Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 4/9/2019
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(ACC Mentioned) Expand Tariff Relief Bill to Cover Trump Tariffs Chemical Group Says
Apr 8, 2019 | PoliticoPro Trade - Whiteboard
By Doug Palmer
A law periodically passed by Congress to temporarily waive duties on goods used by U.S. manufacturers should be expanded to provide relief from duties imposed by President Donald Trump on steel and aluminum products, as well as on Chinese goods... -
(ACC Mentioned ) ITC’s Broadbent Suggests Using MTB Process to Negotiate Reciprocal Concessions
Apr 8, 2019 | Inside US Trade
By Isabelle Hoagland
As the U.S. International Trade Commission gathers input on the effects of duty suspensions and reductions enacted under the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill Act of 2018, Commissioner Meredith Broadbent this week suggested the Trump administration use MTB to gain more concessions in trade talks. -
(ACC Mentioned) Politico Pro New Jersey: State's Effort to Ban Plastic Bags Stalls as New York‘S Advances
Apr 8, 2019 | PoliticoPro
By Danielle Muoio and Marie J. French
A year ago, New Jersey appeared ready to beat out New York in enacting legislation to crack down on single-use plastic bags, those ubiquitous scourges on the environment that regularly turn up in waterways and landfills. -
Reshuffle of EPA Regional Offices to Take Effect on Tax Day
Apr 7, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
The EPA’s restructuring of its 10 regional offices will formally take effect April 15, Administrator Andrew Wheeler said April 8 during remarks at the Environmental Council of the States spring meeting in Arlington, Va. -
Bernhardt in Line for Confirmation Vote This Week
Apr 8, 2019 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Ben LeFebvre
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filed cloture on acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s nomination to the department's top spot, setting him up to be confirmed later this week. -
Wheeler Faults States’ Criticism of EPA’s PFAS Action Plan as ‘Inaccurate’
Apr 8, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds and Lara Beaven
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is strongly rejecting state regulators’ criticism of the Trump administration’s action plan targeting per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), saying their recent letter criticizing the plan includes “inaccurate” statements... -
EPA Watchdog Raises Alarm on Toxic Chemical Release Reports
Apr 8, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
Municipal sewage treatment plant releases were left out of the EPA’s online inventory of the volume of toxic chemicals released into the environment each year, the agency’s inspector general reported April 8. -
Watchdog Issues Rare 'Alert' That EPA Data on Toxic Substance Releases Inaccurate
Apr 8, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green
The top watchdog overseeing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a rare "management alert" Monday warning that the agency’s public data on toxic substance releases are not accurate. -
Some Links to Cancer Shown in Draft Review of Common Pesticide
Apr 8, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Adam Allington
A draft federal report finding some links between the active ingredient in Roundup and some forms of cancer could affect the widespread legal proceedings involving the weedkiller. -
Roundup, the World’s Best-Selling Weedkiller, Faces a Legal Reckoning
Apr 8, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Jacob Bunge and Ruth Bender
For years, scientists at Monsanto Co. worked closely with outside researchers on studies that concluded its Roundup weedkiller was safe. -
Why Both Major Political Parties Have Failed to Curb Dangerous Pesticides
Apr 9, 2019 | Washington Post
By Elena Conis
The news that David Bernhardt, President Trump’s Interior Secretary nominee, blocked a federal report on the risks certain pesticides pose to hundreds of endangered species has enraged scientists and environmental groups. -
A Growing Problem After Wildfires: Toxic Chemicals
Apr 9, 2019 | Reuters (In The Washington Post)
By Sharon Bernstein
As an uncontrollable wildfire turned the California town of Paradise to ash, air pollution researcher Keith Bein knew he had to act fast: Little is known about toxic chemicals released when a whole town burns, and the wind would soon blow away evidence. -
EU to Opt Against Health Warning for Suspected Carcinogen
Apr 6, 2019 | The Guardian
By Arthur Neslen
A suspected carcinogen found in spray paints, sun creams and varnishes will not receive a cautionary health label, under European Union proposals seen by the Guardian. -
REACH and CLP Hub: After the Final Registration
Apr 9, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Thomas Berbner
Almost one year ago we 'celebrated' the final registration deadline for phase-in substances. For many companies it seemed this was the end of REACH, but that was not the case. In fact, it is just the opposite. -
Chemicals Top EU Notifications for Product Risk
Apr 8, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Oziel
Hazardous chemicals in products, such as toys and cosmetics, have become the biggest risk to health and safety on the EU and EEA market. -
What's in Trump's Energy Orders?
Apr 9, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Kelsey Brugger, Ariel Wittenberg and Hannah Northey
President Trump is heading to Texas tomorrow to sign two executive orders aimed at boosting an oil and gas sector he's long touted as an ally. -
Transcanada, Trump Admin Ask Court to Drop Pipeline Lawsuit
Apr 9, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
TransCanada Corp. and the Trump administration yesterday asked a federal appellate court to drop a lawsuit and dissolve a construction block on the embattled Keystone XL pipeline. -
It’s Time to Bring Pipeline Safety into the 21st Century
Apr 9, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Don Santa
The United States’ emergence as a global energy superpower would not have been possible without America’s extensive natural gas pipeline network. -
Workers, Harris County Take Legal Action over Crosby co. Chemical Fire
Apr 8, 2019 | Houston Business Journal
By Olivia Pulsinelli
A series of lawsuits have been filed against KMCO LLC in the week since a chemical fire broke out at the company’s facility near Houston. -
(ACC Mentioned) Railroad Regulator Wants to Hear More Pros and Cons on Collecting Rail Data
Apr 8, 2019 | Freight Waves
By Joanna Marsh
The Surface Transportation Board (STB) wants to hear more from shippers and the Class I railroads on whether the railroads should supply more rail performance data to the board. -
Plans for Broad Infrastructure Bill on Life Support
Apr 9, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Geof Koss and Maxine Joselow
Temper your expectations for a broad infrastructure bill in this Congress. -
Several Agencies Refusing to Take Part in Trump's Committee to Reassess Climate Science: Report
Apr 8, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Michael Burke
Several federal agencies are reportedly refusing to take part in a White House panel that will reassess and counter the government's previous conclusions on climate change. -
Nielsen Oversaw Period of Omissions on Climate
Apr 9, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Thomas Frank
Search the Department of Homeland Security's website using the phrase "climate change" and you'll find dozens of reports, plans, statements and fact sheets. For all their variety, the documents have two things in common: They warn about security threats from climate change... -
Suit Tests EPA’s Ability to Avoid Adding New Haps to Air Toxics Rules
Apr 8, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Environmental groups in a new legal filing are challenging EPA’s discretion to avoid setting new limits for previously unregulated hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) for an industry when the agency reviews the sector’s remaining air toxics risks... -
Castor Doesn't Rule out Nuclear, Carbon Capture
Apr 9, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Timothy Cama
Florida Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor isn't ruling out nuclear power and carbon capture technology as potential climate change solutions as her committee starts exploring options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. -
Trump Gutted Green Rules But Plans to Run on His Environmental Credentials
Apr 8, 2019 | Bloomberg
By Jennifer A Dlouhy and Ari Natter
Donald Trump is preparing a novel campaign strategy for a president who’s pulling the U.S. from the international Paris accord on climate change, cheer-leading for coal, one of the dirtiest source of power, and suggesting that wind turbines cause cancer. -
As White House Questions Climate Change, U.S. Military Is Planning for It
Apr 8, 2019 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin , Brady Dennis and Missy Ryan
In February, the White House devised a plan to challenge the scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels is a main driver of climate change and poses increasingly serious economic and health threats to the United States and the world.
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(ACC Mentioned) Expand Tariff Relief Bill to Cover Trump Tariffs Chemical Group Says
Apr 8, 2019 | PoliticoPro Trade - Whiteboard
By Doug Palmer
A law periodically passed by Congress to temporarily waive duties on goods used by U.S. manufacturers should be expanded to provide relief from duties imposed by President Donald Trump on steel and aluminum products, as well as on Chinese goods, a chemical industry official said today.
"The additional tariffs that the administration imposed over the past year have undermined the competitiveness of U.S. chemical manufacturers and their ability to employ global supply chains," Ed Brzytwa, director of international trade for the American Chemistry Council, testified at a U.S. International Trade Commission hearing on the economic impact of the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill passed last year by Congress.
Congress normally passes the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill every few years, although there was a six-year gap between the 2012 and 2018 versions of the legislation.
Under a revamped process approved in 2016, manufacturers file petitions with the ITC asking for duties to waived on certain goods. The panel then makes recommendations to Congress for inclusion in the bill.
The 2018 MTB temporarily waived ordinary duties on a number of chemical products from China, but it did not waive any of the 10- and 25-percent duties that Trump imposed on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act in order to force Beijing into a trade negotiation.
"While the MTB is lessening the pain of the Section 301 tariffs, it does not mitigate the China Section 301 tariff burden that many U.S. chemical manufacturers face," Brzytwa said. ""Seventy-six percent of the chemicals and plastics covered by the MTB are also on the China Section 301 Lists."
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/trade/whiteboard/2019/04/expand-tariff-relief-bill-to-cover-trump-tariffs-chemical-group-says-3033118
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(ACC Mentioned ) ITC’s Broadbent Suggests Using MTB Process to Negotiate Reciprocal Concessions
Apr 8, 2019 | Inside US Trade
By Isabelle Hoagland
As the U.S. International Trade Commission gathers input on the effects of duty suspensions and reductions enacted under the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill Act of 2018, Commissioner Meredith Broadbent this week suggested the Trump administration use MTB to gain more concessions in trade talks.
Determinations made under the MTB, which was signed into law in September, temporarily reduce or suspend duties on certain U.S. imports based on petitions the ITC receives from companies under the 2016 American Manufacturing Competitiveness Act. The last MTB expired in 2012. The ITC is gearing up for another MTB petition cycle that will begin by Oct. 15.
Last October, the ITC initiated an investigation into the effects on the U.S. economy of duty suspensions and reductions enacted under the MTB. The input, which included an April 8 hearing and public comments, will be used to inform its report required by the American Manufacturing Competitiveness Act. The report will be submitted to the Senate Finance and House Ways & Means committees by Oct. 18.
During the April 8 hearing, Broadbent urged witnesses from the chemical sector to explore options, such as trade talks, as a way to gain more balanced concessions via MTB.
While several industry groups have praised the MTB process’ efficiency, many have told the ITC that Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports were reducing MTB benefits.
The MTB Coalition, which represents users of the duty suspension process, said many of its members claim the benefits of lower duties resulting from the MTB have been largely offset by the Section 301 tariffs. “For example, one MTB Coalition member noted that the company's lone duty reduction was totally discounted by the China tariffs,” the coalition wrote in a March 21 submission to the ITC. Additional costs directly resulting from the 25 percent Section 301 tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods are “astronomically huge,” the coalition said, adding that parts and components hit by tariffs are “not substitutable with imports from other sources.”
“Imports from China are project-based, with long lead times. The business must continue to import from China despite the tariff costs under contracts signed years ago. As a result, the Section 301 tariff completely negates the benefit to U.S. manufacturing of the MTB provision,” the submission states.
Another member of the MTB coalition said it witnessed “its MTB benefits evaporate due to the Section 301 tariffs imposed by the Administration on Chinese imports,” the submission continued. “The MTB benefits have been offset by increased tariff costs approximately double the amount of the tariff relief provided by the MTB.”
The American Chemistry Council, in testimony ahead of the April 8 ITC hearing, said while the act led to the elimination or reduction of import duties on $1.1 billion in products not available in the U.S., “the Section 301 tariffs on many of those same imports still remain in force, preventing U.S. chemicals manufacturers and others from capitalizing the full tariff relief intended by the MTB.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in an October 2018 notice, said Section 301 would override MTB tariff determinations. “Since approximately half of the 1,660 MTB-eligible items are produced in China, there is overlap with Section 301 tariffs,” the notice states. “Products of China subject to Section 301 tariffs can benefit from MTB’s suspensions and reductions for the general (column 1) rate of duty, but remain subject to the 25 percent ad valorem rate of duty imposed by headings 9903.88.01 and 9903.88.02 or 10 percent ad valorem rate of duty imposed by headings 9903.88.03 and 9903.88.04.”
But the ACC said approximately “69 percent of the products covered by the MTB are also on the China Section 301 Lists.”
A source told Inside U.S. Trade that one of the reasons President Trump signed the MTB into law last September was because he had been assured it wouldn’t affect the Section 301 tariffs imposed on Chinese goods.
“I was actually really surprised it got signed,” Broadbent said during the hearing. “One of the things I think we are sort of struggling with these days is how to be a little more creative in how we are solving some of people’s problems on trade and it seems to me that this would have been a slam dunk in getting it signed if we had gotten reciprocal concessions from another country for what we were unilaterally, temporarily suspending the duty on. And that’s a mechanism that USTR would have to negotiate.”
The commissioner contended that such negotiations “might be worth giving some thought.” She pointed to language in the legislation that says: “The Commission shall also solicit and append to the report required under subsection (a) recommendations with respect to those domestic industry sectors or specific domestic industries that might benefit from permanent duty suspensions and reductions, either through a unilateral action of the United States or [through] negotiations for reciprocal tariff agreements, with a particular focus on inequities created by tariff inversions.”
Broadbent then noted “we are in a big negotiation with China now.”
The latest round of U.S.-China talks ended last Friday, with the White House noting the two sides would be in “continuous contact to resolve outstanding issues.” Intellectual property, forced technology transfer, non-tariff barriers, agriculture, services, commodity purchases and enforcement were the subjects of the negotiation, according to the statement.
“There are things that we want to do anyways, it would be a win-win if China wanted to help us on that and give us some reciprocal concessions, so everybody wins,” Broadbent said, adding, “So it might be a good exercise to respond to the language that’s in the statute.”
“I think it would be a really good opportunity to see going forward now that we have this process in place, now that we can get these suspensions done -- how can we build on that and figure out how to get some reciprocal concessions from a trading partner in exchange? Maybe make it permanent in exchange for a permanent, reciprocal concession from a market where you all were exporting,” she suggested, urging witnesses at the hearing to interpret the situation with a “new lens” to “see ‘Well maybe we can get a bilateral deal, a multilateral deal.'”
“So, I urge you to brainstorm on that topic and see if you can come up with some suggestions because Congress is definitely asking for that in the statute that we are responding to,” she said.
Ed Brzytwa, director of international trade at the American Chemistry Council and a former USTR official, said the U.S. chemical industry has been pushing for reciprocal tariff elimination for decades. He pointed to the Doha Round during the hearing, saying “We tried to have a sectoral negotiation on chemicals where you have a critical mass of [World Trade Organization] members all agreeing to eliminate their tariffs on chemicals -- this is still something that is worthwhile. Particularly if you have a negotiation between the United States and China or the United States and the [European Union] or the United States and Japan where tariff reduction, elimination is part of the negotiation.”
Those negotiations should be used as platforms to launch into broader talks with the “right coalition” of WTO members, he continued. “So, I think in terms of creativity and brainstorming we have to go back to coalitions and the willing and plurilaterals -- that’s the best way to do this you can’t just do this bilaterally over the course of time, where it’s not [most-favored nation]. It’s got to be MFN, critical mass, as many as people as possible.”
Broadbent agreed, contending that upcoming bilateral talks with Tokyo, Brussels and others could produce opportunities to achieve reciprocal concessions.
“Yeah, maybe the fact that we are doing bilaterals with Japan and Europe, at least some intention has been announced to do so, may create some more opportunities at the same time that Europe is negotiating with Japan, etc.,” she said. “So, you could get a substantially ‘all-trade’ package that covered a lot of these different markets. They might be suspending the duties anyways within the context of their bilateral or eliminating them and it may not be that much more of a pain to go multilaterally, as you said.”
Commissioner Jason Kearns asked the witnesses whether they would prefer permanent or temporary duty suspensions.
“Clearly the ideal is not that you have a two to three-year duty suspension that happens every blue moon and isn’t very predictable,” he said. “But which is better: permanent duty-free treatment? Or is it better to have a consistent, regular and constant renewal of a two to three-year duty suspension where you all would have an opportunity to add new products and suggest some products be taken off and so forth?”
Brooke DiDimenico, a technical manager with Nation Ford Chemical, said U.S. companies should have the ability to add products to the MTB because “our product line is constantly changing.”
“So, I do think we want the ability to add new products to the MTB. I feel like in a ‘perfect world’ there would be a permanent duty suspension but, on some frequency, people could add new [products] or if they had an issue with something that was already on the list then they could petition against it,” she contended. In other words, she said, “everything stays as it unless there is a complaint.”
https://insidetrade.com/daily-news/itc%E2%80%99s-broadbent-suggests-using-mtb-process-negotiate-reciprocal-concessions
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Apr 8, 2019 | PoliticoPro
By Danielle Muoio and Marie J. French
A year ago, New Jersey appeared ready to beat out New York in enacting legislation to crack down on single-use plastic bags, those ubiquitous scourges on the environment that regularly turn up in waterways and landfills.
The tables have turned.
New York approved a ban on plastic bags as part of the state budget approved last week, while the effort in New Jersey appears to be going nowhere.
Fierce industry opposition has played a role in the slow-down in Trenton, as manufacturers of plastic bags look to kill a bill that was introduced in the Democrat-controlled Legislature last year. But there are other factors at play, as the New Jersey bill tackles more forms of plastic waste than what New York approved, creating a lot more red tape for proponents.
Still, environmentalists are hopeful New York’s ban — which takes effect next March — will help jump start the effort in New Jersey.
“Part of the thunderclap of the New York state ban is that this shows a ban on single-use plastics is not out of the mainstream,” said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey. “This is not just New York City — this is all of New York state. … The reality is if our northern neighbor can ban plastic bags, why can’t we?”
Getting the ban approved in New York wasn’t easy.
In 2017, the state Legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo blocked a fee on paper and plastic bags the New York City Council approved after a protracted battle, enraging local officials and environmentalists. Action in Albany then languished amid reservations from Assembly Democrats about fees in general, opposition from Republicans who at the time controlled the state Senate and a lack of pressure from Cuomo to move the initiative forward.
This year, however, there was a renewed push for a statewide ban on plastic from advocates who accumulated evidence of successful local action on bags, as well as from newly empowered Senate Democrats and Cuomo himself, who gave the ban his full-throated endorsement.
“It was an idea that’s time had come and I think that, certainly, all of the leaders finally came to an agreement that we needed to get the bags out of the environment,” said Jessica Ottney Mahar, New York policy director for The Nature Conservancy. “We started seeing a number of localities around the state taking action and people realized this could be done.”
New York City Council Member Brad Lander, who’s been vociferous in his criticism of Albany overturning the city’s fee, said the growing focus on environmental issues was also a factor in getting the ban approved.
“The pressure to do better on environmental issues is growing,” Lander said. “You look at the young people mobilizing … the clarity that our carelessness with our planet is reaping disastrous impacts is growing.”
In New Jersey, the campaign to reduce the amount of plastic began with a proposal to charge for single-use bags.
Of the 454,365 pieces of debris that were removed from New Jersey beaches in 2018, 81 percent were plastic or foam, according to a Clean Ocean Action report.
The state Legislature, in the midst of last year’s budget negotiations, narrowly passed a bill to place a 5-cent fee on plastic bags as lawmakers searched for additional revenue streams to plug budget holes. The move drew fierce opposition from environmental groups, which said the bill was being fast-tracked and that a ban would be more effective.
Gov. Phil Murphy, who ran on an environmental agenda, vetoed the legislation in August, saying the fee “does not go far enough to address the problems created by over-reliance on plastic bags and other single-use carryout bags.”
Before the veto, lawmakers had introduced another measure, NJ S2776 (18R), that would not only ban plastic bags, but plastic straws and polystyrene, or foam, food container products as well.
But that bill has stalled. Lawmakers involved in the legislative process attribute the hold-up to a number of factors, including industry opposition and a busy legislative session in which big-ticket items, such as legalizing marijuana, are getting more attention.
Industry leaders, including Coca-Cola, the American Chemistry Council and the New Jersey Food Council, have lobbied against the bill, according to records from the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission. The American Progressive Bag Alliance, which represents plastic bag manufacturers like Novolex, has also met with lawmakers.
A representative for Novolex, which has manufacturing facilities in Elizabeth and Gloucester County, said jobs could be in jeopardy if the bill passes.
“I can tell you this, we are really going to rethink if we want our factories in New Jersey or if we want to invest,” Mark Daniels, Novolex’s senior vice president for sustainability and environmental policy, told a Senate committee hearing on the bill in September.
The sheer scope of the legislation has also caused some of the hold-up, said Assemblyman John McKeon, a Democrat from Essex County who is the primary sponsor. For example, advocates for the disabled oppose the proposed ban on straws, McKeon said, because people with certain disabilities need to use straws to drink.
“There are a lot more moving parts than dealing with the plastic bags themselves,” McKeon said.
Although New York is ahead of the curve, officials on both sides of the Hudson say many details need to be worked out to fully execute a ban on single-use plastic bags. For example, advocates and industry leaders have concerns with a compromise dealing with paper bags that passed in New York.
Under the policy, counties and cities can impose a fee on paper bags, with the revenue going to a state environmental fund and local reusable bag programs. The opportunity for municipalities to “opt-in” gives state lawmakers who might have otherwise opposed a fee on paper bags cover since the onus is now on local officials.
Lander and some of his colleagues on the New York City Council plan to introduce local legislation to implement a 5-cent fee on paper bags as soon as the statewide plastic bag ban takes effect next year.
He said it’s likely to be a close vote, but the mechanism to use the revenue for environmental purposes should help quell some criticism of the previous city fee, the revenue from which would have been kept by retailers.
“The goal is not to collect a single nickel. The goal is to give people a good incentive to bring reusable bags,” Lander said. “It is easy for people to switch to reusable bags and all the evidence shows that some people will love it and some people will be grumpy about it, but overwhelmingly New Yorkers will switch to reusable bags if we adopt a fee.”
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2019/04/politico-pro-new-jersey-states-effort-to-ban-plastic-bags-stalls-as-new-yorks-advances-1334727
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Reshuffle of EPA Regional Offices to Take Effect on Tax Day
Apr 7, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
The EPA’s restructuring of its 10 regional offices will formally take effect April 15, Administrator Andrew Wheeler said April 8 during remarks at the Environmental Council of the States spring meeting in Arlington, Va.
The reorganization effort, announced in a September 2018 memo. Under the EPA’s new approach, each of the 10 regional offices will have eight divisions, mimicking the setup in the EPA headquarters office.
Former EPA officials and current employees have expressed concerns that the reshuffling at the regions could give the Trump administration an opportunity to shrink the agency and allow more political control over the regions.
Approximately half of the EPA’s career staff work in the regional offices, and much of the on-the-ground permit reviews, oversight, and enforcement operations are housed in the regions.
But Henry Darwin, the EPA’s chief of operations who led the reorganization, has said the effort is aimed to facilitate better coordination between the EPA headquarters and the regional offices.
“It’s at times difficult for headquarters to see where the work is being done,” Darwin told Bloomberg Environment in an interview last year.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/reshuffle-of-epa-regional-offices-to-take-effect-on-tax-day
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Bernhardt in Line for Confirmation Vote This Week
Apr 8, 2019 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Ben LeFebvre
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filed cloture on acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s nomination to the department's top spot, setting him up to be confirmed later this week.
Bernhardt is expected to win confirmation to replace former Secretary Ryan Zinke, who stepped down in January amid multiple ethics investigations. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week easily approved his nomination.
Senate Democrats have criticized Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry, as being too close to his former clients, but Republicans and a few Democrats have expressed support for him.
The Senate will vote to invoke cloture on Wednesday morning to limit additional debate on the nomination, with a final confirmation vote expected that afternoon or the following day, aides said today.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Wheeler Faults States’ Criticism of EPA’s PFAS Action Plan as ‘Inaccurate’
Apr 8, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds and Lara Beaven
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is strongly rejecting state regulators’ criticism of the Trump administration’s action plan targeting per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), saying their recent letter criticizing the plan includes “inaccurate” statements, such as that the plan fails to address the contaminants broadly as a class.
“I believe that our PFAS action plan is the most comprehensive multi-media action plan ever developed by EPA in its 49-year history for a chemical concern,” Wheeler told the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) Spring Meeting April 8 in Arlington, VA.
Noting that he first learned of ECOS’ April 4 letter in the press, Wheeler added that the letter also contained other statements he believed were inaccurate, such as a suggestion that the agency does not intend to use authority under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to prevent PFAS from reaching the environment.
He said the plan does more than simply address the two most common contaminants, PFOA and PFOS,
and includes numerous short and long-term actions to address the class more broadly, including strategies that draw on the recently revised TSCA, which grants the agency authority to restrict the chemicals' production and processing.
He also said that the plan calls for public input on guidance for cleaning up contaminated groundwater before finalizing that document, as well as for partnering with ECOS to ensure regulators have the best available data.
“I am very proud of the work of EPA staff in preparing the action plan and hope that we can continue to work together on this issue,” he told the state regualtors. “You don’t have to send a letter to us to get our attention.”
Wheeler’s remarks respond to an April 4 letter from ECOS, which represents most state environment commissioners, and three other state groups that criticized the PFAS action plan, citing weaknesses across many program areas. The letter called for EPA to go farther, such as by setting binding standards for contaminants across multiple media.
In addition to ECOS, which represents many state environment commissioners; the Association of Clean Water Administrators, which represents state water-quality regulators; the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators; and the Association of State & Territorial Solid Waste Management Officials also signed the letter.
In a separate April 8 address, EPA toxics chief Alexandra Dunn, a former ECOS executive director and general counsel, also defended the plan, while also appearing to acknowledge a need for EPA to take a stronger tack than may be apparent in the plan.
Speaking to the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, Dunn said the plan includes lots of action items. But she added that, "We've got to put teeth in it" to ensure that the plan addresses wide-ranging concerns regarding the common contaminants.
She also acknowledged that the agency has not adequately reviewed PFAS that are in active use. She said that of the 602 “active” chemicals on the agency's TSCA inventory of chemicals in commerce, EPA has only reviewed 58 percent of them. "We can't say EPA has looked at every PFAS," she said.
She added that the agency is continuing to review alternatives to long-chain PFAS and will use significant new use rules (SNURs) and TSCA section 5e orders, which to provide protections.
Action Plan
PFAS are a class of thousands of non-stick chemicals that have been used in a host of consumer and industrial products and processes and have been linked to adverse health effects including certain cancers, ulcerative colitis and other conditions.
But EPA has been slow to address them. On Feb. 14, the agency unveiled its action plan to tackle PFAS pollution across several media that includes some enforcement and research measures, but only begins the process of setting binding water and waste policies.
For example, the agency has begun the regulatory process for listing PFOA and PFOS as hazardous waste under the Superfund law, plans to issue interim groundwater cleanup recommendations for contaminated sites -- although that guidance is reportedly tied up in an interagency dispute between EPA and the Department of Defense over cleanup levels -- and will expand PFAS monitoring in drinking water in future years, among other measures.
The agency's commitments fell short of calls from environmentalists and many states for strict policy limits on the substances. In particular, critics dismissed the plan for deferring until the end of the year a decision on whether to set an enforceable drinking water standard, known as a maximum contaminant level, for PFOS and PFOA.
While individual states joined in those critiques, the April 4 letter from ECOS and other groups marked their first public attack on the plan.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/wheeler-faults-states%E2%80%99-criticism-epa%E2%80%99s-pfas-action-plan-%E2%80%98inaccurate%E2%80%99
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EPA Watchdog Raises Alarm on Toxic Chemical Release Reports
Apr 8, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
Municipal sewage treatment plant releases were left out of the EPA’s online inventory of the volume of toxic chemicals released into the environment each year, the agency’s inspector general reported April 8.
Chemicals in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory could cause cancer or other serious health effects.
Companies and other organizations that release toxic chemicals into the environment, or recycle or recover them, must report the amounts to the agency.
The EPA’s online Toxic Release Inventory for the years 2013-2017 doesn’t “properly include” releases from publicly owned treatment works, which are sewage treatment plants owned by a government agency, the inspector general found.
As a result, communities or researchers “will not always have accurate or consistent information regarding releases of the hazardous substances” from those treatment plants, which could “significantly impact” human health and the environment, the inspector general said in its letter to EPA leadership.
Tracking Releases
The EPA “developed and deployed corrections within three business days of the concerns being relayed to us by OIG staff,” a spokesman for the agency said in an email. “Additionally, EPA has determined that the glitches did not impact the recently released 2017 National Analysis.”
The overall volume of chemicals discharged, released, or emitted into the environment increased from 2016 to 2017, largely due to an uptick in chemical waste in landfills and other land disposal, the agency said in its Toxic Release Inventory national analysis, announced March 5.
The EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory tracks the permitted release and disposal of about 650 chemicals, including metals such as lead and mercury, dioxin compounds, and hazardous air pollutants such as hydrochloric acid.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/epa-watchdog-raises-alarm-on-toxic-chemical-release-reports
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Watchdog Issues Rare 'Alert' That EPA Data on Toxic Substance Releases Inaccurate
Apr 8, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green
The top watchdog overseeing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a rare "management alert" Monday warning that the agency’s public data on toxic substance releases are not accurate.
The EPA’s Office of Inspector General (IG) said the inconsistencies were “of sufficient concern to warrant immediate reporting.”
The emergency letter from the EPA’s acting IG to the head of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention warned that certain information the EPA released publicly about its toxic chemical releases did not match internal EPA data.
“As a result, the public is not receiving complete and timely information about environmental conditions affecting human health,” the letter read.
Specifically, the alert referred to missing data pertaining to releases of hazardous substances from publicly owned treatment works. The government watchdog discovered that there were substantial differences between the publicly listed data on the total number of pounds of toxic chemicals released into the environment and internal data sets the EPA handed over separately to the IG.
The IG found the discrepancy while auditing the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), which annually collects information about toxic chemical releases reported by both industrial and government facilities. Chemicals covered by the TRI cause cancer or other chronic human health effects.
The discrepancies the EPA found referred to releases between 2013 and 2017.
The watchdog said the discrepancy will likely be the most troubling to local communities or global researchers who use the data in their analyses.
The IG wrote that the "audit of the EPA’s TRI data is ongoing, but we found this information to be of sufficient concern to warrant immediate reporting" and asked the EPA to respond within 15 days to announce actions taken to correct the identified discrepancies.
An EPA spokesperson said the agency “developed and deployed corrections” within three business days of hearing from the IG internally.
“Additionally, EPA has determined that the glitches did not impact the recently released 2017 National Analysis,” the spokesperson said.
At least one environmental organization heavily criticized the improperly released public information.
“The TRI is the most important tool guaranteeing Americans the right to know about toxic chemical pollution in their own backyards,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group.
“EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler should take the inspector general’s warning seriously and move immediately to restore the integrity of the TRI,” he added.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/437908-watchdog-warns-in-rare-alert-that-epa-data-on-toxic-substance
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Some Links to Cancer Shown in Draft Review of Common Pesticide
Apr 8, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Adam Allington
A draft federal report finding some links between the active ingredient in Roundup and some forms of cancer could affect the widespread legal proceedings involving the weedkiller.
On April 8, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, (ATSDR), part of the Department of Health and Human Services, released a long-awaited draft toxicological profile of glyphosate, the active ingredient found in Roundup weedkillers.
According to the report, “numerous studies reported risk ratios greater than one for associations between glyphosate exposure and risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma or multiple myeloma.”
A risk ratio of greater than one means that being exposed to a certain substance increases risk of cancer, while a ratio less than one decreases risk.
Lawsuits OngoingThe legal troubles that Bayer inherited following its 2018 purchase of Monsanto are continuing to unfold in a sprawling multi-district lawsuit containing more than 1,600 cases.
On March 19, a six-person jury in a San Francisco federal court found that Roundup was a “significant factor” in causing the non-Hodgkin lymphoma of 70-year-old Edwin Hardeman. The jury later awarded Hardeman $80 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
Throughout the proceedings, Bayer has maintained that glyphosate is safe to use and doesn’t view the ATSDR report as proof one way or the other.
“We welcome another scientific perspective on what’s the most studied substance of its kind, glyphosate,” a Bayer spokesperson said in a statement to Bloomberg Environment.
The company said its experts are still reviewing the draft profile in full detail but that it continues to have confidence in the safe use of glyphosate, backed up by an extensive body of science, 40 years of real-world experience, and the conclusions of regulatory agencies.
“Including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, European Food Safety Authority, European Chemicals Agency, German BfR, and Australian, Canadian, Korean, New Zealand and Japanese regulatory authorities, as well as the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization Meeting on Pesticide Residues, confirm that glyphosate‐based products are safe when used as directed and that glyphosate is not carcinogenic,” the company said.
Growing Public Concerns
Last week, the House Science Committee sent a letter to ATSDR Director Patrick Breysse, asking for the status on the draft report, which has been in the works since 2015.
Environmental groups have questioned the science that regulators have used to approve glyphosate, arguing that it often doesn’t reflect conditions that farmworkers and individuals are actually exposed to.
“The risks would’ve been found to be greater had they given sufficient weight to more realistic studies of people and test animals exposed to the full product, not just one chemical in Roundup,” said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Sass also points out that the ATSDR report raises the issue of endocrine, reproductive, and developmental concerns “that are not being addressed in some of the high-profile litigation that’s grabbing headlines,” she said.
Despite the correlation to increased risk of cancer, the ATSDR document also reported that the associations “were statistically significant only in a few studies.”
“There does seem to be an effect. It’s not a large risk [of NHL] but it’s there based on what ATSDR has found,” said Tina Levine, a former manager in EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, where she ran the Health Effects Division.
“That said, consumer exposures are likely to be very different from professional applicators,” she added.
The draft is available for public comment on the Federal Register until July 8.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/some-links-to-cancer-shown-in-draft-review-of-common-pesticide
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Roundup, the World’s Best-Selling Weedkiller, Faces a Legal Reckoning
Apr 8, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Jacob Bunge and Ruth Bender
For years, scientists at Monsanto Co. worked closely with outside researchers on studies that concluded its Roundup weedkiller was safe.
That collaboration is now one of the biggest liabilities for the world’s most widely used herbicide and its new owner, Bayer AG BAYRY -0.58% , which faces mounting lawsuits alleging a cancer link to Roundup.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys are putting Monsanto’s ties to the scientific community at the center of a series of high-stakes suits against Bayer. Since the German company acquired Monsanto last June, two juries in California have sided with plaintiffs who have lymphoma and blamed the herbicide for their disease. Bayer’s shares have fallen roughly 35% since the first verdict.
In both cases, plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that Monsanto’s influence on outside studies of Roundup’s active ingredient tainted the safety research. The attorneys obtained certain Monsanto emails showing outside scientists asking the company’s scientists to review their manuscript drafts, and Monsanto scientists suggesting edits.
Gary Kitahata, a member of a jury that ordered Bayer to pay $289.2 million to a former California groundskeeper with non-Hodgkin lymphoma last August, said Monsanto’s interaction with outside researchers played an important role in jurors’ deliberations. He recalled being struck by emails allegedly dealing with “things like ghostwriting, influencing scientific studies that were done.” A judge later reduced the award, which Bayer is appealing, to $78.5 million.
Last month, a federal jury in San Francisco awarded $80.3 million to another man with non-Hodgkin lymphoma who had used Roundup, a verdict Bayer also plans to challenge. Another trial is under way in Oakland, involving two more of the 11,200 U.S. farmers, landscapers and others who have filed suit, threatening product-liability costs at Bayer for years to come.
Bayer said hundreds of studies and regulatory decisions across the globe show the active ingredient in Roundup, called glyphosate, is safe and isn’t carcinogenic. Regulators in the U.S. and abroad have continued to approve its use, in some cases after having gone back and taken another look at research criticized by plaintiffs’ attorneys.
“Plaintiff lawyers have cherry-picked isolated emails out of more than 20 million pages of documents produced during discovery to attempt to distort the scientific record and Monsanto’s role,” Bayer said. A spokesman said the documents at issue relate only to secondary reviews of past research, not to the original science. He added that the outside scientists have stood by their conclusions.
In the U.S., Roundup has become almost as fundamental to farming as tractors. American farmers use it or other glyphosate-based herbicides on the vast majority of their corn, soybean and cotton acres, making it a factor in American agriculture’s steadily rising productivity.
Monsanto developed the chemical decades ago and later introduced crops genetically engineered to survive being sprayed with it, driving what is now a more than $9 billion seed business for Bayer. Annual sales of glyphosate herbicides, including by competitors, total around $5 billion, according to Sanford C. Bernstein.
Despite their regulatory acceptance, the herbicides have faced growing resistance, especially since a 2015 decision by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a World Health Organization unit, classifying glyphosate as likely having the potential to cause cancer in humans. In January, a French court banned a Roundup product with the ingredient, even though it had a European Union seal of approval.
Costco Wholesale Corp. recently pulled Roundup herbicides from its stores, according to an executive of the retailer. Certain cities in California, Florida, Minnesota and elsewhere have forbidden glyphosate weedkillers on municipal property. Other farm-state lawmakers have defended the herbicides.
The attack on Monsanto’s role in research that deems Roundup safe is led by Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman PC, a law firm representing more than 1,400 plaintiffs. It has selectively released hundreds of company emails obtained through legal discovery and put many of them on its website.
“These documents provide evidence that Monsanto’s been actively engaged in manipulating the science regarding glyphosate’s carcinogenicity,” said Michael Baum, the firm’s managing partner.
One document cited by plaintiffs’ attorneys is a 2000 email that Monsanto’s Hugh Grant, later the company’s chief executive, sent following the publication of a paper upholding Roundup’s safety. “This is very good work, well done to the team,” he wrote to Monsanto scientists.
They weren’t the paper’s authors. Outside scientists were. An acknowledgements section cited Monsanto researchers as having provided scientific support. They had reviewed the text and data, according to internal Monsanto communications.
Mr. Grant, who retired after Bayer acquired Monsanto for $63 billion, declined to comment, Bayer said.
Bayer said collaboration with outside scientists is important for purposes such as testing safety and efficacy, and it provides properly disclosed compensation for outside scientists’ work, adding that this pay isn’t given to influence their scientific opinions.
Helmut Greim, a retired toxicology professor at the Technical University of Munich who has worked with Monsanto, said, “There is this perception that industry is evil and that whoever is involved with them is at least equally evil.”
“If the industry asks a scientist to help,” he added, “I see it as my duty to do so. But one shouldn’t let oneself be influenced.”
Some regulators say when a research paper discloses industry funding, they take into account the possibility of corporate influence on the findings. “We generally are a bit more suspicious,” said Bjorn Hansen, executive director of the European Chemicals Agency.
The chemicals agency and the European Food Safety Authority both re-examined glyphosate studies questioned by plaintiffs’ attorneys and let stand their approvals. The agencies said they look at the raw data in research, so that the kind of study the attorneys question—a review of past research—generally doesn’t carry much weight.
Health Canada also recently took a second look at studies on which it had based its approval of glyphosate herbicides, after critics raised concerns about Monsanto’s role in research. The Canadian agency assigned a separate group of its scientists to go over the studies. Their review didn’t change its conclusion.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently doing a periodic review of the glyphosate science, ahead of a decision expected soon on extending glyphosate’s longstanding U.S. approval. The EPA’s most recent review of glyphosate’s potential human risk, in late 2017, continued to find the chemical unlikely to cause cancer in humans.
A spokesman for the EPA said it has practices in place to “ensure that [company]-developed data represent sound science.”
Scientific research in industry and academia has become more entwined over the years, scientists say, as corporations have become a more important funding source. Since 2007, U.S. federal government spending on basic scientific research has plateaued at around $38 billion annually, according to data from the National Science Foundation. Corporate funding has roughly doubled in that time, to about $27 billion.
Companies or industry groups that finance research often include in contracts a right to review early versions of studies, said academics, who added that government-funded entities may attach a similar requirement.
For researchers with fewer options allowing them to be fully independent, “to some extent, they have to play by the industry’s rules,” said Sharon Batt, an adjunct bioethics professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
A 1998 review of 70 articles on the safety of a hypertension medication found that authors who produced conclusions supporting its use were nearly twice as likely as neutral or critical authors to have financial relationships with manufacturers. The review, on drugs called calcium-channel antagonists, was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
A 2003 analysis of studies on industry-sponsored biomedical research found corporate-funded studies were more than 3½ times as likely to show results favorable to companies as were studies with no industry funding. The analysis appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In 2002, researcher Susan Monheit was writing an article on glyphosate herbicides used against aquatic weeds and sent a draft to a Monsanto regulatory-affairs official for fact checking. The official forwarded it to Monsanto toxicologist Donna Farmer, according to emails that the Baum Hedlund law firm obtained in discovery and that The Wall Street Journal reviewed.
Ms. Farmer told the official the paper needed organizational work. “During one editing I had basically re-written the thing—then decided that was not a good thing to do so I tried to just correct the inaccuracies,” she wrote to the regulatory-affairs official, Martin Lemon.
In an interview, Ms. Monheit, who worked at the California Department of Food and Agriculture, said Mr. Lemon passed along Monsanto’s suggestions by telephone and she followed some of them, such as deleting references to old information. “I certainly didn’t want to use data that was out of date,” she said, but “I was wary of having Monsanto influence the article.”
When her article was published in a weed-control newsletter called Noxious Times, concluding the chemical posed minimal risk to wildlife, a note described it as the product of a review of previously published research and consultations with pesticide chemists and eco-toxicologists. The note didn’t name Monsanto.
Bayer didn’t make the employees available for interviews.
In the late 2000s, Monsanto financed a study done partly by Pamela Mink, then an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University, reviewing past research on glyphosate’s safety. Shown a draft, Monsanto’s Ms. Farmer suggested some edits, mostly to the introduction, and circulated the draft to fellow company scientists, according to documents produced in the litigation and reviewed by the Journal.
One of the Monsanto scientists, Daniel Goldstein, added his own suggestions. “There are a couple places where I read the sentences several times, and I just can’t gather what the underlying message is,” he emailed Ms. Farmer. The two suggested deleting redundant phrases, asked for math to be double-checked and corrected names.
When the paper was published in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology in June 2012, some of the critiqued passages didn’t appear, while others were rephrased and expanded. Brian Stekloff, a lawyer representing Bayer, said in court last month that Ms. Farmer moved around words in the introduction and added context about Roundup products that outside scientists would not have had.
The final paper was significantly different from the draft but had the same conclusion, which was that the researchers had found no pattern showing glyphosate exposure caused cancer in humans.
Its authors were listed as Dr. Mink and three other researchers who, like her, were affiliated with science consultancy Exponent Inc. The paper said one of the authors had been a paid consultant to Monsanto. “Final decisions regarding the content of the manuscript were made solely by the four authors,” it said.
Dr. Mink didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Dr. Greim, the retired Munich toxicology professor, said Monsanto approached him in 2013 about helping it publish some unpublished internal research it earlier submitted to regulatory bodies.
He said Monsanto officials sent him a draft of a report. “I told them, ‘That’s not how it’s done, you need a lot more information’” to support the conclusions, Dr. Greim said. He said he went back and forth with company scientists for months, asking them to add details such as the number of animals and organs studied, and changing the presentation of the results, until he felt the paper was satisfactory.
Monsanto accepted all of his suggestions, Dr. Greim said, and “there were a lot of passages I ended up writing.” He said he was paid €3,000, or about $3,400, for his work.
When the paper was published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology in 2015—finding no link between the Roundup ingredient and cancer—Dr. Greim appeared as lead author. A “declaration of interest” section said that he had been paid by Monsanto and that his three co-authors had connections to the glyphosate business, including one who was employed by Monsanto.
In an internal Monsanto memo released by the Baum Hedlund law firm, a Monsanto scientist listed among his accomplishments “ghost wrote cancer review paper Greim et al. (2015).”
Dr. Greim, who has sat on various German and EU scientific advisory committees, said he didn’t care what was said internally because that wasn’t what happened.
Bayer attorney Mr. Stekloff, speaking generally, said in court last month that there were instances of “dumb emails” and “bad language” among the many company documents produced in the case, but “the overall record demonstrates that this was a company committed to testing and committed to science.”
—Sara Randazzo and Sarah Nassauer contributed to this article.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/roundup-the-weedkiller-that-changed-farming-faces-a-reckoning-11554735900?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1
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Why Both Major Political Parties Have Failed to Curb Dangerous Pesticides
Apr 9, 2019 | Washington Post
By Elena Conis
The news that David Bernhardt, President Trump’s Interior Secretary nominee, blocked a federal report on the risks certain pesticides pose to hundreds of endangered species has enraged scientists and environmental groups.
“It is clear Mr. Bernhardt will always put the profits of his special-interest allies above the well-being of this nation’s most imperiled animals and plants,” said a coalition of 31 environmental and health-advocacy groups in a statement opposing Bernhardt’s nomination.
But as infuriating as the Trump administration’s favoritism toward the pesticide industry may be, it’s actually nothing new. Since the dawn of the modern pesticide era during World War II, federal regulators in administrations from both major parties have adopted lax, pro-industry standards that have allowed potentially dangerous pesticides to remain legal.
World War II led to an explosion of synthetic pesticides that were cheap, easily manufactured and highly profitable for chemical companies, which raked in $40 million in pesticide sales per year at the war’s start and $260 million over a decade later. Some of the new pesticides were astonishingly powerful: A single drop of Tepp could kill a mouse instantly. Others seemed incredibly safe. A naked man could sit with his back against the DDT-coated wall of a heated steel chamber for four days and emerge, allegedly, with no serious lasting effects. (We know this because one scientist found some “volunteers” to do just that.)
The power and number of the new pesticides called for a new federal law to regulate their use. The old law, dating to 1910, required little of pesticide makers. They simply had to label their products accurately, and it had been laxly enforced by the federal Bureau of Chemistry. The result was that all too often, unwitting shoppers took home apples, asparagus, cabbage, pears, spinach, broccoli, celery and more with levels of arsenic and lead that could — and did — sicken and kill.
The postwar pesticide law drafted in 1947 was intended to halt such tragedies as it guided farmers through the landscape of new pesticides. But industry representatives played a crucial role in drafting the legislation, and it once again did far too little to protect the public. The new law required pesticide labels to include ingredients and directions, and information about antidotes in the case of serious “poisons,” as pesticides were then called. It also required that pesticides resembling salt, sugar or flour be dyed another color, “to lessen the chance of housewives putting bug instead of baking powder into their biscuits,” as the Associated Press wryly put it.
But the law elided a crucial question: What, exactly, constituted a poison? It depended on what kind of scientist you asked.
For scientists with the Public Health Service, poisons were chemicals that caused immediate harm, which you could document by observing men who worked with chemicals in factories and fields. Food and Drug Administration scientists, however, took a longer view. They advocated pre-market studies in lab animals to observe the full effects of a chemical over a lifetime or generation. When FDA scientists fed DDT to dogs, for instance, they were troubled to see evidence of neurological problems, liver damage and startlingly high levels of the chemical in puppies, who got it from breast milk. PHS scientists, meanwhile, examined DDT “spray men” who ended each work day drenched in DDT, and they seemed fine.
Whose science to rely on? The USDA, now in charge of pesticide oversight, chose the latter, which suited pesticide makers just fine.
With few market restrictions in place, the companies ramped up production. Between 1945 and 1950, U.S. manufacturers tripled the amount of pesticides produced. By 1952, the USDA had more than 20,000 new pesticide products to keep track of. All the while, cancer rates climbed and pesticides came under suspicion.
Highly publicized hearings in the 1950s, spearheaded by New York Rep. James Delaney, led to improvements, including an amendment to the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act preventing USDA from registering any pesticides until the FDA set a “safe” residue level. As environmental scientist John Perkins pointed out decades ago, though, that was still a win for the pesticide industry, as it “legitimized” pesticide use by establishing “legal” doses.
President Richard M. Nixon’s effort to overhaul federal pesticide law in 1971 produced more meaningful change. That law required manufacturers to submit health and safety testing data for any pesticide they wanted to register, and it granted the newly established Environmental Protection Agency authority to require additional data.
This should have made a big difference. But by the end of the 1970s, the EPA’s pesticide office was drowning in a backlog of registration requests and, unable to keep up, chose to register pesticides whose applications included incomplete, unreliable and obsolete data.
This led to the creation of “conditional” registration: After 1978, companies could register new products without submitting all of the required safety and testing data. More than 16,000 pesticides have been registered for use in the United States; more than two-thirds were initially registered conditionally. Some, according to a Government Accountability Office report, have been conditionally registered for more than 20 years. One legal analysis declared this a long-standing “loophole” in federal pesticide law, one that allowed companies to circumvent the legal requirement to prove a product safe for health and the environment before selling it to the public.
One of those conditionally registered compounds was glyphosate, first brought to market in the 1970s and back in the headlines recently after a jury awarded $80 million in damages to a Northern California man who claimed the Monsanto weedkiller Roundup caused his Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. It’s the second major jury decision against the pesticide in less than a year, and more cases are pending.
Conditional registration is not the only reason glyphosate has remained on the market. EPA scientists classified it as a carcinogen back in 1985 but reversed course after six years of correspondence with Monsanto executives. In the decades that followed, the company commissioned its own science from its preferred scientists and asked federal regulators to base decisions on that science. In one instance, the EPA ceded to industry requests to remove a certain scientist from a glyphosate safety review panel.
In another, an EPA scientist promised Monsanto it would block a planned glyphosate safety review. The president whose EPA made this promise? Barack Obama.
This is our system for ensuring that pesticides are safe. They are innocent and on the market until proven guilty. Close relationships between industry and our regulatory agencies help keep them there. By the time enough independent science has produced evidence of harm, it’s far too late to reverse the damage done.
It’s no small irony that one of the pesticides in the report blocked by Bernhardt, malathion, was called out by Rachel Carson in “Silent Spring” in 1962. “The alleged ‘safety’ of malathion rests on precarious ground,” she wrote. But the real problem was that, “as often happens — this was not discovered until the chemical had been in use for several years.”
Lawmakers and regulators must adopt a harder line toward pesticides. This is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem. It’s a long-standing American problem — one that risks the safety of our environment, our food supply and most importantly, our health.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/04/09/why-both-parties-have-failed-curb-dangerous-pesticides/?utm_term=.1a3dca564ab9
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A Growing Problem After Wildfires: Toxic Chemicals
Apr 9, 2019 | Reuters (In The Washington Post)
By Sharon Bernstein
As an uncontrollable wildfire turned the California town of Paradise to ash, air pollution researcher Keith Bein knew he had to act fast: Little is known about toxic chemicals released when a whole town burns, and the wind would soon blow away evidence.
He drove about 100 miles to Paradise, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, from his laboratory at the University of California at Davis, only to be refused entrance under rules that allow first responders and journalists — but not public health researchers — to cross police lines.
It was the second time Bein says he was unable to gather post-wildfire research in a field so new public safety agencies have not yet developed procedures for allowing scientists into restricted areas.
Fires like the one that razed Paradise in November burn thousands of pounds of wiring, plastic pipes and building materials, leaving dangerous chemicals in the air, soil and water. Lead paint, burned asbestos and even melted refrigerators from tens of thousands of households only add to the danger, public health experts say.
Bein’s experience highlights the difficulties in assessing the impact of today’s massive disasters, whether wildfires that burn entire towns or flooding after major hurricanes, incidents that scientists say are becoming more common because of climate change.
“Everything that we’re doing, it feels like this is a question nobody has asked before, and we have no answers,” said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, director of the Environmental Health Sciences Center at the Davis campus.
Researchers are examining soil tested for the presence of chemical compounds in neighborhoods destroyed by the 2017 wildfire that swept into Santa Rosa, in California’s Sonoma County north of the Bay Area, and comparing it to uninhabited land nearby where only trees had burned, Hertz-Picciotto said. In that still-uncompleted study, researchers found nearly 2,000 more chemical compounds in the soil than in uninhabited parkland nearby. Researchers are now working to identify the compounds.
While scientists have studied wildfires for decades — learning much about the impact on air, soil and nearby ecosystems — fires that race from the forest into large urban communities were, until recently, exceedingly rare.
As natural disasters increase in scope and frequency, public health researchers across the United States are developing new lines of inquiry with unusual speed.
Scientists, many of them funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), are studying pregnant women exposed to polluted air and water after Hurricane Harvey hit Houston in 2017; residents of Puerto Rico forced to live in unrepaired homes where mold and fungus grew after Hurricane Maria in 2017; and eggs from backyard chickens that ate California wildfire ash, among other topics.
“It’s fundamentally critical that we be able to understand these situations and the risks to populations both in the short term and in the long term,” said NIEHS senior medical adviser Aubrey Miller, who is helping to develop quick-response disaster research cutting across scientific specialties.
To do that, NIEHS has sped up the time it needs to fund research, from months or years to as little as 120 days, said Gwen Collman, who directs the agency’s work with outside researchers.
At UC-Davis, where researchers are studying eggs from backyard chickens that may have breathed smoke and pecked at ash in areas affected by wildfires, the work is complicated.
“In an urban fire, you’re dealing with contaminants that don’t go away — arsenic, heavy metals, copper, lead, transformer fluid, brake fluid, fire retardant,” said veterinarian Maurice Pitesky, who is leading the study.
Any contaminants found in the eggs could stem from other factors such as the proximity of the home to a factory, a waste disposal site or a highway, he said.
In an as-yet-uncompleted study, researchers have tested eggs sent by individual owners of roughly 350 backyard properties concerned about possible contamination from wildfires and other causes, researcher Todd Kelman said. The locations of the yards were mapped to see which homeowners lived near wildfire areas, and the eggs were tested to see if they have high levels of contaminants such as lead, cadmium and other chemicals associated with human buildings and activities.
One recent morning, teams from the Environmental Protection Agency in white hazmat suits combed through Paradise, loading seared paint cans, partially melted pesticide containers and the remains of propane tanks onto trucks to be hauled away.
Rusty Harris Bishop, a toxics expert with the EPA who worked on the Paradise cleanup, said removal teams take away whatever contaminants they find, including melted pipes or asbestos-laden construction materials, going beyond the older definition of hazardous household waste.
But cleanup protocols after such disasters are evolving along with the public health science, he said.
That gap in knowledge concerns researchers such as Bein, who plans to train as a firefighter to get access to the burned areas in the next big blaze.
“As these types of fires become more frequent in nature, where instead of once every decade it’s once every summer . . . then we really need to know how this is going to affect health,” Bein said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-growing-problem-after-wildfires-toxic-chemicals/2019/04/05/7243d6b4-45bb-11e9-90f0-0ccfeec87a61_story.html?utm_term=.d65bf25666db
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EU to Opt Against Health Warning for Suspected Carcinogen
Apr 6, 2019 | The Guardian
By Arthur Neslen
A suspected carcinogen found in spray paints, sun creams and varnishes will not receive a cautionary health label, under European Union proposals seen by the Guardian.
In what campaigners say is an unprecedented and potentially illegal step, the European commission has dropped a recommendation from its chemicals advisers for mandatory health warnings on all inhalable liquid forms of titanium dioxide (TiO2).
The regulation was drafted under what EU officials describe as “very heavy” pressure from industry, supported by the UK and the Trump White House.
Bas Eickhout, a Green MEP, said: “The commission is being weak on the chemical industry and watering down the meaning of Reach [chemicals] legislation, in a pattern that is becoming increasingly concerning. If the risk assessor has given clear warnings, the commission cannot ignore them. As a parliament, we will absolutely push to make sure this does not happen.”
TiO2 is a whitening substance found in a vast array of paints, plastics, pills and toothpastes, with a global turnover estimated at $13bn (£9.8bn) a year.
France has moved to ban its use in foods and the European commission initially proposed a universal health warning for any products that could be inhaled, after the European chemicals agency (Echa) joined the World Health Organization and US agencies in declaring it a suspected carcinogen.
But the move sparked a £12mindustry-led pressure campaign, and intense lobbying led by the UK, focused on the “socioeconomic consequences” of health regulation.
President Donald Trump’s US trade representative also complained to the World Trade Organization that the move was “unnecessarily disruptive to billions of dollars of US-EU trade” and called for it to be delayed.
Now, a new proposal to be debated by EU national representatives on 11 April would exempt all forms of TiO2 except powders from cancer warnings.
One EU source speaking on condition of anonymity said: “I am ashamed to say I don’t know why we are derogating them. We should not be having a problem with this. I think it is because we received a lot of pressure from industry, particularly on paints. It has been the worst I have seen.”
They added: “Without proper labelling, people may not wear masks when they are using spray paints, and they would be exposed.”
The Titanium Dioxide Manufacturers Association (TDMA) has spearheaded a multimillion-euro lobby campaign, in which officials reportedly met with up to 24 lobbyists at a time, some of whom were “giving us orders”, according to one diplomat.
Letters seen by the Guardian show no letup in the jockeying over the last month. One missive from the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic), which represents the TDMA, described the TiO2 issue as “politically very sensitive”.
The TDMA did not respond to questions but made clear that it opposes any regulation of what it sees as a “non-hazardous” substance in real-world consumer situations.
Perceptions of “over-lobbying” are due to the complexities of the case, the TDMA believes.
The group has been accused of gaining undue influence after spending as much as €800,000 on representation from FleishmanHillard, a global marketing agency. It has no separate listing in the EU’s transparency register.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/06/eu-to-decide-against-health-warning-for-suspected-carcinogen
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REACH and CLP Hub: After the Final Registration
Apr 9, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Thomas Berbner
Dr Thomas Berbner of Dr Knoell Germany GmbH examines the steps companies should take to ensure dossiers are up to date.
Almost one year ago we 'celebrated' the final registration deadline for phase-in substances. For many companies it seemed this was the end of REACH, but that was not the case. In fact, it is just the opposite.
Europe has established one of the largest databases for information on chemicals containing, amongst other data, details about the physical and chemical properties, toxicological and eco-toxicologic impact reports, and information about where substances are used. Extended Safety Data Sheets (SDSs) introduced a new way of communicating the safe use of a chemical substance.
We know more than ever before about chemicals in Europe. However, this needs to be kept in mind: the chemicals market is not and has never been in a steady state.
Every year, new chemicals are introduced, other chemicals go off-market and the existing ones may change in market shares. Production volumes and manufacturing procedures may change, new uses are introduced, or new scientific knowledge about a substance might become available.
Manufacturers and importers of new substances are generally aware of the registration obligations they have to fulfill to legally place a substance on the market. It seems that for the existing phase-in chemicals the awareness of keeping the information up-to-date is lower however.
Article 22 of Regulation (EC) No. 1907/2006 requires updating a registration without undue delay if there is a change:
in the status of the registrant;
in the composition of the substance;
in the annual or total quantities manufactured or imported; and/or
in classification and labelling.
Furthermore, a registration may require updating if there are new uses or advice is given against a new use, or new risks to human health or the environment come to light.
Additionally, updates are required if there are amendments or updates to the chemical safety report (CSR) or section 5 of Annex VI, as well as in cases where data access is granted or where there is a requirement to perform a test for which a testing proposal is necessary.
Updates are also necessary where Echa requests them (eg, decisions of a completeness check, etc).
The need for regular reviews
There are many reasons why a registration should be reviewed on a regular basis, even if the company is certain nothing has changed. However, many registration dossiers have not been updated since their submission to Echa.
The commission and agency are aware of this and there are additional measures to encourage dossier updates. For example, document CA/114/2018 intends to clarify the term "without undue delay" used in Article 22 of REACH.
There is also discussion about a new regulation that may give an interpretation of the term 'without delay' as the obligation to update a dossier within three months in cases where there are new uses or changes in substance identity and/or tonnage bands. Registrants may also be required to update dossiers within 12 months if an updated CSR becomes available, if there is new scientific data with regard to properties, and/or if new risks are found.
'The EU plans to screen data for all registered chemicals with a focus on hazard data until 2027'
Furthermore, Bjorn Hansen told Chemical Watch’s Global Business Summit in March that the EU plans to screen data for all registered chemicals with a focus on hazard data until 2027.
BfR study
Aside from missing dossier updates, there is another issue that bothers authorities as well as industry. The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) has completed a REACH compliance project that started in 2014.
They reported that only 31% of the dossiers for substances at greater than 1,000 tonnes per year and 44% of the dossiers for volumes between 100 and 1,000 tonnes per year were considered compliant. For the rest of the dossiers, data was considered to be missing.
The results of this study were rapidly taken up by the media and published without drawing a clear picture about what the term "incompliant registration dossier" actually meant.
On 21 February, Echa released an article headlined: REACH compliance – an agency priority for 2019. It looked at how many registration dossiers did not contain all of the required information and referred to the BfR study. Echa said the result was comparable to the results of Echa’s own compliance checks.
How could this happen? Why are so many registrations considered to be incompliant or incomplete?
Looking back at the first registration deadline
At this point we have to take a look back in time, when the first registration deadline for phase-in substances in volumes of more than 1,000 tonnes per year per legal entity was still in the future.
Chemicals management in the European Economic Area (EEA) was completely new and no one had real experience dealing with the REACH regulation.
In the beginning, Echa still had to be established and guidance documents were not yet developed or published. Therefore, registration dossiers were submitted that had been generated to the best knowledge and capability of all stakeholders at that time. Happy to have overcome the registration burden and having kept products on the market, registrations were considered to be in a steady state.
Today, it is rather obvious that some registration dossiers, including some now several years old, might have been of a very high quality at the time they were prepared but are considered to have fallen short of today’s expectations of sound chemicals management.
After REACH entered into force, all stakeholders had to learn the requirements and ensure that data was not missing for many intrinsic substance properties. This information had to be provided and, hence, registrants deviated from standard data requirements towards the optional use of alternative data like read-across or quantitative structure-activity relationships (Qsars).
The problem was that the justifications for the use of these alternative types of data were not considered sufficient when applying today’s standards. This is also in accordance with preliminary results of a Cefic analysis.
Echa stated that REACH was built in such a way that industry does its job and Echa checks the results. Wherever data is missing, industry is encouraged to avoid animal testing and to use alternative methods. Such alternative methods could not be developed at a sufficient pace, however, and put industry in a problematic situation: they should (and wanted to) avoid animal testing but there were insufficient alternatives.
That left industry with alternative data options like read-across. Since a lot of data was missing years ago, this option was used to a much higher degree than expected by Echa. The pressure to use data waivers may, however, leave uncertainty about the hazard and subsequently the risk of a chemical substance. Hence, there is no other way than to tackle such uncertainties.
Checklist
A substance for which the registration dossier is considered to be incompliant by today’s standards does, of course, not necessarily pose a hazard or risk to man and/or the environment, but there are worries, because one simply does not know for sure. Therefore:
· Take Article 22 of the REACH regulation very seriously and keep your dossier up-to-date. Check the basic data about volumes and uses (also uses advised against). Are they still accurate? Remove uses that are not active any longer.
· Keep an eye on the scientific data. Is there something new with regard to hazards to man and/or the environment? And;
· Check your justifications for read-across or QSAR data. Do they sufficiently and reliably explain why you chose this approach?
One final point on why it is so important to keep a registration up-to-date is the prioritisation of dossiers for further evaluation by the authorities. One may imagine that the authorities will tackle hazardous substances that are produced in high volumes and have disperse uses. Therefore, check these points in your dossier. Is the classification of the substance accurate and are the volumes still in the registered range? For the uses check whether they are all correct.
Sometimes just a few additional sentences in a justification may change a dossier that is considered non-compliant into a document well-received by the authorities.
https://chemicalwatch.com/76106/reach-and-clp-hub-after-the-final-registration
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Chemicals Top EU Notifications for Product Risk
Apr 8, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Oziel
Hazardous chemicals in products, such as toys and cosmetics, have become the biggest risk to health and safety on the EU and EEA market.
Risks related to chemicals comprised 25% of all notifications last year, according to a European Commission report on the EU's Safety Gate rapid alert system for dangerous products – formerly known as Rapex. This was up three percentage points on the 2017 notifications.
Injury from use of a product received the same level of notifications as chemicals in products in 2018, at 25%.
In total, there were some 637 alerts about chemicals in products. Chemicals represented the most common risk notified in:
· Croatia;
· Czech Republic;
· Denmark;
· Estonia;
· Ireland;
· Italy;
· Luxembourg;
· the Netherlands;
· Norway;
· Poland;
· Slovakia; and
· Sweden
The Commission’s latest report does not include a breakdown of which notified products contained hazardous chemicals. The five most notified products were:
· toys (31%);
· motor vehicles (19%);
· clothing, textiles, and fashion items (10%);
· electrical appliances and equipment (8%); and
· cosmetics (7%).
The number of notifications grew from 2,201 in 2017 to 2,257 alerts last year.
The largest number of total Rapex notifications came from Germany with 362 alerts, France with 249 and Hungary with 172 alerts. China remained the number one product country of origin, accounting for 52% of notifications.
Cooperation with Chinese authorities in the product safety field continues to be a priority, the Commission said, but the results are "mixed". Its awareness raising about product safety rules that need to be met when selling to EU consumers is ongoing.
Follow-up actions
National authorities have an obligation to follow up on the information circulated in Rapex. If they find the same product on their own market, they should take measures and send this information through the system so it is also circulated.
They carried out 4,050 follow ups in 2018. Motor vehicles were the subject of the most of these with 77%, toys comprised 7% and other product categories 16%.
Of the latter, 2% comprised childcare articles and children's equipment, as well as clothing, textiles and fashion items. Electrical appliances and equipment accounted for only 1%.
While in the risk categories, chemicals only comprised 9% of follow ups.
Reform
The latest figures show that national authorities are not managing to stop unsafe products from reaching consumers, European consumer organisation Beuc said.
Its director general Monique Goyens urged the European Parliament to "swiftly approve" a Commission proposal for improvements to market surveillance activities, which Beuc said was "fragmented, underfunded and patchy".
The reform, due to be voted by Parliament in a plenary session on 15-19 April, could revamp the situation from 2021, it said. If adopted, member states should be able to improve their efforts to weed out unsafe products from the market.
Under the proposals, an EU-wide network would be set up to coordinate joint enforcement actions, and the performance of individual countries would come under peer review, Beuc said. The existing central database would be expanded to include information about accidents and injuries caused by products.
In 2017 and 2016, hazardous chemicals in products were the second biggest risk to health and safety on the EU and EEA market.
Squishy toys
An emerging area of concern is chemicals in squeezable or ‘squishy’ toys. Most of the 23 alerts in 2018 for these products reported that they contained dangerous substances, such as n,n-dimethylformamide, n,n-dimethyl-aminoethanol, cyclohexanone and triethylenediamine.
These substances pose a risk to the eyes, or cause mucous membrane irritation and liver damage.
In some cases, the toys may also pose risk of choking, suffocation or microbiological risks, all of which cause serious life-long health injuries, particularly to children.
Out of the 23 alerts, 14 were due to a chemical-related risk.
https://chemicalwatch.com/76083/chemicals-top-eu-notifications-for-product-risk
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What's in Trump's Energy Orders?
Apr 9, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Kelsey Brugger, Ariel Wittenberg and Hannah Northey
President Trump is heading to Texas tomorrow to sign two executive orders aimed at boosting an oil and gas sector he's long touted as an ally.
Whether that move will pay off for the industry in terms of substantial regulatory relief, or for Trump's 2020 prospects, is unclear.
Following months of buzz and chatter among energy executives and Beltway insiders, Trump is slated to ink the orders in Crosby, Texas, tomorrow, surrounded by union workers and engineers. The move builds on Trump's unveiling last week of a new order to approve the contested Keystone XL oil pipeline with the government conducting an environmental review.
But will this week's orders be as concrete as the approval of Keystone XL? Or will it face lengthy legal challenges like the oil conduit and other projects that have fallen under Trump's "energy dominance" agenda?
What's certain among those closely watching the president is that such posturing — and orders to beef up domestic energy production, permitting projects and infrastructure investments — plays to Trump's conservative base.
"It's a good political move," said Josh Price, an analyst at Height Capital Markets. "It fits in their narrative perfectly: We are doing whatever we can to boost American energy, but there are obstructive states getting in the way so we are going to do this to weaken their authority. But the practical effect is pretty minimal."
"It's a lot of optics," Price said.
The orders are, in part, expected to address conflicts between the Trump administration and Democratic governors in New York and New Jersey over sections of the Clean Water Act. Any attempt at a quick fix by the administration would likely not apply to most projects, however. And more generally, analysts said, it's unclear exactly how, in most areas, the administration could spur production.
Yesterday, a White House official confirmed the event would take place at the International Union of Operating Engineers' International Training and Education Center in Crosby. Later tomorrow night, Trump is hosting a fundraiser 30 minutes away in Houston.
The fundraiser is being hosted by RNC co-chairs Ronna McDaniel and Tommy Hicks Jr., as well as Trump Victory Committee Finance Chairman Todd Ricketts. Guests will pay up to $100,000 per couple, according to an invitation.
Executive orders are often messaging tools, used to showcase an administration's priorities, especially as an election season nears.
Several industry sources had limited knowledge about tomorrow's event, which is unusual given industry representatives would usually plan to attend. At the same time, sources said, past events have come up with little notice.
Last week, one source joked all that was certain was that there would be hard hats. "They love hard hats," the source said.
Here's a look at what Trump's orders might accomplish and where they could fall short.
'Reforming' the Clean Water Act?
President Trump could direct EPA to limit states' abilities to weigh in on Clean Water Act permits.
Section 401 of the act allows states to "certify" that projects requiring permits comply with both the act and their water quality standards. That means projects being permitted federally by EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers or the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission also must be approved, denied or approved with conditions by states.
States must issue their certifications or denials within a "reasonable timeframe" set by federal agencies.
Energy interests have been pressuring the Trump administration to limit states' involvement since New York and Washington state refused to permit a high-profile pipeline in 2016 and coal terminal in 2017, respectively.
Washington state's denial in particular rankled those in the industry because, while it was based on water quality concerns, it also discussed issues related to air pollution and climate change. Both the Washington and New York denials occurred after companies had been asked to resubmit their applications multiple times to help give states more time and more information to review.
Ross Eisenberg, vice president for energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, said reforming Section 401 regulations is "at or near the top of our list" when it comes to streamlining permits for energy projects.
"That needs to be clarified in terms of how it is applied to create certainty," he said. "It has a valid function, unless you are abusing it."
An executive order in and of itself cannot alter how those certifications work, but President Trump could direct federal agencies to write new regulations or guidance redefining what that "reasonable timeframe" is and whether it begins when an application is submitted or when an application is deemed complete. He could also direct agencies to specify that state certification decisions must only consider issues of water quality.
That's something federal agencies have been working on for months.
Speaking at a "water week" event last week, EPA Deputy Director of the Office of Water for Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds Sandra Connors called the certification regulations "really ancient" and said the agency was "looking at whether or not we can, by guidance or rulemaking, see about advancing some modernization there."
Army Corps of Engineers chief R.D. James directed his staff in February to clarify regulations around Section 401 certifications so states would only have 60 days to review permits (Greenwire, Feb. 6).
The moves have received strong pushback from organizations representing states.
The Western Governors' Association has been a vocal opponent of any changes to the certification process, saying in a statement yesterday that it "would inflict serious harm to the division of state and federal authorities established by Congress."
Association of Clean Water Administrators Executive Director Julia Anastasio says limiting states' input wouldn't actually streamline permitting.
Instead, she said, "There will just be more outright denials."
Forcing states to make a decision on a shorter timeframe, without allowing them to ask for more information or more time to review complicated projects, she said, will lead to "denials without prejudice" allowing applicants to resubmit with more information.
"I don't think that it would create a win for the regulated community," she said. "I understand it can be frustrating when you're stuck in this resubmittal loop, but there also has to be recognition that these are often really big, complicated projects.
"Breaking pipeline bottlenecks?
Trump's team chose to unveil the executive orders in Texas, which sits atop the Permian Basin, a lucrative U.S. oil and gas play. The basin has boomed since the advent of hydraulic fracturing a decade ago, but a bottleneck in pipeline capacity has slowed transporting product to market.
Yet it's murky how the Trump administration could speed up pipeline construction in the Permian. More than two-thirds of the basin's oil production is on the Texas side, and Texas regulators haven't thrown up roadblocks to in-state pipelines.
Some federal regulations still apply to purely intrastate lines, such as Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. But those rules come into play when pipelines and other projects cross navigable waterways, said Brigham McCown, an attorney who formerly worked for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
"There ain't much water out in West Texas that would be a river crossing under Section 404," McCown said.
The rest of the basin is in New Mexico, where more than a third of the land is owned by the federal government. There, U.S. land managers have opened up vast swaths of land for oil and gas leasing and advanced permits to drill earlier this year when much of the government agency work was shut down.
Other issues in the Permian the White House cannot fix. The influx of workers, trucks and industrial activity has overwhelmed local roads and led to crowded schools and strain on hospitals.
The Texas Transportation Commission is seeking funding for $2.2 billion worth of highway projects in the region. Among the top priorities are Interstate 20, which runs through Midland and Odessa, and a notoriously dangerous stretch of U.S. 285 between Pecos, Texas, and the New Mexico state line (Energywire, Dec. 18, 2017).
Transportation Commission Chairman Bruce Bugg said he's spoken to White House adviser Larry Kudlow about the region's infrastructure needs.
"What the president wants is what's the highest impact," Bugg said during a March 28 commission meeting.
Reporter Mike Lee contributed.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/04/09/stories/1060150115
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Transcanada, Trump Admin Ask Court to Drop Pipeline Lawsuit
Apr 9, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
TransCanada Corp. and the Trump administration yesterday asked a federal appellate court to drop a lawsuit and dissolve a construction block on the embattled Keystone XL pipeline.
As expected, the company and the government filed motions to dismiss following President Trump's executive order revoking a State Department approval and issuing a new presidential permit for the crude oil project (E&E News PM, March 29).
"These actions render plaintiffs' claims moot," TransCanada argued in its filing with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In the original lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, environmental and tribal groups fought the State Department's issuance of a permit to cross the U.S.-Canada border. President Trump encouraged TransCanada to refile its application with the State Department shortly after he took office. Former President Obama rejected the project in 2015.
"Those claims all challenged the validity of a permit that no longer exists," TransCanada wrote yesterday. "Accordingly, no effective relief can be granted with respect to those claims."
TransCanada and the Trump administration filed their appeals with the 9th Circuit after Judge Brian Morris for the lower court last year found holes in the State Department's environmental review of the pipeline. He ordered all work on the project to stop until the agency filled in the gaps.
Morris, an Obama appointee, rejected requests at the time by TransCanada to amend the preliminary injunction to exempt some preconstruction field work.
Allowing TransCanada to build work camps and prepare off-site storage could spur "bureaucratic momentum" and "skew the Department's future analysis and decision-making regarding the project," the judge found.
Trump last month handed down an order withdrawing the State Department permit to instead use executive authority to greenlight the border crossing.
The legality of Trump's permit is now also under the scrutiny of Morris' court (Energywire, April 8).
TransCanada pointed to last week's lawsuit by the Indigenous Environmental Network and North Coast Rivers Alliance as evidence that the 9th Circuit should drop the original challenge.
"Indeed, one of the plaintiffs has acknowledged as much, by filing a new suit in which it recognizes the validity of the President's revocation of the State-issued permit," TransCanada argued.
The logic of the argument is "demonstrably backward," said Stephan Volker, an attorney for the plaintiffs.
"The fact that the Trump administration had authority — indeed, a duty under the law — to revoke its illegal 2017 presidential permit as ordered by the Montana federal district court does not suggest that it had authority to approve yet another unlawful presidential permit," he said.
"As our new lawsuit explains, the presidential permit issued on March 29 is unlawful just like its predecessor," Volker said.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/04/09/stories/1060149909
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It’s Time to Bring Pipeline Safety into the 21st Century
Apr 9, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Don Santa
The United States’ emergence as a global energy superpower would not have been possible without America’s extensive natural gas pipeline network. Approximately 300,000 miles of transmission pipelines carry natural gas safely to market, where it generates electricity, heats homes, powers American manufacturing and is exported to allies and trading partners abroad.
This stunning development is attributable to American ingenuity, and it is critical that our pipeline safety regulations also reflect advancements in technology and engineering practices.
Current regulations are based on federal standards that were established piecemeal over the span of half a century and that often are inconsistent with modern practices.
The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have begun hearings on reauthorization of the Pipeline Safety Act, the law that confers authority upon the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). PHMSA regulates pipeline design, construction, testing, operations, inspection, and maintenance. The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America strongly favors using this reauthorization to bring federal pipeline safety regulations into the 21st century.
PHMSA is now finalizing a sweeping set of regulatory changes that will be the most significant update to natural gas transmission pipeline safety rules since federal pipeline safety regulations were first issued in 1970. PHMSA's updates will advance gas transmission pipeline safety by defining specific requirements to facilitate using modern pipeline safety technologies and processes.
On HoustonChronicle.com: Once sleepy pipeline sector at center of the action
For example, PHMSA’s new rules establish requirements governing the use of non-invasive tools that can evaluate pipeline condition and identify pipe needing repair or replacement. The rules also set out requirements for operators to test certain existing pipelines to ensure that they meet today’s safety standards.
These regulations enjoy broad support from public safety advocates and natural gas pipeline companies, as well as bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.
The Interstate Natural Gas Association recently joined several public advocacy groups and pipeline trade associations in penning a letter encouraging Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to act expeditiously to advance this important regulatory update. The Republican chairs and Democratic ranking members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and the Subcommittee on Transportation and Safety, sent a similar letter expressing their support for completing the rulemaking.
The Interstate Natural Gas Association hopes to see these critical regulations completed this year and anticipates that they will lay the foundation for Congress and PHMSA to continue updating older regulations to reflect today’s technological and engineering capabilities.
Day in and day out, pipeline operators work to ensure and enhance the safety and reliability of the critical infrastructure that is America’s natural gas pipeline system. Just as technological advances made the shale revolution possible, new technologies and engineering practices are improving the performance and safety of the nation’s natural gas pipeline network.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/It-s-time-to-bring-pipeline-safety-into-the-13751721.php?cmpid=ffcp
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Workers, Harris County Take Legal Action over Crosby co. Chemical Fire
Apr 8, 2019 | Houston Business Journal
By Olivia Pulsinelli
A series of lawsuits have been filed against KMCO LLC in the week since a chemical fire broke out at the company’s facility near Houston.
The fire at 16503 Ramsey Road in Crosby broke out the morning of April 2 and was extinguished around 4:20 p.m. the same day. Statements from the company indicate the fire was due to a leak of isobutylene, but the cause of the leak and source of the ignition are still unknown. One worker died, and at least two others were transported to the hospital for treatment of their injuries.
As of April 8, individuals have filed four lawsuits against KMCO over the fire. Harris County and the state of Texas also took legal action against the company, alleging violations of environmental regulations.Workers' claims
The most recent lawsuit — Aurelio Campos et al. vs. KMCO LLC, filed by the Lanier Law Firm and the Alexander Law Firm April 8 in Harris County District Court — claims that a check valve on an isobutylene line failed.
“On information and belief, before the explosion it became apparent to personnel at the plant that a leak was occurring at or near the check valve,” the lawsuit alleges. “Despite this knowledge, KMCO personnel did not immediately order an evacuation or sound the general alarm. Only after a large quantity of isobutylene had been released an ignition became imminent was a call made to evacuate.”
The lawsuit includes negligence and gross negligence under causes of action. The lawsuit alleges KMCO failed to properly train employees, provide adequate equipment, properly supervise employees and work being performed, conduct adequate maintenance, inspect and/or maintain equipment, implement adequate safety policies and procedures, and more.
John C. Foley, president and CEO of KMCO, provided the following statement in response to the lawsuits: “KMCO is working in close cooperation with the Fire Marshal, federal Chemical Safety Board and OSHA investigators to determine the accurate timeline and cause of last week’s tragic incident. I can assure our team and the community that no investigation will be more thorough than our own. But until facts are known, any legal complaints should be considered unverified.”TRENDINGCOMMERCIAL REAL ESTATELocal hotel to transform into Texas' first Margaritaville ResortFOOD & LIFESTYLEHeights-area burger restaurant shutters after two yearsHIRING IN TRAVEL AND TOURISMChili's Grill & Bar, Restaurant Manager - Dayton- Liberty
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The three plaintiffs in Aurelio Campos et al. vs. KMCO LLC were working at the Crosby facility and “sustained severe bodily injuries” in the incident, per the lawsuit. However, the lawsuit does not specify whether they were employees of KMCO or contract workers and does not detail the extent of their injuries.
Other lawsuits were filed by a pipefitter at the site who suffered “severe damage to his knees, wrist, shoulder, neck, ears, head and other parts of his body,” as well as a unspecified worker at the site who also sustained injuries to his knee, ear, shoulder and other parts of his body. Another individual filed a lawsuit over unspecified severe injuries.
“While the company is aware that some outside contractors have made legal claims, none of the third-party companies they work for have informed us of any alleged injury,” KMCO said in a statement. “To our knowledge, no KMCO employee has filed a lawsuit as a result of the incident.”Environment-related legal action
Separately, Harris County and the state of Texas — acting by and through the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) — on April 3 alleged violations of the Texas Water Code, Texas Solid Waste Disposal Act, Harris County Floodplain Regulations and Harris County Stormwater Regulations. The violations would carry various penalties per day.
Harris County's April 3 court filing notes that the fire caused 100 percent opacity conditions for one hour and 19 minutes. It also claims that foam sprayed to extinguish the fire and “facility-industrial wastewater (was) discharged into or adjacent to water” at least from April 2-3.
Statements from KMCO assert that the foam is not hazardous to people or groundwater, and the Environmental Protection Agency and TCEQ have been monitoring air quality. As of April 5, “there have been no findings that would raise community health concerns,” KMCO said.
“The company is continuing its water containment and collection efforts,” KMCO said in its April 5 statement. “Additional precautions are being taken to manage anticipated rainfall and prevent any uncontrolled runoff. Residents should be aware that mobile water pumping equipment and tank vehicles deployed on adjacent roads are removing water runoff from the site. No hazardous compounds have been detected in any offsite samples.”
As of the April 3 court filing, the permits division of the Harris County Engineering Department was in the process of reviewing records to determine whether the KMCO facility had all permits required under the Harris County Floodplain Regulations. The filing alleges the facility “may not have requested or passed all required final inspections for development permits.”
Additionally, the court filing also notes that the Harris County Pollution Control Services Department responded to complaints of a strong natural gas odor near the KMCO facility on Feb. 6. A KMCO executive told the HCPCSD representative that a contracted vacuum truck performing routine maintenance at the facility released mercaptan. After an investigation, KMCO was issued violation notices of several Texas Clean Air Act provisions related to the Feb. 6 incident and two previous judgements on March 25, per the April 3 filing.
Several media outlets — including the Houston Chronicle, KHOU 11, KPRC Click2Houston.com and KTRK ABC13 — have reported that the facility has a history of complaints and violations. However, in a statement posted by Click2Houston.com, KMCO noted that it only acquired the facility in 2012.
In response to an unrelated chemical fire just weeks earlier, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued another Houston-area company, Intercontinental Terminals Company LLC, alleging violations of TCEQ rules. Click here to read the story.
https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2019/04/08/workers-harris-county-sue-crosby-co-over-chemical.html
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(ACC Mentioned) Railroad Regulator Wants to Hear More Pros and Cons on Collecting Rail Data
Apr 8, 2019 | Freight Waves
By Joanna Marsh
The Surface Transportation Board (STB) wants to hear more from shippers and the Class I railroads on whether the railroads should supply more rail performance data to the board.
The board said on April 5 that it is opening a rulemaking proceeding in response to a petition filed by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) on December 6, 2018 to expand the existing requirements for what performance data the railroads supply to the board on a regular basis as mandated by the Ex Parte 724 proceeding.
The rulemaking proceeding is designed for the board to hear more information on the issues behind the petition, and is not a ruling on the merits of the petition itself, STB said.t wants the ACC and the Association of American Railroads (AAR), which responded to ACC’s petition in a January 28 reply, to respond by May 6. The board will also take responses through May 20.
The board already receives certain rail performance metrics on a weekly, semi-annual and occasional basis. STB first sought public comments in April 2014 for Ex Parte 724 following rail service issues with Canadian Pacific (NYSE: CP) and BNSF (NYSE: BRK). On March 21, 2017, the rule requiring the Class I railroads to submit performance data became effective.
But some shippers and the ACC are asking the board to amend the rules to create a distinct reporting category for chemicals and plastics. They also want to extend the weekly average terminal dwell time reporting requirement to include all Class I, terminal and switching carriers that operate in conjunction with the Chicago Transportation Coordination office. Another request is to have the same types of terminal reporting requirements be applied not only to the Chicago gateway but also to the New Orleans, East St. Louis and Memphis gateways along the Mississippi River.
These modifications will help shippers even further to identify and monitor service issues and spot trends pertaining to railcar cycle times. This additional data will also enable more collaboration, because shippers can suggest service adjustments on routes, fleet sizes and sourcing locations, according to STB’s summary of ACC’s filing.
The AAR meanwhile said in its reply that the additional commodity-specific reporting shouldn’t be included because ACC hasn’t said what the public benefit is for it. The trade association also said the data collection for the additional gateways would be too burdensome and would require programming changes to their systems.
The board is asking ACC to explain how performance data helps both in business applications and to mitigate rail service problems. It also wants ACC “to quantify the value of additional reporting.”
The board is asking AAR to explain what those programming changes to the railroads’ systems would look like, as well as provide any data describing or quantify potential costs.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/railroad/stb-opens-rail-performance-data-proceeding
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Plans for Broad Infrastructure Bill on Life Support
Apr 9, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Geof Koss and Maxine Joselow
Temper your expectations for a broad infrastructure bill in this Congress.
That's the message coming from lawmakers in recent weeks, despite bipartisan support for fixing the nation's aging roads and bridges and also addressing some energy and climate priorities.
The main problem: disagreement over how to pay for it.
"I need money. And that's the holdup," House Transportation & Infrastructure Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) told E&E News.
"Until the president commits the money and Ways and Means commits the money, we're not going anywhere," DeFazio added.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), chairwoman of the Transportation & Infrastructure Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, echoed those sentiments at a recent event.
"The parting comes on money," Norton said, adding, "I cannot say to you that we are further along on money than we were five years ago" (Greenwire, March 28).
House leadership has reserved floor time for an infrastructure bill and is considering late spring. The goal is to move the measure through both chambers before the August break.
"We'd like to get something through the Senate this year," Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told E&E News last week. "It would be wonderful to get it done before the August recess."
Yet the disagreement over funding is just one challenge facing lawmakers. Another challenge is the looming reauthorization of a surface transportation bill.
The Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act is set to expire in 2020. Lawmakers could simply reauthorize the FAST Act and call it a day on infrastructure.
Other challenges include the 35-day partial government shutdown and GOP discomfort with Democrats' demands for climate change components, said D.J. Gribbin, President Trump's former infrastructure adviser.
"The odds are against a broader bill happening given a variety of factors, including time lost during the shutdown of the government and interest to bundle climate change with infrastructure, and the early start of the presidential elections," Gribbin said.
"You've got those three dynamics working against this, makes it very long odds that Congress will be able to pass it," he said.
Funding fights
Lawmakers continue to bicker about funding options.
One idea on the table is raising the federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents per gallon, which hasn't been increased since 1993. Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business heavyweight typically averse to higher taxes, has endorsed the idea.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao indicated the administration is open to the possibility of a gas tax increase during a Senate Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee hearing last month.
Asked about ways to fund infrastructure improvements, including a gas tax hike, Chao said "nothing is off the table" (E&E Daily, March 8).
But in the GOP-controlled Senate, resistance has come from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a longtime opponent of raising the gas tax.
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, has also been agitating against a gas tax hike. "It is political stupidity at the highest and most suicidal level," he said recently on Fox Business Network's "Bulls & Bears" program.
Another funding idea under consideration is transitioning to a vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) fee. That would entail charging people a fee based on the distance they drive.
Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), ranking member on the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, has emerged as a vocal supporter of VMT. He contends it would better account for the rising number of electric vehicles on the nation's roads.
"I believe the only viable future lies in a transition to VMT, or vehicles miles traveled," Graves said during a hearing in February. "I see this as the best way to ensure that everyone contributes to the [Highway] Trust Fund."
But VMT lacks broad support, and former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said at the hearing that it wouldn't generate enough revenue on its own to ensure the long-term solvency of the trust fund.
Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, said last week that he would leave the details of paying for surface transportation to DeFazio, noting the constitutional requirement that revenue measures originate in the House.
"There's the hard money and there's the investment piece," he told E&E News. "I think I've got the answer on the investment piece."
Those would be new tax equity financing options for states, included in a bipartisan proposalWyden has pushed with Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) that is modeled after "Build America" bonds he authored that were enacted in the 2009 economic stimulus that sold more than $180 billion before they expired.
Wyden has previously said he envisions broad flexibility for states to use such bonds for critical infrastructure, including renewable energy and transmission projects. Hoeven has estimated that about $50 billion in private investment can be leveraged from the $8 billion in federal expenditure in the program (E&E Daily, Feb. 6).
"This has the best [return on investment] of any of the alternatives, which I think is the operative question," Wyden said last week.
Holding out hope
Despite the partisan bickering over pay-fors, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ranking member Tom Carper (D-Del.) said he continues to convene advocates and push for a consensus.
"I'm not in a position to go into details, but there's a fair amount of conversations going on at fairly high levels," Carper told E&E News.
"What I'm trying to do is to develop, with the input of a lot of other people, a menu of options to help pay for these things," he said, adding that he hopes to move a bill out of the EPW Committee in July.
A key House Ways and Means Democratic staffer told a renewable energy conference in Washington, D.C., last month that infrastructure remains a top priority for Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.).
"There is a strong view and feeling and energy among our committee Democrats that there is a really good opportunity before us to actually do something meaningful in terms of investment in this area," said Aruna Kalyanam, the staff director for the Subcommittee on Tax Policy, at the March 20 American Council on Renewable Energy annual policy conference.
"Our members do not view infrastructure as simply roads, highways, bridges, tunnels," she said. "They think way beyond that."
Kalyanam said a legislative strategy remains under development, noting widespread interest among numerous House committees in contributing provisions for a "green economy writ large."
"I don't know if the path forward is one package or two packages or if things march together," she said.
She noted that Neal sees the infrastructure window closing at the end of the year, with election-year politics limiting major legislative initiatives.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2019/04/09/stories/1060149639
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Several Agencies Refusing to Take Part in Trump's Committee to Reassess Climate Science: Report
Apr 8, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Michael Burke
Several federal agencies are reportedly refusing to take part in a White House panel that will reassess and counter the government's previous conclusions on climate change.
The Washington Post reported Monday that several agencies have informed the National Security Council (NSC), which started the initiative, that they are unlikely to participate in the panel.
The Post reported in February that the NSC initiative would challenge the degree to which humans are the cause of climate change.The initiative is considered a modification of NSC senior director and climate change denier William Happer's original plan to create a panel on the effects of climate change and national security.
The Department of Defense, the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are among the agencies that have not yet offered experts to the White House for the initiative, according to the Post.
An intelligence official told the newspaper that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence recommended that the intelligence community be excluded from the committee "given [its] role is not to conduct scientific climate change studies but to assess and analyze national security implications of climate change.”
Defense Department spokesman Johnny Michael referred questions from the Post about the department's participation in the initiative to the White House.
“What I can tell you is that the effects of a changing climate are a national security issue with potential impacts to [Defense Department] missions, operational plans and installations,” he told the Post in an email, adding that the Pentagon “will focus on ensuring it remains ready and able to adapt to a wide variety of threats — regardless of the source — to fulfill our mission to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.”
The federal government last year released the National Climate Assessment. The assessment warned that climate change could have devastating effects on the economy, health and environment and that current efforts to counter climate change were insufficient.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/437967-several-agencies-refusing-to-take-part-in-trumps-committee-to
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Nielsen Oversaw Period of Omissions on Climate
Apr 9, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Thomas Frank
Search the Department of Homeland Security's website using the phrase "climate change" and you'll find dozens of reports, plans, statements and fact sheets. For all their variety, the documents have two things in common: They warn about security threats from climate change, and they were written before Kirstjen Nielsen became Homeland Security secretary.
Nielsen leaves office with a record of disregarding climate change that contrasts sharply with predecessors who wrote detailed reports such as the 2012 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap, the 2013 DHS Climate Action Plan and a chapter on climate change in the 2014 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review.
Nielsen wrote no such reports in her 16 months running the federal government's second-largest department and was skeptical about whether people contributed to climate change. "I do absolutely believe that the climate is changing. I can't unequivocally state it's only caused by humans," Nielsen said during her Senate confirmation hearing in November 2017.
Thirty-seven senators voted against Nielsen. President Trump forced her to resign Sunday.
"There's no evidence as far as we can tell that the Department of Homeland Security did much of anything on climate change or climate adaptation since she started. It certainly was not a priority of hers," said Francesco Femia, co-founder of the Center for Climate & Security, a research group of military and security experts that focuses on the threat of climate change. "It was something the Department of Homeland Security was taking pretty seriously under the previous administration."
Janet Napolitano and Jeh Johnson, the DHS secretaries under President Obama, emphasized climate change as an important threat to domestic security.
Napolitano, secretary from 2009 to 2013, wrote the first DHS Climate Action Plan in 2013, which explicitly linked climate change to homeland security. The report called climate change a "threat multiplier" that exacerbated global poverty and environmental degradation, which in turn create "conditions that could enable terrorist activity and violence."
Extreme global weather combined with inadequate disaster relief "create opportunities for militant groups to become active," Napolitano wrote.
Johnson, who was secretary during Obama's final three years in office, wrote a directive in July 2016 that established a DHS policy of integrating climate resilience into risk management, planning and government continuity.
"If you're not thinking about infrastructure and impacts of climate change and how homeland security might be affected by climate dynamics in the future, then you're not prepared," Femia said. "We can see these risks coming. The models are accurate on climate change compared to other models" of security threats, he said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, a component of DHS, has faced criticism in the past year for avoiding any mention of climate change in major reports. Neither FEMA's 2018-2022 strategic plan nor its analysis of the failures in responding to the damage caused by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico include the word "climate."
"FEMA is the government's emergency-response agency, and there is a role that FEMA can have in not just disaster response but in building resiliency," said Andrew Holland, chief operating officer of the American Security Project, a nonprofit that analyzes national security threats.
DHS oversees 21 agencies ranging from the Transportation Security Administration and Coast Guard to the Office of Operations Coordination and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office. But under Trump and Nielsen, two agencies — Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection — have been preeminent as Trump has emphasized tighter border security.
Trump's focus on border security and his skepticism about climate change left DHS leadership with little room to take on the issue.
John Kelly, who ran the department from January 2017 to July 2017 before becoming Trump's chief of staff, had publicly acknowledged the threat of climate change when he was a Marine Corps general in charge of the U.S. Southern Command from 2012 to 2016. Southcom led Defense Department planning for extreme weather and sea-level rise.
Under Kelly, DHS published a Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan in June 2017 that listed "climate change adaptation and resilience" as one of its 10 goals.
Kelly's stature as a former four-star general and the respect he appeared to have from Trump enabled him to talk about climate change. But Nielsen, a former adviser to President George W. Bush who worked in the private sector during the Obama administration, did not have such freedom.
"I don't think she ever had the status or leeway to say those kinds of things" about climate change, Holland said.
Femia of the Center for Climate & Security said that Nielsen's uncertainty about whether climate change is caused by humans is "a perspective that is beyond the pale at this point. Even within the national security and homeland security community, there's a very broad consensus that climate change is both a national security issue with homeland security dimensions to it, especially how it impacts critical infrastructure at home."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/04/09/stories/1060149943
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Suit Tests EPA’s Ability to Avoid Adding New Haps to Air Toxics Rules
Apr 8, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Environmental groups in a new legal filing are challenging EPA’s discretion to avoid setting new limits for previously unregulated hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) for an industry when the agency reviews the sector’s remaining air toxics risks, arguing that EPA has violated the Clean Air Act by refusing to set such new limits for pulp mills.
In their opening brief filed April 2 in Louisiana Environmental Action Network, et al. v EPA, et al., groups including Sierra Club, Louisiana Environmental Action Network and others ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to scrap EPA’s July 12 denial of their petition to reconsider a pulp mills rule.
The groups in their petition to EPA asked the agency to reconsider its Oct. 2017 rule reviewing national emissions standards for hazardous air pollutants (NESHAP) for the pulp mills sector. The groups fault EPA for failing to set new emissions limits for several air toxics emitted by the plants, including mercury, dioxins, polycyclic organic matter, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen fluoride, which are not regulated in the original NESHAP rule issued in 2001.
Previous cases have addressed the omission of some HAPs from NESHAPs at the outset, or EPA’s use of emissions limits on “surrogate” substances to provide controls on HAPs.
But the instant case appears to represent a first-time test of whether the agency departed from prior practice under the Obama EPA, which typically used NESHAP reviews to set emissions limits for HAPs not included in the original rules, environmentalists say.
Unusually, the Obama administration proposed the review lacking limits for new pollutants, however, and the Trump EPA then finalized the rule in 2017. Environmentalists say the Obama EPA offered no explanation for the omission, and the Trump administration was wrong to finalize the rule as proposed, and then refuse reconsideration.
The air law requires EPA to conduct risk and technology reviews (RTRs) for sectors eight years after its issuance of a NESHAP rule for a sector, although EPA has fallen far behind schedule in conducting these reviews. If the RTR shows remaining risks to public health, or finds new, cost-effective control technologies, EPA can tighten emissions limits.
In its 2017 RTR rule, however, EPA declined to set new limits for any previously unregulated HAPs emitted by Kraft mills, citing its discretion not to do so.
EPA is obligated only to review NESHAPs with respect to chemicals already subject to emissions limits for the sector, EPA argued. The agency then rejected environmentalists’ petitions to set such new limits.
“Because EPA’s emission standards for pulp mills lack limits on many of the hazardous air pollutants that pulp mills emit, they do not comply with the Clean Air Act,” environmentalists say. The air law requires EPA to set limits for chemicals it lists as HAPs, and to revise NESHAP rules “as necessary,” environmentalists say.
“EPA takes the position that it is not ‘necessary’ to bring its emission standards for pulp mills into compliance with the Clean Air Act even though the agency acknowledges these standards lack limits on listed hazardous air pollutants that pulp mills emit,” the groups say.
Listed HAPs Go ‘Uncontrolled’
But the air law “refutes EPA’s assumption and shows that its position is untenable.” The law requires EPA to “review and revise” emissions standards for source categories, and where EPA reviews its emission standards for a source category and “determines they do not comply with the Clean Air Act, it is ‘necessary’ for the agency to bring them into compliance.”
The periodic reviews provide the only mechanism to revise the NESHAPs “as necessary,” and allowing EPA to ignore new HAPs emitted by a sector would defeat the purpose of listing new toxics, the groups argue.
“EPA’s interpretation frustrates [air law section 112’s] purpose by allowing listed hazardous air pollutants to go uncontrolled. In addition, EPA does not even attempt to explain its interpretation. EPA does not say why it believes the statute allows it to ignore that the emission standards it has set for a source category are blatantly unlawful,” environmentalists say.
HAPs still unregulated from pulp mills include “mercury, dioxins, polycyclic organic matter, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen fluoride to name just a few,” environmentalists say.
Environmentalists say D.C. Circuit precedent requires EPA to regulate all listed HAPs emitted by a source category in a NESHAP, noting that EPA has tried to omit them before.
“In the past, EPA has repeatedly promulgated emission standards that do not include limits for each hazardous air pollutant a source category emits,” the groups say.
But, “As this Court has made clear repeatedly, the emission standards EPA promulgates for a source category under section 112(d) must include limits on each listed hazardous air pollutant that category emits,” environmentalists say.
In the proposed version of the pulp mills RTR -- issued under the Obama administration but finalized under President Donald Trump -- EPA did not propose limits for the unregulated HAPs, “as it had done consistently in previous [RTR] reviews of emission standards that lacked limits on listed hazardous air pollutants. Nor did EPA say why it was not proposing them,” environmentalists say.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/suit-tests-epa%E2%80%99s-ability-avoid-adding-new-haps-air-toxics-rules
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Castor Doesn't Rule out Nuclear, Carbon Capture
Apr 9, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Timothy Cama
Florida Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor isn't ruling out nuclear power and carbon capture technology as potential climate change solutions as her committee starts exploring options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Castor, chairwoman of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, held her cards close at a World Resources Institute event yesterday in Washington, D.C., and made few solid endorsements of climate policies.
But, asked to weigh in on policies to encourage nuclear or carbon capture, Castor called for a "balance" and didn't rule them out.
"This is going to be an issue that we examine. I think it's clear right now that nuclear power is a carbon-free source and we need to maintain the plants that we have online in a safe fashion," she said, before criticizing Duke Energy Corp.'s handling of the now-closed Crystal River 3 Nuclear Power Plant in her home state.
"It's going to be a balance, but we're going to look at all that," said Castor, who has quickly risen as one of the Democrats' top voices on the climate issue.
On carbon capture technology for coal-fired power plants, Castor said again, "It's got to be a balance."
She recognized that carbon capture, like switching to natural gas, locks in fossil fuel use and its emissions for the long term, but didn't rule it out.
"All of those things are going to be brought in a balance, and they're going to be brought into a debate," Castor said.
"The role of the Select Committee right now, today, is not to draw those bright lines and to make hard and fast declarations," she said, "but we don't have time to waste."
Castor also did not rule out carbon removal technology, but she was doubtful that there's much of a government role in the industry. "That's probably the case for now that the private sector will lead on that," she said.
GOP 'light-years away'
Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), who served with Castor before losing re-election last year, spoke at yesterday's WRI event, as well, and cheered the movement of the congressional GOP to being more friendly to at least some climate change policies.
"I think we are light-years away from where we were at the end of the last Congress," said Curbelo, who last year became the first Republican in a decade to introduced carbon-pricing legislation and was one of the most progressive Republicans in Congress on climate change.
"What you're seeing now is that the evolution has continued and Republicans are starting to not just talk about solutions, but a few of them have actually proposed solutions," he said.
Curbelo credited the move in part to the Green New Deal proposal by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
"The great value of the Green New Deal, the great contribution it has made, is that it has elevated this issue. Everyone is talking about it," Curbelo said.
He said it has pushed Republicans to search for their own climate policies, which he called "very good news, and an indicator that we are approaching, or at least moving toward, a bipartisan solution."
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2019/04/09/stories/1060149893
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Trump Gutted Green Rules But Plans to Run on His Environmental Credentials
Apr 8, 2019 | Bloomberg
By Jennifer A Dlouhy and Ari Natter
Donald Trump is preparing a novel campaign strategy for a president who’s pulling the U.S. from the international Paris accord on climate change, cheer-leading for coal, one of the dirtiest source of power, and suggesting that wind turbines cause cancer.
He’s going to tout his environmental credentials.
Administration officials are developing talking points on climate change and cultivating a list of environmental “success stories,” from cleaner air to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, said a person familiar with the plans who asked not to be named describing internal deliberations.
“President Trump believes you can grow the economy and protect the environment,” said Judd Deere, a deputy White House press secretary.
In attempting to demonstrate that the U.S. is getting greener while still rolling back what Trump sees as job-killing constraints on industry, a key cheerleader may be Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
“Today we have the cleanest air on record, and we are ranked No. 1 in the world for access to clean drinking water,” Wheeler said at the Washington Auto Show on April 4. “As we continue to reduce pollution, we’re also reducing burdensome regulations.”Crying Foul
Plans to cherry-pick examples of Trump’s “green” accomplishments to take to voters already has environmental activists crying foul.
“They’re whitewashing their sooty record,” said David Doniger, a senior adviser to the NRDC Action Fund, an affiliate of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “They’re taking credit for the law and the actions of their predecessors that they’re actively trying to roll back.”
The strategy ignores Trump’s zeal to ease environmental regulations he says are hampering U.S. growth. But it’s also is a tacit recognition of the political reality confronting the president as he seeks re-election: many of the swing voters Trump needs to win a second term in the White House also prize environmental progress.
“For the president to win these battleground states, he’s going to have to have some record of environmental achievement to showcase,” said David Banks, who previously advised Trump on the issues. “The environment and environmental issues can make or break you.”
Environmental activists say the administration cynically plans to take credit for achievements driven by policies put in place by his predecessors -- including regulations his agencies are now attempting to undermine or overturn.
Within months of taking office, Trump tasked the EPA with redoing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan that aimed to slash greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s power plants, and directed the Interior Department to resume selling coal on federal land, ending a moratorium imposed by former President Barack Obama. The agency is also easing Obama-era limits on methane from oil wells and standards throttling greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles.
But supporters say Trump has environmental achievements to celebrate too.
“Deregulation does not always mean rolling back rules,” said Wheeler. By modernizing, simplifying or streamlining regulations, the administration is creating “greater certainty” and empowering the public “to innovate and create cleaner and safer technologies,”
Wheeler noted that from 1970 to 2017, conventional air pollution in the U.S. fell 73 percent, even as the economy grew more than 260 percent, Americans traveled more miles, and the U.S. used more energy.
The Trump administration can also point to expanding use of natural gas, both domestically and exported overseas, where it can displace more carbon-intense energy sources. “That is a pretty substantial story that they can tell, not only about our decarbonizing in the U.S. power sector, but also globally, sharing those technologies around the world,” said Rich Powell, executive director of ClearPath Action, a group seeking to accelerate clean energy innovation.
Polling shows voters increasingly care about the environment, making the sales job even more important. Highlighting some wins could be enough to offset the harshest criticism of its policies.
If Republicans want to win back the House in 2020 or 2022, “we’re going to have to find ways to appeal to all those suburban voters who turned the other way” in 2018, Powell said. Polling indicates the environment is a way to appeal to them, he said.
survey conducted by Pew earlier this year found that 63 percent of U.S. adults say stricter environmental regulations are “worth the cost,” up from 59 percent two years ago. Among Republicans, the number who took a positive view of stricter environmental laws jumped to 45 percent in the latest poll from 36 percent in 2017.
Trump’s pending “green” strategy is different from the way administration officials describe their environmental agenda to Republicans and outside business groups. Wheeler has boasted about rollbacks of environmental regulations when testifying on Capitol Hill; in hearings last week he described to lawmakers 38 deregulatory actions set to save $3 billion. By contrast, the campaign talking points now being assembled ignore that track record and focus instead on environmental achievements.
Among the policies Trump could highlight:
· A decline in greenhouse gas emissions during Trump’s first year in office. Emissions are lower than in 2005, a baseline year widely used to measure progress. However, they rose some 3.4 percent in 2018 as the U.S. economy grew, posting the biggest jump in eight years, according to estimates from Rhodium Group analysts in January expected to be confirmed by government data. Administration officials may say greenhouse gas emissions are dropping, Doniger said, “but they’re not dropping any more -- and this administration is doing everything it can to push them up.’’
· A planned replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan that the EPA says will reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity by between 13 and 30 million short tons in 2025. But because it’s designed around efficiency improvements at individual power plants, the Trump administration’s proposal is weaker than the regulation it’s designed to replace.
· Finishing a review of air quality limits for ozone and tiny pollutants by a December 2020 deadline. That would be unusual, as the EPA has rarely satisfied congressional deadlines to review the limits every five years. But in its zeal to meet the deadline, Trump’s EPA halted a formal review by subcommittees of scientific advisers with deep air quality expertise -- a process former members say is essential to drive sound requirements. It’s a “manic insistence” on meeting the schedule at the expense of strong standards for smog and soot, said John Walke, a senior adviser to the NRDC Action Fund.
‘Rollback Agenda’
Environmentalists say Trump’s expected pitch to voters is undermined by what’s really happening on the ground.
“The Trump administration’s discussion of air pollution and climate pollution both suffer from two realities,” Walke said. “First, the administration has nothing to do with decreasing emissions, and second, their rollback agenda is increasing dangerous air pollution and climate pollution. Once that’s established, all the rhetoric just collapses.”
Big Picture
That misses the big picture, said Mandy Gunasekara, who left her EPA post in February to tout the administration’s energy and environmental wins as the 2020 election approaches. Even as the administration revises regulations it regards as overreach by Obama, Trump supports the overall goal of maintaining clean air and water, she said.
“Deregulation does not mean setting aside fulfillment of important agency missions,” said Gunasekara. “If you look at the facts on the ground, President Trump has been one of the most successful presidents in advancing a pro-growth and pro-environment agenda.”
Trump already talks about the environment in rallies and on Twitter, frequently boasting that the U.S. has the “cleanest” air and water on the planet. “There’s nobody cleaner than us, and it’s getting better and better,” he said during a rally in West Virginia in August. In October, Trump tweeted that the U.S. has the “Cleanest Air in the World - BY FAR!”
At a rally in Michigan in March, Trump touted his support for the Great Lakes, the largest body of fresh water on Earth. He vowed to make sure a federal restoration program would get full funding, even though he asked Congress just weeks earlier to slash the EPA’s Great Lakes Program by 90 percent.
“I support the Great Lakes. Always have,” Trump said. “They’re beautiful. They’re big. Very deep. Record deepness, right?”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-08/trump-to-tout-green-bona-fides-while-gutting-environmental-rules
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As White House Questions Climate Change, U.S. Military Is Planning for It
Apr 8, 2019 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin , Brady Dennis and Missy Ryan
In February, the White House devised a plan to challenge the scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels is a main driver of climate change and poses increasingly serious economic and health threats to the United States and the world.
But so far, the rest of the federal government hasn’t helped the Trump administration in its quest.
Several agencies have informed the National Security Council, which launched the initiative, that they do not anticipate taking part. Others, including some spearheading the government’s climate research, such as NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, say that no one has contacted them about it. And last week, four top U.S. military officials testified before Congress that they continue to see climate change as a significant security threat.
On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing devoted to the topic, featuring former secretary of state John F. Kerry and former defense secretary Chuck Hagel.
Jon Powers, an Iraq War veteran who served as federal chief sustainability officer, said the military has become attuned to climate change given its global footprint and massive energy consumption.
“People are acting on climate not for political reasons, but [because] it really affects their mission,” said Powers, president and chief executive of the investment firm CleanCapital. “With the military
That doesn’t mean the White House effort is dead. Administration officials are considering establishing a federal advisory panel, which would allow them to appoint outsiders to scrutinize government findings.
Myron Ebell, a director at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, said there was no point in enlisting federal scientists to challenge the government’s own climate reports. “They will only confirm what they’ve already done.”
For months, White House officials have looked for ways to question the scientific underpinnings of climate change and whether the issue actually presents an imminent national security threat.
The effort has been championed by William Happer, an NSC senior director. An emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University, Happer once headed an advocacy group that touted carbon dioxide as an asset rather than a pollutant.
During the early months of the administration, some Trump officials weighed the idea of conducting a “red team-blue team” exercise on climate change, an idea espoused by Scott Pruitt, then the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. White House aides, including then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, blocked the idea at the time.
But the effort got new life in recent months, after Happer’s arrival.
An NSC spokesman, who declined to be named in keeping with the council’s press policy, said the idea of an independent federal advisory committee remains on the table.
Speaking before the Senate Armed Forces Committee on Thursday, Gen. David L. Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, cited the conflict in Syria as an example of how climate change’s impact is already destabilizing some nations. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) asked about recent comments made by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr.
“Most don’t remember what caused the Syria conflict to start,” Goldfein said. “It started because of a 10-year drought.”
“I think what . . . Chairman Dunford was talking about was that we have to respond militarily very often to the effects of, globally, of climate change.”
Goldfein’s remarks came two days after the commanders of U.S. European Command and U.S. Transportation Command voiced similar views before the same Senate panel.
After Warren asked Army Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, who also serves as NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, whether he agrees with the intelligence community’s assessment that climate change presents a security threat, Scaparrotti replied, “I do, and I believe that, as you noted, much of this will be drivers for potential conflict, or at least very difficult situations that nations have to deal with.”
John Conger, who directs the Center for Climate and Security and served as acting assistant secretary of defense from 2012 to 2014, said the divergent views underscore the current schism within the federal government. After 13 agencies issued a National Climate Assessment warning that the intensifying effects of climate change pose a threat to the United States, President Trump and multiple Cabinet members questioned its findings.
“It’s important not to look at the administration as monolithic,” Conger said. “There are people in the administration who don’t think climate change is a risk, or is real, and there are people in the administration who do think it’s a risk and is real.”
Several agencies — including the Defense and State departments, along with the EPA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence — have yet to offer experts for the White House effort, according to three people familiar with the matter who asked for anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
One intelligence official said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, who serves as the head of the intelligence community, “recommended the [intelligence community] be excluded from the committee’s scope of review given [its] role is not to conduct scientific climate change studies but to assess and analyze national security implications of climate change.”
Defense Department spokesman Johnny Michael referred questions about Pentagon participation in the panel to the White House.
“What I can tell you is that the effects of a changing climate are a national security issue with potential impacts to [Defense Department] missions, operational plans and installations,” he said in an email. The Pentagon “will focus on ensuring it remains ready and able to adapt to a wide variety of threats — regardless of the source — to fulfill our mission to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.”
An official at NASA said Friday the agency was unaware of any White House panel to reexamine climate change. A spokeswoman for Interior, which also conducts climate research, said the department had not been contacted about it and was not involved in any such effort.
In a recent hearing on Capitol Hill, NOAA’s acting administrator, Neil Jacobs, said he had not been asked to participate and defended the National Climate Assessment.
“I don’t know that there’s any ad hoc working group that’s been formed,” Jacobs said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/as-white-house-questions-climate-change-us-military-is-planning-for-it/2019/04/08/78142546-57c0-11e9-814f-e2f46684196e_story.html?utm_term=.a5f522c34384
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