Preview Newsletter
AM ACC Clips Report - April 11, 2019
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(ACC Mentioned) Chevron Phillips Agrees To Report Pellet Spills
Apr 11, 2019 | Plastics Today
Environmental advocacy group As You Sow (Oakland, CA) announced that it has withdrawn its shareholder proposals with Chevron and Phillips 66 since Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. (The Woodlands, TX), which is jointly owned by the two companies, has agreed to start reporting spills of pre-production plastic pellets. -
(ACC Mentioned) Chevron Phillips Chemical To Report Pellet Spills
Apr 11, 2019 | Kallanish Energy
Chevron Phillips Chemical has announced it will start publicly reporting plastic pellet spills at its chemical plants, Kallanish Energy reports. -
(ACC Mentioned) Mayoral Misinformation
Apr 11, 2019 | Eugene Weekly
By Mark Robinowitz
Mark Twain said if you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed and if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. “Climate Laws” (EW, 4/4) by current and former mayors Lucy Vinis and Kitty Piercy was misinformation. -
(ACC Mentioned) Cosmetics Industry Kicks Outs California Bill To Make Products Safer
Apr 11, 2019 | Cosmetics Business
By Becky Bargh
The cosmetics industry has quashed a bill that sought to ban 20 ‘adulterated’ cosmetic ingredients in California. -
EPA Proposes Rule For Reviewing Certain TSCA CBI Claims
Apr 11, 2019 | Inside EPA
EPA has released its proposed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) rule detailing how it will review industry confidentiality claims on chemical identities listed as active on the agency's TSCA inventory, including querying whether the data has been previously disclosed and allowing exemptions for certain previously substantiated claims. -
EPA Wants Chemical Makers to Show Their Work on Secret-Keeping
Apr 11, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Chemical manufacturers and processors would have to follow specific electronic procedures that detail their rationales for keeping secret the identity of chemicals they make or handle under an April 10 EPA proposal. -
EPA Rule Would Control If Cos. Can Keep Chemicals Secret
Apr 11, 2019 | Law 360
By Nadia Dreid
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is mulling a new rule that would change the way companies prove that a certain chemical must be kept confidential for business reasons, asking Wednesday for comment on the proposed change. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA's Toxics Office Eyes Addressing PFAS In Smaller Subclasses
Apr 11, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
EPA's toxics office is eying the possibility of eventually addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in small subclasses, an approach that would likely ease efforts to deal with the thousands of chemicals in the class though it could set up obstacles for industry if newer PFAS are part of a heavily regulated subclass. -
(ACC Mentioned) Cosmetics Industry Kicks Out California Bill to Make Products Safer
Apr 11, 2019 | Cosmetics Business
By Becky Bargh
The cosmetics industry has quashed a bill that sought to ban 20 ‘adulterated’ cosmetic ingredients in California. -
Despite Bipartisan Support, Officials Doubt PFAS Bills' Prospects
Apr 10, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan and Dave Reynolds
A top Defense Department (DOD) environment official is expressing doubt over prospects for bipartisan and bicameral legislation that seeks to boost regulation and funding for addressing cleanup of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), an assessment that at least one top Democrat appears to share. -
EPA ‘Can’t Do’ Green Chemistry, Agency Official Says
Apr 10, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Research on designing chemicals that produce less waste, use less energy, and are safer is being cut at the EPA to increase the focus on chemical recycling and disposal. -
EPA to Update Ethylene Oxide Limits Amid Sterigenics Concerns
Apr 11, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Joyce
The EPA will propose to update a 25-year-old emissions standard for ethylene oxide, a carcinogen, the agency said in an April 10 statement. -
Wheeler Piles On More Deception Trying To Defend EPA’s Corrupt Actions on Formaldehyde
Apr 11, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund.
By Richard Denison
In a series of recent hearings Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler has sought to justify his and his agency’s corrupt decisions to kill off a health assessment of formaldehyde done by career scientists in the agency’s science arm (IRIS) and resurrect it under the control of conflicted political appointees. -
Precise GenX Mechanism of Toxicity Eludes EPA Scientists
Apr 11, 2019 | Chemical Watch
US scientists have failed to prove that the mechanism of toxicity for GenX compound HFPO-DA is the same as for PFOS and PFOA, despite identifying some similarities. -
AOP Knowledge Base Reveals Thousands of Possible Toxicity Mechanisms
Apr 11, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Dr Emma Davies
Scientists from the US EPA and Environment and Climate Change Canada have networked existing adverse outcome pathways (AOPs) to reveal thousands of potential new toxicity mechanisms. -
New York's Cuomo Threatens Suit if EPA Certifies Hudson Cleanup
Apr 11, 2019 | Inside EPA
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) is reiterating the state's threat to sue EPA if it certifies that General Electric (GE) has completed cleanup of the Hudson River, despite calls from state officials, U.S. lawmakers and others for further cleanup given the remedy's failure to meet its goals. -
Ontario Passes Repeal of Toxics Reduction Act
Apr 11, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins
The Canadian province of Ontario will repeal its Toxics Reduction Act (TRA) by 2021 in an effort to avoid "unnecessary duplication" with the federal government’s toxic substance assessment programme – the Chemicals Management Plan. -
Trump Signs Orders to Speed Up Oil and Gas Pipeline Construction
Apr 10, 2019 | The New York Times
By Clifford Krauss
President Trump signed two executive orders on Wednesday that he says will speed up construction of pipelines and other projects to enhance the production and transport of oil and natural gas between states and across international borders. -
Trump’s Pipeline Order is No Longer Just in the Pipeline
Apr 11, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Chuck McCutcheon
President Trump is expected today to sign executive orders making significant revisions to how the government regulates the transportation of energy across state and international lines—but the exact timing of those changes is unclear. -
Trump's Pipeline EO Immediately Draws Legal Threats
Apr 10, 2019 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Annie Snider
The ink had barely dried on President Donald Trump's executive order aimed at limiting states' ability to block infrastructure projects when it received its first legal threat. -
No Easy Solution to Expanding Infrastructure for Increased U.S. LNG Exports, Say Executives
Apr 10, 2019 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Leticia Gonzales
A “whole lot more” oil and natural gas infrastructure is needed to accommodate the projected tripling of U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports over the next decade, but domestic challenges need to be overcome so the country can succeed in an increasingly competitive global market, industry executives said Tuesday. -
Permian Pipe-Building to Overshoot Demand, Enterprise Says
Apr 11, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Adams-Heard
The world’s biggest oil field may soon have too many pipelines, with crude-hauling capacity in the prolific Permian Basin set to outpace production for years to come, Enterprise Products Partners LP told investors. -
Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Law Proposed by New England Democrats
Apr 11, 2019 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
Democratic lawmakers in New England have proposed federal legislation designed to increase pipeline safety in the wake of a deadly series of natural gas explosion and fires in suburban Boston last year. -
Trump Plan to Ship Natural Gas by Rail Stokes ‘Bomb Train’ Fears
Apr 11, 2019 | Bloomberg
By Jennifer A Dlouhy
President Donald Trump wants to allow natural gas to be shipped in railroad cars, a move that would open new markets hungry for the fuel but could risk catastrophic accidents if one were to derail. -
DeGette Bill Targets Refinery ‘Loophole’ for Hydrogen Cyanide
Apr 10, 2019 | Inside EPA
Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) is floating legislation that aims to force EPA to set a health-protective limit for hydrogen cyanide (HCN) emitted by oil refineries, closing what DeGette calls a “loophole” that allows refiners to emit the neurotoxin in unsafe amounts. -
Minnesota Dems to Roll Out Bill Modeled on Green New Deal (1)
Apr 11, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Joyce
Minnesota Democratic legislators will introduce legislation inspired by the federal Green New Deal that would require the state to produce carbon-free energy by 2030. -
Whitehouse, Schatz Float Latest Version of Carbon Fee Bill
Apr 10, 2019 | E&E News PM
By Nick Sobczyk,
Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) today reintroduced their carbon fee bill, one of several emissions pricing measures circulating on Capitol Hill amid renewed interest in addressing climate change. -
Senate Democrats Revive Carbon Tax Bill
Apr 10, 2019 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Zack Colman
Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Martin Heinrich (N.M.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) introduced legislation today to help combat climate change by taxing carbon emissions at $52 per metric ton beginning in 2020. -
Centrist Democrat Unveils Climate 'Playbook'
Apr 11, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Nick Sobczyk,
California Rep. Scott Peters yesterday announced his "Climate Playbook," a list of more than 50 bills the Democrat believes could kick-start congressional efforts to combat climate change.
Industry and Association News
TSCA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Chevron Phillips Agrees To Report Pellet Spills
Apr 11, 2019 | Plastics Today
Environmental advocacy group As You Sow (Oakland, CA) announced that it has withdrawn its shareholder proposals with Chevron and Phillips 66 since Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. (The Woodlands, TX), which is jointly owned by the two companies, has agreed to start reporting spills of pre-production plastic pellets. As You Sow reached a similar agreement with ExxonMobil last month. These pellets, also called nurdles, are believed to be a significant source of ocean plastic pollution, according to As You Sow.
As You Sow routinely files shareholder proposals with large corporations to, in its words, foster transparency. In the case of Chevron Phillips and other plastics producers, visibility “is essential to enable policy makers and other stakeholders to assess the scope of this growing problem [of plastic pellet spills],” said Senior Vice President Conrad MacKerron.
When As You Sow filed the shareholder proposal with Chevron and Phillips 66 calling for pellet spill reporting, the two companies petitioned the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to allow them to omit the proposal. The SEC did not rule in their favor and, consequently, Chevron Phillips will share the requested data with As You Sow. Chevron Phillips agreed to report data it currently submits to state regulatory agencies regarding:The amount of pellets lost in the environment due to accidental releases from its plants;the amount of material recovered within its resin-handling facilities that is recycled;substantive information on its best management practices, plastic pellet production capacity and information on how it engages its supply chain to share best practices and help reduce and eliminate pellet losses elsewhere.
It also said it will employ third-party auditing to verify its reporting.
As Clare Goldsberry noted in a recent article about As You Sow’s advocacy, the plastics industry has a long-time program designed to deal with pellet spills and related issues. Operation Clean Sweep (OCS) was started 28 years ago by the Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS) in cooperation with the American Chemistry Council to implement best practices to control pellet spills at resin manufacturing plants as well as plastics processing facilities. However, “Operation Clean Sweep provides no transparency on the scope and nature of spills or efforts made to clean up. Given what we know about the alarming rates of plastic leakage into oceans, companies can no longer hide behind vague pledges of best practices,” said MacKerron. “They need to provide prompt and detailed disclosure about specific actions taken to prevent spills, and when spills occur, information on spill size and actions taken to clean up.”
On April 3, Chevron Phillips Chemical announced that it was becoming a member of Operation Clean Sweep Blue. Also administered by PLASTICS and the American Chemistry Council, OCS Blue is an “even more rigorous commitment to pellet loss reduction efforts than Operation Clean Sweep, which the company has been a member of since its inception in 2000,” said Chevron Phillips Chemical in a press release.
https://www.plasticstoday.com/materials/chevron-phillips-agrees-report-pellet-spills/3719301860608
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(ACC Mentioned) Chevron Phillips Chemical To Report Pellet Spills
Apr 11, 2019 | Kallanish Energy
Chevron Phillips Chemical has announced it will start publicly reporting plastic pellet spills at its chemical plants, Kallanish Energy reports.
The news comes after activist shareholder As You Sow had pressured the petrochemical company’s co-owners Chevron Corp and Phillips 66 to report pre-production pellet, or so-called, nurdle spills.
The Texas-based company Tuesday announced it's joining Operation Clean Sweep Blue, a program managed by the American Chemistry Council’s Plastics Division, and the Plastic Industry Association.
That effort represents a more rigorous commitment to fight pellet loss than Operation Clean Sweep, which the petrochemical company had joined in 2000. At present, pellet spills are only reported to state regulatory agencies.
Chevron Phillips also agreed to report on recycling efforts related to spilled pellet recovery in its annual sustainability report, that will be released in late 2019.
Such pellet spills, which can get into waterways and eventually end up in the oceans, are believed to be “a significant source of ocean plastic pollution,” As You Sow said.
Plastic pellets are estimated to be the second largest direct source of microplastic pollution to the ocean by weight, it said.
When Chevron Phillips did not respond to the activist's proposal last fall, As You Sow filed shareholder proposals with both companies.
Chevron and Phillips 66 petitioned the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to allow them to omit the proposal. The SEC ruled the companies could not omit the proposals.
With the new agreement, As You Sow has agreed to withdraw its proposals. “Such basic transparency is essential to enable policymakers and other stakeholders to assess the scope of this growing problem,” said Conrad MacKerron, senior vice president of As You Sow, in a statement.
Last month, California-based As You Sow had announced ExxonMobil had agreed to report pellet spills at its plants.
http://www.kallanishenergy.com/2019/04/11/chevron-phillips-chemical-to-report-pellet-spills/
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(ACC Mentioned) Mayoral Misinformation
Apr 11, 2019 | Eugene Weekly
By Mark Robinowitz
Mark Twain said if you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed and if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. “Climate Laws” (EW, 4/4) by current and former mayors Lucy Vinis and Kitty Piercy was misinformation.
They claimed addressing climate change will boost economic growth. In reality, investing in solar panels might mitigate the downslope. Endless growth required ever increasing consumption of finite resources.
Eugene’s climate law mandates buying “carbon credits,” not major shifts in polluting behaviors. Giving public funds to private consultants does not reduce dependence on concentrated energy, re-localize food production or create more cooperation.
Good Company, a consultancy that helped create Eugene’s climate plan, is now promoting plastic incineration for the American Chemistry Council. Perhaps they can market “cancer credits” to offset the health impacts.
In 2006, Mayor Piercy introduced a lecture by Richard Heinberg of Post Carbon Institute, one of the few voices who integrates climate concerns with the physical reality of fossil fuel depletion. Shortly afterward, her policy response was to recommend another parking garage for downtown Eugene.
At least Piercy made City Hall carbon neutral — by demolishing it.
“Climate Laws” claims we have “11 years” to solve the problem. In 1990, the U.N. Environment Program warned the 1990s would be the decade of decision.
In Salem, Gov. Kate Brown and the Democrats let solar energy tax credits expire, with little objection from climate activists. I’m more interested in the laws of thermodynamics, which are not changed by political rhetoric and greenwashing.
https://eugeneweekly.com/2019/04/11/mayoral-misinformation/
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(ACC Mentioned) Cosmetics Industry Kicks Outs California Bill To Make Products Safer
Apr 11, 2019 | Cosmetics Business
By Becky Bargh
The cosmetics industry has quashed a bill that sought to ban 20 ‘adulterated’ cosmetic ingredients in California.
Labelled the Toxic-Free Cosmetics Act, it targeted products including asbestos, mercury, formaldehyde and carbon black, in an effort to make personal care products safer for consumers.
However, it was met by opposition from the American Chemistry Council, California Chamber of Commerce, Fragrance Creators Association, Household and Commercial Products Association and the Personal Care Products Council.
The Act was set to be discussed on 23 April by the Assembly Environment, Safety and Toxic Materials Committee but was stalled without the votes to move to the Assembly Health Committee.
Opposers of the bill told the Los Angeles Times they questioned its scientific validity and existing laws are in place to be safe for consumers.
The bill is now not likely to be discussed for another year.
https://www.cosmeticsbusiness.com/news/article_page/Cosmetics_industry_kicks_outs_California_bill_to_make_products_safer/153690
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EPA Proposes Rule For Reviewing Certain TSCA CBI Claims
Apr 11, 2019 | Inside EPA
EPA has released its proposed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) rule detailing how it will review industry confidentiality claims on chemical identities listed as active on the agency's TSCA inventory, including querying whether the data has been previously disclosed and allowing exemptions for certain previously substantiated claims.
“We continue to be committed to fostering transparency about information on chemicals while protecting verified confidential information,” EPA toxics chief Alexandra Dapolito Dunn said in an April 10 statement. “With this proposed rule, we are meeting another obligation” under the revised TSCA enacted in 2016, she said.
EPA will seek public input for 60 days after publication in the Federal Register of the rule “Procedures for Review of CBI Claims for the Identity of Chemicals on the TSCA Inventory."
The prepublication version of the rule issued on EPA’s website outlines a series of questions that chemical manufacturers, importers and processors must answer and that EPA will review in order for companies to claim as confidential a chemical identity that is listed as active in commerce on the TSCA inventory.
Questions include whether disclosure of the CBI data would harm a company’s competitive advantage, what steps a company has taken to protect the information from disclosure during its operations, and whether EPA or another federal agency has substantiated a claim of confidentiality in the past.
“Consistent with how EPA handles the review of other TSCA confidentiality claims, EPA would carefully consider the facts provided in the substantiations, any pertinent previously issued confidentiality determinations, and other reasonably available information that EPA finds appropriate to determine the information’s entitlement to confidential treatment,” the proposed rule says.
The rule also exempts from proposed requirements certain CBI claims based on recent, past substantiations.
The revised TSCA mandates that EPA finalize a version of the rule requiring companies to substantiate claims of confidential business information (CBI) within one year of EPA's publication of the final TSCA inventory denoting active and inactive chemicals, which the agency issued earlier this year.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-proposes-rule-reviewing-certain-tsca-cbi-claims
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EPA Wants Chemical Makers to Show Their Work on Secret-Keeping
Apr 11, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
EPA details draft process for companies seeking to keep chemical identities secret
Toxics law aims to balance business protections with public’s right to know
Chemical manufacturers and processors would have to follow specific electronic procedures that detail their rationales for keeping secret the identity of chemicals they make or handle under an April 10 EPA proposal.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal, open for comment for 60 days, describes how it will review at least 7,757 chemicals with specific identities that their manufacturers, importers, or processors claim should be kept secret.
The EPA says companies claiming confidentiality for “active” chemical substance identities must substantiate those claims electronically.
“We continue to be committed to fostering transparency about information on chemicals while protecting verified confidential information,” said Assistant Administrator for the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Alexandra Dapolito Dunn on April 10.
Inventory OnlyThe chemicals are listed on the EPA’s confidential inventory of compounds “active” in commerce during the 10-year period ending June 21, 2016. That means the EPA and approved contractors know what the chemical is, but not the public or competitors.
Companies making or using confidential chemicals provide the public a generic name roughly describing their chemical that doesn’t allow competitors to replicate it.
Protecting this proprietary information is vital to companies who invest in the development or new application of a chemical.
Yet knowing the identity of a chemical that may be causing health or environmental problems can help industrial hygienists protect workers, researchers investigating community concerns, and first responders or doctors treating patients.
Only Confidential Chemicals CoveredThe number of chemicals covered by the EPA’s proposal is a subset of the 86,228 chemicals that are or have been in U.S. commerce.
Of those 86,228 chemicals, 47 percent, or 40,655, have been actively in commerce since 2006, the EPA said in a February update of the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Most of those 40,655 chemicals—32,898, or 81 percent—have identities known to the public, according to the EPA. That means the precise identity of 7,757 chemicals, 19 percent, has been claimed as proprietary information. The total number of chemicals with confidential identities may grow before the rule is finalized due to new compounds entering the U.S. market.
The requirement that the EPA review confidential chemical identities was part of the 2016 Toxic Substances Control Act amendments’ efforts to balance a company’s legitimate need to protect its investments with people’s right to know about the chemicals.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-wants-chemical-makers-to-show-their-work-on-secret-keeping
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EPA Rule Would Control If Cos. Can Keep Chemicals Secret
Apr 11, 2019 | Law 360
By Nadia Dreid
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is mulling a new rule that would change the way companies prove that a certain chemical must be kept confidential for business reasons, asking Wednesday for comment on the proposed change.
The Toxic Substances Control Act defines what qualifications companies must meet in order to claim a chemical as a confidential business secret, and the proposed rule is intended to ensure such claimed chemicals meet the legal standards, the EPA said.
“EPA would review each specific chemical identity CBI claim and substantiation, and approve or deny each claim consistent with the procedures and substantive criteria in [the] TSCA,” according to the proposed rule. “EPA must protect such information from disclosure for a period of 10 years, unless the claim is withdrawn, or EPA becomes aware that the information does not qualify for protection from disclosure.”
The rule lays down an “electronic reporting process” for companies to substantiate their claims that a specific active chemical needs to be kept secret for business reasons.
“We continue to be committed to fostering transparency about information on chemicals while protecting verified confidential information,” Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said in a statement Wednesday. “With this proposed rule, we are meeting another obligation under TSCA, as amended by the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act.”
The TSCA was first passed in 1976 to regulate chemicals, but the law was amended in 2016 to require the EPA to establish a rule governing confidential business information claims on chemicals that are considered “active” in U.S. commerce.
A chemical is considered active if it has been made or processed in the United States, or imported into the country, within 10 years before June 21, 2016, the EPA said.
The amendment mandates that the rule be on the books by Feb. 19, 2020, and the first round of reviews must take place by the same date in 2024.
Read more at: https://www.law360.com/energy/articles/1148834?copied=1
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA's Toxics Office Eyes Addressing PFAS In Smaller Subclasses
Apr 11, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
EPA's toxics office is eying the possibility of eventually addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in small subclasses, an approach that would likely ease efforts to deal with the thousands of chemicals in the class though it could set up obstacles for industry if newer PFAS are part of a heavily regulated subclass.
The approach also appears to respond in part calls from states, environmentalists and others for the agency to address the chemicals in larger groups rather than on a chemical-by-chemical basis as the agency has been currently.
EPA toxics chief Alexandra Dunn told a March 28 panel at the American Bar Association's Section of Environment, Energy and Resources spring conference in Denver, CO, that it would not be easy to address PFAS as a class.
Dunn said that chemicals can be managed as a class when they have similar toxicities and exhibit similar behavior in the environment. “Unfortunately, right now we are exploring whether we can address PFAS as a class, but” the fact that they vary widely in toxicity means the agency cannot just do it all at once like it did with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), she said. “We are still looking at” how to do it, she said.
Because there are so many PFAS, “You can imagine that going chemical by chemical will take a very long time,” she said, but added that one option is to divide them into smaller classes where the toxicities and chemical characteristics are similar.
“We have to have scientific integrity to do that,” she added.
Meanwhile, Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Toxicology Program (NTP), is supportive of treating the chemicals as a class as the best way of protecting public health.
“Approaching PFAS as a class, rather than as thousands of individual compounds, is the best approach for assessing exposure and biological impact and for protecting public health,” she said in testimony at a March 28 hearing on PFAS before the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee.
She similarly pointed to work the NTP is conducting in close concert with EPA's Office of Research & Development (ORD) to determine the behavior of more than 100 PFAS and to see if they should be divided into subclasses.
She said the NTP is working closely with ORD “to study more than a hundred different PFAS, and to try to understand whether in fact they are all doing the same thing, or may be grouped into a number of specific classes.”
This work is being conducted under the NTP's Response Evaluation and Assessment of Chemical Toxicity (REACT) program.
“Scientists will be able to compare one PFAS to another, determine the relationship between chain length and other structural features and toxicity, and inform on whether there are common or overlapping patterns of toxicity,” she said in written testimony provided to the committee.
Existing Groups
EPA and states have already grouped some PFAS into classes, according to sources. For instance, EPA in 2016 grouped the two most commonly found PFAS -- perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) -- when it set 70 parts per trillion (ppt) as a drinking water health advisory for the two chemicals combined.
States have also followed suit, with for instance, Vermont and Massachusetts setting combined drinking water values for five PFAS, says an abstract by Gradient's Laura E. Kerper and other scientists for a presentation at a March 12 conference of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.
The authors conducted an analysis of grouping PFAS together to develop guidance values. In the paper, Gradient -- an environment and risk sciences consulting firm -- concluded that based on its analysis, “PFAS should only be grouped together for the setting of regulatory guidelines if the compounds have both similar endpoints for toxicity and similar half-lives.”
Based on EPA methods, the authors say PFOA, PFOS and perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA) “are appropriately grouped together based on similar critical effects and half-lives but [perfluorobutyrate (PFBA), perfluorobutanesulfonic acid (PFBS) and perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS)] should not be grouped with PFOA, PFOS, and PFNA or with each other.”
And attorneys with the law firm Clark Hill point out in a March 25 alert that EPA's PFAS action plan says it is weighing the creation of groups of PFAS with similar effects and chemical structures by relying on “novel high through-put toxicity testing and its judgment as to the toxicity of PFAS mixtures.” But they note the approach implicates scientific uncertainties not yet fully explored, citing a July 25 article in PloS One.
Yet, the Clark Hill attorneys caution against PFAS necessarily fitting the same profile as other commonly grouped chemicals, such as dioxins, which EPA can assess as mixtures using toxicology-equivalency factors. “It is telling that when dioxin equivalency factors, relative potencies for polychlorinated biphenyls congeners, and relative cancer potencies for polyaromatic hydrocarbons were developed, the individual chemicals within these classes were far fewer in number and yet were found to have significantly differing toxicities,” Clark Hill attorneys Jane C. Luxton, William J. Walsh and Amanda L. Tharpe write.
“There currently is no widely accepted method to assess the toxicity of chemicals as a class on the scale presented by PFAS compounds and thus it will take time to develop one,” they add.
For dioxin-like compounds with similar structures and toxicology, EPA has applied a toxicology-equivalency factor method, a component mixture method, in order to determine human health risks posed by mixtures of dioxins, according to EPA's website.
'Whack-A-Mole' Approach
Environmentalists have been vigorously pushing for addressing PFAS as a class, rather than one-by-one. For instance, in petitioning New England states to set enforceable “treatment technique” standards for PFAS, the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) urged against a chemical-by-chemical regulatory framework, saying they are inefficient.
“The 'whack-a-mole' approach is especially troublesome when it comes to setting drinking water standards for emerging contaminants like PFAS, because it is time consuming and expensive to assess them, it is 'technically and financially challenging to identify and reverse environmental and human exposure to PFASs[,]' and both of these issues are exacerbated by the continual introduction of new PFAS compounds,” CLF says in a petition it sent last year to Connecticut regulators, in part referencing a 2017 article in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology.
David Andrews, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, which has long pushed for strict regulation of PFAS in drinking water, tells Inside EPA there is “growing public outrage” over the fact that EPA has allowed more than 600 “poorly studied and potential toxic PFAS chemicals active in commerce.”
“If EPA wants to have any chance of assessing and regulating these chemicals in our lifetimes it must be done as a class or in groups of subclasses,” he says.
Andrews notes EPA has already set the precedent for regulating these as a class in its long-chain PFAS significant new use rules under the Toxic Substances Control Act. “We now know that these rules defined the class of PFAS too narrowly to protect health and based on the current data all members of the PFAS class should be considered together.”
But industry is rebutting the idea of a one-size-fits-all approach, with the American Chemistry Council's Vice President Robert Simon in a response to questions saying there are “vast differences within the PFAS family of chemistry.” While some chemicals in the family sound similar, he says, PFAS have different characteristics, formulations, intended uses and environmental and health profiles.
“So blanket, one-size-fits-all approaches to regulate all PFAS as a class are not only misleading for the public, they are scientifically-inaccurate,” he says.
He says EPA should be encouraged to find ways for the agency to “consider the broad range of chemical and toxicological properties to help prioritize those substances, or groups of substances, which may require greater scrutiny.
“This more deliberate approach acknowledges the differences within the chemical family, but offers a pathway for prioritizing research and data.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epas-toxics-office-eyes-addressing-pfas-smaller-subclasses
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(ACC Mentioned) Cosmetics Industry Kicks Out California Bill to Make Products Safer
Apr 11, 2019 | Cosmetics Business
By Becky Bargh
The cosmetics industry has quashed a bill that sought to ban 20 ‘adulterated’ cosmetic ingredients in California.
Labelled the Toxic-Free Cosmetics Act, it targeted products including asbestos, mercury, formaldehyde and carbon black, in an effort to make personal care products safer for consumers.
However, it was met by opposition from the American Chemistry Council, California Chamber of Commerce, Fragrance Creators Association, Household and Commercial Products Association and the Personal Care Products Council.
The Act was set to be discussed on 23 April by the Assembly Environment, Safety and Toxic Materials Committee but was stalled without the votes to move to the Assembly Health Committee.
Opposers of the bill told the Los Angeles Times they questioned its scientific validity and existing laws are in place to be safe for consumers.
The bill is now not likely to be discussed for another year.
https://www.cosmeticsbusiness.com/news/article_page/Cosmetics_industry_kicks_out_California_bill_to_make_products_safer/153690
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Despite Bipartisan Support, Officials Doubt PFAS Bills' Prospects
Apr 10, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan and Dave Reynolds
A top Defense Department (DOD) environment official is expressing doubt over prospects for bipartisan and bicameral legislation that seeks to boost regulation and funding for addressing cleanup of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), an assessment that at least one top Democrat appears to share.
Maureen Sullivan, DOD's deputy assistant secretary for environment, told the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) spring meeting April 9 that it was unclear how a House bill requiring EPA to list all PFAS as “hazardous substances” under the Superfund law will clear multiple panels to which it has been referred.
It is “never a good sign” when a bill is referred to multiple committees, she said.
The legislation, H.R. 535, which would trigger PFAS cleanup liability for DOD and private parties, has been referred to both the House Energy & Commerce and Transportation & Infrastructure committees, which share jurisdiction over the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA).
But Sullivan said it is unclear where this bill is going, and she knows of no hearings to be held on it.
She provided a similar assessment of H.R. 1417, which would provide funding or grants to publicly owned water systems and private homeowners where PFAS is contaminating their water.
The House bill has 51 co-sponsors and has been referred to four committees -- Energy & Commerce, Transportation & Infrastructure, Ways & Means and Agriculture -- which Sullivan reiterated was “not a good sign.”
Sullivan also downplayed prospects that a bipartisan House task force on PFAS would be able to achieve much. “They can't hold hearings on proposed legislation and have no subpoena power,” she said, though she added that members of the group “can hold town halls around the country” where they can gather information.
Sullivan's comments suggest that despite high-profile concerns on Capitol Hill, lawmakers appear unlikely to advance major policy measures on the issue and will instead leave it to EPA to advance such policies by regulation, though those are likely to move slowly and will not be as ambitious as what lawmakers are seeking.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the top Democrat on the Senate environment committee, appeared to acknowledge the legislation's slim prospects. In an April 9 press release, Carper touted S. 638, the Senate companion to H.R. 535, saying he expects to add to the bill's current list of the cosponsors -- which currently number 31.
“In the meantime,” he said, “Congress needs to continue conducting consistent and persistent oversight on the administration, especially EPA and the Department of Defense, and impart a strong sense of urgency.”
PFAS are a hot-button issue for many communities, lawmakers, states and environmentalists, who are pushing for speedy action from both EPA and DOD, the latter of which faces significant cleanup liability given its use of PFAS-containing firefighting foam in training and firefighting at its bases.
The substances 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.
Communities around the country have raised concerns over the chemicals’ presence in drinking water systems, calling on state and federal regulators and lawmakers for responses to address the contaminants.
EPA Action Plan
But EPA earlier this year released an action plan that includes few firm commitments to regulate the substances, though the agency says it will consider listing two of them under CERCLA and weigh setting an enforceable drinking water standard.
For example, EPA's action plan says it will consider listing the two most common PFAS -- perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) -- while the bipartisan legislation seeks to require the agency to list all PFAS.
Frustrated with what they consider EPA’s slow response, lawmakers have been pushing for action, introducing legislation in some cases to force EPA’s hand.
But Sullivan said while there is “a lot going on” on PFAS in Congress, there is no clear sense of where legislation is going.
Sullivan has previously defended DOD's actions to address PFOA and PFOS in drinking water supplies, saying DOD has cut off exposures and followed the Superfund law to respond to contamination.
DOD has said 24 of its drinking water systems contained PFOS and PFOA above EPA's non-enforceable drinking water health advisory.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/despite-bipartisan-support-officials-doubt-pfas-bills-prospects
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EPA ‘Can’t Do’ Green Chemistry, Agency Official Says
Apr 10, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
EPA trims budget for design of chemicals with few health or ecological harms
Mandate for green chemistry cut from 2016 amendments to toxics law
Research on designing chemicals that produce less waste, use less energy, and are safer is being cut at the EPA to increase the focus on chemical recycling and disposal.
“With a limited budget and resources, there are things we can’t do,” Jeff Frithsen, national director for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chemical Safety for Sustainability research program, told agency advisers April 10.
“Sustainable chemistry: Can’t do it,” he said. “We’re not saying it isn’t important, but in terms of all the other things we have [to do], we can’t do that.”
The President’s budget requested $86.6 million for research on chemical safety and sustainability next year. That would be a cut of about 32 percent from the estimated $126.9 million Congress approved for this year.Research Strategy
Frithsen was among the EPA staff briefing the Board of Scientific Counselors Chemical Safety Subcommittee (CSS) April 10 on the agency’s draft 2019-2022 Chemical Safety for Sustainability research plan.
The subcommittee is meeting through April 12 in North Carolina to review and offer recommendations on draft EPA research plans for 2019-2022.
Specific dollar amounts or other details of anticipated research are not included in the research plan, nor were they discussed during the meeting. More specific plans with that information will be crafted after the subcommittee offers its advice, Frithsen said.
End-of-Life FocusInstead of green chemistry, the research office would try to better understand what happens to chemicals when they are recycled or disposed of, he said.
One subcommittee adviser said he was concerned about the agency’s decision to emphasize the “back end” of how chemicals affect the environment by decreasing the focus on designing them in the first place to reduce health and environmental effects.
But Jeffery Morris, director of the EPA office that regulates chemicals, said he supports the new research strategy.
All aspects of a chemical from its design or “front end” to its “back end”—meaning its disposal or ability to be recycled—interests the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Morris said. But the regulatory office faces the greatest uncertainty at the “back end,” he said.
Absent from LawThe absence of language supporting green chemistry research from the 2016 law that overhauled the nation’s primary chemicals statute irked environmental and some business groups at the time.
The final bill amending the Toxic Substances Control Act didn’t include a provision supported by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) boosting green chemistry.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-cant-do-green-chemistry-agency-official-says
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EPA to Update Ethylene Oxide Limits Amid Sterigenics Concerns
Apr 11, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Joyce
EPA to update, revise two industrial emissions standards
Agency data showed airborne ethylene oxide poses public health hazard
The EPA will propose to update a 25-year-old emissions standard for ethylene oxide, a carcinogen, the agency said in an April 10 statement.
The announcement comes amid protests about increased emissions of the chemical discovered at monitoring stations around the Sterigenics U.S. LLC facility in Willowbrook, Ill., which uses ethylene oxide to sterilize medical equipment.
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency effectively shut down the plant with a seal order prohibiting use of the gas at that facility, a move Sterigenics is challenging in court. The company maintains that it has not violated its Clean Air Act permit limits for the chemical.
EPA data show airborne ethylene oxide around sterilization facilities poses a public health hazard to workers and nearby residents, an August 2018 report from the Agency of Toxic Substances and Disease Registry said.
The report said that a 2016 EPA analysis showed the adult-based inhalation unit risk increased 30 times more than the agency’s previous estimates. The EPA also changed ethylene oxide’s cancer weight of-evidence descriptor from “probably carcinogenic” to humans to “carcinogenic to humans,” a July 26, 2018 letter to EPA Region 5 from the ATSDR, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, said.
EPA StandardThe EPA issued ethylene oxide standards in 1994 and an associated maximum achievable control technology standard to protect human health in 1996. A technology review is required within eight years after a MACT standard is issued and then every eight years.
“The agency is in the process of conducting the Clean Air Act-required technology review of the source category and plans to issue a proposed rule this summer,” the agency statement said.
Kristin Gibbs, a spokeswoman for Sterigenics, said in an April 10 statement that the company is ready to work with the legislators as well as federal and state agencies “to continue the safe usage of EO.”
Coatings Manufacturers LimitsEPA will also issue a proposed rule limiting emissions from coating manufacturing operations “in the summer time frame,” Mike Koerber, deputy director in the EPA Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, said during an EPA presentation April 9.
EPA is required under a 2017 court order to propose revised toxic air pollution standards for miscellaneous manufacturing coatings by June 17, 2020, and to finalize them a year later. It is not under a court order to proposed revised toxic air pollution standards for ethylene oxide.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-to-update-ethylene-oxide-limits-amid-sterigenics-concerns
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Wheeler Piles On More Deception Trying To Defend EPA’s Corrupt Actions on Formaldehyde
Apr 11, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund.
By Richard Denison
In a series of recent hearings Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler has sought to justify his and his agency’s corrupt decisions to kill off a health assessment of formaldehyde done by career scientists in the agency’s science arm (IRIS) and resurrect it under the control of conflicted political appointees.
Recall that under Wheeler’s and his predecessor’s leadership, a draft of the IRIS assessment, ready since fall 2017 for release for public comment and peer review, has been suppressed. Also recall that EPA leadership ran a phony priority-setting process last fall under the direction of yet another conflicted political appointee in order to claim that the IRIS formaldehyde assessment is no longer a priority for the agency. Aspects of this scheme were highlighted in a recent report of Congress’ Government Accountability Office (GAO). Finally, recall that a scant few weeks after that pronouncement, EPA declared last month that it intends to name formaldehyde a “high-priority substance” under TSCA.
Now to the next installment in this corrupt scheme: Here is an excerpt from Wheeler’s testimony from yesterday seeking to justify these earlier moves (minute 35:54 here):
If we were going to move forward with the formaldehyde IRIS assessment, it would be a minimum of 18 months and we decided that it was more important to go ahead and put formaldehyde through the TSCA program because at the end of the day we can regulate formaldehyde under TSCA. You cannot regulate a chemical under IRIS.
Let the obfuscation and deception begin.
First, Wheeler has provided no basis for his 18-month claim. But it is sheer hypocrisy for him to now cite as an excuse how long completion of the IRIS assessment would take – after helping to suppress the draft of that assessment for the past 18 months. But for EPA leadership’s interference, the IRIS assessment would likely have been completed by now and available for use in the TSCA office.
Second, it is of course true that the TSCA office is a regulatory office and that in principle it could regulate formaldehyde under TSCA. Given this EPA’s track record of not regulating chemicals, I would take with a freight train’s load of salt Wheeler’s assertion that he’s doing all this so they can regulate formaldehyde in the end; it’s precisely the opposite. But what his claim entirely omits is that the entire purpose of establishing IRIS back in 1985 was for it to conduct credible health hazard assessments of chemicals outside the fray of regulatory decisions – which could then be used by the regulatory offices at EPA to inform regulations. Wheeler also conveniently omits that a TSCA assessment of formaldehyde will only be of use to the TSCA office, while a completed IRIS assessment would be of use to the whole array of EPA regulatory offices.
But let’s, just for the sake of argument, take Wheeler’s 18-month claim at face value. That would put completion of the IRIS assessment in October 2020. Does that justify starting the assessment all over again under TSCA? Hardly.
Here’s the timeline under TSCA: EPA could not start a TSCA assessment of formaldehyde until the end of December of this year, at the earliest. It just started the prioritization process last month, and TSCA says that process must run a minimum of nine months. Then EPA has to issue within six more months a final scope for its TSCA assessment, first subjecting a draft of it to public comment and revising it accordingly. That takes us to June 2020.
Then, depending on whether it takes an optional 6-month extension, EPA has 30-36 more months to complete its assessment under TSCA. That puts the deadline for completion at between December 2022 and June 2023. So there is a full 2¼ to 2¾ years of overlap between that schedule and Wheeler’s date for completion of the IRIS assessment. And of course the draft of the IRIS assessment could already serve as a point of reference for the TSCA office if only Wheeler and other conflicted appointees would stop suppressing it.
In doing its assessment under TSCA, EPA will have all kinds of other things it needs to be doing in the early months, should it have to wait a bit for the IRIS assessment. And last but not least, it will have 19 other assessments it will have to be working on at the same time: formaldehyde was only one of 20 chemicals EPA identified as candidates for high-priority designation under TSCA, and the same clock will apply to those 19 assessments as I outlined above.
Until appointees who came directly from industry took hold of the process, the TSCA office had every intention to rely on IRIS assessments of chemicals, both because of the credible science they represent and for the sake of efficiencies in carrying out the substantial TSCA workload. Why waste precious time redoing those assessments? The only reason is so that industry interests can see to it that the science is redone to their liking.
Bottom line: The Trump EPA could easily still make this all work – it could allow IRIS to complete the formaldehyde assessment and then have the TSCA office rely on it when conducting its risk evaluation – even despite having wasted the last 18 months doing its dirty deeds. Instead, it is once again elevating private interests over the public interest – and offering up deceptions to try to obfuscate and cover up its real intent.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2019/04/10/wheeler-piles-on-more-deception-trying-to-defend-epas-corrupt-actions-on-formaldehyde/
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Precise GenX Mechanism of Toxicity Eludes EPA Scientists
Apr 11, 2019 | Chemical Watch
US scientists have failed to prove that the mechanism of toxicity for GenX compound HFPO-DA is the same as for PFOS and PFOA, despite identifying some similarities.
Their study of rats suggests that HFPO-DA causes "extensive" changes in gene activity relating to peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) signalling, a biological process known to be involved in PFOS and PFOA toxicity.
A team from the EPA and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) exposed pregnant rats to HFPO-DA and looked for changes in both the mothers and their offspring.
They found that GenX activated PPAR signalling pathways in maternal and foetal livers. The mothers had heavier livers, as well as lower levels of fats and thyroid hormones in their blood. The female pups had lower body weights and the males lower weights for their reproductive tissues.
Reduced pup weight "appears to be one of the most sensitive endpoints of in utero PFAS studies", and should be "more extensively evaluated for HFPO-DA exposure", write the researchers.
PFOS and PFOA affect in particular the alpha PPAR. However, the effects of HFPO-DA seen in the study cannot be ascribed solely to PPARalpha, the scientists say in their paper, published in Environmental Health Perspectives last week.
"Although findings in this study are consistent with other PPARalpha agonists … data gaps exist for key events and other mechanisms that might be involved, particularly in other tissues besides those like the liver with high PPARalpha levels."
Led by Justin Conley from the EPA's Office of Research and Development, the researchers call for "extensive research" into possible toxicity mechanisms as well as studies into mixtures of multiple PFASs.Worldwide water
GenX is a later generation, short-chain PFAS. It has been detected in river water worldwide and there are concerns over its persistence and mobility.
The EPA classifies the chemical as an "emerging contaminant" in need of more research. The agency has indicated that oral exposure to GenX – such as through drinking water – could impact the thyroid, reproductive organs and tissues, developing foetuses, and the kidney.
Germany and the Netherlands are evaluating GenX under the Community Rolling Action Plan (Corap) because of concerns over environmental exposure and persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) properties.
Echa's Member State Committee has agreed that further information is needed for the evaluation, including a biomonitoring study of volunteer workers at a GenX plant, and a carcinogenicity study in mice.
In its substance evaluation decision, Echa describes PPARalpha as "the most extensively studied signal pathway behind PFOA induced carcinogenicity". However, it outlines areas of uncertainty relating to PPARalpha mechanisms.
https://chemicalwatch.com/76146/precise-genx-mechanism-of-toxicity-eludes-epa-scientists
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AOP Knowledge Base Reveals Thousands of Possible Toxicity Mechanisms
Apr 11, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Dr Emma Davies
Scientists from the US EPA and Environment and Climate Change Canada have networked existing adverse outcome pathways (AOPs) to reveal thousands of potential new toxicity mechanisms.
An AOP links the first step on a toxicity pathway – the molecular initiating event (MIE) – to a final adverse outcome, via a series of key events. Led by EPA mathematician Nathan Pollesch, the scientists used relationships between these key events to network 187 AOPs stored in the AOP knowledge base (AOP-KB), hosted by the OECD.
Their analysis shows more than 9,000 "unique, previously undescribed pathways". Each pathway represents a potential toxicity mechanism, although the authors acknowledge that they will not all be biologically plausible.
"As crowd-sourced contributions to the AOP-KB continue to accumulate, the resulting network of AOPs grows not only in complexity but also in its potential for revealing previously undiscovered relationships and knowledge," the scientists write in Toxicological Sciences. However, assessing and curating the large amount of emergent AOP information will be a "major challenge", they caution.
As a repository alone, the AOP-KB is useful for the toxicological community but it has additional value as a "source of novel emergent knowledge", they conclude.
The knowledge base facilitates sharing of knowledge captured in AOPs that we know, but also helps to generate knowledge about the ones we know less about, said Maurice Whelan, head of systems toxicology at the Joint Research Centre's Institute for Health and Consumer Protection.
"Although the extent of toxicological space currently captured in the AOP-KB is rather modest overall, I think we're now beginning to see the power of capturing mechanistic knowledge in this structured, collaborative and machine-friendly way," he added.
Two of the paper's authors – Dan Villeneuve from the EPA and Jason O'Brien from Environment Canada – will present at a free OECD webinar on the AOP framework on 30 April 2019.
The AOP-KB is an OECD initiative run with the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, US EPA, and US Army Engineer Research and Development Center. It has four platforms: AOP-Wiki, Effectopedia, AOP Xplorer and Intermediate Effects DB.
https://chemicalwatch.com/76274/aop-knowledge-base-reveals-thousands-of-possible-toxicity-mechanisms
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New York's Cuomo Threatens Suit if EPA Certifies Hudson Cleanup
Apr 11, 2019 | Inside EPA
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) is reiterating the state's threat to sue EPA if it certifies that General Electric (GE) has completed cleanup of the Hudson River, despite calls from state officials, U.S. lawmakers and others for further cleanup given the remedy's failure to meet its goals.
The governor told WAMC April 9 that the state might sue to block EPA's certification that the cleanup is complete “if there is any legal viability to the suit whatsoever,” according to an April 9 Times Union article. The suit would likely be filed against the agency, it says.
The remarks come after New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) Commissioner Basil Seggos last week said his office has been in contact with EPA over the potential cleanup certification. The article notes a certificate of completion (COC) -- which GE, the sole potentially responsible party at the site, has sought -- could resolve GE's liability for the remaining polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contamination in the river.
The stepped-up rhetoric from Cuomo reiterates previous threats state officials have made in response to the possibility that EPA will certify the cleanup as complete.
Two related decisions have been pending before the EPA Region 2 administrator for more than a year: whether to finalize a draft five-year review (FYR) finding that cleanup of the Hudson River PCBs Superfund site is working as intended, although “not yet protective;” and whether EPA will grant GE's request to issue a COC for the dredging remedy. GE completed a six-year, $1.7 billion sediment cleanup, including dredging, at the site in 2015.
EPA in January 2018 signaled it was taking a step back from either decision after New York state officials threatened a suit if the agency certified the cleanup as complete and as environmentalists and others urged the agency to use the FYR as an opportunity to strengthen the cleanup requirements for the site.
And then in December 2018, the NYSDEC issued a report following extensive sampling, finding that in many cases PCB concentrations in the river had not significantly declined, according to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who raised concerns to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler earlier this year over the potential issuance of the COC despite EPA's draft FYR finding that the remedy is not yet protective.
Wheeler in a written response to senators earlier this year on the issue declined to state which way EPA was going on the COC, but downplayed a certification, noted such a declaration would have a limited purview, and said reopening the cleanup to add requirements is within the agency's authorities.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/new-yorks-cuomo-threatens-suit-if-epa-certifies-hudson-cleanup
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Ontario Passes Repeal of Toxics Reduction Act
Apr 11, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins
The Canadian province of Ontario will repeal its Toxics Reduction Act (TRA) by 2021 in an effort to avoid "unnecessary duplication" with the federal government’s toxic substance assessment programme – the Chemicals Management Plan.
The repeal, which was signalled in December, is included in the Restoring Ontario's Competitiveness Act (Bill 66) that received royal assent on 3 April. The package of more than 30 measures is aimed at "reducing regulatory burdens in 12 sectors".
Ontario’s TRA requires industry to voluntarily develop toxic reduction plans and report yearly. However, the province says the law will become redundant because the CMP will have assessed all affected substances by the end of 2020.
It will also amend Ontario Regulation 455/09 to end all toxic substance reduction planning and reporting on new toxic substances, effective immediately.
When Ontario’s current government took office last year, it put forward its Open for Business Action Plan to eliminate red tape within the state. The plan committed the province to bringing forward a series of legislative packages to eliminate burdens to business. Bill 66 was the first of these.Industry lobby
The Chemical Industry Association of Canada has lobbied for the repeal of the TRA since its passage in 2009, citing the fact that Ontario is the only province in the country that imposes its own chemical reporting requirements on industry. The rest of the country defers to the combined authorities of the CMP and the National Pollutant Release Inventory.
Don Fusco, CIAC’s director of government and stakeholder relations for Ontario, said the organisation’s support of Bill 66 is a symptom of "ongoing advocacy to recommend burden reductions where there are duplicate regulations".
"The TRA created an additional regulatory burden on industry with no discernible benefit," said CIAC. "It must be clearly understood that repealing the Act causes no gap in regulatory oversight for substances deemed toxic in Canada."
In December, preliminary results from Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks indicated just a 0.04% reduction overall in the substances used, created and released in the province as a consequence of the programme, which the Ministry cited as evidence that it has "not achieved meaningful results".
However, the NGO Environmental Defence Canada has disputed the repeal of the TRA, saying it "not only takes away effective and business-friendly tools to reduce pollution, it may also result in increasing Ontarians’ exposure to toxics."
https://chemicalwatch.com/76148/ontario-passes-repeal-of-toxics-reduction-act
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Trump Signs Orders to Speed Up Oil and Gas Pipeline Construction
Apr 10, 2019 | The New York Times
By Clifford Krauss
HOUSTON —
President Trump signed two executive orders on Wednesday that he says will speed up construction of pipelines and other projects to enhance the production and transport of oil and natural gas between states and across international borders.The actions are unlikely to have much of an immediate impact, and they will probably attract legal challenges by state governments seeking to preserve control over such projects. But the orders are symbolically important for a president who likes to take credit for a boom in energy production and exports. And he delivered the message in Texas, an oil-rich Republican state where Democrats recently made electoral gains.
One order directs the Environmental Protection Agency to review and tighten rules to make it more difficult for states to scuttle pipelines by invoking provisions of the Clean Water Act.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, an opponent of hydraulic fracturing, has blocked natural gas pipelines that would connect several Northeastern states to Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale gas field. A shortage of natural-gas pipeline capacity prompted Consolidated Edison to impose a moratorium on new gas connections last month in parts of Westchester County.
The other executive order would transfer authority for approving the construction of international pipelines from the secretary of state to the president, eliminating a lengthy State Department review process. The goal is to speed up projects like the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.
Mr. Trump issued a new presidential permit last month to Keystone XL, which has been delayed since the early years of the Obama administration. But the pipeline is being contested in the courts by environmentalists, farmers and some Native American groups.
“Too often, badly needed energy infrastructure is being held back by special-interest groups, entrenched bureaucracies and radical activists,” Mr. Trump told an audience at the International Union of Operating Engineers training center in Crosby, Tex., near Houston. “This obstruction does not just hurt families and workers like you. It undermines our independence and national security.”
Environmentalists were quick to criticize the orders issued Wednesday, which they said would exacerbate climate change.
“President Trump is curtailing the public’s voice in an attempt to force dirty energy projects on communities across America,” said Joshua Axelrod, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Pipelines like Keystone XL pose dangers to our water, our farms and our climate.”
But oil executives said the orders would give Washington greater flexibility as it tried to limit oil exports from Venezuela and Iran while keeping gasoline prices low.
“These are things that are good for our country and for the energy business to continue to help us be energy independent,” said Dale Redman, chief executive of ProPetro, a major Texas oil service company.
Delays in pipeline construction have long bedeviled oil and gas companies, constraining production growth in West Texas and elsewhere. But new pipelines crossing Texas will be completed at the end of this year and in 2020 without much federal intervention.
In some cases, oil field economics, not federal policy, have stood in the way of new pipelines. Many energy companies have been burning gas that bubbles up with crude oil — a process known as flaring — because gas prices are so low that it would not be profitable to build pipelines to bring all of it to market.
But several states have put up roadblocks to Mr. Trump’s efforts to champion fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal. Washington State has blocked the building of export terminals vital to the survival of the Western coal industry at a time when utilities are shutting down coal-fired power plants. And Michigan last month halted an underwater oil pipeline project proposed by Enbridge, a major Canadian energy company, to import oil from Canada.
Mr. Cuomo said in a statement on Wednesday, “President Trump’s executive order is a gross overreach of federal authority that undermines New York’s ability to protect our water quality and our environment.”
Wednesday’s orders direct federal officials to pursue policies designed to expedite projects. For example, the president is telling Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta to review barriers to financing energy projects, including decisions by universities and pension funds to divest from oil, gas and coal companies. And he is instructing the Transportation Department to allow freight railroads and tanker trucks to haul liquefied natural gas, a growing export commodity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/business/energy-environment/trump-oil-gas-pipelines.html
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Trump’s Pipeline Order is No Longer Just in the Pipeline
Apr 11, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Chuck McCutcheon
President Trump is expected today to sign executive orders making significant revisions to how the government regulates the transportation of energy across state and international lines—but the exact timing of those changes is unclear.
The orders will strip power from the secretary of state to approve international oil and gas pipelines, direct the EPA to change its regulations that allow states to object to energy infrastructure projects, and require the Labor Department to look into whether retirement funds moving money out of energy investments are violating responsibilities to shareholders.Senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity were vague about the timing during a conference call with reporters. The pipeline issue could surface at a hearing of the Senate commerce panel’s transportation and safety subcommittee examining federal pipeline safety and oversight.Carbon Capture Incentives CaptiveMore than a year after Congress passed bipartisan tax incentives for carbon capture technology, investors are still on the sidelines—and it’s not for lack of interest, Abby Smith writes.Investors—along with coal companies, oil and gas companies, industrial manufacturers, startups focused on using captured carbon, and others—are waiting on federal tax regulators to lay out the rules for how to claim the credits. “It really has the risk of stalling out this very important policy, and it’s doubly unfortunate given the breadth of political support,” says Brad Crabtree, vice president for carbon management at the Great Plains Institute.The lack of progress comes as the Senate environment committee will vote today on bipartisan legislation (S. 383) to boost carbon capture technologies.Green New Deal Name-Calling
Republicans’ repeated depiction of the Green New Deal as “socialist,” “completely unrealistic,” and “tantamount to genocide” is a strategic decision within the party to try to cement the idea that Democrats have swerved too far left, Dean Scott writes.At a March luncheon with senators, South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham later told reporters, President Trump said of the climate-change blueprint: “Make sure you don’t kill it too much, because I want to run against it.”Environmentalists say such arguments are likely a dry run for broader attacks on House climate legislation. They echo Republicans’ response on cap-and-trade legislation backed by the Obama administration nearly a decade ago, when the GOP helped sink Democratic legislation it branded a “light switch tax” that would raise utility bills.
Emergency planning is getting more complicated, more intense, and more frequent for the companies and municipalities that provide drinking water across the country, David Schultz writes.Interior secretary nominee David Bernhardt is headed toward likely Senate confirmation Thursday just before the chamber goes on a two-week recess, said Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who heads the Senate energy panel. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filed cloture on the nomination to tee up a procedural vote expected today.The House Energy and Commerce’s energy panel discusses eight bills aimed at making homes, buildings, and energy infrastructure more efficient and cost-effective. Lawmakers will hear from Daniel Simmons, head of the Energy Department’s energy efficiency office, and James Campos, director of the agency’s economic impact and diversity office.Senate Appropriations’ energy and water panel talks about fiscal 2020 budget requests for Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation. Expect the panel’s chairman, Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander (R), to question proposed cuts for inland waterways, including the partially-built lock at the Chickamauga Dam on the Tennessee River that has long been one of his top priorities.Insights
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State pesticide regulators are concerned the Environmental Protection Agency is angling to reduce their ability to impose additional restrictions on pesticides in their states.Newer Water Programs Can Better Fund Projects, EPA Head Says
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency defended Trump administration proposed cuts to a popular drinking water loan program, arguing newer agency programs can better address pollution issues.
Today’s EventsAll Day • Offshore Wind • The IPF 19 conference on offshore wind continues in New York.All Day • Energy • Columbia University hosts 6th annual Columbia Global Energy Summit featuring Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee.All Day • Nuclear • World Nuclear Fuel Cycle Conference in Miami featuresNuclear Energy Institute CEO Maria Korsnick as well as executives from Duke Energy and other companies.8 a.m. • Infrastructure • Women’s Council on Energy and the Environment hosts discussion on Trump administration’s “One Federal Decision” policy intended to foster a coordinated and cooperative federal review of major infrastructure projects.9 a.m. • Forest Service/BLM • House Natural Resources’ public lands panel looks at spending priorities and missions of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.9:30 a.m. • Harbor Maintenance • House Transportation and Infrastructure’s water resources panel discusses the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund. Shipping companies pay fees that go into this fund, but its money is often diverted by Congress to pay for projects other than harbor maintenance.10 a.m. • Sustainable Agriculture • House Appropriations’ agriculture panel assesses economic opportunities for farmers through sustainable agricultural practices.6 p.m. • Climate • New America Foundation hosts discussion on how climate change will transform U.S. democracy.Around the WebWest Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Colorado GOP Sen. Cory Gardner led a bipartisan group in introducing a bill (S. 1081) to provide permanent, dedicated funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The fund is financed by receipts from oil and gas drilling along the Outer Continental Shelf and used by local communities for parks and maintaining biking and hiking trails.In only about 58 percent of cases did the EPA meet the chemical law’s 90-day deadline to decide whether a new chemical may enter commerce, the agency says in a new performance report.The Bureau of Land Management’s proposed restrictions for the Burning Man counter-cultural festival in northern Nevada would result in worse environmental impacts than existing conditions, the event’s backers say.Quote of the Day“We’re on a merry-go-round of acceptance of non-science that is preventing us from doing what every other nation in the world is currently trying to do.”
—Former Democratic senator and Secretary of State John Kerry, lamenting federal inaction on climate change.https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/trumps-pipeline-order-is-no-longer-just-in-the-pipeline-49
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Trump's Pipeline EO Immediately Draws Legal Threats
Apr 10, 2019 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Annie Snider
The ink had barely dried on President Donald Trump's executive order aimed at limiting states' ability to block infrastructure projects when it received its first legal threat.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who has launched a presidential campaign focused on climate change, issued a statement with his attorney general vowing "to challenge any attempt by the administration to illegally constrain Washington’s authority to protect our state’s natural resources."
Inslee's administration in 2017 used its Clean Water Act authority to block what would be the largest coal-export terminal in North America, citing not just impacts on waterways, but also air pollution and vehicle traffic.
And New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), whose administration issued a 2016 denial to the 125-mile Constitute Pipeline and was targeted by Trump in his speech today, called the order a "gross overreach of federal authority."
But it's not just blue states that are raising concerns about the new order. The Western Governors Association, composed of 11 Republican and 11 Democratic governors, had strongly urged the Trump administration against any move to curtail states' rights under the 1972 water law and fought efforts in Congress to do so.
In a statement, the group said Western governors "have concerns" about the EO's impact on states' rights under the Clean Water Act, but said they "welcome the opportunity offered in the Order to work closely with federal partners on improved policies for water quality certification under Section 401."
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said today the agency "will immediately engage with our state and tribal partners" on updates to the 401 process — something WGA members have been asking him to do for months.
Notably, all six of the states that sided with the Millennium project's backers in a lawsuit challenging its denial, including Wyoming, are members of WGA.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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No Easy Solution to Expanding Infrastructure for Increased U.S. LNG Exports, Say Executives
Apr 10, 2019 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Leticia Gonzales
A “whole lot more” oil and natural gas infrastructure is needed to accommodate the projected tripling of U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports over the next decade, but domestic challenges need to be overcome so the country can succeed in an increasingly competitive global market, industry executives said Tuesday.
Speaking on a panel at the Pipeline & Gas Journal’s Pipeline Opportunities Conference in Houston, Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Guy Nichols, director of marine operations, said the Jones Act was among the chief challenges facing infrastructure buildout in the United States. The federal statute enacted in 1920 limits shipments to U.S. ports to ships built in the United States and owned by U.S. citizens.
The decades-old law, originally drafted in part to protect the shipping industry and the growth of commerce, has been hotly debated particularly in New England. The region, which lacks adequate pipeline capacity to transport gas during periods of strong demand, brought in Russia-sourced LNG this winter to meet demand during a particularly frigid period.
The 3.25 Bcf Gaselys vessel originated from Russia's new $27 billion Yamal LNG terminal above the Arctic Circle on the Yamal Peninsula and then was re-exported from Grain LNG in the UK before landing in New England. The vessel was estimated to have delivered 2.89 Bcf at the Everett import terminal in Boston in late January.
Even before then, the governors of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont in December raised the issue of modifying the Jones Act to allow more LNG shipments into the natural gas-starved region. The governors jointly called for "working with congressional delegations to address whether the Jones Act should be modified to ensure that LNG can be delivered in a timely manner during winter months."
Along with pursuing more LNG shipments, the governors called for examining additional infrastructure, including gas storage, in key areas that could be used by gas-fired power plants.
Modifications and other waivers to the Jones Act are “hard to get,” according to Nichols. Puerto Rico was granted a 10-day waiver in 2017 after Hurricane Maria -- the deadliest Atlantic hurricane since 2004 -- slammed the commonwealth, killing thousands and knocking out power to the entire island of more than three million residents.
Meanwhile, building U.S. vessels is uneconomic, Nichols said. Some U.S. ships were built decades ago but “only two are still running.” Citing a Government Accountability Office study, Nichols said the cost today to build a U.S. LNG vessel is about $600 million, which is triple the cost of a Korean vessel, which at the end of 2017 cost about $182 million to build. The ships would also take three times as long to build if done so in the United States, the study found.
Trade policy also stands in the way of infrastructure buildout in the United States, said attorney Kevin Ewing, a partner at Bracewell. Last September, the Trump administration enacted a 10% tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese products. Beijing retaliated with tariffs of 5-10% on more than 5,000 products imported from the United States, including LNG at 10%. Analysts have been divided over whether the tit-for-tat tariffs will or will not impact a "second wave" of U.S. LNG projects.
Cheniere in February 2018 -- months before the trade spat ensued-- signed two deals with a unit of state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. for 1.2 million metric tons/year for 25 years. It is unclear whether other deals are awaiting a resolution to the trade war.
Meanwhile, Trump, who was headed to Texas on Wednesday for fundraising and to sign executive orders (EO) that could speed up pipeline infrastructure, has also demanded $5.7 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. After failing to come to an agreement with Congress on funding for the wall last December, a five-week partial government shutdown began.
“There are a number of different directions in which the current administration is heading,” Ewing said. “We have some tension in the current foreign policy that translates into regulatory challenges.”
Land use and cumbersome regulatory processes also stand in the way of ensuring the United States has adequate infrastructure in place to accommodate more gas exports. While modifications to existing facilities only take about five years to get through the regulatory and construction process, greenfield projects can take double that time before entering service, according to Ewing.
In particular, executives said improvements and modifications need to be made to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), cited by some as the most difficult part of getting through the FERC process. “The worst thing we can do is cut corners on NEPA process,” but legislation needs to fix the process, said Sempra Energy’s Bill Lasinger, director of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission relations.
In addition, water quality certifications have become an increasing barrier to some infrastructure development projects, according to executives. While acknowledging the important role states have under the federal Clean Water Act, the process has been abused by states to interrupt projects up and down the East Coast, they said.
“It’s just good regulatory policy to have a streamlined process regardless of whether it’s Republican or Democratic in nature,” Ewing said.
Panelists also indicated they’d prefer to work through a more streamlined regulatory process rather than under presidential EOs when trying to get potential projects off the ground.
“There needs to be a joint effort between the states and the feds to get through the obstacles,” Lasinger said.
The world is not going to wait for the United States to get their ducks in a row, according to Freeport LNG’s Lance Goodwin, vice president of business development. Freeport is expected to bring online the first train at its export facility along the Texas coast later this year, but Goodwin noted that Russia too “has gone bullish on LNG” and Qatar has projects of its own.
“If we want to be able to compete at all, we need to get our regulatory process streamlined and get going.”
https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/117993-no-easy-solution-to-expanding-infrastructure-for-increased-us-lng-exports-say-executives
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Permian Pipe-Building to Overshoot Demand, Enterprise Says
Apr 11, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Adams-Heard
World’s biggest oil field may soon have too many pipelines
1.5 million barrels of daily pipe capacity coming by year-end
The world’s biggest oil field may soon have too many pipelines, with crude-hauling capacity in the prolific Permian Basin set to outpace production for years to come, Enterprise Products Partners LP told investors.
There will be a “period of three or four years where the Permian could have excess takeaway capacity,” Enterprise Chief Financial Officer Randy Fowler said during the company’s analyst event April 10.
Chief Executive Officer Jim Teague was absent April 10 after breaking three ribs over the weekend. Teague “spent the weekend getting ready for this meeting and acting as a chauffeur for his two tween stepkids, enthusiastically cheering at both middle school baseball and softball tournaments, and somehow in the course of that managed to crack three ribs,” Enterprise Chairman Randa Duncan told attendees. It was the first time Teague missed an investor day since taking the reins at the end of 2015. Last year, Teague kicked off the event by calling his broker from the podium and buying Enterprise stock.
Fowler joined rivals Energy Transfer LP and Magellan Midstream Partners LP in warning about an eventual overbuild as pipeline companies race to put new steel in the ground. A dearth of capacity has forced oil explorers in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico to sell their output locally at a discount to coastal prices that’s been as wide as $24 a barrel.
Three new pipes are poised to add as much as 2.2 million barrels of daily capacity by early 2020, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Michael Kay and Jonathan Mardini.
That would double if two additional proposals move forward. Exxon Mobil Corp. and Plains All American Pipeline LP have already pulled the trigger on a massive conduit that would move more than 1 million barrels a day. A separate project whose backers include Energy Transfer and Magellan is also on the table, though its future looks less certain.
“A bunch of different folks have a bunch of different forecasts, but I think most of those will say that as you get into end of 2019 through 2021, 2022, there’s likely going to be an overbuild situation,” Magellan CFO Aaron Milford said at a conference last month. “We think that’s just going to work itself out through time with additional production.”
Also during Enterprise’s analyst day, Fowler told investors not to expect any massive stock repurchases. Instead, the company’s $2 billion buyback program, its first in more than 18 years, will likely take place over several years and will remain “opportunistic,” he said.
“You just really need to be very deliberate on that,” Fowler said. Unitholders have been split on whether they prefer buybacks over quarterly payouts in the form of distributions, and buybacks aren’t “necessarily as tax efficient as distribution growth is,” he said.
Fowler repeated earlier statements that Enterprise continues to consider joining pipeline peers in ditching the master limited partnership model to become a corporation, but that for now, “we haven’t seen anything yet that’s compelling enough to come in and make a change.”
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/permian-pipe-building-to-overshoot-demand-enterprise-says
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Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Law Proposed by New England Democrats
Apr 11, 2019 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
Democratic lawmakers in New England have proposed federal legislation designed to increase pipeline safety in the wake of a deadly series of natural gas explosion and fires in suburban Boston last year.
The Leonel Rondon Pipeline Safety Act calls for the Department of Transportation (DOT) to require natural gas pipeline operators create more robust integrity management plans. The new rules would, among other things, require a greater focus on the presence of leak-prone cast iron pipes and on risks that could result in operation above the maximum allowable operating pressure. It also directs operators to avoid using a risk rating of zero for low-probability events.
Leonel Rondon died during a series of explosions that rocked the Merrimack Valley in Massachusetts last September. At least two dozen people also were injured and 131 structures were damaged. A preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board said the explosions may have been caused by gaps in construction work orders on a cast-iron, low-pressure system built in the early 1900s and operated by Columbia Gas of Massachusetts, a subsidiary of NiSource Inc.
The proposed legislation would require operators to submit copies of their distribution integrity management plans, emergency response plans, as well as procedural operations and maintenance manuals to the DOT's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Board or to state regulators. The bill calls for DOT to require operators implement best safety practices, or a pipeline safety management system, according to recommendations by the American Petroleum Institute.
The bill also calls for a professional engineer to approve important changes to a pipeline system, and that a qualified gas employee be on-site at a district regulator station to monitor gas pressure during construction work.
Civil penalties would be substantially higher. Operators that run afoul of pipeline safety standards would face a maximum penalty of $20 million for each violation, up from $200,000 currently. The maximum penalty limit would also be increased to $200 million from the current limit of $2 million.
Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts said the bill is designed "to ensure that no natural gas company is allowed to shortchange safety ever again. Without strengthening safety regulations, America's natural gas pipeline infrastructure remains a ticking time bomb."
The Senate version of the bill is sponsored by Markey and Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. Rep. Lori Trahan of Massachusetts is sponsoring companion legislation in the House.
https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/117996-natural-gas-pipeline-safety-law-proposed-by-new-england-democrats
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Trump Plan to Ship Natural Gas by Rail Stokes ‘Bomb Train’ Fears
Apr 11, 2019 | Bloomberg
By Jennifer A Dlouhy
President Donald Trump wants to allow natural gas to be shipped in railroad cars, a move that would open new markets hungry for the fuel but could risk catastrophic accidents if one were to derail.
Trump on Wednesday ordered the Transportation Department to write a new rule permitting super-chilled natural gas to be shipped in specialty tank cars. The order follows a multiyear lobbying campaign by railroads and natural gas advocates, who argue it is needed to serve customers in the U.S. Northeast, where there aren’t enough pipelines, and making it possible to use the gas to power ships and trains.
“There are all sorts of new opportunities where you can use rail much more efficiently,” said Charlie Riedl, head of the Center for Liquefied Natural Gastrade group.
The effort, which could help offset falling rail shipments of coal, mirrors how the oil industry turned to trains to ship crude when there weren’t enough pipelines to meet demand. But a series of spills and other accidents -- including a runaway oil train that derailed and killed more than 40 people in a small Quebec town in 2013 -- have safety advocates warning against putting gas on the rails.
Earlier: Trump Said to Seek Limit on State Power Over Pipelines
“It’s a disaster waiting to happen,” said Emily Jeffers, a staff attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, who added that Trump’s initiative evokes earlier concerns about crude-filled “bomb trains” traveling through American cities. “You’re transporting an extraordinarily flammable and dangerous substance through highly populated areas with basically no environmental protection.”
LNG is natural gas that has been chilled to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 167 Celsius) in a process that removes water, carbon dioxide and other compounds, leaving mostly methane in a fluid that takes up less than 1/600th the space it previously occupied as a gas. It is already shipped across oceans around the globe, ferried across the U.S. in trucks and stashed in storage tanks to ensure natural gas is on hand when demand escalates.
LNG does not burn on its own, and it can’t ignite in its liquefied state. The risk comes if a tank car were ruptured and LNG were exposed to the air, triggering the LNG to rapidly convert back into a flammable gas and evaporate.City Risks
Fred Millar, an independent rail consultant working with citizen groups opposed to moving LNG by trains, says Trump’s policy change would pose “an unprecedented new level of risk for American cities,” and is being pursued hastily “because of enormous pressure to sell our fracked gas.”
Millar warns that LNG is especially hazardous because of its ability to easily warm to a vigorous boil, forming a flammable gas cloud that can erupt into an unquenchable fire. A 1944 explosion in Cleveland killed more than 100 people after liquefied natural gas from an East Ohio Gas Co. storage tank seeped into the city’s sewer system and ignited, leveling homes and businesses across several city blocks, he said.
However, supporters of rail transport stress that natural gas dissipates rapidly and has such a narrow ignition window it is only able to ignite when mixed with air at a ratio of about 5 to 15 percent, unlike other flammable materials carried by rail. LNG won’t dissolve in water and, if spilled, generally evaporates, leaving no residue behind.
Related: Stalled New York Shale Pipe Gets Second Chance With Court Case
“It’s really hard to even get it to ignite to begin with in a gaseous format, let alone in a liquid format,” the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas’s Riedl said.
The Association of American Railroads emphasizes that LNG is “similar in all relevant properties to other hazardous materials that are currently authorized to be transported by rail.” Besides crude oil, hydrogen chloride and other liquefied gases are now widely transported over American train tracks.
There have been only two accidental releases of cryogenic liquids approved for U.S. rail transport in DOT-113 tank cars in the past 16 years, the association said in a 2017 petition asking regulators to allow the LNG shipments. Railroad group representatives did not respond to emails requesting comment.
“The record reflects that railroads transport cryogenic liquids very safely,” and “rail is undeniably safer” than transporting LNG in trucks, the group said.
Trains already move some liquefied natural gas in North America. The Obama administration in 2015 authorized the Alaska Railroad Corp. to ship LNG using portable containers on flatcars. Canada’s transportation department also allows LNG to be shipped in DOT-113 tank cars.Open Markets
The policy change could expand existing gas markets and open up new ones. A prime opportunity is creating a new avenue for getting natural gas to New England, where high winter demand and limited pipeline capacity have caused prices to rise sharply and lured cargoes from Russia. The railroad association said some shippers are interested in transporting LNG by rail from the prolific Marcellus shale formation in Pennsylvania to New England, as well as on routes between the U.S. and Mexico.
Rail shipments could out-compete other sources of LNG in the region, analysts said, even factoring in added costs to liquefy natural gas and transport it in tank cars. New England imported six cargoes of LNG at an average price of $8.88 per million British Thermal Units in January, even though the same quantity of Appalachian natural gas traded at $3.25.Maritime Fuel
“That means liquefaction and transport costs of over $5 would still make it economic to liquefy U.S. gas and ship it by rail to New England,” said Anastacia Dialynas, a BNEF oil and gas analyst.
Rail transport could similarly ease bottlenecks getting Permian gas from West Texas and New Mexico to the U.S. Gulf Coast, Riedl said.
Industry leaders point to other possibilities, including serving burgeoning demand for LNG as a maritime fuel, amid looming international restrictionson high-sulfur diesel. Rail shipments of LNG could enable the creation of new fueling locations at ports in Florida and the U.S. West Coast, without requiring expensive new liquefaction infrastructure.
It could take more than a year for the Transportation Department to write new rules governing LNG in tank cars.
— With assistance by Naureen S Malik, and Ari Natter
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-11/trump-plan-to-ship-natural-gas-by-rail-stokes-bomb-train-fears
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DeGette Bill Targets Refinery ‘Loophole’ for Hydrogen Cyanide
Apr 10, 2019 | Inside EPA
Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) is floating legislation that aims to force EPA to set a health-protective limit for hydrogen cyanide (HCN) emitted by oil refineries, closing what DeGette calls a “loophole” that allows refiners to emit the neurotoxin in unsafe amounts.
The bill, H.R. 2092, would require EPA to set numeric limits for air emissions of HCN under the Clean Air Act’s air toxics program. The legislation would require EPA to set an HCN emission standard that “will fully protect the surrounding communities,” DeGette said in a March 19 statement ahead of the bill’s introduction April 4.
DeGette, who chairs the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s oversight panel, is concerned in particular about emissions from the Suncor refinery just north of Denver. “Companies, such as Suncor, have discovered -- and are now utilizing -- a loophole in the law that exists when the EPA has not set a maximum allowable limit for a certain chemical, such as hydrogen cyanide. When no limit has been set by the EPA, a company is able to suggest its own limit.”
DeGette says that Suncor is “pumping more than 25,000 pounds of the highly-toxic chemical into the air each year.” Similar situations have arisen with refineries in Houston, Canton, OH; and Gallup, NM; effectively setting their own limits, DeGette says.
Her bill would “also require petroleum refineries that emit hydrogen cyanide to establish real-time fence-line monitoring” of their HCN emissions, and report those findings to the public, according to the statement. As of press time, the bill had no co-sponsors.
At present, HCN is limited only through use of carbon monoxide (CO) as a “surrogate.” When EPA finds CO levels demonstrate complete combustion at refinery emissions sources, the agency deems HCN to be sufficiently controlled. The agency’s position predates the Trump administration, as the Obama administration in a 2015 overhaul of refinery air rules declined to set specific limits for HCN despite pressure from environmentalists.
Federal courts have in principle accepted the use of CO as a surrogate for air toxics, rejecting environmentalists’ arguments that the agency must set individual numeric limits for hazardous air pollutants. But the courts have also pressed EPA to carefully explain and justify the use of surrogates, for example in litigation over EPA boiler air toxics standards, which resulted in a partial remand of those standards to better explain use of CO as a surrogate.
DeGette’s bill would require that EPA set an HCN limit to provide “the maximum degree of reduction in emissions that is achievable” that “assures and ample margin of safety to protect public health and the environment.” This is known as a maximum achievable control technology standard.
The bill would require EPA to use the “best available science regarding the effects of HCN on the health of children and vulnerable sub-populations, including when multiple sources of HCN and exposure to additional pollutants may be present in a given area,” according to DeGette’s March 19 statement.
Meanwhile, environmentalists’ challenge to EPA’s refinery rules remains in abeyance in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the consolidated suit American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, et al. v. EPA, where the agency’s use of surrogate pollutants for HCN and other toxics will likely be at issue. The suit is on hold pending EPA administrative action to reconsider certain aspects of the refinery rules, which has been underway since 2016.
One environmental attorney says DeGette’s bill “would make meaningful progress for clean air and public health in communities where people live, work, and go to school near petroleum refineries.” But if the bill is not enacted, the absence of an HCN limits “is a loophole that the court could correct in the pending lawsuit, if it is not resolved sooner.”
Various community groups have spoken out in favor of the bill in Colorado and Texas. In an April 5 joint statement, Becky English, a Colorado Sierra Club volunteer leader, said “Fallout from industrial operations and infrastructure always impacts nearby vulnerable people the most, so this is a social justice issue. We applaud Rep. DeGette’s leadership on this issue.”
“A limit is definitely needed to regulate hydrogen cyanide,” said Juan Parras, director of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/degette-bill-targets-refinery-%E2%80%98loophole%E2%80%99-hydrogen-cyanide
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Minnesota Dems to Roll Out Bill Modeled on Green New Deal (1)
Apr 11, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Joyce
Bill more ambitious than governor’s plan for carbon-free electricity production by 2050
Creates advisory council to facilitate state’s transition to a cleaner economy
Minnesota Democratic legislators will introduce legislation inspired by the federal Green New Deal that would require the state to produce carbon-free energy by 2030.
State Rep. Frank Hornstein (D) announced April 10 he will introduce April 11 a bill creating green jobs and infrastructure resulting in the state producing 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2030. The bill, which will be sponsored in the state Legislature’s upper chamber by Sen. Scott Dibble (D), will create a state funding mechanism to help fuel the move toward reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
A key component of the legislation is the inclusion of legislative findings declaring climate change is a scientific fact and its effects are accelerating, Hornstein said at an April 10 news conference.
He described the legislation as “a very, very forward looking, visionary bill that combines aspirational and achievable goals with pragmatic solutions.”
“Basically this bill says we’ve got a problem, Minnesota. This is the blueprint to solve it,” Hornstein said.
Governor ActionThe legislation’s push for carbon-free energy is more ambitious than a plan outlined in March by Gov. Tim Walz (D), which would require Minnesota electric utilities to use only carbon-free energy sources to produce electricity for sale in the state by 2050.
State Rep. Jamie Long (D) introduced legislation March 4 to achieve Walz’s 100 percent carbon-free electricity target. The Energy and Climate Finance and Policy Division committee is considering it.
The Dibble-Hornstein legislation is modeled on a U.S. House resolution calling for a Green New Deal (H.Res.109), which has the environmental goals of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, cleaning up hazardous waste sites, and securing clean air and water for all U.S. residents within a decade.
MN Can’t Wait, a group of Minnesota middle and high school students, helped draft the bill, Hornstein said.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/minnesota-dems-to-roll-out-bill-modeled-on-green-new-deal-1
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Whitehouse, Schatz Float Latest Version of Carbon Fee Bill
Apr 10, 2019 | E&E News PM
By Nick Sobczyk,
Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) today reintroduced their carbon fee bill, one of several emissions pricing measures circulating on Capitol Hill amid renewed interest in addressing climate change.
The "American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act" would be among the most aggressive of those proposals, and it has picked up two new co-sponsors this year, including a 2020 presidential candidate: Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).
The bill has virtually no shot of passing the Senate in this Congress, with Republicans still widely opposed to carbon pricing.
But it's a signal from Schatz and Whitehouse — two of the Senate's top climate hawks — that they still view a price on carbon as the linchpin of any plan to combat climate change, despite debates about the idea in the environmental community amid vigorous discussion about the Green New Deal.
"A price on carbon pollution is one of the best options we have for bipartisan action, and it is one of the best options we have for tackling climate change," Schatz said in a statement. "By putting a price on pollution, our bill provides a market-based solution for dealing with the planetary emergency that is climate change."
Whitehouse has been introducing versions of the legislation since 2014, making this the fourth Congress in a row that the measure has entered the Congressional Record.
This year's iteration is the most ambitious yet. It would price carbon starting at $52 per ton — up $2 from the 2018 version — with fees rising 6% annually over inflation.
It would be assessed on fossil fuels when they are mined, processed and imported, as well as on large emitters of greenhouse gases that are not from fossil fuels.
The measure would also include a border adjustment, in effect a tariff on energy-intensive imports from countries that do not price carbon to level the playing field for American manufacturers.
The sponsors project that the fee, to be administered by the Treasury Department, would generate $2 trillion in revenue over the first decade.
At least $10 billion per year would go to grants for climate adaptation, low-income communities and workers transitioning away from the fossil fuel industry. Workers would also be offered a $900 tax credit, adjusted for inflation, every year to offset payroll taxes.
The sponsors say it would reduce energy-related emissions 51% by 2029, compared with 2005 levels, and exceed the goals the United States set in the Paris climate agreement, citing an analysis by Resources for the Future.
Other carbon pricing schemes introduced this Congress include a cap-and-dividend measure from Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and the bipartisan "Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act," the bill championed by Citizens' Climate Lobby.
Numerous prominent economists have also endorsed carbon pricing as the best way to fight climate change, and a number of conservative advocacy and lobbying groups have emerged in the last few years to push for the idea with the support of the business community.
Those include the Climate Leadership Council and its lobbying affiliate, Americans for Carbon Dividends, which advocate for the fee-and-dividend plan supported by former Secretaries of State James Baker and George Shultz, with support from major oil companies.
Whitehouse has said in the past that the business community could eventually be an important ally, and he suggested that the "American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act" would bolster that case.
"A carbon fee will unleash the power of the markets, reducing emissions by making polluters pay the American people for harm caused by their products, and boosting carbon reduction industries by strengthening their business case," Whitehouse said in a statement.
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Senate Democrats Revive Carbon Tax Bill
Apr 10, 2019 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Zack Colman
Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Martin Heinrich (N.M.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) introduced legislation today to help combat climate change by taxing carbon emissions at $52 per metric ton beginning in 2020.
The bill largely resembles S. 2368 (115), which Whitehouse and Schatz offered last Congress. It stands little chance of passing the Republican Senate, but it comes amid increasing discussion of climate change in the chamber.
The senators cited research from nonpartisan think tank Resources for the Future that showed their plan would push carbon emissions 51 percent below 2005 levels by 2029. The senators said it would generate $2.3 trillion in revenue in the first decade to support an annual $900 refundable tax credit for workers and $10 billion annually for grants "to address climate-related challenges."
The fee would increase by 6 percent annually above inflation and be assessed where fossil fuels are mined, processed, refined or imported. It would also apply to large emitters of greenhouse gases that are not derived from fossil fuels, and to producers and importers of gases with high planet-warming properties.
Of the four co-sponsors, only Gillibrand has endorsed the Green New Deal proposal from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
Still, Whitehouse and Schatz are considered Democratic climate change leaders on the hill, and they've insisted a carbon tax can achieve bipartisan support. The Green New Deal is silent on whether to harness market measures like carbon taxes.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Centrist Democrat Unveils Climate 'Playbook'
Apr 11, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Nick Sobczyk,
California Rep. Scott Peters yesterday announced his "Climate Playbook," a list of more than 50 bills the Democrat believes could kick-start congressional efforts to combat climate change.
The bills in the playbook include everything from smaller measures to prop up energy research or study emissions reduction strategies, to carbon pricing proposals and the Green New Deal resolution from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
The playbook in some ways reflects Peters' and other centrists' doctrine on climate: Pass what's politically feasible now and work to fill in the gaps.
It follows several lawmakers who have sought to etch out a place for themselves in the revived climate debate on Capitol Hill, including Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee Chairman Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), who put out a climate "framework" last month (Climatewire, March 21).
While many environmentalists look to 2021 — when Democrats could be in control — to pass ambitious climate policy, Peters said his playbook seeks to "move beyond resolutions to immediate climate action."
"We cannot wait another two years — nor can we wait for Congress to come to consensus around a single bill," Peters said in a statement. "The Climate Playbook acknowledges this reality."
Still, the playbook spans the spectrum of ideology — and practicality — by listing the progressive Green New Deal along with the Green Real Deal, a counteroffer introduced by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a close ally of President Trump.
Also included is a bipartisan measure from last Congress to promote renewable development on public lands that was originally introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), perhaps the most vehement Republican critic of the Green New Deal.
The first measure listed is H.R. 9, Democratic leadership's bill to keep the United States in the Paris Agreement and force the Trump administration to come up with a plan to meet emissions targets.
One measure in the playbook has already begun to move through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The bipartisan "USE IT Act," on which Peters is the lead sponsor in the House, sailed through the Republican-led Senate panel yesterday (Greenwire, April 10).
The bill would authorize $35 million for a direct air capture advisory board at EPA and demonstration projects for technology to suck carbon out of the air.
Peter said the playbook will be updated and is intended to be a fluid document.
"To be clear, these initiatives are only the beginning of a conversation on climate action now," he wrote in a preamble to the list. "If these bills need to be improved, we can do that. If we've got gaps to fill, we can propose additional legislation."
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2019/04/11/stories/1060153233
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