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(ACC Mentioned) P&G joins Flexible Film Recycling Group
Apr 10, 2015 | Recycling Today
The American Chemistry Council (ACC), Washington, has announced that Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. (P&G) has joined its Flexible Film Recycling Group (FFRG), a self-funded group that seeks to increase the recovery of flexible polyethylene (PE) film, wraps and bags. -
Senate TSCA Reform Bills Lack Chemical Treaties Implementation Language
Apr 10, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Maria Hegstad
Neither of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform bills pending in the Senate contain language vital to implement a pair of international chemicals treaties that the United States negotiated and signed but has yet to ratify, even as production and use of chemicals has become an ever more global business and the lack of ratification makes it more difficult for the United States to participate in global chemical regulation. -
McCarthy: Carbon Plan is Meant to Drive Markets
Apr 10, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Erica Martinson
EPA’s Clean Power Plan is meant to drive markets toward a lower-carbon future, even if it’s not the final answer on climate change, Administrator Gina McCarthy said today in Chicago. “How do you go from zero to the end of a marathon in one leap?” McCarthy said in response to questions about the fact that the plan alone will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to stave off the most severe impacts of worldwide climate change. “But part of my job is to recognize that the way in which we structure our carbon pollution plan... is to make sure that we are sending a longer-term market signal,” added the administrator, who was speaking at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. To some degree, that signal is based on what is already happening, she said. “The best regulations that we do are the ones that take advantage of the progress moving forward anyway.” The U.S. is “on a good trajectory, but we are banking on the United States playing a leadership role here and recognizing that this is an economic opportunity,” McCarthy said of international negotiations surrounding climate change. -
McCarthy: Climate Rule is Coming Despite McConnell's Efforts
Apr 10, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Erica Martinson
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says she’s not worried that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell might succeed in convincing states to ignore the agency’s climate regulations. -
McCarthy: Changing Interim CO2 Goal Doesn't Have to Mean Delay
Apr 10, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Erica Martinson
Changing how the agency manages the 2020 interim goal for greenhouse gas reductions from power plants doesn’t necessarily mean the final rule will need to be pushed back, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said today at an event in Chicago. -
FERC Staff Working Urgently on Reliability Options for Clean Power Plan
Apr 10, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Rod Kuckro
Dozens of staff members at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are scrambling to put together a menu of options from which commissioners can soon devise a recommendation to U.S. EPA on how to maintain grid reliability as states implement the Clean Power Plan. -
Laws in 3 States Fall Short in Giving Legislatures Veto Power Over EPA's Clean Power Plan
Apr 10, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
By Scott Detrow
Three additional states have passed laws granting legislators input on how their state responds to U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan. But unlike the law West Virginia enacted earlier this year, the new measures fall far short of model legislation promoted by the influential American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. -
Clean Power Plan Interim 'Cliff' Could Limit Compliance Options -- McCarthy
Apr 10, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jean Chemnick
U.S. EPA has heard from numerous stakeholders that the Clean Power Plan's interim compliance targets might force states to comply by upping their use of natural gas rather than investing in renewable energy and efficiency options that take more time to develop, agency chief Gina McCarthy said this morning. -
The State Electricity Revolt
Apr 9, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
Health care, Wall Street, the Internet—by the time President Obama leaves office, there may not be much of the economy left for his successor to take over. -
States, Industry Back EPA Proposal To Retain Existing Lead Air Standards
Apr 10, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Stuart Parker
States and a lead industry group are backing EPA's proposal to retain its existing lead national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) based on a lack of any new scientific data to justify tightening the limit -- though EPA's Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee (CHPAC) has said there is a need for a stricter NAAQS. -
Groups Sue EPA Over Industry Toxics Standards
Apr 10, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Peterka
A coalition of environmental groups this week filed a lawsuit against U.S. EPA alleging that the agency failed to complete required reviews of air toxics standards for 21 industry categories. -
Md. Researchers Link High Levels of Radon in Homes to Hydraulic Fracturing
Apr 10, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
A new study from Johns Hopkins University researchers pins elevated levels of radioactive radon in Pennsylvania homes to the spate of natural gas wells drilled across the state spurred on by hydraulic fracturing.
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(ACC Mentioned) P&G joins Flexible Film Recycling Group
Apr 10, 2015 | Recycling Today
The American Chemistry Council (ACC), Washington, has announced that Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. (P&G) has joined its Flexible Film Recycling Group (FFRG), a self-funded group that seeks to increase the recovery of flexible polyethylene (PE) film, wraps and bags.
“Optimizing and recovering packaging is a key part of our sustainability mission at P&G,” says Stephen Sikra, P&G research and development manager. “Our aim is to reduce our environmental footprint as a company and that of the consumers who choose our products. Working with the FFRG and our value-chain partners to expand film collection and recycling is a focused priority as we work toward that goal.”
Shari Jackson, FFRG director, says, “We’re extremely pleased to be working with P&G. National efforts to educate consumers about the recyclability of bags and wraps are already paying off, and having P&G on board will help extend our reach even further.”
Through its partnership initiatives, FFRG has supported the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s (SPC) “Store Drop-Off” label for plastic film packaging and helped to establish film recycling pilot programs around the country.
In addition, FFRG is partnering with the SPC and the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers, Washington, on the Wrap Action Recycling Program (WRAP), which has been developed to make it easier for state and municipal governments, brands and retailers to increase awareness of opportunities to recycle used PE wraps at local stores.
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Senate TSCA Reform Bills Lack Chemical Treaties Implementation Language
Apr 10, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Maria Hegstad
Neither of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform bills pending in the Senate contain language vital to implement a pair of international chemicals treaties that the United States negotiated and signed but has yet to ratify, even as production and use of chemicals has become an ever more global business and the lack of ratification makes it more difficult for the United States to participate in global chemical regulation.
"TSCA needs provisions that allow the U.S. to fully participate in international chemical management schemes," andTSCA reform legislation should include the necessary changes that would lead to ratification, former EPA toxics chief Lynn Goldman told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in written testimony last month.
While ratifying the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent (PIC) has been a bipartisan goal for many years, supported by a wide and diverse group of stakeholders, proponents have struggled to build congressional interest, sources say.
President George W. Bush signed the Stockholm Convention in 2001 and President Bill Clinton signed the Rotterdam Convention in 1998. The fact that the United States has not ratified either treaty places the country in the company of other non-parties, among them Angola, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Tunisia and Turkey, Goldman said in her March 18 testimony.
"We need a provision that would trigger regulatory action when a chemical is added to the Stockholm Convention list of POPs identified for elimination or reduction, or to 'opt out' of any such listing," Goldman explained. "We need an additional provision that triggers export notification for chemicals that are on the Rotterdam Convention mandatory PIC list."
Goldman acknowledged that such changes would also have to be made within the federal law covering pesticides, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, but said that "amending TSCA in these areas would be a good first step."
Proponents of ratifying the treaties include both environmentalists and industrial and agricultural chemical producers and users. Though concerned for different reasons, all proponents agree that the United States' limited ability to participate in meetings of the international representatives who convene regularly to consider adding more chemicals to the treaties is problematic. U.S. representatives at these meetings are representatives of a non-party to the treaties, and are thus ineligible to vote on decisions of adding chemicals to the conventions.
A former EPA toxics official turned consultant says the "world has adjusted to the U.S. not ratifying" the treaties, and the U.S. still has a role at treaty meetings because of the size of its economy. But the source adds that representatives are seated at separate tables based on whether or not they represent countries that ratified the treaties. "We're at the kids' table in the back of the room," the source says.
Advancing Ratification
Sources disagree over the best strategy to move ratification forward, with some suggesting that if TSCA is being reformed, ratification should be included in the mix -- as Goldman suggested in her testimony. But others suggested that nothing additional should be added to reform bills, for fear that any additional complication could sink the reform process.
A former state department attorney now in private practice and familiar with the treaties said the implementing language is omitted from the TSCA bills -- which include the two Senate measures and a draft House bill -- because the authors are hostile to ratifying the treaties. Instead, the language was omitted because of "incrementalist" concerns about "getting over the high hurdle [of reforming TSCA] first given the challenges we have seen, the source says. Adding anything to the mix, even if it is uncontroversial, runs the risk of bringing it down."
The bipartisan Senate TSCA reform bill introduced by Sens. David Vitter (R-LA) and Tom Udall (D-NM) makes one but not any of the other necessary changes to implement the treaties, according to a second former EPA toxics official who is now a consultant. "The only thing that speaks to [treaty implementation is language that] allows 12b exportation notices as required by the treaty," the source says.
The Vitter-Udall bill strikes the existing TSCA Section 12b, which describes exportation of chemicals and notice of such exportation. The new language says that "A person shall notify the Administrator that the person is exporting or intends to export to a foreign country . . . a chemical substance for which the United States is obligated by treaty to provide export notification . . ."
Similarly, newly inserted language requires said person to inform the Department of Homeland Security if importing or exporting such chemicals. And, EPA must notify other countries' governments where a chemical is exported through "a notice that satisfies the obligation of the United States under the applicable treaty."
The TSCA reform bill introduced by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA), contains similar language.
"That's different from [the existing] TSCA, which allows notices for actions under TSCA, so it is silent" on international treaties, the second former EPA official says. "That's only one change. It deals with one issue."
The bills do not appear to address the treaties in any other way -- in contrast to the TSCA reform bills that the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced, which included conforming language to implement the treaties.
The second source suggests that some of the changes proposed to TSCA Section 6, which gives EPA the authority to ban chemicals but is seen as the center of the existing statue's weaknesses, might be interpretable to implement some of the other necessary changes to implement the treaties, but that additional analysis would be necessary to make such a determination.
The former State Department attorney provides one possible explanation for the treaty language making it into Section 12b but nowhere else in the legislation. The source says that the one change made "is already pretty close to what Stockholm would require. It might have been included in anticipation of future action."
Bipartisan Goal
Ratifying the treaties has been a bipartisan goal for some years, with a wide coalition of supporters. EPA toxics chief Jim Jones identified ratification of the treaties as a key goal of the Obama administration at a congressional hearing five years ago, but efforts to pass the necessary implementing language in TSCA failed to move in part because of a disagreement between activists and administration officials over whether the changes should be addressed in standalone legislation prioritized to move quickly or included in a broad overhaul of TSCA.
And at a briefing in September 2010, Jones said, "Having the science on the table with the U.S. voice behind it . . . is beneficial to the ultimate conclusions that the parties make." He noted, for example, that if the United States had been a party to the convention, it could have pushed for more aggressive regulation of the pesticide endosulfan. In other cases, the United States could argue that the scientific evidence does not warrant strict actions, he said.
John Graham, the former head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, last month told attendees at a chemical industry conference that President George W. Bush tasked him with getting the treaties ratified. His efforts went nowhere, he said.
"[T]he President looked me in the eye and said, 'John, you're gonna help me go get this done,'" Graham recounted March 3 in keynote remarks at GlobalChem annual conference in Baltimore of his efforts to get the treaties ratified. "So my assignment was to figure out what had to be done to get the House and Senate to amend TSCA and FIFRA. I won't even get into the FIFRA complications, we'll just talk about TSCA."
TSCA Changes
Graham outlined four changes needed in TSCA to make the law compatible with the Stockholm convention. First, TSCA's definition of chemical must be "tweaked" to align it with the Stockholm Convention's definition of chemical, Graham said. Second, legislators must extend EPA's authority to include exports of chemicals, not just domestic sales. Thirdly, TSCA needs a new section to describe how the U.S. will handle chemicals that are added to the Stockholm Convention after the U.S. ratifies it. Fourth, TSCA's notice and comment procedures need to be aligned to the timing of the Stockholm Convention's procedures.
"Now by legal standards, all of this is not heavy lifting. We're not talking about massive surgery of the TSCA," Graham said. "Let's talk about how difficult it is to do minor surgery before we do major surgery. After two years, we had not a single bill passed through a committee of the House or Senate."
"Roughly 15 years later, and we have still not done what I just described to you with regard to the POPs process," Graham added. "Lower your expectations. Congress is not an easy body to get focused, particularly on pretty technical and detailed types of issues where the devil is in the detail of getting these things right."
The second former EPA official provides another example of the Rotterdam Convention, explaining that the treaty requires that all ratifiers not export PIC-listed chemicals to other signatories. "The U.S. would have to be in a case that controlled and prevented the U.S. to export [any PICs] to, say, Peru, for example. There's nothing in these [bills] to control exports."
The source praised Goldman for raising the ratification issue, which he believes has been forgotten.
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McCarthy: Carbon Plan is Meant to Drive Markets
Apr 10, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Erica Martinson
EPA’s Clean Power Plan is meant to drive markets toward a lower-carbon future, even if it’s not the final answer on climate change, Administrator Gina McCarthy said today in Chicago.
“How do you go from zero to the end of a marathon in one leap?” McCarthy said in response to questions about the fact that the plan alone will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to stave off the most severe impacts of worldwide climate change.
“But part of my job is to recognize that the way in which we structure our carbon pollution plan... is to make sure that we are sending a longer-term market signal,” added the administrator, who was speaking at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
To some degree, that signal is based on what is already happening, she said. “The best regulations that we do are the ones that take advantage of the progress moving forward anyway.”
The U.S. is “on a good trajectory, but we are banking on the United States playing a leadership role here and recognizing that this is an economic opportunity,” McCarthy said of international negotiations surrounding climate change. -
McCarthy: Climate Rule is Coming Despite McConnell's Efforts
Apr 10, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Erica Martinson
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says she’s not worried that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell might succeed in convincing states to ignore the agency’s climate regulations.
“I believe there is broad public support for climate change, which does not always translate effectively into political” support for a carbon reduction program, McCarthy said today at the University of Chicago.
And McCarthy said she has assured officials in other countries that the U.S. is moving forward. As soon as the rule was announced, “my calendar was quite quickly filled up with other countries asking … if we can do this,” she said.
“The politics are one thing, the reality is another,” she said.
Conversations with utilities and states are continuing too, McCarthy said. “I don’t see any utility thinking we’re not doing this.”
McCarthy said she has no concerns about claims that the rule is unconstitutional. “I am entirely confident that we are on the right side. We don't see validity on the constitutional questions.” -
McCarthy: Changing Interim CO2 Goal Doesn't Have to Mean Delay
Apr 10, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Erica Martinson
Changing how the agency manages the 2020 interim goal for greenhouse gas reductions from power plants doesn’t necessarily mean the final rule will need to be pushed back, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said today at an event in Chicago.
The administrator has made clear in recent remarks that the agency has taken seriously some states’ concerns that the 2020 requirements that are an interim goal on the path toward the 2030 goals are too difficult to meet so soon after the final rule comes out.
But, McCarthy said today, “an interim goal for me is essential,” and the question was how to set it.
“There’s a number of different ways to resolve” the issues raised by states, McCarthy said. She did not offer any specifics as to how the agency may alter the 2020 goal.
A few states have said that the early requirements are too high, and could push them towards using much more natural gas, “and renewables could be left behind,” McCarthy said.
But she later cautioned that she did not mean the agency wants to make a rule that specifically encourages renewables.
“EPA’s job is not to choose fuels,” she said. “People are pointing out to us that we may have designed it in ways that point certain ways ... and we should be more neutral.” -
FERC Staff Working Urgently on Reliability Options for Clean Power Plan
Apr 10, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Rod Kuckro
Dozens of staff members at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are scrambling to put together a menu of options from which commissioners can soon devise a recommendation to U.S. EPA on how to maintain grid reliability as states implement the Clean Power Plan.
That was the message from Commissioner Colette Honorable on Wednesday during a wide-ranging news conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by Platts.
In January, the former chairman of the Arkansas Public Service Commission was sworn in as the newest FERC member. Against that background, Honorable didn't mince words about a popular suggestion coming from electric utility stakeholders: that FERC coordinate a review of all state and regional plans to comply with the EPA rule to slash carbon emission by 2030.
Most recently, that was among suggestions made to FERC by Edison Electric Institute, which represents the nation's investor-owned utilities.
Honorable noted that during the most recent technical conference on the Clean Power Plan in St. Louis on March 31, a utility executive suggested that "FERC review each and every state implementation plan and determine whether or not reliability would be met."
But then there was "pushback" from state regulators in attendance, who said "not so fast," she said.
"It is in fact state regulators that have primary jurisdiction with regard to generation planning, integrated resource planning and resource adequacy at the distribution level," Honorable said.
"Having come from the states, I respect that and honor that. But having said that, I will be very open to discussing ways in which that sentiment could be effectuated," she said.
Still, she added, "if the state regulators have anything to say about it, I don't know that they would embrace the proposal by EEI."
Even if FERC wanted to review state plans, bandwidth might be an issue.
"You'd have to think about the practicality of undertaking an effort such as that," Honorable said. "With limited staff and resources, I would really want to learn more about how that would take place in reality."
So far, FERC has not heard from EPA about the suggestion that it review state implementation plans before EPA does, Honorable said.
But Honorable said she did ask Janet McCabe, EPA's acting administrator for air and radiation, whether FERC still had time to advise the agency on how to ensure reliability, even as EPA closes in on finalizing its proposed rule. The answer was yes, she said.
A number of Honorable's colleagues on the commission have expressed a sense of urgency, saying in early March that FERC needed to come up with a consensus in three or four weeks (Greenwire, March 20).
"I'm very confident that they will be waiting to receive our feedback," Honorable said of EPA. "We are taking this role very seriously," she said, adding that her commission "is comprised of very hands-on colleagues. I don't think there is a shy one among us on this topic."
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Laws in 3 States Fall Short in Giving Legislatures Veto Power Over EPA's Clean Power Plan
Apr 10, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
By Scott Detrow
Three additional states have passed laws granting legislators input on how their state responds to U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan. But unlike the law West Virginia enacted earlier this year, the new measures fall far short of model legislation promoted by the influential American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.
Despite varying levels of skepticism -- or in some cases hostility -- in the three states toward EPA's effort to lower the power sector's carbon emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels over the next 15 years, lawmakers in Arizona, Arkansas and North Dakota failed to give themselves veto power over their states' eventual implementation plans for meeting those EPA goals.
ALEC's proposed bill would give legislatures the ability to approve or reject the plans put together by air regulators. The language was modeled from a Pennsylvania law signed last year and has already been emulated in West Virginia (ClimateWire, March 5).
But the new laws in all three states are much more limited and instead give smaller legislative committees the ability to weigh in on, but not outright reject, the state plans.
Observers say the laws' limited scope comes from regulators' -- and more importantly, affected utilities' -- discomfort with the idea of opening up an already-complicated plan-crafting process to the politics of state legislatures.
And despite calls from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for states to refuse to submit plans to EPA, Arizona and Arkansas regulators' comments suggest that even if states are skeptical of the new rule, they would rather write their own plan than have a federal proposal written for them.Who determines 'unreasonable reliability risks'?
When it was originally introduced in January, the Arkansas legislation followed, for the most part, the ALEC model: It barred the state's Department of Environmental Quality from submitting an implementation plan to EPA unless a legislative council had first reviewed and approved the approach.
That's not to say the idea was wholly ALEC-inspired -- legislators had already won the ability to review and approve state regulations last year, through a ballot measure approved by nearly 60 percent of Arkansas voters.
But by the time the measure made it to Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson's desk, it had seen two key changes. Most importantly, amended language allowed the state to submit a plan to EPA at the governor's order, whether or not the legislative panel had approved it.
"That was important to us," said Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality Director Becky Keogh.
The law also clarifies that "submission of a state plan is the preferred method of compliance with federal emission guidelines."
"Stakeholders were concerned that anything that's gone through an approval process not cause harm to the state, in terms of its ability to process a state plan," Keogh said. "Not a way to block the process or prevent a path forward."
Arkansas' dominant utility, Entergy Corp., was one of those stakeholders. "Entergy believes ... that each state should preserve the flexibility to submit a plan if it believes that is the best option," said Entergy Arkansas' public affairs manager, Paul Means.
But the law may still threaten the regulatory certainty that Entergy and other utilities crave. The language bars the state from submitting a plan that "results in a significant rate increase" or "results in unreasonable reliability risks." It does not, however, clarify who determines whether those subjective terms have been met.Ariz. regulators 'just say no' to federal plan
The new Arizona law, passed and signed in March, creates a committee of legislative leaders who will review the state's implementation plan. Like Arkansas, the Arizona measure does not give the lawmakers the power to block Arizona's proposal.
The measure actually walks back a 2010 law that barred state agencies from regulating greenhouse gas emissions without first obtaining legislative approval.
It's a retreat that, oddly enough, was requested by utilities. "The department needs to have its handcuffs removed for this effort," Larry Lucero, Tucson Electric Power Co.'s government relations director, told Arizona lawmakers last year, according to The Arizona Republic.
State regulators pushed for the change, too. Because Arizona's Clean Power Plan targets are so high -- the draft regulation calls for a 51.7 percent reduction -- Arizona Corporation Commission member Bob Stump said regulators decided they couldn't afford to "just say no" and get stuck with a federally written reduction plan.
"We took the approach, and the Legislature finally took this approach, as well, that we need to submit something as opposed to having something imposed upon us," Stump said. "Initially, some members of the Legislature took the approach that we should simply refuse to submit [a plan] and thumb our nose at EPA, and that's certainly a reaction I can sympathize with emotionally."
Arizona officials have warned that they would need to shut down every coal plant in the state to meet EPA's goals.
"Not speaking for all branches of the government, obviously, but I think the attitude, broadly speaking, in Arizona is one of, 'Let's do what we can to offer a plan that's actually achievable and hope for the best,'" Stump said. "That the EPA recognizes Arizona's unique situation."Caution reigns in N.D.
The North Dakota law is much more limited. It simply calls on the Legislature to study the potential impact of EPA's new regulations.
Malcolm Woolf, senior vice president for policy and government affairs at Advanced Energy Economy, said the common theme is that utilities don't want to overly complicate the implementation plan process. "The utilities would rather design a plan that is cost-effective for them, rather than have EPA impose a plan from Washington," he said. "It's hard enough to design a plan. Getting it through the Legislature adds a whole other level of complexity and uncertainty." And if a state plan gets held up in the legislative process, he argued, the state might be stuck with an EPA-written proposal instead.
Arizona, Arkansas and North Dakota all submitted public comments criticizing or questioning the Clean Power Plan's legitimacy or feasibility. Arkansas recently joined the lawsuit challenging the EPA rule in court.
Yet despite Senate Majority Leader McConnell's recent call for states to "just say no" to the regulations and refuse to submit state plans, it appears that officials in all three states are doing what they can to preserve their ability to eventually write their own proposals.
Reporter Emily Holden contributed.
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Clean Power Plan Interim 'Cliff' Could Limit Compliance Options -- McCarthy
Apr 10, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jean Chemnick
U.S. EPA has heard from numerous stakeholders that the Clean Power Plan's interim compliance targets might force states to comply by upping their use of natural gas rather than investing in renewable energy and efficiency options that take more time to develop, agency chief Gina McCarthy said this morning.
Speaking at a forum at the University of Chicago, McCarthy said the agency is eyeing changes to the way its existing power plant carbon rule requires early reductions that would give states more compliance flexibility.
This might involve introducing interim requirements more slowly than the proposed rule now does, though that is only one of several options, she said.
"If there is legitimate concern here, and we're hearing it a lot, changes are going to happen," McCarthy said, adding that "what I do not want to do is to design this in a way that is limiting choices of states."
Industry groups and some states have consistently said that EPA's proposed reduction requirements for the years between 2020 and 2029 would create a regulatory "cliff," not only limiting states' compliance options but compromising grid reliability as coal-fired power plants shutter before new capacity is brought online. They have urged the agency to scrap the interim target altogether, but McCarthy and other EPA officials have effectively ruled that out.
"An interim goal for me is essential," McCarthy said today. The Clean Power Plan's 15-year horizon requires some means of ensuring that states stay on track to meet their eventual 2030 targets, McCarthy said.
McCarthy dismissed as a political stunt Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's call to states not to comply with the EPA rule (Greenwire, March 4). The Kentucky Republican has authored op-eds and letters in recent months counseling states not to submit state implementation plans for the rule, but McCarthy said state agencies showed few signs of heeding his advice. They are still meeting with EPA, she said, in an effort to understand the rule before crafting their implementation plans.
And utilities aren't showing doubt that EPA will implement the rule, McCarthy said. They also continue to engage with EPA and to factor future carbon restrictions into investment planning.
"The politics are one thing here, reality is another," she said.
McCarthy, who has spent much of this week traveling to promote EPA's Waters of the U.S. rule, said climate divisions are mostly an inside-the-Beltway matter.
"I believe there is broad public support for climate change [action], which does not always translate effectively to political support," she said. But she added that political support for actions like the Clean Power Plan is growing as the public sees an economic upside to investing in new technologies, like wind and solar energy.
McCarthy pledged that the final rule her agency unveils this summer will take grid reliability issues and energy costs into account. But at a separate event yesterday, Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Philip Moeller said the rule could wreak havoc on the grid if some form of reliability safety provision is not added to the final version.
EPA must recognize that shifting from reliance on one generation's technology to another requires time to plan, site and construct transmission and supply infrastructure, Moeller said.
"We're going to need the pipes and wires that aren't there now," he said. And the final rule must recognize that its assumption that states can run their combined-cycle natural gas power plants at 70 percent will require more supply than those plants currently need to provide power only during times of peak demand.
Moeller has proposed that FERC provide EPA with a formal proposal that would create a role for the commission going forward to ensure that reliability is maintained.
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Apr 9, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
Health care, Wall Street, the Internet—by the time President Obama leaves office, there may not be much of the economy left for his successor to take over. The better news is that his attempt to do the same to the energy industry is meeting heavy resistance in the states.
The Environmental Protection Agency is finishing a rule—expected in June or July—that requires the states to meet carbon-reduction targets by reorganizing their “production, distribution and use of electricity,” as the EPA puts it. This is an unprecedented federal usurpation of what has been a state responsibility since the invention of the modern steam turbine in the 1880s.
States are normally allowed as much as three years to comply with EPA mandates that are far less complex than this one. But the EPA will instruct them to submit implementation plans by summer 2016 and make interim progress as soon as 2020. The rule is intended to impress the greendees of the Paris climate conference this year, so Mr. Obama can announce a global climate deal.ENLARGEEPA offices in Washington, D.C. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
The plan hangs on an obscure section of the 44-year-old Clean Air Act. That law’s section 111(d) was well understood but the EPA has published a new interpretation of these several hundred words that runs 1,200 pages. No less a dean of legal liberalism than Harvard’s Larry Tribe is stunned by this attempt to nationalize U.S. electric generation.
States will be told to meet the targets using four “building blocks.” The first is uncontroversial: improving the efficiency of fossil-fuel power plants and installing pollution-control technology like smokestack scrubbers. But for the first time the EPA is also telling states to roam “outside the fence line” of power plants to force coal and eventually natural gas to shut down, mandate quotas for renewables like wind and solar, and impose energy conservation.
The problem is that the federal government has no legal power outside the fence line. Last year the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals slapped down the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s bid to claim authority over “demand response” on the electric grid.
Thus the EPA is trying to coerce the states into doing what it can’t do itself. Most will need to pass new laws or rush through new rules to comply, jammed into a single year. The EPA wants to embed policy changes that a Republican President couldn’t reverse and deny Governors and legislatures the time to think through the consequences. But some states are thinking, and they may tell the agency: No mas.
Under the cooperative federalism of the Clean Air Act, states are invited to draw up implementation plans for EPA approval. But they have no legal obligation to do so, because the feds cannot commandeer the states. The EPA can pursue a fallback federal plan if it doesn’t like what states do. But there is good reason for the states to band together, refuse to participate, and thus call the EPA’s bluff.
In particular, states would avoid making themselves complicit in dangerous behavior. Virtually everyone who understands the electric grid, from state utility commissions to the regional transmission operators, warns that the EPA’s ambitions threaten reliability. These apolitical organizations think brownouts or cascading blackouts are possible.
To take one example, the northeast blackout of 2003 cost about $13 billion, and the New York Independent Systems Operator now reports that the EPA’s reductions “cannot be sustained while maintaining reliable electric service to New York City.” It calls the plan “inherently unreasonable” that “no amount of flexibility can fix.” This is not Texas talking.
The section 111(d) rewrite will be litigated for years or decades and almost certainly resolved by the Supreme Court. The 2016 White House budget requests $52 million merely to hire lawyers to defend this single rule. It would be prudent for states to postpone cooperation until the lawsuits shake out, rather than spend billions of dollars now that may turn out to be unnecessary.
We also know from ObamaCare that the feds do not have the bandwidth to successfully reconstruct part of the economy without state participation. A mass state-by-state boycott, though risky, could limit some of the damage by overloading the EPA’s limited resources and personnel.
More to the point, the states ought to decline to lend political legitimacy to an extraordinary abuse of federal power. The EPA is not merely exercising the lawmaking that belongs to Congress but frustrating democratic accountability. If the EPA causes a blackout, then voters should understand that the EPA is the cause, not a Governor.***
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is urging Governors to wait before cooperating, and the irony is that the White House is assailing him for “interfering” with state deliberations. The truth is that the EPA is attempting to steal state sovereignty in order to dominate everything from power plants to ceiling fans. The EPA’s imperiousness is creating the case for noncooperation. States can only protect their energy futures by declining to do the EPA’s dirty work.
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States, Industry Back EPA Proposal To Retain Existing Lead Air Standards
Apr 10, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Stuart Parker
States and a lead industry group are backing EPA's proposal to retain its existing lead national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) based on a lack of any new scientific data to justify tightening the limit -- though EPA's Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee (CHPAC) has said there is a need for a stricter NAAQS.
EPA took comment through April 6 on its Jan. 5 proposal to retain the current standard of 0.15 micrograms per cubic meter (ug/m3), set in 2008. That standard was reduced tenfold from the earlier level of 1.5 ug/m3, set in 1978. The agency in its proposal says that there is not enough new scientific evidence on lead in ambient air to warrant changing the standard again, a decision backed by its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC).
In April 6 comments, the National Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA) -- representing many state and local air authorities -- notes that even though lead is known to be highly toxic and have no safe level of exposure, CASAC has endorsed the agency's position.
"Based on this conclusion by CASAC, NACAA supports EPA's proposal to retain the current lead NAAQS at this time. Further, we endorse CASAC's recommendation that research should be undertaken to address the identified data gaps and uncertainties in order to inform future reviews of the lead standards," NACAA says.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) in its March 4 comments says that its own "review of the data confirms that the current standards provide the requisite protection of human health and welfare, with an adequate margin of safety" -- the standard required for setting NAAQS under the Clean Air Act.
"The data gaps that existed when the 2008 NAAQS lead standards were established are still present today, and the TCEQ agrees that the newly available information has not substantially altered the previous understanding of the at-risk populations, concentration-response relationships, or effects from exposures lower than what was previously examined," TCEQ says. It notes that blood lead levels in children aged one to five have fallen sharply from 2000 to 2010, and only a tiny fraction of children in the United States live in areas violating the current NAAQS.
And industry organization the International Lead Zinc Research Organization, Inc. in its April 2 comments says, "Ambient air levels have continued to fall since the 2008 standard was set and moreover US EPA summarizes in the Proposed Rule the extent to which lead emissions have been reduced since 2008, when the existing standard was set. For example it has been estimated that there has been a 68% reduction from secondary lead smelting sources as well as other emission reductions associated with commercial and industrial waste. These reductions in emissions will undoubtedly serve to further reduce levels of lead in ambient air and associated levels in blood."
However, CHPAC members have previously suggested a need for EPA to tighten the NAAQS down to 0.02 ug/m3, the same level it endorsed during the last lead standard review that led to the 2008 limit.
CHPAC has argued that evidence of harms to children under the current lead standard has "become even more compelling" since the panel called for the 0.02 ug/m3 standard.
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Groups Sue EPA Over Industry Toxics Standards
Apr 10, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Peterka
A coalition of environmental groups this week filed a lawsuit against U.S. EPA alleging that the agency failed to complete required reviews of air toxics standards for 21 industry categories.
The groups' complaint charges that EPA violated the Clean Air Act by not reviewing and updating the hazardous air pollutant standards for the industries. They include chemical companies, metals and plastics operations, and municipal landfills.
The coalition behind the lawsuit is composed of local organizations based in California, Louisiana, Oregon and Ohio. They filed the lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
"Exposure to hazardous air pollutants emitted by industries covered by this lawsuit can cause serious human health effects, including reproductive disorders and cancer," said a press release yesterday by the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, one of the groups. "Many major sources of industrial air pollution are located in areas where people are already overburdened with environmental contamination."
Under the Clean Air Act's program for hazardous air pollutants, the agency is required to review standards every eight years to ensure that they're adequately protecting public health.
According to the lawsuit, EPA has missed its statutory deadlines to launch reviews for the 21 industry categories.
The industries are considered "major" sources of hazardous air pollution under the Clean Air Act. They have been found to emit several harmful pollutants, including metals, organic compounds and inorganic acid gases.
The groups have asked the court to find that EPA violated the Clean Air Act and to compel the agency to review the standards.
A representative for EPA said in an email that the agency was reviewing the lawsuit.
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Md. Researchers Link High Levels of Radon in Homes to Hydraulic Fracturing
Apr 10, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
A new study from Johns Hopkins University researchers pins elevated levels of radioactive radon in Pennsylvania homes to the spate of natural gas wells drilled across the state spurred on by hydraulic fracturing.
In the paper published this week in Environmental Health Perspective, researchers from the university's Bloomberg School of Public Health reported that radon levels have steadily risen since 2004, with the highest levels concentrated in homes near high drilling activity.
"We found things that actually didn't give us the reassurance that we thought it would when we started it," said Brian Schwartz, environmental health science professor and study leader.
Pennsylvania is already home to high levels of the clear, odorless gas, to which long-term exposure greatly increases a person's chance of cancer. The Marcellus Formation contains uranium, a highly radioactive material that produces radon when it decays.
Though researchers note there could be other factors involved, Schwartz said they found the highest levels near active drilling sites.
The study enters an already tense atmosphere as Maryland lawmakers seek to introduce a moratorium on the production method for 2½ years in the state's western portion. Maryland is also known for high radon levels in parts of the state (Baltimore Sun, April 9).-- KS
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