrote looking at its association memberships and how they align with its climate policies. That was prompted by increasing calls from institutional investors, including pension funds, to stop lobbying against efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Edward Collins, the lead researcher for climate lobbying at the United Kingdom-based InfluenceMap, said that increasing efforts to make lobbying more transparent will inevitably lead more companies to exit associations that don't align with their views.
"These trade groups, especially the ones that are being highlighted in these reports, are some of the most powerful oppositional forces on development of rigorous climate change policy," said Collins, who researched the issue extensively.
"This concern around lobbying and companies' disclosures around it has become more mainstream," he said.
Shell is not the first company to leave an association over climate. A handful of companies, like Apple Inc. and PG&E Corp., left the Chamber of Commerce in 2009 over climate, while numerous companies like Exxon Mobil, Ford Motor Co. and Google LLC have cut ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council, often directly citing climate.
But Shell is the first oil major to leave AFPM.
Some of the groups on Shell's warning list defended their climate policies but didn't seem worried that they'd lose members.
"We support efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions," an American Chemistry Council spokeswoman said.
"ACC's Sustainability Principles include a commitment to achieving measurable reductions in GHG emissions in the manufacture and distribution of our products. Since 1992, the GHG intensity (pounds of CO2-equivalent emitted per pound of production) of ACC members has fallen by 24 percent," the spokeswoman said.
API said it "is proud of its work to create world class safety and sustainability standards for the entire natural gas and oil supply chain and advocate on behalf of our broad membership for smart local, state and federal policies — ranging from tax to trade, regulatory, access and more — to meet Americans' demands for energy with affordable, reliable and ever cleaner energy."
"We are proud to continue to serve Shell and all our member companies on behalf of the American public and consumers," a spokesperson said.
None of the organizations supports putting a price on carbon emissions, a contrast with many oil majors.
But some doubt that Shell's departure was any real indicator of how oil companies feel about their associations.
"This was a decision made in Europe at the Netherlands headquarters. It was not made in North America," said Stephen Brown, an energy industry consultant.
"And it was made for purely political reasons. They are bowing to the institutional investment community. That's all this is," said Brown.
Brown pointed out that diversified energy companies like Shell and BP are much more equipped to handle climate policies than the refiners that AFPM represents, since they sell natural gas.
"It's a very easy give for an Exxon Mobil or a BP to say, 'We need to transition to natural gas.' Guess who's holding all that natural gas?" he said.
Frank Maisano, a consultant at the law and lobbying firm Bracewell LLP and veteran of energy policy battles, downplayed any overarching message from Shell's AFPM exit.
"Enviros, shareholder activists and others always like to try and split industry. Many times, companies are doing what is in their best specific interest at the time or pleasing other political, policy or public constituencies," he said.
"Most industry trade groups work on myriad issues for their member companies," Maisano said. "Like any family, they aren't always fully aligned on every policy, but always strive to reach consensus positions on policies that are in the best interest of that specific industry, as well as the communities and consumers that rely on them."
Mike McKenna, a Republican energy lobbyist, said Shell might even go back to AFPM.
"This kind of thing happens from time to time," he said. "Then after a while everyone recalibrates. Then they rejoin the associations."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/stories/1060142545/search?keyword=%22american+chemistry+council%22
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Colorado Passes Sweeping Overhaul of Oil and Gas Regulations
Apr 4, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Catherine Traywick
Colorado’s legislature passed a sweeping overhaul of the state’s oil and natural gas laws, giving local governments more power to regulate drilling in one of the nation’s top crude-producing regions.
The bill now heads to the desk of Democratic Governor Jared Polis, a longstanding proponent of tightening public health and safety standards around oil and gas development. The reforms passed Wednesday come as Colorado pumps record volumes of crude, primarily from the Denver-Julesburg basin situated on the outskirts of Denver.
Under the measure, explorers such as Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Noble Energy Inc. could face new levels of oversight from local governments, which would be able to regulate the siting of surface infrastructure and impose other rules around drilling. The legislation also shifts the focus of the state’s energy regulator from fostering oil and gas development to protecting public health, safety and the environment.
The shale boom has vaulted Colorado to the nation’s No. 5 oil producer, ahead of both Alaska and California in crude output. But proximity of oil and gas development to Denver’s suburbs has raised concerns about health and safety, especially after an Anadarko gas line explosion in 2017 killed two people and leveled a home.
While the legislation passed Wednesday would change the way drilling is permitted—and was vehemently opposed by the oil and gas industry—it could alleviate some public concern around development, according to Washington-based Height Securities.
It “would restore investor certainty by stabilizing the volatile politics in ‘Not In My Backyard’ communities along the Front Range,” analysts at Height said in a note last week. “By addressing local issues related to health, safety, and nuisance, Colorado officials can ease the tension between industry and residents.“
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/colorado-passes-sweeping-overhaul-of-oil-and-gas-regulations
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Apex Wins Dismissal of Colonial Pipeline Spill Claims
Apr 4, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Steven M. Sellers
Apex Companies LLC isn’t liable on landowner claims that a spill from a Colonial Pipeline Co. booster station damaged their properties, a federal court in North Carolina ruled.
Colonial hired Apex to perform limited remedial and excavation activities at the site in Lexington, N.C., and it wasn’t apparent that any of these activities, such as sampling soil, would cause a risk of harm to Jackie Braswell, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina said April 2. Nor was it evident that Apex failed to exercise ordinary care, the court said.
The decision granted a dismissal to Rockville, Md.-based Apex.
The plaintiffs sued both Colonial and Apex in the wake of a 500-gallon spill of fluid from a failed hydraulic line at the booster station, which serves an underground petroleum pipeline that stretches from Texas to New Jersey.
The 2013 spill exposed the plaintiffs and their properties to hazardous gases and tar-like chemical pollutants that damaged their properties, the complaint states.
Apex was hired by Colonial to conduct a site assessment and excavate the spill area.
Even if Apex owed a duty to the landowners as a contractor for Colonial, Braswell set forth only “conclusory and vague” allegations of what Apex did wrong, or how its activities affected the plaintiffs, the court said.
Judge N.C. Tilley Jr. wrote the opinion.
Wallace & Graham PA represented the plaintiffs. Ragsdale Liggett PLLC represented Apex. Alston & Bird LLP represented Colonial.
The case is Braswell v. Colonial Pipeline Co., 2019 BL 116404, M.D.N.C., No. 18-cv-00580, 4/2/19.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/apex-wins-dismissal-of-colonial-pipeline-spill-claims
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Vatican Is Said to Invite Big Oil Back for Climate Change Talks
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Kelly Gilblom, Chiara Albanese, and John Follain
The Vatican has invited Big Oil bosses for the second time in a year as part of Pope Francis’s campaign to counter climate change, according to people familiar with the plan.
Top executives from BP Plc and Eni SpA are among those invited to attend a two-day meeting from June 13, the people said, asking not to be identified before a formal announcement. The officials could meet the Pope on the second day, they said.
Chief executive officers of Exxon Mobil Corp., Eni and BP, along with asset manager BlackRock Inc.’s Larry Fink, attended a similar meeting last year, in which they agreed the world needed to transition to lower-carbon fuels while ensuring adequate supply. Since then, little progress has been made on some of the key points agreed at that meeting, such as carbon pricing.
The Pope’s spokesman declined to comment when asked about this year’s meeting.
The interest of Pope Francis, who has made climate change a cornerstone of his papacy, adds to the pressure companies are already facing on emissions. Royal Dutch Shell Plc gave in to demands from investors last year to set short-term climate targets, while BP has said it will disclose more information about the alignment of its business model with the Paris accord. Exxon Mobil has successfully blocked a measure from investors on climate change.
In its strategy update last month, Eni said it will plant 20 million acres of forest in Africa to help offset all carbon dioxide emissions from its oil and gas exploration and production operations by the end of the next decade.
The Pope said in an encyclical letter in 2015 that the science around the topic is clear and that the Catholic Church should view it as a moral issue. The Vatican, which has diplomatic relations with over 180 countries and has permanent observer status at the United Nations, has also fervently backed the Paris climate agreement.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/vatican-is-said-to-invite-big-oil-back-for-climate-change-talks
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Some Frack-Sand Miners, Facing Excess Supply, Seek New Markets
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Wethe
For the last six years, Kevin Bowen has made good money selling sand to shale frackers who use it for drilling. It was hard not to. The industry has been booming in the oil fields of West Texas.
But today the U.S. frack-sand industry is swimming in an excess of supply that has battered prices and cut the stocks of frack sand miners by more than 70 percent in the last two years. So Bowen’s Shale Support LLC, based in Mississippi, is doing something he thought would never happen: selling sand outside of the U.S. -- and reaping a 20 percent bump in profit. The first shipment, 25,000 tons worth, pulled into a port in Bahia Blanca, Argentina last month after a 22-day sea odyssey from New Orleans, and he’s still amazed that Argentina would look past its own sand.
“I thought, certainly there’s got to be sand closer that’s good enough quality,” he said. “I think the answer is: ‘Right now, no.”’
The source of the oversupply is easy to trace. In the last couple of years, entrepreneurs opened dozens of sand mines throughout the U.S., particularly in the red-hot Permian Basin oil patch of West Texas and New Mexico, rivaling the original capital of U.S. frack-sand mining in northwestern Wisconsin. Production surged 50 percent. Now, for every grain of sand that explorers need to prop open a tiny crack in their oil-soaked rock, miners have roughly two grains to offer them.
That’s depressed the industry even as shale production continues to shatter records. Some sand companies in Texas and around the U.S. have shut down quarries. Both U.S. Silica Holdings Inc. and Covia Holdings Corp. have started to tout their market diversity, selling sand to industries such as construction and automotive. Some Wisconsin mines are struggling to stay open. Hi-Crush Partners, which has mines in Wisconsin and was the first to open one in West Texas, has seen its stock fall by 77 percent since the end of 2016.
“If we didn’t have the West Texas mines, the U.S. would be under-supplied with sand,” said Scott Forbes, who watches the sand market for industry consultant Wood Mackenzie.
The search for new markets like Argentina marks another strange twist for the sand industry. When fracking took off a decade ago in Texas, drillers naturally turned to Wisconsin, its epicenter. Along with water and chemicals, sand is pumped underground to release trapped hydrocarbons.Oil Plunge
But in 2014, the price of oil plunged. Drillers rushed to the West Texas area to pump shale oil, the cheapest method to extract the fuel. Looking to cut costs further, drillers came to the conclusion there was no need to ship sand 1,300 miles by rail from Wisconsin. Plenty of it existed in West Texas, even if its size or shape wasn’t as efficient as Wisconsin’s in getting oil out of shale. The cost saving was dramatic: Shipping from Wisconsin came to about $90 per ton, triple the $25 or so to truck sand in Texas.A pile of sand sits at a facility in Barron, Wisconsin.Photographer: Rachel Woolf/Bloomberg
But the frenzied sand expansion has brought the inevitable bust. The price of West Texas sand is expected to drop almost 20 percent to about $30 a ton compared with last year, according to Rystad Energy AS. Covia, the second-biggest frack-sand miner, has idled 7 million tons, the most by any one company tracked by Evercore ISI.
U.S. Silica, the current king of frack sand in terms of market size, estimated in February that as much as 20 percent of the 50 million tons of northern sand needs to get shut down. Its stock is down about 70 percent since the end of 2016.
“Some of that capacity is just kind of companies and mines that are sort of hanging on by their fingernails at this point,” U.S. Silica Chief Executive Bryan Shinn told analysts on a conference call at the time.Vaca Muerta
Meanwhile, as sand prices and competition grew, Kevin Bowen looked for a new market. He found it in Argentina, where the country is trying to boost production at the Vaca Muerta field in Patagonia, one of the world’s largest shale plays that remains largely untapped.
He expects to get paid about $240 a ton for his sand, far more than the $50 a ton that U.S. oil companies are paying in the Permian Basin. It even exceeds the $170 per ton drillers are paying to get sand from mines in Argentina. That’s because U.S. sand is of better quality and, besides, Argentina’s mines can’t satisfy the demand.
Bowen said he has no intention of abandoning the U.S. shale business, which remains the biggest user of any kind of sand. But he needed a way to broaden his base of customers.
“The American market is going to be cyclical up and down,” Bowen said. “Argentina definitely offers the opportunity to flatten some of those up and down cycles.”
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/some-frack-sand-miners-facing-excess-supply-seek-new-markets
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EPA to Ease Air Limits for Alaska Diesel Generators
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith and Amena H. Saiyid
The EPA will issue a rule in June relaxing air pollution standards for diesel generators in remote areas of Alaska, Administrator Andrew Wheeler told senators.
“We are working to provide regulatory relief” and plan to remove so-called tier 4 air pollution requirements for operators of diesel generators in those areas, Wheeler said in response to questions from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) during an April 3 budget hearing.
The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to release a notice of proposed rulemaking and direct final rule in June, Wheeler added.
Diesel generators emit air pollution such as nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbons. All are harmful to human health, according to the EPA.
Legislation on Same IssueThe EPA’s action would be consistent with legislation re-introduced in early January in the Senate by Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and in the House by Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska). That legislation would require the EPA to set standards for air particle pollution for diesel generators in Alaska built after 2014 that are less stringent than standards the EPA set in 2016.
The bill cleared the Senate environment committee in February. Last year, the legislation passed the Senate but didn’t clear the House.
The EPA’s 2016 standards required diesel generators to install a device to capture particle pollution.
Murkowski said that she and others in the Alaska delegation have asked the EPA to reexamine the 2016 standards.
“You know this issue very well in terms of the high cost of compliance to many of our small remote communities,” Murkowski told Wheeler.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/epa-to-ease-air-limits-for-alaska-diesel-generators
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Mexico’s Gas Dependence on US Pushes Politicians to Consider Fracking
Apr 3, 2019 | Platts
By Marcela Duenas
Mexico’s new president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, has said there will be no fracking during his six-year term, igniting a debate about Mexico’s energy security amid rising gas consumption. But mixed signals on the issue have emerged from elsewhere in the government.
So what is all the fuss about? Saying no to fracking will mean leaving more than half of Mexico’s total natural gas reserves in the ground. This could be risky for Mexico, since the country’s natural gas production has fallen dramatically in recent years, descending to 2.6-2.7 Bcf/d in 2018 from a historical high of 5.1 Bcf/d in 2010, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics.
The decline in production coincided with rising domestic gas consumption off the back of growing gas-fired power generation, new factories, and favorable gas prices in the US. This combination of factors has caused a rapid increase in natural gas imports from the US through pipelines and as LNG.
Mexico’s gas imports now account for more than 70% of total demand. Pipeline flows amounted to around 4.2-4.5 Bcf/d in 2018, but insufficient pipeline infrastructure amid surging demand has led Mexico to become the second-largest buyer of US LNG, taking around 19% of the overall LNG exports from the country.
This growing reliance on imported natural gas from the US is fueling a debate on self-sufficiency goals, and energy security. Mexico is one of the few countries in the world that depend on a single other state for gas imports. That leaves its energy supply heavily exposed to US export strategy. What would happen if the US decided to liquefy more of its natural gas and sell it to other countries that pay more than Mexico?
Fracking could yield significant domestic gas output, alleviating the country’s dependence on natural gas imports. The technique dramatically altered the US energy balance, taking it from a country heavily reliant on the Middle East for its energy needs, to an oil and gas powerhouse. Oil production in 2018 reached around 11 billion b/d, and natural gas production reached 16.86 Tcf in 2017, a 39% increase over the last decade, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Furthermore, the US hydrocarbon bonanza has helped reduce energy prices, saving consumers billions of dollars and spurring economic growth.
In Mexico, fracking has been used for more than half a century, and has been applied to about one in five conventional oil and gas wells, according to former energy secretary, Pedro Joaquin Coldwell. This year, there were plans to start applying the technique in unconventional basins. However, AMLO cancelled a bidding round scheduled for February 2019, which involved nine unconventional onshore blocks.
Without the use of fracking for shale gas extraction, hydrocarbon production will depend on the country’s conventional basins. According to the National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH), more than 50% of Mexico’s gas reserves are in non-conventional resources, and the only way to extract them is by hydraulic fracturing.Click to enlarge
Furthermore, Mexico ranks sixth worldwide in volume of unconventional resources. It is estimated that the hydrocarbons contained in shale across all the oil provinces of the country are equivalent to 4.1 times the total historical production of oil and gas of the mega deposit Cantarell, according to Coldwell.
But despite AMLO’s blunt fracking ban, there is a twist: Pemex, the state oil and gas company, contemplates investing in fracking in its 2019 budget, devoting about Mexican Peso 3.8 billion to evaluating multiple areas with oil and shale gas. Additionally, the Energy Secretary, Rocio Nahle, mentioned in early 2019 that this government will use fracking, though she was careful to emphasize that she was not advocating a free-for-all. Strict conditions would apply, she said, including the use of the most modern and environmentally-friendly technology.
Furthermore, in February, CNH approved Pemex’s plan to test shale potential in up to eight exploratory natural gas wells in northwest Veracruz. This suggests the new administration has no clear position on fracking, and it is watching to see what happens with the exploratory wells to inform its next steps.
Politics aside, there are other obstacles to producing shale gas in Mexico. Firstly, there are the environmental concerns about water use, air and groundwater pollution and earthquakes that have drawn opposition to fracking in Mexico just as they have in other countries including the US.
There are also challenges more specific to Mexico, of land holding and mineral rights; a lack of knowledge on unconventional resource geology; a small service industry; a poor regulatory framework; lack of pipelines; and security issues.
Meanwhile, given the efficiency and abundance of US shale gas plays, and the resulting low prices, Mexico faces stiff competition in its bid to develop domestic resources. Given a green light for fracking, would Mexico be able to emulate US efficiency? To promote the production of natural gas in unconventional reservoirs, at least in early stages, the government would need to implement a comprehensive program including incentives and tax breaks, as was done in the US in the 1980s.
To frack or not to frack, is the dilemma that lingers. Either continue relying on the US to meet Mexico’s natural gas demand and let go of the country’s vast shale reserves, or start the exploitation of these deposits to attempt to reverse the significant fall of conventional deposits.
All oil and gas activities carry a risk, and what Mexico needs is to tighten regulation in all processes, not only for fracking, but also for traditional extraction, in order to reduce any possibility of damage to the environment. And before allowing or prohibiting fracking, there should be a deeper analysis and discussion that covers not only gas and oil output, but also the impact it might have on the petrochemical and electricity industry, employment, and national security.
https://blogs.platts.com/2019/04/03/mexico-us-gas-fracking/
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U.S. LNG to China Will Increase Despite Trade Tension: Cheniere
Apr 4, 2019 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By David Stanway and Meng Meng
Shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States to China will increase over the long term despite ongoing trade tensions, senior executives of Cheniere Energy, the biggest U.S. exporter of the super-chilled fuel, told Reuters.
"It's clear that the U.S. LNG trade with China is just beginning because U.S. LNG has just started," Cheniere Vice President Robert Fee told Reuters on the sidelines of the LNG2019 conference in Shanghai on Thursday.
"U.S. LNG to China will increase and that will happen organically. We are thinking long-term and Chinese demand is long-term."
Cheniere has delivered 62 cargoes of LNG to China since first starting exports from February 2016, Fee said.
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So far this year only three cargoes of U.S. LNG have been delivered into China, compared with 16 cargoes in the first quarter of last year, Refinitiv Eikon shiptracking data shows.
The United States and China started imposing tariffs on each other's goods in July last year, although talks are now underway to resolve the long-running trade dispute. As the spat heated up from mid-2018, China added LNG to its tariff list in August and imposed a 10-percent duty on LNG in September.
The United States is the world's fastest-growing exporter of LNG, while China is the fastest-growing importer as Beijing weans the country off coal to reduce pollution.
"We are very focused on China. We think this is a market that is extremely exciting to Cheniere," said Cheniere Chief Executive Jack Fusco.
"I believe with the infrastructure that the Chinese companies are investing in today, whether it be LNG storage or natural gas storage or more terminals, (it's) all positive and will help China have not such a volatile demand," Fusco said.
He added that China's coal-to-gas switch was just beginning and will be a big source of demand growth, and that the country's appetite for gas for power generation will also grow.
China's demand will be more than enough to absorb additional supply expected from Russia through the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline that is due to start up at the end of the year, Fusco also said.
Separately, Cheniere has delivered the first cargo from its newly commissioned Sabine Pass train 5 and is mulling its financing strategy for train 6, Fusco said.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/04/04/business/04reuters-shanghai-lng-conference-cheniere.html
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Panel Backs Cancellation of Russian Gas Pipeline
Apr 4, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Geof Koss
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday passed a resolution calling for the cancellation of the Russian-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline, adding to growing pressure on President Trump regarding the project.
The nonbinding resolution, S. Res. 27, offered by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), passed by voice vote. It urges the administration to take a number of steps to counter Russian aggression in Ukraine, including by targeting the proposed pipeline that would carry Russian natural gas across the Baltic Sea to Germany (E&E Daily, April 1).
Critics of the pipeline say it threatens Europe's energy security by making the European Union further dependent on Russian natural gas.
Germany "is putting its head in the noose," said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), a Foreign Relations member and advocate of countering Russian President Vladimir Putin by increasing U.S. energy exports to the European Union.
Barrasso has supported sanctions against Nord Stream 2, which Trump was pressed on last week when he visited with Senate Republicans during their weekly caucus luncheon.
The resolution approved yesterday does not dictate specific sanctions on the pipeline but notes the president is required by a 2017 law to impose mandatory sanctions against Russia.
Barrasso acknowledged that there are outstanding questions over how to sanction the project, the sole shareholder of which is Russia's state-owned oil and gas company Gazprom. The decision ultimately rests with Trump, Barrasso noted.
There have been a number of bills related to Nord Stream 2 offered in recent years.
Earlier this week, Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.) introduced bipartisan legislation, H.R. 2023, that would require the secretary of State and director of national intelligence to compile reports related to construction of Nord Stream 2. Heck's office did not respond yesterday to a request for more information on the measure.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2019/04/04/stories/1060142401
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Fatal Explosion at Houston Chemical Plant Draws Federal Probe
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
Federal investigators will probe a Houston-area chemical plant where one worker was killed and two were injured in an April 2 fire and explosion.
The inquiry by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, announced April 3, will look at the circumstances that might have led to the explosion at the KMCO LLC facility and offer recommendations to prevent similar incidents in the future.
The Chemical Safety Board does not issue any fines or citations. However, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is also investigating to determine if worker safety standards were violated, agency spokeswoman Chauntra Rideaux said in an email. KMCO has been cited for 66 OSHA violations since 2010 and paid fines of $247,932. Under federal law, OSHA has six months to issue new citations to the company.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said on Twitter that an ignition of isobutylene, a flammable gas, was the initial cause of the fire.
The fire prompted local authorities to order people within a mile of the plant to remain indoors. It’s the second major chemical incident in the region in the last few weeks, after a blaze at an Intercontinental Terminals Co. oil storage tank facility caught fire and burned for four days. The agencies are also investigating that incident. Chemical Safety Board investigations have not been able to enter the site yet as the fire cools.
KMCO is owned by Owner Resource Group LLC , a private equity firm based in Austin, Texas. The company said in a statement April 2 it was “deeply saddened” by the explosion. KMCO’s plant is about four miles from the Arkema Inc. organic peroxides plant that flooded and exploded in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/fatal-explosion-at-houston-chemical-plant-draws-federal-probe
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The Houston Area Has Had Two Chemical Plant Fires In Two Weeks. Why Do They Keep Happening?
Apr 4, 2019 | Pacific Standard
By Leah Dunlevy
On Tuesday, a fire erupted at a KMCO chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, killing one worker and leaving two others injured. This was the second Texas chemical fire in two weeks, following a blaze that began at a petrochemical storage facility in Deer Park on March 17th. While no injuries were reported, the Deer Park fire triggered widespread concerns about air quality in the area.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo told the Associated Press that "it is disturbing and it is problematic that we're seeing this incident in a facility, especially on the heels of" the fire in Deer Park.
Here's what we know about the regulation of this industry.DO CHEMICAL FIRES HAPPEN FREQUENTLY?
In an op-ed published by the Houston Chronicle after the Deer Park fire, Elena Craft, the senior director for health and climate at the Environmental Defense Fund, criticized the lack of oversight by state agencies, writing that "the state agency responsible for ensuring chemical plant safety is missing in action—unable or unwilling to protect the health and well-being of Texas families." Craft argues that the Texas Commission on Environmental Air Quality, a state agency tasked with protecting the state's natural resources, has essentially let companies "self-regulate."
In 2016, a year-long Houston Chronicle investigation revealed that chemical plants across Houston, America's petrochemical capital, remain a pervasive and virtually unsupervised threat. According to the investigation, the Houston area has a chemical fire or explosion every six weeks on average.HOW THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY IS (OR ISN'T) REGULATED
At the state level, supervision has been limited in Texas. This, along with Texas' disproportionate number of chemical facilities, has created the perfect chemical breeding ground for toxic fires.
But Texas is not alone. The frequent chemical fires there exemplify an oversight gap at the federal level as well.
The Houston Chronicle reports that, across various federal agencies tasked with supervising the chemical industry's 15,000 plants, there are fewer than 400 federal inspectors, and they have a combined budget of less than $50 million a year. These agencies include the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.
The EPA has been largely focused on preventing and mitigating environmental damage, and invests very few resources in chemical safety. Less than 1 percent of its $8.6 billion budget is allocated for regulations regarding chemical safety.
Chemical companies actively lobby to keep the industry more or less deregulated. Using data from the Center for Responsive Politics, the Houston Chronicle reports that the industry has annually spent an average of $191 million on lobbying, and frequently cites the risk of terrorism as a justification for keeping industry information private. In cases when new regulations are established, supervisory agencies at the state and federal level simply don't have the capacity to enforce them.IS LEGAL CHANGE LIKELY?
The 2013 explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, that devastated the area's farming community left 15 people dead, injured over 200, and leveled hundreds of homes. The severity of the explosion led to an order by President Barack Obama to overhaul chemical safety laws.
The Houston Chronicle investigation concludes with Obama's mostly unsuccessful plan to create more rigorous standards for oversight of the chemical industry. Ultimately, the industry's expansive lobbying efforts diminished the impact of Obama's intended policies.
And regulatory efficacy has only declined from there.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that he wants to gut the EPA, and his proposed budget for the 2020 fiscal year would decrease EPA funding by 31 percent. Trump has already made cuts to the EPA that will likely further restrict the agency's already limited capacity to regulate the chemical industry. With increasing cuts, it seems unlikely that significant change to further regulate the chemical industry will occur under this administration.
In further government cuts, Trump officials are attempting to ease regulations that require large companies under the supervision of the OSHA report injury and illness data. In addition to increasingly unsafe conditions for workers, these changes could also diminish regulatory agencies' capacity to supervise and determine whether chemical companies are adequately following safety protocols.
https://psmag.com/news/the-houston-area-has-had-two-chemical-plant-fires-in-two-weeks-why-do-they-keep-happening
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Company Will Keep Using Toxic Chemical at Wisconsin Refinery
Apr 3, 2019 | AP (In The New York Times)
Husky Energy says it will invest more than $400 million to rebuild its oil refinery in Superior, Wisconsin, and continue its use of a highly toxic chemical that raised fears in the community of 27,000 after an explosion at the refinery last April.
The blast injured 36 people and required the evacuation of much of Superior due in large part to the presence of hydrogen fluoride, which can be hazardous to human health. The tank containing the chemical was not damaged by the explosion.
Company officials told Wisconsin Public Radio on Wednesday that they explored using alternatives to hydrogen fluoride, but that the chemical is fundamental to making gasoline.
Opponents say there are safer ways to produce high-octane gasoline.
The refinery expects to resume some operations in late 2020.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/04/03/us/ap-us-refinery-explosion-wisconsin.html
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Hunting for Clues in Hacking's Cold Cases
Apr 4, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
As employees at nuclear power plants operated by Entergy Corp. showed up for work on a Tuesday morning in February 2018, they got a strange warning: Don't turn on your computers.
The electricity giant, which owns and operates eight nuclear sites from New York to Louisiana, was in the throes of a widespread malware infection on its corporate system.
The culprit? "Crypto-mining" malware — a tool for hackers to make a quick buck digging for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin by hijacking a company's computing power.
The initial chatter around the incident made no mention of cryptocurrency mining, and until now it wasn't known publicly that the year-old incident went beyond Entergy's corporate headquarters to affect computers at the nuclear sites.
"We have implemented our security response process, taking proactive steps to not only further contain the impact of this cyber incident, but also identify the cause," Entergy Chief Operating Officer Paul Hinnenkamp said in a statement at the time (Energywire, Feb. 8).
The compromise at Entergy represents a cold case, of sorts. The public knew something had happened on the utility's networks, but it wasn't clear exactly what.
The history of cybersecurity incidents at nuclear reactors and industrial plants is riddled with redactions, cryptic corporate statements and glossed-over impacts. In the extraordinarily rare cases when hackers reach the physical controls at such secretive sites, the fog of war only thickens. It can be difficult to separate rumor from reality, as shown by a string of false alarms over explosive industrial cyberattacks.
"There isn't enough data being collected all the time to establish a comprehensive picture," said former NSA analyst Sergio Caltagirone, now vice president of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Dragos Inc. "So if an incident did occur, we may never know what caused it."
The few public, well-understood cases of industrial control system hacks and their impacts — like the Stuxnet worm that crippled Iranian nuclear centrifuges 10 years ago or the Triton malware that shut off safety systems in the Petro Rabigh refining complex in Saudi Arabia in 2017 — may just be the tip of the iceberg.
"I wonder what may be out there that's just seen as bugs or errors," said Emily Miller, director of national security and critical infrastructure programs at cybersecurity firm Mocana Corp.
Miller said the solution to the current opacity is a combination of education, technology and applying traditional security models. But for many past cases, it may be too late to ever find out the full story. "Often we just don't know," she said, "and that lack of knowledge does us all a disservice."
In Entergy's case, the hack was serious enough to file a report with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the off-chance the problem leeched into sites' emergency systems. (It didn't, according to NRC.) The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, which manages an electric grid stretching from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast, temporarily elevated its system status to "orange" when it lost contact with some Entergy systems.
Here are four other cases of potential disasters whose details are still a mystery to the public — and could remain so.The German steel mill
In late 2014, German intelligence officials revealed that an unnamed steel mill had been hit by hackers at some point in the previous year, bringing "massive damage" to a furnace.
This was big news. Only once before had hackers managed to cause physical harm to an industrial process, in Iran at the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility.
The report from Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) laid out how hackers used "spear-phishing" emails to pry open a path into the business networks of the steel mill's parent company. The attackers then pivoted into the sensitive control systems, where they wreaked havoc.
But the few brief German-language paragraphs hardly do justice to a watershed moment in ICS hacking history. For one, BSI authorities have been tight-lipped about the victim. But the hackers, too, remain mysterious: Were they out looking for valuable know-how hidden in the physical processes of the steel mill and inadvertently caused damage? Or did they intentionally overload the furnace, hoping to perhaps send a political message or even set back a competitor?
In a December 2014 analysis, experts affiliated with the SANS Institute rated the event as "probably true" and suggested open-source reporting could unmask the specific victim.
"Multiple theories can be drawn including industrial sabotage for competing contracts or national interests, environmental extremists, or an individual or group testing out capabilities and tactics whether the physical damage was intended or not," the authors noted.
Despite the lack of clarity around the target, culprit and even the precise type of furnace damaged, the SANS experts cited the case study's "profound implications" for control system cybersecurity.
They predicted "more ICS-capable attackers will be coming to light in the coming years as the community becomes more open with sharing incidents."The Haifa tunnels
In October 2013, the Associated Press reported that "Trojan horse" malware had infected security cameras in Haifa, Israel's Carmel Tunnels toll road.
The initial cyberattack that Sept. 8 disabled the cameras and caused a 20-minute shutdown of the roadway, which is managed by a subsidiary of Israeli infrastructure giant Shikun & Binui. The following day, the hackers caused a much longer lockdown that snarled traffic for eight hours, in AP's telling.
Multiple cybersecurity sources in Israel have confirmed the outlines of the case on the condition of anonymity, but questions remain: Who hacked into the traffic system, and what did they want from Haifa's intricate tunnel networks?
Barak Perelman, co-founder and CEO of the industrial cybersecurity firm Indegy, said he couldn't speak to the specifics of the Haifa tunnel episode but considers it "very plausible."
The system "by definition needs to be connected with the outside world because it monitors vehicles going through the tunnel," he pointed out. That could give remote hackers plenty of options to worm into the traffic network.
Perelman also said he wouldn't put transportation systems at the top of the list for both their criticality and their cybersecurity readiness. "I know for a fact that transportation systems are not getting the highest attention in terms of cybersecurity," he said.
Shikun & Binui and Israeli cybersecurity authorities didn't respond to requests for comment about the cold case.
The main contractor at the tunnel, which serves as a vital conduit for Haifa's more than 250,000 residents, told AP a "communication glitch" caused all the commotion.Japan's nuclear mishap
Three years ago, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director Yukiya Amano made a startling statement to several news outlets.
At some point in the previous two or three years, a nuclear power plant had suffered "some disruption" from hackers, Amano told Reuters, although the reactor in question wasn't forced to shut down.
The statement was deliberately vague, meant to underscore — without naming names — the serious threat hackers could pose to global nuclear facilities.
Though he never clarified his statement, Amano's loose time frame matches with a reported cyber event at Monju Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.
In early 2014, the plant reported experiencing an "information leak" from a "computer virus infection" in a Japanese-language news release.
The Jan. 3 incident "had nothing to do with plant operations, control and monitoring," reported the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, which operates the site.
Monju has now begun the yearslong process of permanently shutting down as a casualty of long-running operational setbacks and Japan's sharp turn away from nuclear electricity following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
Asked about the case, a JAEA spokesman pointed to a follow-up statement on the 2014 incident that elaborated on the stolen data, which consisted of a screenshot of one employee's personal computer, the worker's IP address and user account information, and lists of files and folders. The computer in question did not contain security-sensitive information, in JAEA's telling, and had been infected by malware via a software update for a video player.
"JAEA will take this case seriously, and will work to further strengthen information security in order to prevent a recurrence," the organization concluded.Pipeline disruptions
Early last year, at least a half-dozen natural gas utilities had to fall back to using email or "manual" methods for billing and scheduling energy deliveries in the wake of a cyberattack on a services provider.
Energy Services Group (ESG) reported experiencing an unspecified "cyberattack" on its software systems, beginning Thursday, March 29, 2018, and stretching into the weekend (Energywire, April 6, 2018).
Multiple cybersecurity experts have described how third-party vendors like ESG could be used as a hopping-off point to breach eventual targets, though it's not clear any pipeline control systems were affected by last year's intrusion.
"You still wonder when have these things actually crossed over to the operational side?" said Bryan Owen, cybersecurity manager at technology vendor OSIsoft.
The mysterious cyber incident caused some business-level disruption at major pipeline companies that had relied on "electronic data interchange" services provided by ESG subsidiary Latitude Technologies. Tulsa-based midstream company Oneok Inc. reported switching off part of its network as a precaution.
Since the ESG episode, the pipeline industry and officials at the Transportation Security Administration have kicked off a "pipeline cybersecurity initiative" aimed at addressing new hacking risks (Energywire, Oct. 15, 2018). The Oct. 3 announcement and the industry responses to it made no mention of the ESG outage.
Joe Slowik, adversary hunter at Dragos, said hackers could have plausibly used a foothold like ESG to eventually pivot into more sensitive networks. "That story died awfully fast for something that could have been quite serious."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/04/04/stories/1060142635
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Apr 4, 2019 | Railway Age
By William C. Vantuono
“Commuter rail,” says Metra CEO and Executive Director Jim Derwinski, “needs a distinct voice.” Derwinski and a group of current and former passenger rail industry executives led by former New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority Director of Regulatory Affairs, Corporate Standards and Benchmarking KellyAnne Gallagher, have launched the Commuter Rail Coalition (CRC), described as “an association representing the interests, needs and benefits of the nation’s commuter railroads.”
“The Commuter Rail Coalition is comprised of commuter rail agencies, operators and other interested parties acting together to engage and educate stakeholders and communities on the value of commuter railroads,” says Gallagher, CRC’s Founding Executive Director (who also spent many years at APTA advocating for commuter rail). “The coalition will give a stronger voice in Washington D.C. to the safest mode of surface transportation. Commuter rail transportation delivers 490 million passenger trips annually, reduces congestion, decreases commuters’ carbon footprints and increases property values as well as a region’s tax base.”
CRC’s founding members represent a who’s who in commuter rail. Gallagher, Derwinski, TriMet (Portland, Ore.) General Manager Doug Kelsey and SFRTA/Tri-Rail (South Florida) Executive Director Steven Abrams form the association’s executive committee, with Derwinski as Chair. They’re joined by former New York MTA Chairman and Long Island Rail Road President Tom Prendergast, Connecticut DOT Commissioner and former Metro-North President Joe Giulietti, North County Transit District (Oceanside, Calif.) Executive Director Matthew O. Tucker, New Jersey Transit Executive Director Kevin Corbett, former Federal Railroad Administration Executive Director Pat Warren, Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District President Mike Noland, and FTI Consulting Senior Managing Director John Cline.
Left to right, top: KellyAnne Gallagher, Jim Derwinski, Doug Kelsey, Steven Abrams, Tom Prendergast. Center: Mike Noland, Pat Warren, Kevin Corbett, Matthew O. Tucker, Joe Giulietti. Bottom, center: John Cline.
“Our mission is to provide a strong and concise voice for commuter rail,” Gallagher told Railway Age. She stressed that commuter rail, of which there are 30 operators in the U.S., is subject to many of the same regulatory requirements as Class I freight railroads. The most critical one is Positive Train Control (PTC), an unfunded mandate for which—unlike the USDOT’s initiatives on autonomous highway vehicles—there was no pilot project. “We didn’t have that benefit,” she said. “Going forward with any new regulation, we need a more measured approach. We also need to be in harmony with the freight railroads, and work hand-in-hand with the Association of American Railroads on the issues and concerns we have in common. We should not be at cross-purposes.”
PTC, which now has less than 20 months to go before the absolute final full-implementation deadline of Dec. 31, 2020, has been a major impetus behind CRC’s founding, Derwinski told Railway Age. “PTC, and other what I refer to as ‘unfunded major decisions’ made all of us realize that commuter rail needs a stronger voice on Capitol Hill. We need a focus in Washington that brings our issues forward. By coming together as a single group, the Commuter Rail Coalition allows us to leverage our collective voices on the issues that matter.”
https://www.railwayage.com/passenger/commuterregional/a-new-voice-for-commuter-rail/
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Paris Climate Bill to Get Vote in Early May, House Chairman Says
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
House leaders are pushing to bring the first Democratic climate legislation of this Congress to the floor in the first week of May, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said April 3.
The bill, H.R. 9, would put the U.S. back on track to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with commitments made at the 2015 international climate change conference in Paris.
The Obama administration set a voluntary target to reduce economywide emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
The largely symbolic measure is expected to pass the House but highly unlikely to move in the GOP-controlled Senate. The bill was unveiled at a March 27 press conference with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
GOP ComplaintsRepublicans complained at the beginning of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s meeting to vote on H.R. 9 and 13 other bills on health care, telecommunications, and other issues under the committee’s jurisdiction.
Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), the ranking member of the Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee, disagreed with the decision to hold a committee vote on H.R. 9 without a hearing in his subcommittee.
“I would urge you to be cautious in taking further actions that will push Republicans further away from acting in conjunction with you,” Shimkus told Democrats.
Pallone explained that an April 2 hearing on climate change in the House Foreign Affairs Committee counted as a hearing on the legislation, since that committee has primary jurisdiction over the bill.
Pallone added that leadership’s urgency to bring the bill to the floor left little time for a hearing in the Energy and Commerce Committee.
“I would have very much liked to have a hearing and a markup in the subcommittee and do the whole thing,” he told Shimkus.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/paris-climate-bill-to-get-vote-in-early-may-house-chairman-says
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Air Quality Panels Cut Because They Took Too Long, EPA Head Says
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith and Amena H. Saiyid
The slow pace of panels of outside scientists charged with helping EPA evaluate air quality standards was hampering the agency’s ability to meet its deadlines, EPA head Andrew Wheeler said April 3.
It was the first time Wheeler has explained a reason for his October decision to disband panels of independent scientists, engineers, and other specialists who served on subcommittees of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC).
The congressionally mandated committee is tasked with helping the EPA review the science underpinning federal air quality standards for ozone, particulate matter, and four other pollutants.
The EPA is required to review its air quality limits every five years, but has rarely met that timeline. The agency must complete its review of standards for both ozone and particulate matter by December 2020.
The Environmental Protection Agency administrator’s decision to eliminate the sub-panels of outside specialists has faced sharp criticism from scientists and environmental groups. He has refused to budge from that decision despite repeated calls from existing and former full committee members to reinstate the subcommittees.
Now Wheeler is saying the decision was part of an effort to “streamline” the review process to ensure the EPA meets its five-year deadlines.
“Part of the problem was having subcommittees, which are not required under the statute, took a lot of time to go back-and-forth between the subcommittee and the full CASAC committee,” Wheeler said in response to questions from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) during an April 3 budget hearing.
‘Literally Months and Years’Van Hollen pushed back, asking Wheeler why the EPA couldn’t give the subcommittees a deadline by which to submit their information.
Wheeler said prior administrations have taken that step but have still been unable to meet the five-year review timeline.
“It is that formal subcommittee review process that took literally months and years,” Wheeler said. He added that he assured the head of the CASAC that the members could seek outside technical assistance and scientific review as needed.
“The agency has never met the five year-deadline that is required under the Clean Air Act, so we reformed the process in order to meet the deadline given to us by Congress,” Wheeler added.
The defense from Wheeler is a step beyond what he’s been willing to say previously. Up until this point, Wheeler has maintained that the full committee, which has seven members, has enough expertise to complete the reviews and the subcommittees weren’t needed.
Reasons for DelayScientists and former CASAC members, however, are pushing back on Wheeler’s claims.
The committee’s process isn’t the reason the EPA has had trouble meeting the five-year timeline, Christopher Frey, a former chairman of the committee and an environmental engineering professor at North Carolina State University, told Bloomberg Environment in a statement. Instead, the EPA has been slow to initiate reviews and to work on rules after receiving the committee’s advice, he said.
“Taking experts away from CASAC does not ‘streamline’ the review process—it hamstrings the review process,” Frey added.
And Wheeler’s critics say eliminating the subcommittees takes away another avenue for the EPA to receive independent scientific advice on its regulations.
He “is now admitting he wanted to shortcut EPA’s way of getting science advice on air pollution standards,” said Gretchen Goldman, research director for Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy.
Van Hollen also didn’t buy Wheeler’s rationale.
“It looks like another step to eliminate outside independent expert opinion,” the Maryland senator told Wheeler. “The credibility of the agency is clearly being hurt here.”
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/air-quality-panels-cut-because-they-took-too-long-epa-head-says
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States Focus on Chemicals Linked to Warming When Feds Won't
Apr 4, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Storrow
States are stepping up efforts to regulate a group of potent greenhouse gases used in air conditioners, refrigerators and insulating foams.
The push to restrict use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, playing out in state capitals across the country represents one of the clearest examples of interstate coordination on climate policy.
It follows two years of inaction at the White House, where President Trump has not submitted a 2017 international treaty restricting HFCs to the Senate for ratification, and a federal court decision knocking down an Obama-era rule to phase out the chemicals nationally.
The state measures are modeled after the Obama EPA effort and come as the Trump administration has proposed scaling back a rule aimed at preventing HFC leaks (Greenwire, Sept. 20, 2018).
"This is in line with our work to look at the federal actions that are happening and to push back where anti-climate rollbacks are occuring," said Reed Schuler, a climate adviser to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D). "The EPA under President Trump is not moving to confront the issue of HFCs. We know HFCs are growing in Washington and across the country and are increasing share of national emissions."
California passed a law to limit HFCs last year. Washington lawmakers appear poised to follow suit. A bill calling for a reduction in HFCs has passed the state House and is now under consideration in the state Senate. Regulators in Connecticut, Maryland and New York are weighing similar rules.
More states may soon follow. The issue has emerged as a focal point for the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 22 states and Puerto Rico committed to the Paris climate accord.
"If you have widespread adoption across alliance states, which is not where we are, you're talking about half the population using alternatives" to HFCs, said Julie Cerqueira, the alliance's executive director. "It certainly is a significant opportunity."
States have struggled to pass meaningful carbon reduction policies in the two years since Trump initiated America's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, despite pledges to redouble their climate efforts.
That has begun to change this year. New Mexico recently passed a law to green its electricity supply, and several other states may soon follow. Washington lawmakers are advancing a suite of bills aimed at slashing emissions from electricity, transportation and buildings. Oregon looks like it will join California's cap-and-trade program. And a collection of Northeastern states are working on their own cap-and-trade program for transportation.
HFCs nonetheless represent a unique opportunity for states to make a meaningful contribution to climate policy. Unlike vehicle emission standards, federal law does not preempt states from regulating HFCs.
The pollutants, commonly used as a coolant in air conditioners and refrigerators, are also something of a rarity among greenhouse gases. Not only are they uncommonly powerful at trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere, but there is widespread agreement that their use should be limited.
In 2016, 197 countries agreed to amend the Montreal Protocol to reduce their use (Climatewire, Oct. 17, 2016). The deal reached in Kigali, Rwanda, calls for a 40% reduction in HFCs by 2024 and ultimately envisions use of the superpollutant falling to 15% of 2011-2013 levels by 2036.
Companies like Honeywell International Inc., Chemours Co., Carrier Corp. and the industry's main trade group, the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI), have argued the agreement could be a boon for American firms through the manufacture of HFC alternatives and next-generation air conditioners and refrigerants (Climatewire, Jan. 7). An industry-backed study estimated ratification of the Kigali Amendment would result in the creation of 1,400 jobs and $1 billion in capital investment.
"We've made it clear to the administration that the economic benefits of this transition, of an HFC phasedown, are significant domestically, and what it will let us do to capture a global market," said Kevin Fay, who represents the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy, an industry group in favor of Kigali ratification.
A White House spokesman declined to comment.
Environmentalists support the restriction of HFCs on climate grounds. Some HFCs have a global warming potential several thousand times greater than carbon dioxide over their lifetime in the atmosphere. Full implementation of the Kigali Amendment is projected to limit nearly a half-degree Celsius of additional planetary warming. That would be a major boost to efforts to keep a global rise in temperatures below 2 C.
Greens say state action is important because not all companies are on board with the timetable for reducing HFC use. Two HFC manufacturers, Mexichem Fluor Inc. and Arkema SA, sued EPA over its 2015 plan to reduce the chemicals. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of the companies, saying the agency had exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Act (Greenwire, Aug. 8, 2017).
"The goal of the state actions is to keep American industry on the transition pathway and to have the U.S. do its part in the reduction of HFCs," said David Doniger, senior strategic adviser for the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate and clean energy program. "You could get there by having 50 states adopting state rules, but you don't have to if half a dozen or more large states send a signal that keeps the de facto national trend moving forward."
Industry representatives have expressed unease at the state efforts, raising concerns about the creation of a regulatory patchwork and states' ability to enforce the rules.
"Letting us devolve to a number of state programs will significantly scale down the economic benefits that are possible," Fay said.
AHRI also strongly prefers a federal standard to state ones, said Francis Dietz, a spokesman for the trade group.
"But we're sympathetic to states being concerned that the federal government isn't moving as quickly as we'd like," he said. "We're working with them to make sure that at very least they harmonize their own phasedown plans."
Environmentalists and state officials acknowledge those concerns. They, too, express a preference for a federal standard.
To address industry's worries, state officials have routed their efforts through the Climate Alliance in an effort to standardize their rules.
Maryland Environmental Secretary Ben Grumbles said in a statement that alliance members are planning meetings later this year to "promote consistency among states on HFC regulations." Maryland is working on a draft rule now and is aiming to finalize a standard by 2020.
New York officials said they are now accepting informal feedback and anticipate releasing a draft regulation later this year. They also noted they would consider changes to synchronize the rules to those in California and Washington.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/04/04/stories/1060142223
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Cleveland Meets EPA Particle Pollution Air Quality Standards (1)
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alex Ebert and Amena H. Saiyid
Cleveland’s air is cleaner now, the head of EPA asserted April 3.
This wasn’t the case four years ago when the Environmental Protection Agency found the city in violation of the national air quality standards for fine airborne particle pollution that is linked with exacerbated respiratory and cardiac problems.
Since then, the state took steps to reduce its pollution from automobiles and power plants and other industrial sources.
As a result, two northern Ohio counties in the Cleveland region—Cuyahoga and Lorain—are now at or below the annual 12 micrograms-per-cubic-meter standard for fine airborne pollution the EPA set in January 2013, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler told Senate appropriators April 3 during a discussion of the agency’s budget request for fiscal year 2020. The agency later announced the news in a statement, as well.
Gasoline, Boilers and CoalThe EPA bases its compliance designations on recommendations made by state and tribal air agencies about which localities are meeting the standards.
States and tribes are informed of the intended area designations, which include the counties that would be designated as nonattainment areas. Cleveland is the only one of 14 localities across the nation found to be in violation of the standards during the Obama administration that is now meeting them, an EPA spokesperson said.
The improved air quality came about in part due to stricter vehicle gasoline standards, pollution controls for large industrial boilers, and a regional shift away from coal-fired power plants, Heidi Griesmer, Ohio EPA spokesperson, said April 3.
In 2015 FirstEnergy Corp., an electric utility, closed a century-old coal-fired facilitynorth of Cleveland. Other facilities in the region also switch to natural gas, reducing particulate matter.
Griesmer said moving the region into attainment will mean new pollution-generating developments won’t have to impose the same offsets in order to begin operations in the Cleveland area. However, those developments must still demonstrate they won’t kick Cleveland back into nonattainment.
(Updated throughout.)
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/cleveland-meets-epa-particle-pollution-air-quality-standards-1
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Climate Program Being Revamped, Not Cut, Interior Says (1)
Apr 3, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Lee
The Trump administration is “realigning and restructuring” its climate change research centers, but is not looking to close them down, an Interior Department official told Congress April 3.
The national network of Climate Adaptation Science Centers would be reduced from eight centers to four under President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget, confirmed Jim Reilly, director of the U.S. Geological Survey.
But the survey wants to reorient the science centers so that three satellite offices are more closely overseen by the national office, Reilly told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies.
The eight Climate Adaptation Science Centers, which are spread across the country, study the impacts of climate change on fish, wildlife, ecosystems, and communities. Trump’s budget request would slash the program from $44 million to $24 million.
The proposed cuts have forced USGS to “identify where we have the best research being done by the best people, look to where we can streamline and find efficiencies,” Reilly testified.
NASA ModelBut he also expressed confidence that the reorganization will work, pointing to his tenure at NASA—for whom he flew on three space shuttle missions—as evidence that consolidation can work.
NASA’s budget was cut by 25 percent while he worked for the agency, “and we still got the International Space Station built,” Reilly said.
Democrats have said the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to the program are part of a broader campaign to deny climate science.
Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.) said several centers claim the USGS under Trump has tried to delay or obstruct the distribution of funds, only releasing funding for five months at a time and delaying new project approvals by more than six months.
“It’s hard not to see these delays as part of a coordinated effort to undermine their work,” Kilmer said.
Reilly said he wasn’t aware of any such delays, and that there is “no incentive to delay funds to the organization.”
Concerns About ReorganizationAlso during the hearing, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), the panel’s chair, tried to ask the three administration witnesses—representing the Geological Survey, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service—to identify specific activities that won’t be done as a result of the budget cuts.
None of the three witnesses provided the kinds of specific examples McCollum seemed to be seeking, eventually leading her to say in frustration, “I’m trying to do oversight.”
McCollum also sought answers on Interior’s broad plan to reorganize itself into 12 regions, rather than the current network of eight bureaus and 49 regional offices.
She acknowledged that reorganizations can save money, but said she wanted to ensure the $23 million proposed for the reorganization doesn’t take precedence over more important programs that would be zeroed out.
“There’s just so much going on with cuts right now, we have to see what this reorganization’s going to look like,” McCollum said.
The panel has set a tentative date for acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to answer questions about the reorganization, according to McCollum.
Staffing Questions at National ParksDan Smith, deputy director of the Park Service, told the subcommittee that his department is continuing to move toward hiring more seasonal workers, as opposed to full-time employees.
Many park operations are seasonal in nature, Smith said. Full-time employees also carry hidden costs, Smith said, pointing to a recent 1.9 percent across-the-board pay raise that forced him to find $22 million in the department’s budget.
The cost of hiring new federal employees has also grown, according to Smith.
“Moving to seasonals is going to be our future,” Smith said. “But it will put people in the parks when our visitors are there.”
Another idea in the works is to group parks together in regions, so that one relatively high-paid superintendent can manage more than one park, Smith said.
The Trump budget supports over 18,000 full-time NPS employees.
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) said she had heard concerns about parks being unable to meet their operational needs.
(Adds additional reporting throughout.)
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/climate-program-being-revamped-not-cut-interior-says-1
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EPA Plans Second Wave Of NSR Revisions In Coming Guidance Memos
Apr 3, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA air policy chief Bill Wehrum is planning a second wave of changes to the new source review (NSR) air permitting program to ease industry compliance, based mostly on non-binding guidance, before the end of President Donald Trump’s current term, according to a top agency air official.
The Trump EPA has prioritized overhauling NSR in response to industry calls to reform the program to limit onerous regulatory burdens that many industry groups feel inhibit their ability to build new or modified facilities. That effort is opposed by environmental groups that say the agency is seeking to erode important environmental protections, and the result will be worsened public health.
In its first phase of NSR changes, the Trump EPA focused on a series of steps to streamline compliance, primarily through guidance, but also in some cases by subsequent regulation. Wehrum has characterized this as a “rifle shot” approach, designed to avoid legal problems he ran into when trying to push a comprehensive regulatory overhaul of NSR during his tenure as a senior EPA air official under the George W. Bush administration.
While those efforts continue, the agency is now signaling a second phase is about to begin.
Speaking March 26 at a conference of the Association of Air Pollution Control Agencies (AAPCA) in Baton Rouge, LA, senior EPA career staffer Anna Marie Wood outlined the coming changes, described as “upcoming Phase 2 improvement actions.” Wood is director of the air quality policy division within the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards.
A source present at the meeting says Wood did not offer details of the coming changes. However, they include: a draft guidance on the definition of when projects “begin actual construction,” and a draft guidance on what qualifies as “routine maintenance, repair and replacement” under NSR, both due this summer; a draft guidance on use of “plantwide applicability limits (PALs), due in the fall; and a guidance on the “actual to projected actual applicability test,” which relates to measurement of a facility’s emissions before construction of a project, and the projected emissions afterward.
Also on the agenda is a proposed rule on unspecified NSR “error corrections,” expected in late spring; a proposed rule on oil and gas facility registration under EPA-administered federal implementation plans for Clean Air act compliance; and possible reconsiderations of NSR rules on various topics relating to unplanned “fugitive emissions,” ethanol facilities, and also the requirement that facilities keep records to prove there is not a “reasonable possibility” they will exceed regulatory emissions thresholds and trigger full NSR review.
Comprehensive Analysis
Many of these issues are key concepts that relate to whether plants must undergo a comprehensive NSR analysis, which can result in stringent new pollution control requirements.
For example, the precise date of when a project begins construction is important to determine whether it has met its obligations to determine if NSR applies, because NSR is a “preconstruction” permit program and thus permit applicants must obtain the required permits before building their project.
Also, the exact date of construction is important in any subsequent effort to determine compliance using actual pollution measured after construction. The Trump EPA in an earlier guidance began using actual post-construction emissions as the measure of NSR compliance, rather than the prior agency policy of relying on pre-construction emissions projections.
If plants can demonstrate their project qualifies as routine maintenance, repair or replacement, they can escape additional controls required by NSR. But what qualifies as such is determined on a case-by-case basis, sometimes with disparate results, resulting in much litigation by utilities seeking to use the exemption. EPA’s guidance may set easier conditions for industry to invoke the exemption.
PALs, meanwhile, are facility-wide emissions caps that allow plants to increase emissions from a particular emissions point without triggering NSR, so long as the overarching emissions limit is not breached. Environmentalists have previously been skeptical of PALs, suspecting they allow facilities to circumvent NSR and evade necessary emissions controls.
Ongoing Efforts
All these “phase 2” changes would build on the first wave of actions by the Trump EPA, which is still ongoing. EPA is still reviewing public comments before it finalizes a guidance document on when facilities are considered “adjacent” -- one factor in deciding whether their emissions should be combined, or “aggregated,” for the purposes of NSR, resulting in a higher likelihood they will breach regulatory emissions thresholds and trigger NSR.
In Sept. 4 draft guidance, EPA said it intends to abandon the Obama-era test of whether projects are “functionally interrelated” and instead focus only on physical proximity, because “EPA believes that focusing exclusively on physical proximity when considering whether or not operations are adjacent is a more objective and reasonable approach.” Industry commenters, however, faulted the draft guidance for not stating a specific distance between facilities to determine adjacency. EPA expects to finalize the guidance in late spring.
The agency also expects to finalize by late spring its revised guidance narrowing the definition of “ambient air” subject to air law regulation. The draft guidance would allow regulators to consider a wider range of physical restrictions on the public from accessing private land when determining what counts as ambient air subject to regulation, beyond the traditional definition of private land being behind a fence or public barrier. The revised definition would now include other “measures” that bar access by the public, likely making it easier for facilities to avoid regulation.
In the summer, EPA plans to issue a proposed rule to codify in regulation its guidance on “project emissions accounting,” also known as project “netting,” under NSR. The revised policy allows facilities to count emissions decreases, as well as increases, in the initial step of NSR analysis. If they can show a net decrease from the facility, the plants need not conduct a more in-depth analysis of their emissions impact that includes emissions from other plants in the surrounding area.
Environmental groups again oppose this idea, alleging it will result in plants avoiding necessary pollution control mandates, and they are already suing over the accounting guidance in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit case Environmental Defense Fund, et al. v. EPA, et al. That suit is in abeyance until EPA issues its proposed rule. The proposal is now undergoing White House pre-publication review.
In a related development, EPA appears to have decided to split its controversial plan to essentially exempt most coal-fired power plants from NSR permitting requirements from its broader proposed Affordable Clean Energy rule to limit coal plant greenhouse gases. The NSR component of the ACE proposal would ease the test for when the plants trigger NSR if they make efficiency upgrades to lower GHGs and comply with ACE.
The proposal revises the emissions test used to trigger NSR. The current test uses annual emissions to determine if a modification would cause an emissions increase. The proposal would change that test to an hourly measure, which means that NSR would rarely if ever apply, even if a plant’s annual emissions rise.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-plans-second-wave-nsr-revisions-coming-guidance-memos
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Pipeline Firm Urges Justices To Decline Suit On Timing Of CWA 401 Reviews
Apr 3, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Lara Beaven
A natural gas pipeline company is urging the Supreme Court to reject a petition from environmentalists to clarify when states' Clean Water Act (CWA) section 401 certifications for natural gas pipelines are final and subject to judicial review, arguing there is no split between and among federal appellate courts on the issue as the petitioners had argued.
“The questions presented in the petition have no merit,” Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company (Transco) says in a recent response brief to the Supreme Court.
The ruling at issue applied a federal finality standard to Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP) issuance of the section 401 water quality certification, as did all of the courts in the cases cited by environmentalists, so there is no conflict among the decisions, the company says.
“The different outcomes in the cases cited are attributable solely to the different way in which each State arrives at a final permitting decision. In each case, however, the finality standard remains the same: the federal finality standard.”
Transco also urges the justices to reject environmentalists' 10th Amendment arguments that the DRN decision commandeers Pennsylvania’s legislative and administrative processes in violation of the 10th Amendment, saying they were not raised in the lower courts and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit did not address the issue in its decision.
Delaware Riverkeeper Network (DRN) filed a petition for certiorari in January asking the justices to reverse DRN, et al. v. DEP, a ruling from the 3rd Circuit that the petitioners say upended their ability to challenge the state's certification under state law.
And the environmentalists charged in part that the court's decision is at odds with an earlier decision from the 1st Circuit over a Massachusetts certification as well as a subsequent decision in the 3rd Circuit addressing New Jersey's program.
In its Sept. 4 ruling, the 3rd Circuit found federal appeals courts could hear a challenge to Pennsylvania's 401 certification for the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline under the provisions of the Natural Gas Act (NGA) even though the state's administrative appeals process had not concluded.
Under CWA section 401, states have the ability to evaluate whether activities under a federal permit will undermine attainment of state water quality standards. For federally permitted activities, a state certification that water quality will be protected is necessary for projects requiring such permits, including CWA permits, to proceed.
The provision has gained attention in Congress and at EPA as many industry officials and GOP lawmakers have sought to narrow states' ability to use the authority to block pipelines and other projects -- though states are strongly resisting such efforts.
Environmentalists and other parties have generally challenged state certifications via administrative procedures under state law before they are considered final.
But DRN says the 3rd Circuit's decision wrongly supplanted Pennsylvania’s definition of finality with a federal one, improperly usurping Pennsylvania's administrative review process while invoking the NGA's appeal mechanism.
This created “uncertainty as to which states will have their administrative review process preserved and which states will have them preempted,” their petition says.
'Straightforward Jurisdictional Analysis'
Transco counters the 3rd Circuit “performed a straightforward jurisdictional analysis under the Natural Gas Act using a federal finality standard that is fully consistent with the decisions of this Court and other federal courts, including the cases Petitioners cite from the First, Second, and Third Circuits.”
The reasons there were different outcomes in DRN and a ruling in the 1st Circuit, Berkshire Environmental Action Team, Inc. v. Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co., is because there are fundamentally different permitting processes in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. “The Third Circuit did not apply a different finality standard, as Petitioners suggest.”
Additionally, the 3rd Circuit's ruling in DRN “is fully consistent with its contemporaneous decision” in Township of Bordentown, New Jersey v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Transco says.
The key question is not whether a federal court can hear a challenge to a 401 decision before a state's administrative appeals process has concluded but whether that administrative process is an intra-agency review or whether the review is conducted by a state board that is completely separate from the state agency making the 401 decisions, the company says.
In Pennsylvania, the review is done by the Environmental Hearing Board, an independent quasi-judicial agency that is separate from DEP, while in New Jersey, the administrative review would occur within “an intra-agency adjudicative hearing,” Transco argues.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/pipeline-firm-urges-justices-decline-suit-timing-cwa-401-reviews
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