Preview Newsletter
PM ACC Clips Report - April 26, 2019
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(ACC Mentioned) Axalta’s Bryan Shelton Honored as Responsible Care Employee of the Year
Apr 26, 2019 | Body Shop Business
Axalta announced that Bryan Shelton, the company’s global responsible care coordinator, has received the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) Responsible Care Employee of the Year award. The Responsible Care Employee of the Year... -
These 5 Rules Could Be Coming Soon
Apr 26, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Niina Heikkinen
From greenhouse gas emissions controls to offshore drilling, the Trump administration has yet to complete a number of high-profile regulatory changes the president has promised. Regulatory experts are closely tracking forthcoming... -
(ACC Mentioned) Is the EPA Stifling Science on Chemical Toxicity Experiences
Apr 26, 2019 | 2 What
The Environmental Safety Company is altering its method to chemical toxicity oversight, in response to a report issued lately by the Authorities Accountability Workplace. Within the overhaul, the EPA reassigned employees from its Built-in... -
Court Dings EPA's TSCA Inventory Rule on Confidentiality
Apr 26, 2019 | Politico Pro
By Alex Guillén
A federal court on Friday faulted EPA for omitting some questions from a list that companies must answer to keep chemical identities “confidential” under the updated Toxic Substances Control Act. The law requires EPA to maintain a... -
EPA TSCA Inventory and CDR Revision Updates
Apr 26, 2019 | National Law Review
By Lynn L. Bergeson
EPA Proposes TSCA CDR Revisions And Update To Small Manufacturer Definition For TSCA Section 8(a): On April 25, 2019, EPA issued a proposed rule that would amend the TSCA Section 8(a) Chemical Data Reporting (CDR)... -
Enviros Notch Partial Win on TSCA Secrecy Claims
Apr 26, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Environmentalists scored a partial victory today over the Trump administration's update to Toxic Substances Control Act rules. EPA violated federal law when it crafted a 2017 provision that made it easier for companies to keep chemical... -
(ACC Mentioned) Health Experts Defend EPA IRIS on EtO Cancer Risk
Apr 26, 2019 | Natural Resources Defense Council
By Jennifer Sass
Ethylene Oxide—abbreviated as EO or EtO—is one of the hazardous industrial chemicals that the Cancer Lobby is vigorously defending. The chemicals industry’s tactics include science-denial and relying on its friends in the Trump... -
Chemical Rule Sent Back to EPA on Trade Secret Concerns (1)
Apr 26, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
An EPA rule failed to require chemical manufacturers to sufficiently prove that they tried to prevent other companies from reverse engineering chemicals they produce, when the original manufacturer asserts the need to keep chemical... -
Democrats Pressure EPA to Reverse Course on Paint Stripper Loophole
Apr 26, 2019 | Politico Pro
By Alex Guillén
Twenty-three Senate Democrats, including five presidential hopefuls, called on EPA today to reverse its decision not to ban commercial uses of paint strippers containing methylene chloride. EPA last month banned consumer sales of paint... -
Dems Urge EPA to Protect Workers From Deadly Paint Stripper
Apr 26, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Ariana Figueroa
Senate Democrats are pushing EPA to protect workers from methylene chloride after the agency excluded that population from a consumer sales ban on paint strippers containing that substance. Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware... -
Bipartisan Senators Call for Study of PFAs Cleanup Costs
Apr 26, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Ariana Figueroa
Growing concerns about toxic nonstick chemicals in drinking water have prompted lawmakers to ask federal investigators to review the cost of efforts to combat widespread contamination. Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Gary... -
Pentagon Official: Mich. PFAs Study Needs More Time
Apr 26, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greenwire)
A Pentagon official has told northern Michigan residents four more years of study is necessary to get a handle on toxic chemicals from a former Air Force base that are polluting drinking water. Michigan Radio and MLive.com report Air... -
States Weigh Banning a Widely Used Pesticide Even Though EPA Won’t
Apr 26, 2019 | Truthout
By Matt Mawson
Lawmakers in several states are trying to ban a widely used pesticide that the Environmental Protection Agency is fighting to keep on the market. The pesticide, chlorpyrifos, kills insects on contact by attacking their nervous systems. -
This Silkworm-Based Coating Is a Replacement for the Toxic Chemicals on Our Clothes
Apr 26, 2019 | Fast Company
By Anna Meyer
In the 1970s, U.S. Congress required flame retardants to be added to children’s pajamas to protect them in case of fire. These were the days before smoke detectors were required in bedrooms (now required per a 1993 National Fire... -
Trump Administration Hits Pause on Offshore Oil Plans After Court Ruling
Apr 25, 2019 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
A recent federal court decision appears to have struck a blow to President Trump’s plans to expand offshore oil and natural gas drilling across the U.S. continental shelf, with the aim of turning the United States into an energy-exporting... -
BLM Proposes Lifting Some Restrictions for Wyo. Project
Apr 26, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Scott Streater
The Bureau of Land Management is proposing removing seasonal restrictions on drilling activity near non-eagle raptor nests as part of its analysis of a major Wyoming oil and gas drilling project. BLM's new draft supplemental... -
Opponents of New Oil, Gas Law Won't Try for Repeal This Year
Apr 26, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greenwire)
By Dan Elliott
Opponents of a new Colorado oil and gas law that puts public safety ahead of production said yesterday that they will not attempt to overturn it this year but may try in 2020. They had planned to ask voters in November 2019 to repeal... -
US Energy's Growing Role on the Global Stage
Apr 26, 2019 | Real Clear Energy
By James Marks
On April 21, Ukraine held its presidential election amid years long tensions with its neighbor, Russia. The result of the election has as much to do with the exercise of Ukraine’s independence as it does with Russia’s ever looming presence... -
Big Oil Profits Fall as Geopolitics Weigh on a Mainstay, Refining
Apr 26, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Bradley Olson and Rebecca Elliott
The world’s largest oil companies are reporting underwhelming first- quarter profits as an array of geopolitical challenges and weaker prices around the world produced anemic results in the first three months of the year. -
7 in Intensive Care After Chicago-Area Gas Leak
Apr 26, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greenwire)
Seven people, including a firefighter, remain in intensive care after they were injured in an ammonia leak in Illinois. Lake County Sheriff's spokesman Christopher Covelli said today that most of the 37 people injured yesterday have... -
(ACC Mentioned) Inside the EPA's 'Resistance Room,' Where Trump Was Never President and Climate Change Is Real
Apr 26, 2019 | Yahoo News
By Alexander Nazaryan
No such thing. That was the verdict delivered by the security guard inside the Ronald Reagan Building on the question of whether there existed a museum of the Environmental Protection Agency and, more to the point, whether that... -
Ewire: OMB Raises Data Bar for New EPA Rules
Apr 26, 2019 | Inside EPA
The Trump administration has revised existing guidance on implementing the Information Quality Act (IQA) that raises the bar on data EPA and other agencies can use to justify regulatory decisions, a move that environmentalists say... -
Obama Had a Green New Deal, and It Worked. Let’s Do That Again.
Apr 26, 2019 | New York Magazine
By Jonathan Chait
Last month, the Green Advocacy Project conducted a poll on the Green New Deal. The results are alarming. Slightly more Americans oppose the idea (46 percent) than support it (43 percent), but the truly catastrophic finding is the...
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(ACC Mentioned) Axalta’s Bryan Shelton Honored as Responsible Care Employee of the Year
Apr 26, 2019 | Body Shop Business
Axalta announced that Bryan Shelton, the company’s global responsible care coordinator, has received the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) Responsible Care Employee of the Year award.
The Responsible Care Employee of the Year Award recognizes chemical industry leaders for exemplary environmental, health and safety initiatives. The award is presented annually to one member and one partner company employee for outstanding leadership.
Shelton led Axalta’s transition from RC14001:2013 to RC14001:2015 by combining a multi-task, stage-gate approach to building organizational knowledge, maintaining effective communications and coordinating frequent engagement to keep the process on-track. Axalta achieved full global multi-site certification in 2017, a direct result of Shelton’s dedication, drive and insightful roll-out and effective transition process.
“Bryan’s recognition as Responsible Care Employee of the Year is a testament to the leadership he displays on a regular basis, enhancing and strengthening Axalta’s environmental, health, safety and security governance process,” said Barry Snyder, senior vice president, chief technology officer of Axalta. “His positive attitude and effective leadership style have served as a foundation for Axalta to fulfill our ongoing commitment to EHS&S excellence and Responsible Care on a global scale. We are very proud to be one of the first companies in the world to achieve and maintain a multi-site global RC14001 certificate to the 2015 Standard.”
Shelton continues to contribute to the RC14001 program by providing long-term strategic objectives, targets and goals that complement Axalta’s vision, mission and principles. Through his knowledge of the manufacturing process and operational challenges, he is able to provide similar direction to site-specific situations, manufacturing modifications, resource changes and challenges in the ongoing evolution of regulations.
Responsible Care is a voluntary initiative of the global chemistry industry to safely handle products from inception to ultimate reuse, recycle and disposal, involving the public in decision-making processes. Since 1988, Responsible Care has helped ACC member and Responsible Care Partner companies significantly enhance their performance and improve the health and safety of their employees, the communities in which they operate and the environment as a whole.
https://www.bodyshopbusiness.com/axaltas-bryan-shelton-honored-as-responsible-care-employee-of-the-year/
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These 5 Rules Could Be Coming Soon
Apr 26, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Niina Heikkinen
From greenhouse gas emissions controls to offshore drilling, the Trump administration has yet to complete a number of high-profile regulatory changes the president has promised.
Regulatory experts are closely tracking forthcoming final and draft rules and guidance documents in the second half of the presidential term.
"There are a lot of the things we expect to see relatively soon," said Hana Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School who works on Harvard's Regulatory Rollback Tracker. She and Caitlin McCoy, a climate, clean air and energy fellow at Harvard Law School, and other regulatory experts flagged half a dozen actions to keep an eye on as agencies push to complete regulatory rollbacks.
These actions could be made public in the coming weeks and months, based on deadlines projected by agencies, and the dates the rules have gone to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review, a key step toward completing the regulatory process.
Interior's blowout preventer and well-control rule
This rule from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement makes changes to safety standards for offshore oil and gas drilling that were put in place to prevent a repeat of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill.
The new proposal more closely matches the oil industry's own safety standards, a move BSEE defended by saying the proposed changes do not ignore or contradict any of the safety recommendations made to BSEE right after the deadly disaster.
They have also argued that the changes are "reducing unnecessary burdens" to the industry (Energywire, Jan. 7).
BSEE sent the proposal to OIRA for review on Dec. 13, 2018.White House guidance on greenhouse gas emissions
Regulatory experts are waiting for replacement guidance from the White House Council on Environmental Quality on how to consider greenhouse gas emissions under the National Environmental Policy Act. Sean Hayford Oleary/Flickr
Ever since the Trump administration in March 2017 rescinded Obama-era Council on Environmental Quality guidance on how to consider greenhouse gas emissions under the National Environmental Policy Act, regulatory experts have been waiting for a replacement document.
The new guidance is expected to revise the degree to which projects funded or built by the federal government have to consider greenhouse gas emissions in their assessment of environmental impacts of those projects. Of particular interest is how CEQ will say federal agencies should consider indirect emissions linked to projects (Greenwire, Feb. 8).
The guidance progressed after the Senate confirmation of Mary Neumayr to lead CEQ in January. A month later, on Feb. 6, the guidance went to OIRA for review.
EPA's 'once in, always in' proposal
The agency is seeking to formalize its 2018 guidance on how sources of hazardous air pollutants must manage their emissions over time under the Clean Air Act.
Under a 1995 memo, once "major sources" of hazardous air pollutants were given that designation, they would continue to be subject to the control standards of major sources.
With the new proposal, major sources that are able to reduce their hazardous air pollutant levels below a certain threshold could be reclassified as "area sources." This change would require them to use a different set of emissions control standards.
EPA sent the proposal to OIRA on Feb. 25.
A Justice Department attorney representing EPA said to expect a final rule in June (Greenwire, April 1).EPA and the Department of Transportation's clean car rule
The Trump administration is fighting states and environmentalists over clean car rules. David Wilson/Flickr
The Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule by EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would freeze fuel economy standards put forward by the Obama administration at 2026 levels and would prevent California from setting stricter tailpipe emissions standards.
The rule does not appear to have landed at OIRA yet, but EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said during the Washington Auto Show earlier this month that the agencies are aiming to finalize it by spring or early summer (Greenwire, April 4).
Reuters, citing two unnamed officials, stated in an April 11 article that the rule would be out in mid-June.
The rule may also be beat out by another EPA measure on a very similar timeline: the Trump administration's rule on greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants, said Jessica Wentz, a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, who maintains the Climate Deregulation Tracker.
EPA's Affordable Clean Energy rule
This replacement for the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan would rely on efficiency improvements at the facility level to reduce carbon emissions of power plants.
The Trump administration had initially planned to release the rule in the first quarter of this year in its Unified Agenda, but work on the final rule was halted during the partial federal government shutdown, pushing back the final timeline of the rule (Greenwire, Jan. 25).
In a March 11 court filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the agency said it expects the rule to be finished this quarter. Some agency observers say the rule is rumored to come out in June.
But finalizing the rule by then could be a challenge, said Dan Bosch, director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum.
"Since a final draft is not yet under review at OIRA, they would have to really hustle to release it by June. They would likely have to have a draft over to OIRA in the next week or two to have a chance to meet that target," Bosch said in an email last week.
Interior's five-year plan for offshore drilling
Regulatory experts had also been closely tracking the fate of the Interior Department's highly controversial proposal to move ahead with offshore drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans.
Now, the Interior Department says the proposal will be delayed indefinitely due to a recent federal appeals court decision (E&E News PM, April 25).
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's draft plan released in January 2018 would have opened more than 90% of the outer continental shelf to oil leasing and would offer 47 lease sales between 2019 and 2024 (Greenwire, Jan. 4, 2018).
The Trump administration had working on a revised proposal; it brought in staff during the government shutdown to work on it.
But last month, the D.C. Circuit had reinstated the Obama administration's restrictions on offshore drilling in parts of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans (Energywire, April 1).
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt yesterday told the Wall Street Journal that BOEM would wait for the case to complete the appeals process before proceeding with work on the proposal.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/04/26/stories/1060211207
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(ACC Mentioned) Is the EPA Stifling Science on Chemical Toxicity Experiences
Apr 26, 2019 | 2 What
The Environmental Safety Company is altering its method to chemical toxicity oversight, in response to a report issued lately by the Authorities Accountability Workplace. Within the overhaul, the EPA reassigned employees from its Built-in Danger Data System (IRIS)–a program that conducts complete scientific reviews–to duties associated to the Poisonous Substances Management Act, which has a narrower mandate. The company has additionally lowered the variety of its ongoing chemical toxcity assessments from 20 to 3. Former EPA officers contend the shake-up takes chemical assessments out of the fingers of profession scientists, doubtlessly to the detriment of public well being.
The EPA additionally lately halted launch of a long-awaited formaldehyde toxicity evaluation. In testimony earlier than a congressional oversight committee on April 9, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler stated the examine, which had already been accomplished by IRIS, will as an alternative be reconducted underneath the TSCA program. Formaldehyde, which is utilized in manufacturing pressed wooden, adhesives and insulation, has been linked to leukemia.
IRIS was created in 1985 to review chemical substances’ toxicity to people. This system’s assessments “are the preferred source of toxicity information used by the EPA,” in response to the company’s web site, which says EPA program workplaces (items chargeable for particular areas comparable to air air pollution or water high quality) use IRIS toxicity values to find out public well being dangers posed by chemical substances. The TSCA, handed in 1976, extra narrowly authorizes the EPA to overview and regulate chemical substances decided to pose an “unreasonable risk” to human well being and the atmosphere.
An EPA official, who spoke on the situation of anonymity as a consequence of not being licensed to speak to the media, says IRIS and TSCA are “very different” of their approaches to chemical security regulation. “One could make the argument that this is political interference, in that high-level people are saying which methodology we should be using to assess the safety of a chemical,” the official says. “And the policy’s pretty clear that they’re not supposed to do that.”
Underneath the modifications, EPA management additionally now requires a program workplace to make a proper request for a chemical toxicity evaluation earlier than IRIS can launch it to the general public. Based on the GAO report, the EPA’s Workplace of Analysis and Growth (ORD) knowledgeable IRIS officers in June 2018 of this new requirement. The report provides that on the identical time, the EPA administrator (then Scott Pruitt, who was succeeded by Wheeler the next month) directed IRIS officers to request reconfirmations of 20 chemical assessments–which have been then already underneath way–from program and regional workplaces. Whereas these have been being compiled, the report says, ORD management instructed IRIS to not publicly launch any evaluation documentation–including chemical evaluation paperwork that have been prepared for company or peer overview or for public remark. Presumably on account of these modifications, IRIS didn’t launch a brand new chemical evaluation for the rest of 2018.
Genna Reed, a science and coverage analyst on the Union of Involved Scientists, says TSCA has turn into politicized, and that “shifting IRIS scientists to a more political process to look at these chemicals is undermining the work of EPA’s own scientists.” As proof of politicization, Reed factors to the 2017 appointment of Nancy Beck–a former lobbyist for the American Chemistry Council–to deputy assistant administrator of the EPA’s Workplace of Chemical Security and Air pollution Prevention, which implements TSCA.
“I really see this as part of a restructuring of EPA in such a way that science will have very little to do with what EPA is basing its regulation on, and that we will end up with much weaker regulations in terms of protecting the public health,” says Bernard Goldstein, who served as EPA assistant administrator for analysis and growth in 1983-85. “It’s troubling, in large part because it’s very consistent with an overall approach–a very astute approach–to take out inconvenient facts.” Thomas Burke, a former EPA lead science adviser and the Deputy Assistant Administrator of the ORD from 2015-17, says “any reduction” of the variety of IRIS chemical assessments “is a loss for public health and, unfortunately, puts populations who are exposed at risk.”
The IRIS evaluation of formaldehyde toxicity was reportedly able to be made public as early as 2017, however its launch was suspended in December 2018. On April 9 this 12 months, EPA Administrator Wheeler advised a Congressional Power and Commerce Committee listening to that the EPA “will not be moving forward” with the evaluation. Wheeler advised the committee formaldehyde will as an alternative be reviewed underneath the TSCA program; when requested whether or not the IRIS evaluation would ever be made public, he didn’t reply instantly. The EPA workplace of public affairs had not responded to repeated requests for remark by the point of publication.
“If any IRIS assessment has stood the test of review, formaldehyde is one of them,” Burke says. “I think it’s a shame to see that slow-walked and shifted over to [TSCA], where there is a much narrower definition of evaluating potential exposures … rather than providing a big, robust evaluation of the full body of evidence.”
“I am concerned that the EPA under Administrator Wheeler is not carrying out its fundamental responsibility to protect Americans from exposure to harmful toxic chemicals as outlined in the GAO report,” says Consultant Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), who chairs the Home Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. Sherrill says the committee “needs to ensure that political interference within the EPA, such as suppressing the formaldehyde report, does not interfere with sound science and our safety.”
Wheeler testified that formaldehyde was not one of many chemical substances a program workplace had designated as high-priority throughout final summer season’s overview. Based on Wheeler, the benefit of utilizing the TSCA danger analysis course of is that it permits for regulation on the finish of the method. “If we were to move ahead with the formaldehyde IRIS assessment, it would be a minimum of 18 months,” Wheeler advised the committee. “And we decided it was more important to put formaldehyde through the TSCA program, because at the end of the day you can regulate formaldehyde under TSCA.”
Burke disagrees with this characterization, and says the EPA “can use the [IRIS] evidence base for a pervasive environmental contaminant and use the full extent of the statutes,” Burke says. “Moving it to the TSCA program, where the scope would be greatly narrowed, and the evidence base would be narrowed–I wouldn’t agree with that.” Rita Schoeny, who was a senior science advisor on the EPA till 2015, says it’s correct “on paper” that IRIS doesn’t have particular regulatory authority–but that Wheeler’s characterization might result in misinterpretation. “IRIS is not toothless; it carries a lot of weight,” Schoeny says. “The science, the risk assessment, is an enormous driver in terms of how regulations are set.”
https://2what.com/is-the-epa-stifling-science-on-chemical-toxicity-experiences/
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Court Dings EPA's TSCA Inventory Rule on Confidentiality
Apr 26, 2019 | Politico Pro
By Alex Guillén
A federal court on Friday faulted EPA for omitting some questions from a list that companies must answer to keep chemical identities “confidential” under the updated Toxic Substances Control Act.
The law requires EPA to maintain a publicly accessible inventory of all chemicals used in commerce. Most listed chemicals contain detailed information, but a portion can be classified as "confidential" and are identified only by a generic name rather than the specific chemical identity.
The 2016 update to TSCA included more stringent requirements for companies to “substantiate” their confidentiality claims, and EPA issued a rule in August 2017 to address that requirement. But EPA’s regulation fell short on meeting one part of the law, ruled a three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in a lawsuit brought by the Environmental Defense Fund.
The judges said EPA “arbitrarily and capriciously” dropped requirements for companies to prove that confidential chemicals can’t be “reverse engineered” by studying commercially available products or facility emissions.
“The reverse-engineering aspect of the Inventory Rule comes up short,” wrote Judges Patricia Millett, Merrick Garland and Harry T. Edwards.
“It makes no sense to treat as confidential the chemical identity of a substance that can readily be discovered through reverse engineering,” the court wrote. “Yet the EPA’s Rule offers no sensible explanation at all for that gap in substantiation, nor does it even acknowledge the consequence of its omission. That error is fatal.”
The court rejected four other EDF challenges to the inventory rule.
WHAT’S NEXT: The judges remanded that portion of the rule back to EPA, but left the provision in place in the meantime.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2019/04/court-dings-epas-tsca-inventory-rule-on-confidentiality-3147151
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EPA TSCA Inventory and CDR Revision Updates
Apr 26, 2019 | National Law Review
By Lynn L. Bergeson
EPA Proposes TSCA CDR Revisions And Update To Small Manufacturer Definition For TSCA Section 8(a)
On April 25, 2019, EPA issued a proposed rule that would amend the TSCA Section 8(a) Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) requirements and the TSCA Section 8(a) size standards for small manufacturers. The current CDR rule requires manufacturers (including importers) of certain chemical substances listed on the TSCA Inventory to report data on chemical manufacturing, processing, and use every four years. EPA is proposing several changes to the CDR rule to make regulatory updates to align with new statutory requirements of TSCA, improve the CDR data collected as necessary to support the implementation of TSCA, and potentially reduce the burden for certain CDR reporters. Proposed updates to the definition for small manufacturers, including a new definition for small governments, are being made in accordance with TSCA Section 8(a)(3)(C) and impact certain reporting and recordkeeping requirements. Overall, according to EPA, the regulatory modifications may better address EPA and public information needs by providing additional information that is currently not collected; improve the usability and reliability of the reported data; and ensure that data are available in a timely manner. Comments are due by June 24, 2019. See B&C’s full memorandum for more information on the proposed rule.EPA Announces Proposed Procedures For Review Of CBI Claims For The Identity Of Chemicals On The TSCA Inventory
On April 23, 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a proposed rule regarding its plan to review certain confidential business information (CBI) claims to protect the specific chemical identities of substances on the confidential portion of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Inventory. 84 Fed. Reg. 16826. The CBI claims that would be reviewed under this plan are those that were asserted on Notice of Activity (NOA) Form A’s filed in accordance with the requirements in the Active-Inactive rule. Comments are due June 24, 2019.
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/epa-tsca-inventory-and-cdr-revision-updates
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Enviros Notch Partial Win on TSCA Secrecy Claims
Apr 26, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Environmentalists scored a partial victory today over the Trump administration's update to Toxic Substances Control Act rules.
EPA violated federal law when it crafted a 2017 provision that made it easier for companies to keep chemical information secret, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled, while tossing many other environmental objections. The suit from the Environmental Defense Fund was filed in 2017.
Mandated by Congress, EPA's TSCA update rule refreshed the federal inventory of chemicals used in the United States and made some changes to how companies request to keep certain details under wraps.
Under the law, a company can ask EPA to withhold specific chemical information from the public if disclosure would harm the firm's competitive interests. A company must make the claim and meet several prongs to substantiate that confidentiality is needed.
EPA dropped one of those from its final regulation: a requirement that a company confirm that a chemical identity it's seeking to keep confidential "is not readily discoverable through reverse engineering."
That was arbitrary and capricious, the court found.
"Its omission of any inquiry into a chemical identity's susceptibility to reverse engineering effectively excised a statutorily required criterion from the substantiation process," Judge Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, wrote for the court.
Millett explained that "it makes no sense to treat as confidential the chemical identity of a substance that can readily be discovered through reverse engineering," a statement EPA agreed with during oral arguments last year.
"Yet the EPA's Rule offers no sensible explanation at all for that gap in substantiation, nor does it even acknowledge the consequence of its omission," she wrote. "That error is fatal."
The court remanded the issue to EPA to consider its "arbitrary elimination" of the requirement.
Chief Judge Merrick Garland and Senior Judge Harry Edwards, both appointed by Democrats, joined the opinion.
EDF celebrated that part of the ruling as a big win for public disclosure of potentially dangerous chemicals.
"EPA will now have to require significantly more evidence from companies before they can conceal the identities of chemicals they make and sell," EDF attorney Robert Stockman said in an email. "As a result, fewer such claims will be allowed and workers, consumers and the public will gain access to more information about those chemicals."
But the group lost several other arguments in its challenge to EPA's rule, including allegations involving the agency's criteria for maintaining a confidentiality claim and its exemption of exported chemicals from industry notification requirements.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/04/26/stories/1060223691
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(ACC Mentioned) Health Experts Defend EPA IRIS on EtO Cancer Risk
Apr 26, 2019 | Natural Resources Defense Council
By Jennifer Sass
Ethylene Oxide—abbreviated as EO or EtO—is one of the hazardous industrial chemicals that the Cancer Lobby is vigorously defending. The chemicals industry’s tactics include science-denial and relying on its friends in the Trump EPA.
Now, in a strongly worded letter to EPA, scientists, medical professionals, and environmental health experts are stepping up to defend human health, scientific integrity, and public access to accurate information about hazardous chemicals. These experts—people that have devoted their professional lives to identifying preventable causes of human diseases and deaths—wrote EPA to support the findings and conclusions of the EPA Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program. The IRIS program produces chemical assessments, for use in regulatory determinations.
Why did these health professionals feel compelled to wade into the federal regulatory process—to defend the findings of a key EPA science program from EPA political appointees? Because the chemical industry and its Cancer Lobby, the American Chemistry Council (ACC), have long sought to gut the IRIS program, and now are succeeding, with help from Trump EPA management (see my recent blog for details).
The chemical manufacturers represented by the ACC have already tried and failed to have EPA weaken its National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) for ethylene oxide (see ACC Request for Correction). The industry is arguing that the IRIS assessment of ethylene oxide (EPA 2016), which forms the basis of the NATA’s cancer risk estimates, should be withdrawn, and that ethylene oxide air emissions should be more permissive—that is, more polluting (ACC, p. 6).
The industry’s basic argument is that small amounts of ethylene oxide are produced during normal cellular processes, and that this is the cause of people’s cancer, instead of the almost 9 million pounds annually produced in the US to make antifreeze, polyester, PET plastic bottles, liquid coolants, solvents, agrochemicals, and other petrochemical based products.
And, that’s why scientists stepped in—because when it comes to high quality science, these are the experts. The scientists’ letter points out that the EPA IRIS assessment is for cancer risk above background. That is, the additional cancer risk from ethylene oxide that is on top of cellular—called endogenous—levels. Adjusting for background and endogenous levels is pretty standard stuff for scientists—for example, adjusting for smoking, age-related risks, and family or genetic risks (see details in the scientists letter to EPA). Some of you may recognize this same argument used for formaldehyde and other cancer-causing industrial chemicals that industry lobbyists and their science-for-hire experts argue are natural and therefore safe at the levels people are exposed to.
The EPA IRIS program uses standard well-accepted scientific methods to conduct rigorous, transparent, peer reviewed scientific chemical hazard assessments that are used across federal agencies, by states and local governments, and in countries around the globe to set emissions limits and clean up levels for toxic chemicals. In other words, an independent and fully functioning IRIS program is good for the public. Adherence to IRIS science recommendations helps to keep air and waterways cleaner, and people healthier.
The recent investigations of the Sterigenics facility that was emitting ethylene oxide at dangerously high levels into the Willowbrook community shows an 80% increase in Hodgkin’s lymphoma among women in the area, compared to background (see Chicago Tribune reports for details).
Ethylene oxide exposures to Cancer Alley communities in Louisiana are hundreds of times higher. EPA data identify 109 air pollution hotspots in the US where cancer risk estimates exceed the EPA trigger action level of 100 cancers per 1 million people. And, of these, 90 percent of the risk is caused by cumulative exposure to just three air pollutants: ethylene oxide, formaldehyde, and chloroprene. The top 100 air pollution ‘hot spot’ communities are spread across a number of states, including Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Colorado, West Virginia, Texas, Illinois, and Delaware (see The Intercept, A Tale of Two Toxic Cities by Sharon Lerner, Feb 2019).
Also this week, Cancer Alley communities lost their bid to get fenceline air monitoring around the chemical plants and fuel refineries that populate their neighborhoods. House Bill 175, rejected by the Louisiana House Natural Resources and Environment Committee, would have done nothing more than require more rigorous monitoring of air pollutants along the property boundary of any facility that had three or more air pollution violations over the previous two years. The chemical industry argued that monitoring could unnecessarily scare residents, and that low doses of chemicals won’t cause harm. “There may be substances that scare you, but that doesn’t mean they exceed anything,” [industry lobbyist Bob Baumann] said. “People will be frightened.” This kind of nauseatingly paternalistic statement is not only offensive to the core, it is dangerous and deadly.
Environmental racism plays a leading—and deadly—role in where polluting industries are located, how they are concentrated, and whether they are compliant with regulations. Non-whites and below-poverty individuals are more likely to reside near polluting industrial facilities, and a recent study reports that the racial correlation is stronger than the economic one (Mikati et al 2018). In other words, siting polluting industrial facilities is both racist and classist, but mostly racist. This emphasizes the importance of EPA addressing the health risks from cumulative exposure to multiple chemicals, across multiple industrial sectors that impact local areas.
The IRIS assessment supported in the scientists’ letter recognized the importance of developing a health risk value that is protective of children, especially the most vulnerable children in our country: children who live in low-income communities and communities of color.
The chemical industry and its Cancer Lobby, the American Chemistry Council (ACC), have long sought to gut the IRIS program (see my blogs here and here). Instead of addressing the industrial sources of its air pollution, the chemical industry and its allies at the TSCA program are attacking the IRIS assessments, scavenging off IRIS resources to staff up the industry-captured TSCA program (GAO 2019), and shifting the balance of the Agency’s Science Advisory Board from non-industry to industry members.
More scientists and health professionals need to speak out against false science and rollback of regulatory safeguards that will lead to increased human disease and death.
If you want to learn more about how corporate tax giveaways make Louisiana petrochemical industries wealthy, lawmakers captured, and citizens poor, check out this graphic video called, "Why Louisiana Stays Poor".
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/jennifer-sass/health-experts-defend-epa-iris-eto-cancer-risk
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Chemical Rule Sent Back to EPA on Trade Secret Concerns (1)
Apr 26, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
An EPA rule failed to require chemical manufacturers to sufficiently prove that they tried to prevent other companies from reverse engineering chemicals they produce, when the original manufacturer asserts the need to keep chemical identity secret, a federal court ruled April 26.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sent that section of a Toxic Substances Control Act rule back to the Environmental Protection Agency regulation for a redo.
The rule, as challenged by the Environmental Defense Fund, required manufacturers to assert a “reasonable basis to believe that the information is not readily discoverable through reverse engineering.”
Those manufacturers weren’t required to prove that assertion under the rule, which ran afoul of a federal statute authorizing the rule, Judge Patricia A. Millett said, writing for a three-judge panel.
The court upheld the rest of the EPA’s rule that established the procedures chemical manufacturers and processors had to use to let the agency know which chemicals they made or used.
The agency used that information to release earlier this year an official inventory of chemicals active in commerce.
“This decision is a significant win for public disclosure and a strong affirmation by the court of the public’s right to know about the chemicals to which we all are or may be exposed,” Robert Stockman, the EDF attorney who argued the case, told Bloomberg Environment.
“The court ruled that EPA must require companies to provide real substantiation for their claims for confidentiality—and that EPA had failed to do so in the rule we challenged,” he said by email.
“EPA will now have to require significantly more evidence from companies before they can conceal the identities of chemicals they make and sell,” Stockman said. “As a result, fewer such claims will be allowed and workers, consumers, and the public will gain access to more information about those chemicals.”
Also on the panel were Chief Judge Merrick B. Garland and Judge Harry T. Edwards.
The EPA didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on the ruling.
The case is Envtl. Def. Fund v EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 17-1201, 4/26/19.https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/chemical-rule-sent-back-to-epa-on-reverse-engineering-concerns
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Democrats Pressure EPA to Reverse Course on Paint Stripper Loophole
Apr 26, 2019 | Politico Pro
By Alex Guillén
Twenty-three Senate Democrats, including five presidential hopefuls, called on EPA today to reverse its decision not to ban commercial uses of paint strippers containing methylene chloride.
EPA last month banned consumer sales of paint strippers containing methylene chloride, a move cheered by environmentalists, safety advocates and Democrats. But the agency stopped short of banning its commercial use, and instead pledged to create a federal training program and take other safety steps.
In a letter led by Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.), Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the lawmakers note that the 2016 update to the Toxic Substances Control Act directs EPA to specifically include risks to certain vulnerable groups of people, including workers who face greater exposure to certain substances than the general population.
“Given the dozens of deaths of workers, among even those who had been properly equipped and trained to protect themselves against methylene chloride exposure, EPA’s failure to protect commercial users of methylene chloride in its ban is likely to lead to more illnesses and deaths that are entirely preventable,” they wrote.
Methylene chloride can cause death from suffocation via fumes, and chronic exposure is linked to cancer and other illnesses.
Among the signatories are five presidential candidates: Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Kamala Harris (Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
EPA is already facing a lawsuit for continuing to allow commercial uses.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2019/04/democrats-pressure-epa-to-reverse-course-on-paint-stripper-loophole-3146822
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Dems Urge EPA to Protect Workers From Deadly Paint Stripper
Apr 26, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Ariana Figueroa
Senate Democrats are pushing EPA to protect workers from methylene chloride after the agency excluded that population from a consumer sales ban on paint strippers containing that substance.
Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, along with 20 other Senate Democrats, sent a letter today to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler and Assistant Administrator Alexandra Dunn on the agency's final rule banning methylene chloride in consumer products.
Methylene chloride can quickly kill workers if they aren't wearing a respirator in well-ventilated space. The rule, issued last month, does not ban the sale of paint strippers containing methylene chloride for use in commercial settings (E&E News PM, March 15).
"While EPA's decision to ban consumer uses of this chemical is a welcome and overdue step, the decision to exclude commercial uses of the chemical from the ban leaves workers (more than 50 of whom have already been killed due to exposures to this chemical) without the protection they need and the law requires," the senators wrote. "We urge you to immediately move to finalize a ban that will eliminate the unreasonable risks posed by commercial uses of methylene chloride paint strippers."
The Democrats argue that under the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act, workers are legally considered a vulnerable population in need of greater protections.
"Given the dozens of deaths of workers, among even those who had been properly equipped and trained to protect themselves against methylene chloride exposure, EPA's failure to protect commercial users of methylene chloride in its ban is likely to lead to more illnesses and deaths that are entirely preventable," the lawmakers wrote.
During a call with reporters last month, Dunn said EPA was open to the idea of including workers in the ban, but the agency will first seek public comment on a future rule that would establish training for workers using methylene chloride.
Worker advocacy and environmental groups such as the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed a suit last week over EPA's refusal to ban workers from commercial uses of the chemical (Greenwire, April 23).
Environmental groups and two mothers — Lauren Atkins and Wendy Hartley, whose sons died while using methylene chloride — also filed a similar suit against EPA. Both cases are in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/04/26/stories/1060223613
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Bipartisan Senators Call for Study of PFAs Cleanup Costs
Apr 26, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Ariana Figueroa
Growing concerns about toxic nonstick chemicals in drinking water have prompted lawmakers to ask federal investigators to review the cost of efforts to combat widespread contamination.
Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the chairman and ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office yesterday asking the group to investigate where per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are distributed across the United States and the estimated cost of cleaning up the toxins. Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, also signed on to the GAO request.
Now linked to cancer and other health issues, PFAS have been used for decades in military firefighting foam, nonstick kitchenware and many other consumer products. Production, use and disposal of the products have contaminated the groundwater of hundreds of communities across the country.
"PFAS chemicals have been found in people, animals and drinking water, and they typically originate from a nearby facility, such as a manufacturing plant, landfill, wastewater treatment plant, military installation, or firefighter training facility," the letter says.
The senators called for the PFAS cleanup report after GAO found the federal government had failed to meet four of five criteria to address environmental liabilities, a new area added to its annual "High Risk List" in 2017 (Greenwire, March 6).
The letter asks congressional investigators to research disposal methods of PFAS and if there are alternatives to "using PFAS chemicals in firefighting foam and the progress [the Department of Defense] and others have made on finding an alternative."
The request also calls on GAO to investigate what efforts states have taken to address PFAS. Several states, such as New Jersey and California, have started to implement limits on PFAS in drinking water that are stricter than those recommended by EPA (Greenwire, March 4).
The letter follows cleanup guidance EPA proposed yesterday afternoon for two of the best-known PFAS — PFOA and PFOS — at health advisory levels of 70 parts per trillion that left public health advocates and Carper unsatisfied (Greenwire, April 26).
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/04/26/stories/1060223523
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Pentagon Official: Mich. PFAs Study Needs More Time
Apr 26, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greenwire)
A Pentagon official has told northern Michigan residents four more years of study is necessary to get a handle on toxic chemicals from a former Air Force base that are polluting drinking water.
Michigan Radio and MLive.com report Air Force Assistant Secretary John Henderson spoke Wednesday in Oscoda. Henderson said officials want to move faster on cleanup but must "get it right the first time."
The meeting provided updates about dealing with the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS.
The toxins are used in various stain- and stick-resistant household products. They're also a component of firefighting foam used at the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda and other military installations.
State officials and residents are pushing the Air Force to accelerate testing and treatment of polluted groundwater.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/04/26/stories/1060223119
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States Weigh Banning a Widely Used Pesticide Even Though EPA Won’t
Apr 26, 2019 | Truthout
By Matt Mawson
Lawmakers in several states are trying to ban a widely used pesticide that the Environmental Protection Agency is fighting to keep on the market.
The pesticide, chlorpyrifos, kills insects on contact by attacking their nervous systems.
Several studies have linked prenatal exposure of chlorpyrifos to lower birth weights, lower IQs, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other developmental issues in children. But the EPA in 2017 ignored the conclusions of its scientists and rejected a proposal made during the Obama administration to ban its use in fields and orchards
Hawaii was the first state to pass a full ban last year. Now California, Oregon, New York and Connecticut are trying to do the same.
Should California succeed, the rear-guard action could have a big impact.
“If California is successful, that’s a big deal because it’s such a big state — the biggest agricultural state,” said Virginia Ruiz, director of occupational and environmental health at the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Farmworker Justice.
Earlier this year, congressional Democrats also introduced bills to ban the pesticide nationally, but experts believe states are more likely to succeed than Congress. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who is running for president, introduced a separate bill last week that would prohibit schools from serving fruits and vegetables sprayed with the pesticide.
“I don’t see this as something we should still be debating,” said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, an epidemiologist and director of the Environmental Health Sciences Center at the University of California-Davis.
Hertz-Picciotto testified during a California Senate Health Committee hearing April 10 on California’s bill to ban the use of the pesticide. She said more than three dozen studies have demonstrated a connection between prenatal exposure of chlorpyrifos and developmental disabilities, including symptoms of autism.
“No study has identified a level at which we can consider it safe,” she told lawmakers.
Almost two decades ago, the EPA, which regulates pesticides at the federal level, ordered chlorpyrifos for residential use off the market. But the chemical still is used on crops — including citrus, almonds and grapes — and on golf courses and other non-agricultural settings.
Globally, several companies make chlorpyrifos products. In the U.S., the most recognized brand names are Dursban and Lorsban, manufactured by Corteva Agriscience, formerly known as Dow AgroSciences.
Under the administration of President Barack Obama, the EPA in 2015 proposed a complete ban of chlorpyrifos, citing evidence of health risks. But in 2017, President Donald Trump’s EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt,declined to ban it.
“Despite several years of study, the science addressing neurodevelopmental effects remains unresolved,” the EPA says on its website. The agency did not return requests for comment.
Then the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the pesticide completely off the market last summer. The EPA is fighting that decision.
“The EPA is contradicting the findings of its own scientists,” said Aseem Prakash, the director of the Center for Environmental Politics at the University of Washington.
Prakash accused the EPA of serving the interests of the chemical industry over people’s health.
“It’s bizarre,” he added. “We have the research.”
The manufacturers see it differently. Carol Burns, a retired epidemiologist with the Dow Chemical Company, which began manufacturing chlorpyrifos in 1965, is now a consultant for Corteva Agriscience. Burns said during the California Senate hearing that many studies link neurodevelopmental problems in children with the chemical compounds known as organophosphates, but not chlorpyrifos specifically.
“Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate, but not all organophosphates are chlorpyrifos,” she said. The science, she argued, is not clear-cut.
Besides, she added, some of those studies focused on children born in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since then, children face less exposure to the chemical as a result of increasing restrictions on its use, Burns said.
Neither Corteva Agriscience nor the California Farm Bureau Federation would comment for this story.
Chlorpyrifos can be inhaled during application and as it drifts into nearby areas, or ingested as residue on food. People also can be exposed through their drinking water if their wells have been contaminated.
Brief exposure can result in dizziness, nausea and headaches, while more acute poisoning can cause vomiting, tremors and loss of coordination,according to the National Pesticide Information Center.
But long-term exposure, even at low levels, is considered more harmful, especially for young, developing brains. A 2014 study by Hertz-Picciotto and other UC-Davis researchers found that pregnant women who lived near fields treated with chlorpyrifos, primarily during their second trimester, had an elevated risk of giving birth to a child with autism spectrum disorder.
Fidelia Morales has lived in Lindsay, Calif., a small town in Tulare County, for 12 years. Her home is surrounded by orange groves, and the skunky stench of freshly sprayed pesticides often drifts inside, especially during the summer, she said.
The more she learns about chlorpyrifos, the more she wonders whether it played a role in her 11-year-old son’s behavioral issues. His teachers routinely complain about his inability to focus and sit still in class, she said. In fourth grade, he was reading at a second-grade level.
“I used to walk to the groves when I was pregnant — I had no idea that I could be exposing myself and my baby,” she said. “The irony is I left Los Angeles in part to get away from all the pollution. I had no idea I’d end up somewhere worse.”
Morales wants the pesticide banned.
But farmers have told lawmakers that chlorpyrifos is a “last-resort” pesticide, one that’s important for them to have in their toolbox in case of a disease outbreak. They pointed to the Asian citrus psyllid, a tiny insect that feeds on citrus leaves and can transmit disease known as Huanglongbing, or citrus greening, which poses a serious threat to the citrus industry.
Chlorpyrifos is the most effective treatment for that pest, they said.
Farmers also testified that the state already restricts the use of chlorpyrifos through the Department of Pesticide Regulation. Any additional restrictions should be left to the department, they urged.
Based on the department’s recommendations, all California counties this year agreed to set strict restrictions on chlorpyrifos’ application.
They include a ban on aerial spraying. For ground-based applications, farmers cannot apply the pesticide within 150 feet of houses, businesses and schools. The department considers the pesticide a “toxic air contaminant,” and believes the new restrictions will reduce its use, said spokeswoman Charlotte Fadipe.
The use of chlorpyrifos in the state has declined by half in the past decade, she said.
Angel Garcia, a community organizer in Tulare County with the group Californians for Pesticide Reform, said the new restrictions aren’t tough enough.
Those who face the most risk are largely the low-income people of color who live in agricultural areas, he said.
The restrictions “fall short of creating significant health protections,” he said.
https://truthout.org/articles/states-weigh-banning-a-widely-used-pesticide-even-though-epa-wont/
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This Silkworm-Based Coating Is a Replacement for the Toxic Chemicals on Our Clothes
Apr 26, 2019 | Fast Company
By Anna Meyer
In the 1970s, U.S. Congress required flame retardants to be added to children’s pajamas to protect them in case of fire. These were the days before smoke detectors were required in bedrooms (now required per a 1993 National Fire Protection Association code), but when the chemical that was used, Tris(2,3-dibromopropyl) phosphate, was found to be a mutagen, a gene-altering agent, consumers called for action, and the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission soon prohibited it.
But that was just a single toxic chemical: The modern textile industry continues to rely extensively on the use of undisclosed chemicals to improve the performance features of fabric and apparel. In December 2018, a study from the environmental research center The Ecology Center found that 83% of children’s car seats tested contained toxic chemicals used as flame retardants. Even the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences recognizes that many of flame-retardant chemicals “are associated with adverse health effects in animals and humans,” such as endocrine and thyroid disruption or impacts to the immune system.
According to a white paper of research gathered by chemistry company Evolved By Nature, more than 150 chemicals are now regularly used to enhance fabric characteristics, offering everything from a softer feel to faster moisture wicking, wrinkle resistance, improved water repellency, and better color vibrancy. As consumers’ demands for cheaper yet high-performing textiles grow, companies and mills respond by coating fabrics in chemicals that meet standards as a quick fix.
Silk cocoons being washed as part of the activated silk process. [Photo: Evolved By Nature]But while some of these chemicals are also demonstrated carcinogens, or capable of reproductive, nervous, and endocrine system dysregulation, others are allergenic or irritating. Even when we wash the fabric and the chemicals are eventually removed, they linger on our non-laundered fabrics (like our sofa or curtains) or get into our water systems after washing. Many of them do not easily degrade, and the compounds build up in the environment and affect animal life.
So while going plastic-free or switching to recycled plastics in textiles is an important mission for the clothing industry (and one that’s been the central focus for clothing companies like Everlane or Girlfriend Collective), it won’t fix the chemical problem. Greg Altman, Evolved By Nature’s CEO and cofounder, and his cofounder, Rebecca Lacouture, are concerned about how our body is absorbing the chemicals we wear and touch, and how that affects public health at large.
The solution the company developed is what they call “Activated Silk,” a natural alternative to the current petrochemical finishes that can be used for a variety of performance-enhancing needs, like moisture wicking and color retention. It’s made from silkworm cocoons discarded by the textile industry, water, and salt. Activated Silk received the first patent for a natural silk to be used as a coating on fibers.
Evolved By Nature has raised $51 million to date, from investors including The Kraft Group, Roy P. Disney, and Jeffery Vinik. The company says Activated Silk is cost-competitive with existing chemicals, and it’s straightforward to adopt since it requires no disruption to a company’s existing manufacturing processes or equipment. Activated Silk is currently available as an ingredient in two skincare brands, Silk Therapeutics and LabGrab, and Evolved By Nature says it’s currently working with a range of undisclosed fashion and personal care brands to make its technology more available in the latter half of 2019.
The Evolved By Nature white paper notes that we have little understanding of the effects of long-term exposure, because typical toxicological testing protocols generally assess higher doses for shorter periods. Because the typical exposure from one item is so low-dose, regulatory agencies might not see testing as a priority, and therefore health risks have not been adequately studied. So while chemical doses from one garment may be minuscule, we also need to consider the cumulative exposure from our bedsheets, car seats, upholstery, accessories, and towels.
“The health risk is that we as a human body, as a human vessel, are starting to accumulate foreign chemistry that is causing human biology to now co-evolve in ways that we’ve never asked human biology to do before,” Altman says.
He doesn’t think wearing yoga pants every day will give you cancer in 20 years, but he and his company operate under the assumption that it’s smarter not to take a risk. Instead, he notes that we’ll see effects at large with our population, like early puberty in boys and girls, or hormone and fertility changes from endocrine disruption. “If you know you are being exposed to foreign chemistry and it is entering the human body, we should avoid that exposure. That is the safest route,” he says.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90332821/this-silkworm-based-replacement-for-the-toxic-chemicals-in-our-clothes
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Trump Administration Hits Pause on Offshore Oil Plans After Court Ruling
Apr 25, 2019 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
A recent federal court decision appears to have struck a blow to President Trump’s plans to expand offshore oil and natural gas drilling across the U.S. continental shelf, with the aim of turning the United States into an energy-exporting behemoth.
In his first interview since being confirmed to Trump’s Cabinet, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told the Wall Street Journal that a recent ruling by a district court in Alaska has stalled plans that at one time called for opening up most U.S. continental-shelf waters to oil and gas companies.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason ruled that Trump’s revocation of a ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans is illegal. The judge ruled that Congress would need to step in to reverse a decision by President Obama to ban offshore drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans.
With the appeals process in the case expected to drag on for months, if not years, Bernhardt suggested any plan his department crafts now would have to be rewritten by the time the dust settles over the suit. In the meantime, the administration’s plans to offer oil and gas drilling leases in these areas are now stalled.
“By the time the court rules, that may be discombobulating to our plan,” Bernhardt told the Journal.
“What if you guess wrong?” Bernhardt added of the uncertainties surrounding the case. “I’m not sure that’s a very satisfactory and responsible use of resources.”
When reached for comment, Interior spokeswoman Molly Block reiterated that the department is reevaluating how to move forward with its offshore drilling ambitions.
“Given the recent court decision, the Department is simply evaluating all of its options to determine the best pathway to accomplish the mission entrusted to it by the President,” Block wrote by email.
The ruling out of Alaska is the latest is a series of legal losses by the Trump administration as it tries to trim environmental regulations and expand fossil-fuel use. “It does show that this sort of litigation is having an impact on their decision-making,” said Sierra Club senior attorney Devorah Ancel, who has worked on offshore drilling cases for the group.
Oil industry officials said they were optimistic, however, that the case, led by the environmental law group Earthjustice, would not be tied up in court for too long. “We are hopeful that an appeal of this case will move quickly and that we can proceed with the important work of exploring for America’s offshore resources without unnecessary delay," Erik Milito, vice president of upstream operations at the American Petroleum Institute, said in a statement.
The administration’s proposal to allow oil and gas drilling in nearly every corner of U.S. continental-shelf waters — in the Arctic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean — drew immediate backlash from Democratic lawmakers and local Republican politicians in coastal states with economies that depend on tourism.
“Every single governor from Maine to Florida and from Washington to California oppose offshore drilling off their coast," said Collin O’Mara, president and chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation. “Every single one. Republican and Democrat alike.”
One of those governors, Ralph Northam (Va.-D), “is cautiously optimistic about this news, but we will remain vigilant in continuing to oppose any effort to drill off of Virginia’s coasts,” spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky said via email.
Environmentalists grew concerned not only over the climate-change ramifications of such activity but also over the effects that loud seismic testing could have on whales and other sea life.
“It’s fair to say seismic air gun blasting is extremely loud and disruptive ... is that correct?” Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) asked an Interior official last month before blasting off an air horn inside a House hearing room.
Trump officials felt the heat almost immediately after unveiling the proposal in January 2018. Within days, Bernhardt’s predecessor, Ryan Zinke, acquiesced to demands from then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) to exclude the state from leasing.
That exception led more state leaders to ask why Florida and Scott, who went on to unseat a Democratic senator last year, were receiving special treatment.
By March, Zinke backtracked further by expressing doubt that oil and gas exploration would happen in the Pacific.
Still on politicians’ minds was the disastrous Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010, which spilled 215 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
Democrats and their environmentalist allies celebrated Bernhardt’s comments.
“This administration has treated public waters like a bottomless cash cow for Big Oil from day one, and if it takes a court order to get them to see reason, so be it,” House Natural Resources Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said in a statement.
Many Democrats running to remove Trump from office in 2020 are making the administration’s offshore drilling aspirations an issue by calling for a moratorium on all fossil-fuel leasing both in public waters and on public lands.
“It’s an issue staring everyone in the face,” said Kate Kelly, director of public lands at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/04/25/trump-administration-hits-pause-offshore-oil-plans-after-court-ruling/?utm_term=.b3027247949e
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BLM Proposes Lifting Some Restrictions for Wyo. Project
Apr 26, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Scott Streater
The Bureau of Land Management is proposing removing seasonal restrictions on drilling activity near non-eagle raptor nests as part of its analysis of a major Wyoming oil and gas drilling project.
BLM's new draft supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS) considers five potential project options for dealing with raptors within the 1.5-million-acre Converse County Oil and Gas Project area, including removing the seasonal restrictions near raptor nests if certain conditions are met.
Doing so would allow the project, which proposes to develop up to 5,000 oil or gas wells over a 10-year period in Converse County in east-central Wyoming, to operate year-round.
But the proposal to loosen drilling restrictions when young raptors are still in the nests exacerbates the already-heightened concerns of environmental groups and EPA.
The draft supplemental EIS is the latest development in the ongoing debate over balancing natural resource protections with the obvious economic benefits the project could bring to Converse County and eastern Wyoming. The Denver-based Western Energy Alliance last year estimated that the project could bring more than 8,400 jobs to the county and generate as much as $30.8 billion in revenue from taxes and royalties.
BLM's "preferred option" in the draft supplemental EIS calls for amending the Casper resource management plan "to allow relief from timing restrictions within the project area," as long as the project operators "incorporate adequate design features that alleviate impacts to raptors," a bureau spokeswoman said in an email to E&E News.
Those "design features," which would be part of a "raptor management plan that avoids or reduces impacts," could include, among other things, equipping storage tanks and "other above ground facilities with structures or devices that discourage nesting of raptors," according to BLM.
"Monitoring for two consecutive years would be required to ensure that the conservation measures are effective," the draft supplemental EIS says.
If companies follow the requirements in the raptor management plan, "no active nests would be impacted" by the drilling project, it says.
Surveys in the project area have identified 1,283 "historic non-eagle raptor nests," and the draft estimates that half "would have the potential to be active during year-round development."
Environmental groups were outraged by the proposal to lift the seasonal restrictions, which limit "activities or surface use" in raptor nesting habitat from Feb. 1 through July 31, "or until young birds have fledged."
"Drilling and fracking near bird nests during nesting season is outrageously stupid and greedy," said Kelly Fuller, energy and mining campaign director for the Western Watersheds Project.
Fuller said the debate over seasonal limitations with the Converse County project "is part of a larger trend" in which "oil and gas companies are asking the BLM to remove seasonal wildlife protections."
But, she added, "seasonal wildlife protections are there for a reason. If we stop protecting wildlife, pretty soon there is not going to be wildlife left to protect."
BLM published the draft supplemental EIS in today's Federal Register, kicking off a 90-day public comment period that runs through July 25.
The draft is part of a much larger, projectwide analysis of the Converse County project, including in a draft EIS released in January 2018. BLM decided to conduct a supplement in response to public comments on the draft EIS last year.
The massive project, which has been under evaluation by BLM for more than five years, would cover about 1.5 million acres of split estate mixed surface ownership lands. The vast majority of the surface lands — 1.2 million acres, or 83% of the project area — is privately owned; but 64% of the subsurface mineral estate, or 964,525 acres, is federally owned.
The project — proposed by Anadarko Petroleum Corp., Chesapeake Energy Corp., Devon Energy Corp., EOG Resources Inc. and Northwoods Energy — would incorporate "directional, vertical, horizontal, and other drilling techniques, and would develop infrastructure to support oil and gas production" in the project area, according to the draft EIS from last year.
That would include "well pads, roads, pipelines, power lines, compressor and electrical substations, and ancillary facilities such as water supply wells and water disposal facilities," it says.
Thus, the total amount of surface that would be disturbed by the project would approach 53,000 acres, it says.
BLM selected the companies' project proposal as its preferred alternative in the draft EIS last year.
But EPA, in formal comments last year, gave the draft EIS a low rating. In those comments, Philip Strobel, director of the agency's NEPA Compliance and Review Program, noted with concern that the preferred alternative "identifies more wildlife resource impacts" than others, including "long-term exceptions for some wildlife protection stipulations" in the Casper RMP.
The Fish and Wildlife Service, in its comments, echoed some of EPA's concerns. But FWS also acknowledged that, in some cases, "year-round drilling" could result in a reduced footprint "because operators could drill more wells on the same pad rather than needing to move to a different location to work around timing stipulations."
The draft document notes that BLM expected the operators to ask for exemptions to seasonal restrictions around raptor nests and greater sage grouse leks "in non-core areas for several wells over extended periods of time to increase efficiencies and reduce the number of times drilling rigs would be moved on and off pads."
BLM is expected to release a final EIS, which will include the raptor seasonal restrictions analysis, this fall, with a record of decision approving the project by year's end, according to BLM Wyoming's latest "NEPA HotSheet," published last month. The NEPA HotSheet documents all proposed projects and land-use plan updates and amendments the bureau is working to complete.
"The Final EIS will incorporate the analysis and comments from both the draft and supplement, and we will ultimately make one final decision," BLM said in the email to E&E News.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/04/26/stories/1060223757
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Opponents of New Oil, Gas Law Won't Try for Repeal This Year
Apr 26, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greenwire)
By Dan Elliott
Opponents of a new Colorado oil and gas law that puts public safety ahead of production said yesterday that they will not attempt to overturn it this year but may try in 2020.
They had planned to ask voters in November 2019 to repeal and replace the law, but last week, the Colorado secretary of state's office rejected four versions of their proposed ballot initiative. State officials said the proposals violated a law requiring initiatives to address only one subject.
John Brackney, a former Arapahoe County commissioner and one of the leaders of the repeal effort, said the group decided not to appeal the secretary of state's ruling and instead will wait to see how the new rules take shape before deciding whether to ask voters to overturn it.
"We opted to give it a little bit of a break," Brackney said, but added, "I think it's likely we will file for 2020."
Previously, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission was required to encourage production and make public safety and environmental protection secondary considerations.
In addition to flipping those priorities, the new law gives local governments the power to regulate the location of wells and changes the makeup of the commission to add expertise on safety and the environment.
Well location is a contentious issue in Colorado, especially in booming communities north of Denver, where development overlaps with the state's most productive oil and gas field.
Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed the law last week, and the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission will begin writing new rules in May. That could take months or years of hearings and painstaking negotiations with the industry and advocates for public safety and the environment.
Brackney predicted at least some cities and counties would overreach by imposing so many new restrictions on drilling that they effectively ban it. He said environmentalists would put so much pressure on local officials to impose de facto bans that they will cave for fear of losing the next election.
The other leader of the repeal effort, Weld County Commissioner Barbara Kirkmeyer, said they will keep close track of how the new rules come together.
Colorado House Speaker KC Becker, a Democrat who co-sponsored the law, called the repeal measures "bad policy" and said she was glad they were shelved.
"I think in a year we will have more evidence that oil and gas is still thriving under the new law, further showing that going back to the old way of prioritizing oil and gas over health and safety isn't the way to go," she said in an email.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/04/26/stories/1060223045
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US Energy's Growing Role on the Global Stage
Apr 26, 2019 | Real Clear Energy
By James Marks
On April 21, Ukraine held its presidential election amid years long tensions with its neighbor, Russia. The result of the election has as much to do with the exercise of Ukraine’s independence as it does with Russia’s ever looming presence over Europe’s appetite for Russia’s oil and gas.
The Crimean region of Ukraine was absorbed into Russia in 2014 and the Donbass region of the country is still at war among sparring factions, stoking concerns that eastern Ukraine could be diplomatically absorbed into Russia.
Energy is the key component of this geopolitical morass. Europe’s primary access to oil and gas is Ukraine. Should pressures escalate to the point that Ukraine dissolves, not probable but it remains a possibility, that would leave Russia with incredible leverage over Europe’s access to energy resources.
For decades, countries like Russia have been able to weaponize their natural resources. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) largely controlled global energy supplies and wielded huge influence. Member countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, which produce about 40 percent of the world's crude oil, could effectively turn the supply tap on or off. While Russia is not an OPEC member, the country in recent years has developed increasingly cozy ties with the cartel. This coordination put consumer countries, including the United States, at the mercy of producers.
However, the U.S. can play a much different role moving forward. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently reported that the United States’ oil and gas supplies will account for 70 percent of the increase in global production capacity through 2024. By then, U.S. crude oil exports are expected to be as high as 9 million barrels per day, more than Russia and closing in on Saudi Arabia. Coupled with growing output from allies like Brazil and Norway, these new resources could undo hostile powers’ stronghold on international energy markets.
Around the turn of the century, new extraction technologies began opening vast oil and gas reserves buried in shale formations. In 2009, American oil production finally reversed a decades-long decline dating back to 1986. In the following years, output continued to rally, propelled by continued technological advances, growing demand and infrastructure deployment to move products to market. The EIA now projects that crude oil production will average more than 12 million b/d in 2019 and 13 million b/d in 2020.
Add to burgeoning production the fact that the U.S. lifted a 40-year ban on crude oil exports in 2015, and it’s clear that we’re better positioned than ever before to meet energy demands around the world. In fact, today’ geopolitical realities demand it. The only factors dampening this opportunity are the free trade agreements that limit energy exports as well as the infrastructure needed to safely, efficiently transport resources from production sites to end-markets. Through the loosening of these “old habits,” the U.S. can impact meaningful change.
Consider how this shift could positively impact consumer access to energy and grid reliability. Despite its vast crude oil reserves, OPEC member Venezuela faces increasing gasoline shortages in the midst of heightening political turmoil. The country suffered its second electricity blackout this month due to lack of grid maintenance. Unfortunately, the issues of grid reliability and energy shortages are ones that many nations in the region face.
The U.S. can further hedge antagonistic oil-producing countries’ influence and to bolster the quality of life for consumers who lack adequate access to energy resources. While this is a complex, multifaceted problem, reliable energy and electricity can make important contributions to meeting consumers’ everyday needs. This challenge will require smart policy to secure a long-term production frontier, and no need is more pressing than midstream infrastructure.
Pipeline development requires significant investment and planning, and the regulatory process is intentionally rigorous. As a result, deployment has lagged behind production, creating a pinch-point between extraction sites, refineries and consumers. In regions where shale has only recently emerged, pipelines are needed to connect the areas with markets.
Regrettably, in recent years, pipeline rollout has been dogged by activism and politicization, which not only complicates installation, but also undermines the regulatory process. Rather than kowtow to special interests, policymakers should focus on beefing up private-public partnerships and work to strengthen and streamline the regulatory framework to provide confidence to builders.
This is a rare moment for the United States to assist key allies across the globe. Prioritizing infrastructure and development can enhance this success—and thereby continue to step into a global leadership role. America’s energy success story is far from finished. It’s time policymakers invest in energy infrastructure and shale development to secure energy independence well into the future.
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2019/04/26/us_energys_growing_role_on_the_global_stage_110431.html
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Big Oil Profits Fall as Geopolitics Weigh on a Mainstay, Refining
Apr 26, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Bradley Olson and Rebecca Elliott
The world’s largest oil companies are reporting underwhelming first- quarter profits as an array of geopolitical challenges and weaker prices around the world produced anemic results in the first three months of the year.
Sanctions in Venezuela, production cuts in Canada and weak natural-gas prices in Asia took a toll on Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM -2.75% ,Chevron Corp. CVX -1.31% and other companies. The business of refining crude, one of the most reliable profit centers in the industry during the last five years, was especially hard hit.
Exxon said earnings fell in every business segment inside and outside the U.S., and the company’s refining operations—a profit machine for decades in times of high prices and low—showed a loss of $256 million in the quarter. Overall, net income dropped to $2.35 billion, the lowest in three years.
French oil giant Total SA TOT -1.49% missed earnings expectations, and Chevron said profits fell by almost a third to $2.6 billion.
In the past five years, refining crude has contributed about 34% of the combined net income of Exxon and Chevron, and in some years it made up more than 50% of profits, a bulwark against the volatility of oil.
“They’re still making money, but the fat margins have disappeared,” said Sandy Fielden, director of oil research for Morningstar Inc.
Exxon, Chevron and independent U.S. refiners were hit by production declines in Venezuela and Canada that led to scarcity and higher prices for heavy oil, which can be highly profitable to refine because it has generally been cheaper than lighter grades. Yet when the difference in those prices narrows, it typically hurts refining profits.
Exxon reported earnings per share of 55 cents, almost 50% below the first quarter last year and missing analyst expectations. Sales fell about 7% to $63.63 billion. Production rose to 3.9 million barrels of oil and gas, a 2% increase from the same period last year.
Chevron posted earnings of $1.39 a share, down from $1.90 a share in the first quarter of 2018, and also short of analyst expectations. Production rose, but Chevron’s share prices was roughly flat before markets opened as investors waited for more signals on whether the company will raise its $33 billion offer for Anadarko Petroleum Corp.APC +0.84%
Occidental Petroleum Corp. OXY -1.81% recently launched a potential bidding war for Anadarko, making public a $38 billion offer. Before the rival offer, Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth said the company expects to see the transaction close at the agreed-upon price. A Chevron spokesman said the company continues to be confident the transaction will be completed.
Last year, many refiners benefitted from steeply discounted crude in West Texas and Canada, where pipeline bottlenecks left oil landlocked and depressed regional prices. But markdowns for heavier, more sulfurous oil have eroded in the wake of production curtailments in Canada and U.S. sanctions on Venezuela.
That has weighed on the margins refiners earn on each barrel of oil they process into fuels such as gasoline and diesel.
Valero Energy Corp. VLO -1.43% generated $141 million in net income during the first quarter, about 70% less than during the same period last year, the company said Thursday. Its refining margin fell to $7.97 a barrel during the quarter, from $8.65 a year ago.
“The first quarter presented us with tough market conditions,” Chief Executive Joe Gorder told investors, citing narrower oil price differentials paired with high gasoline inventories and low margins for making the fuel.
Mexico’s Maya crude, a heavier oil, traded for an average of less than $4 a barrel below Louisiana Light Sweet, a Gulf Coast benchmark, during the first quarter, according to S&P Global Platts. That compares with an average discount of about $8 a barrel during the same period last year.
Heavy Canadian oil, meanwhile, sold for an average of roughly $10 less than West Texas Intermediate during the first quarter, compared with an average discount of about $26 during the year-earlier period, S&P Global Platts data show.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/exxon-profit-revenue-fall-11556281545?mod=hp_lead_pos5
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7 in Intensive Care After Chicago-Area Gas Leak
Apr 26, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greenwire)
Seven people, including a firefighter, remain in intensive care after they were injured in an ammonia leak in Illinois.
Lake County Sheriff's spokesman Christopher Covelli said today that most of the 37 people injured yesterday have been treated and released from hospitals.
Toxic gas plumes formed and lingered for several hours when anhydrous ammonia leaked from containers being pulled by a tractor in Beach Park, about 40 miles north of downtown Chicago (Greenwire, April 25).
The injured included 11 firefighters and three police officers.
Sheriff's detectives and a team from the National Transportation Safety Board are jointly investigating the leak today.
Covelli told the Daily Herald it could be more than a week before a cause is determined.
Pamela Burnett of unincorporated Warren Township said she was headed to her job in Kenosha, Wis., when she drove through the toxic cloud yesterday. Burnett said she wasn't sure if it was smoke or dust from the shoulder of the road.
"It kept on getting bigger and bigger — this wasn't going away. I tried to slow down and not go through it," Burnett told reporters at the scene. "The next thing I knew, I couldn't breathe. It was such a strong smell. I thought to myself, 'Lord this is it. I'm done now.'"
Burnett, 57, said she pulled off the road while "spitting and coughing" and called 911. She was taken to a hospital for treatment. Her condition wasn't immediately known.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/04/26/stories/1060223055
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Apr 26, 2019 | Yahoo News
By Alexander Nazaryan
No such thing. That was the verdict delivered by the security guard inside the Ronald Reagan Building on the question of whether there existed a museum of the Environmental Protection Agency and, more to the point, whether that museum was somewhere within this airy warren of federal offices in downtown Washington. In fact, she appeared to regard the question as downright insane.
Actually, there was — and is, as of this writing at least — such a thing as an EPA museum. The security guard looked on with annoyed concession as this reporter produced on his phone seemingly incontrovertible evidence that not only did an EPA museum exist in the reality-based community, it existed inside the Reagan Building, which is adjacent to the EPA’s headquarters (and just a few hundred feet from the Trump International Hotel).
The guard frowningly pointed the way. But it would be difficult to blame her, because in a city of temples to culture and the arts, “museum” evokes grandiose splendor, which is to say the exact opposite of “The Story of the Environmental Protection Agency: Protecting Public Health and the Environment,” as the EPA museum is formally known. To be fair, it does call itself an exhibit, not a museum, in a refreshingly modest turn in this town fueled by self-promotion.
Indeed, the repurposed office space next to the EPA’s credit union — which retains its gray carpeting, lime-colored walls and drop ceiling — is less museum than time machine, taking the visitor back to Nov. 8, 2016. That was before Donald Trump was elected president, before Trump’s EPA chief Scott Pruitt declared that “the war on coal is over.”
In fact, the only sign of the Trump administration is a framed photo of Andrew Wheeler, who became EPA head after Pruitt resigned in shame, as the number of investigations into his alleged personal and professional indiscretions rose to nearly 20. The photo was placed inconspicuously next to an ATM, which is not a museum exhibit but an apparent spillover from the employee credit union next door.
Far more notable is a text display — the exhibition is mostly text displays — on climate change. There are no Trumpian arguments about cyclical temperatures or scientific uncertainty. Instead, it very simply says that “climate change is happening now” and that it is caused by “greenhouse gas pollution.”
Trump, who once mused that global warming is a Chinese hoax, has continued to evince skepticism about the causes of rising temperatures, even as scientists warn of impending catastrophe. Wheeler has conceded that climate change is “an important issue,” but it has not been among his priorities.
The museum was opened by EPA administrator Gina McCarthy at the end of the Obama administration. The desire to start the museum “came from the career employees of the EPA,” says former EPA acting deputy administrator Stan Meiburg. Meiburg says that EPA staffers “chafed” at the fact that other federal agencies, including the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, had museums of their own.
“EPA had nothing — not at all,” Meiburg says. “And that just didn’t seem right.” A task force started working on plans for the museum in 2015. It opened in late 2016, while Obama was still president, and clearly reflects his conviction that climate change is an existential threat that could be mitigated by tougher environmental laws and a speedy transition to renewable sources of energy. For example, one panel notes the Obama administration restricted the “amount of toxic metals and other harmful pollutants that steam electric plants are allowed to discharge” in 2015. The panel makes no mention that, two years later, the Trump administration delayed implementing that rule while also canceling the Clean Power Plan, a major Obama initiative to shift away from fossil fuels.
It is remarkable that any of this still exists, considering how assiduously the Trump administration has moved to scrub the agency of its legacy. Mentions of climate change were removed from the EPA website in the months after Trump took office. The little museum, with no celebrities or billionaires on its board of directors, was supposed to meet the same fate.
In the summer of 2017, the Washington Post reported that the museum was “being reworked to reflect the priorities of the Trump administration” and that references to Obama-era green initiatives would be bowdlerized. “The agency may add a display of coal to the museum,” the Post said.
Pruitt didn’t get around to it. Wheeler is a more deft operative than Pruitt, but would a former coal lobbyist pass up a chance to extol fossil fuels, to push the narratives of clean coal and energy independence beloved by the Trump administration?
He has, so far. “We are not aware of any plans to add new displays to the exhibit,” an EPA official involved in the museum’s operations said.The EPA museum in Washington, formally the exhibit "The Story of the Environmental Protection Agency: Protecting Public Health and the Environment."
That leaves the EPA museum a poignant reminder to what the agency once did. Only not many people are going there to be reminded. During the time this reporter spent there on a recent Wednesday afternoon, not a single other person visited. ("EPA never has much money for that sort of thing,” explains Meiburg about museum funding.)
But the visitors who do come — the EPA told Yahoo News it didn’t track attendance — discover that they’ve entered a United States that remains a party to the Paris climate accords, from which Trump indicated in 2017 he would withdraw, though that withdrawal cannot take place for several more years. At the EPA museum, no such withdrawal has taken place. Along with a photograph of the United Nations headquarters in New York, the display text about the Paris accords celebrates it as “the most ambitious climate change agreement in history.”
Another panel discusses the Toxic Substances Control Act, the 2016 legislation that sought to impose some regulatory order on the 80,000 chemicals used in everyday life. And while that law remains in place, the EPA’s own enforcement has waned in the Trump administration. That is in part because the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention is now headed by Nancy Beck, a chemist who was formerly employed by the American Chemistry Council, a lobbying group for petrochemical and other corporations. Beck has been called, as one headline put it, “The Scariest Trump Appointee You’ve Never Heard Of.”
Beck is not mentioned in the museum. Neither is Pruitt. Although the lotion-loving Oklahoman has been gone for nearly a year, nobody has seen fit to update the museum to include his tenure, which included the rollback of dozens of regulations at the behest of corporate benefactors. An interactive display that shows brief videos about previous EPA heads ends with the Obama administration.
Meiburg, the former EPA official, hopes that that does eventually change, with Pruitt and Wheeler included in the museum’s narrative. “The museum needs to tell the story as it was,” he says, to “deal with the hard things, as well as the easy things.” He notes that the museum covers the tenure of Anne Gorsuch Burford, the divisive conservative activist appointed to lead the agency in the 1980s. The EPA has survived her. And it has survived Pruitt.
But with scientists leaving the EPA in droves and corporate lobbyists finding plenty of time to meet with political appointees, experts believe it could be decades before the agency returns to what it was in 2016. If climatologists are right about rising ocean levels and the depleting ozone layer, the planet doesn’t have the luxury of decades to solve its ecological crises.
And so the EPA museum beats on, boat against the Trumpian current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. “EPA Runs on Green Power,” says a poster affixed near the entrance to the museum. That poster, which is not exactly a triumph of graphic design, shows several industrial-size windmills, which have become an increasingly popular source of electrical generation. Trump recently mused in a speech that such windmills cause cancer. They do not.
https://news.yahoo.com/inside-the-ep-as-resistance-room-where-trump-was-never-president-and-climate-change-is-real-154246247.html
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Ewire: OMB Raises Data Bar for New EPA Rules
Apr 26, 2019 | Inside EPA
The Trump administration has revised existing guidance on implementing the Information Quality Act (IQA) that raises the bar on data EPA and other agencies can use to justify regulatory decisions, a move that environmentalists say appears to mandate requirements the Trump EPA is seeking to adopt in its controversial science transparency rule.
According to Inside Climate News, Russell Vought, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), earlier this week signed a memo that imposes many of the same public-data requirements that EPA has been seeking to adopt in its controversial science transparency rule.
According to the report, Vought's memo, titled "Improving Implementation of the Information Quality Act," sets out new guidance for all federal agencies on identifying and using "influential scientific, financial, or statistical information."
Vought writes that influential analysis must be disseminated to the public "with sufficient descriptions of data and methods to allow them to be reproduced by qualified third parties who may want to test the sensitivity of agency analyses."
The memo says that such data should be held to higher standards than other information, with a more in-depth peer review required, the outlet reports, adding that the review should evaluate "the objectivity of the underlying data and the sensitivity of the agency's conclusions to analytic assumptions," with additional peer review required in some circumstances.
Data of this kind, the report says, includes health surveys that are often used to support controls on pollutants, including those like smog and soot that come from burning fossil fuels. The guidance could also affect how limits on greenhouse gas emissions are devised, it adds.
Environmentalists are strongly criticizing the OMB guide, with Andrew Rosenberg of the Union of Concerned Scientists telling Inside Climate News that the guidance will give industry new opportunities to challenge the science underlying agency rulemakings.
"It's about delay," he told the paper. "Every piece of this allows industry to make a claim that will delay the process of regulations.
As Inside EPA has previously reported, EPA has been seeking to adopt similar provisions in its controversial science transparency rule, which seeks to require that rules be based on publicly available data.
The proposal has drawn widespread criticism from environmentalists, Democratic lawmakers and even the agency's own science advisors, who charged that such a requirement would jeopardize the use of studies that rely on confidential medical and business information and would undermine future rules' integrity.
While EPA's transparency rule had been listed as a long-term action item, Administrator Andrew Wheeler earlier this month asked EPA's Science Advisory Board for advice on how it could protect such confidential data, suggesting the agency continues to work on the rule.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-omb-raises-data-bar-new-epa-rules
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Obama Had a Green New Deal, and It Worked. Let’s Do That Again.
Apr 26, 2019 | New York Magazine
By Jonathan Chait
Last month, the Green Advocacy Project conducted a poll on the Green New Deal. The results are alarming. Slightly more Americans oppose the idea (46 percent) than support it (43 percent), but the truly catastrophic finding is the imbalance in passion. The opposition is extraordinarily intense, with nearly all opponents of the Green New Deal registering strong opposition, while those in favor are split between supporting it strongly and only somewhat. And this of course is happening before anybody has even attempted the difficult-to-impossible task of translating the Green New Deal’s mostly popular precepts into specific proposals with concrete trade-offs.
So, remind me, why are we doing this again?
By “this” I don’t mean an ambitious plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I mean the specific political and policy design choices embedded in the Green New Deal, to whatever extent they exist. Those choices include insisting on a 10-year target for phasing out greenhouse gasses rather than the 30-year schedule required by the Paris climate accords, tossing in an array of non-climate-related policies like universal health care and guaranteed jobs for all, and avoiding important emissions-reducing tools like nuclear power.
The most explicit rationale, as Dave Roberts has laid out (see here and here) is to kindle mass activism on an unprecedented scale to radically expand the parameters of what Washington can and will do on climate policy. Two months ago, Roberts was hailing the incipient arrival of this game-changing movement, castigating the critics who dismissed its vast potential. “A wave of grassroots enthusiasm like this isn’t fungible,” he wrote. “It can’t be returned to the kitchen in exchange for a new one with the perfect mix of policy and rhetorical ingredients. It is lightning in a bottle, easily squandered.”
More recently, acknowledging the poll (which he brought to my attention) showing that the enthusiasm is heavily weighted against the Green New Deal, Roberts is presenting the grassroots wave as a future aspiration rather than a countable asset. “Intensity is what matters in politics,” he argues. “Democrats and climate hawks need to figure out how to generate some.” Roberts is a brilliant policy analyst from whom I have learned enormously. But I believe the theory of political change upon which he has hung his support for the Green New Deal strategy is showing its fatal flaws.
The second rationale for the Green New Deal is the belief that Democrats need a radically different strategy because what they tried under the Obama administration failed. Mike Konczal defends it as “a reaction to the failed strategy of cap-and-trade.” Kevin Baker, writing in Harper’s, calls Obama’s climate agenda “woefully inadequate in the first place,” and insists it has “now largely been squashed by President Trump.”
This widespread belief understates both the scale and the durability of Obama’s climate reforms. An overinflated sense of failure has always hung over the last president’s climate agenda, in large part due to the high visibility of his failure, and the inconspicuousness of his success. Obama sought, and failed, to pass a cap-and-trade law through Congress in 2009 and 2010. The defeat played out over a year, in full view of the media, and left behind a devastated and disillusioned core of activists who saw their work smashed against the Senate filibuster.
The successes, by contrast, occurred with barely any fanfare. Obama’s stimulus included $80 billion in green energy subsidies, the largest investment in renewable energy technology in American history. The stimulus was written and passed in mere weeks, during an atmosphere of economic crisis when its impact on a long-developing environmental problem hardly registered with the news media. (Its tax credits for wind and solar power were extended in 2015, as part of a low-profile bipartisan budget deal.)
While the Republican capture of Congress closed off any chance of major new climate laws after 2010, the administration pursued an aggressive agenda through regulation and diplomacy. Obama imposed a wide array of new regulations on power plants, cars, buildings, public lands, and elsewhere. In 2014, Obama struck a bilateral greenhouse gas emissions dea lwith China, which paved the way for the global Paris climate accords the following year.
Baker’s notion that Obama’s agenda has been “quashed” contains some grains of truth. The Trump administration has launched a vigorous effort to roll back Obama’s regulations, and announced its refusal to abide the Paris agreement while throwing itself behind a campaign to revive coal and other dirty energy sources. But even if this rollback were completely effective, it could only reverse the regulatory aspects. Trump can’t un-spend stimulus funding that was spent before he took office.
And in any event, Trump’s rollback has been uneven at best in its implementation. It’s been hampered by incompetent staffing, and has lost an extraordinary 90 percent of the court battles over its regulatory changes. Some of the rollback has been blocked by state resistance, especially in California. And the sheer economic power of the changes Obama helped to set in motion has overwhelmed Trump’s efforts to reverse them. Despite all his efforts to revive coal, the industry has continued to shrink. Solar and wind power have quintupled over the last decade. Meanwhile, Trump’s refusal to abide the terms of the Paris accord has not unraveled the entire deal, which remains largely intact. And worldwide participation is the key thing, since the United States accounts for a shrinking minority of global emissions.
None of this is to say that Trump has had no effect, or that the world is on track for a positive outcome. The urgency of the the climate crisis is such that the crisis has already arrived, and rapid and accelerating speed is required to avert deeper disasters. Merely slowing down the pace of the response is a serious act of sabotage. But that is all Trump has done — he’s put some speed bumps on the path his predecessor forged. He has not erased the Obama climate agenda any more than he erased Obama’s health-care reforms (as Obama critics predicted would occur, with equal confidence, after Trump’s election).
All of this suggests Obama’s presidency offers a model, after all, for how the next Democratic president can address climate change. The three tools used by the 44th president — green energy investment as part of a stimulus bill, tighter regulation, and aggressive international diplomacy — may lack the transformative ambition of the Green New Deal. But the Green New Deal is nowhere close to overcoming either the technocratic challenge of designing workable policies to fulfill its grand designs, or the political challenge of enacting them.
A scaled-up version of Obama’s model, by contrast, is workable. Democrats might have to alter the rules for what kinds of spending the Senate allows to pass with 50 votes to allow for green energy subsidies. That will be a hard task when the 50th Senate vote comes from a red state, but not as hard as getting that 50th vote to approve a revolutionary overhaul of the entire economy. It’s not impossible to imagine a Joe Manchin or a Kyrsten Sinema approving a bill to deploy lots of new green energy infrastructure if it included enough investment for their states.
In addition to whatever spending can pass the Senate, they can use regulations and diplomacy to leverage enormous amounts of positive change. And, as the Obama era shows, the three tools work especially well in concert. Investing in green energy brings down the cost of these technologies, making tight regulations easier to design and comply with. (Power companies couldn’t easily phase out dirty fuel sources until clean ones became cheaper; car companies can bring down their fuel intake because electric cars have become cost competitive.) Tighter regulations create a market demand for more clean energy innovations. And the more affordable these new technologies become, the easier it is for more leaders of developing countries to commit to a green energy path.
Is this suite of reforms going to be “enough”? No, nothing is going to be enough — even eliminating all greenhouse gasses tomorrow would leave the planet dangerously overheated. But more is better than less. The Green New Deal’s advocates are already starting to realize how desperately unlikely it is to yield anything resembling its promises. (Roberts calls it “a long shot — a desperate Hail Mary in a game where time is running short.”) Why would Democrats turn their backs on a model that has actually produced important progress for a desperate long shot?
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/obamas-green-new-deal-worked-climate-change.html
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