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(ACC Mentioned) US Senate Passes TPA Bill with Bipartisan Support
May 28, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The US Senate has voted to approve the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 (S.995), which would set in place Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) or “fast track” trade laws (CW 28 April 2015). -
(ACC Mentioned) Two US Retailers Ban Phthalates from Vinyl Flooring
May 28, 2015 | Chemical Watch
US home improvement retailers Lowe’s and Home Depot will ban the use of phthalates in vinyl flooring they sell by the end of the year. -
House Committee Formally Presents TSCA Reform Bill
May 28, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The full text of the bipartisan House bill to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has been published, and formally presented by the leaders of the Energy and Commerce Committee. -
Letter: How California Regulates Toxic Chemicals
May 28, 2015 | The New York Times
By David Roe
Endless delay in controlling toxic chemicals is so familiar that your editorial takes it for granted, urging a mere 20 chemical reviews a year instead of the Senate bill’s proposed pace of five a year. -
How Jessica Alba Built A $1 Billion Company, And $200 Million Fortune, Selling Parents Peace Of Mind
May 28, 2015 | Forbes
By Clare O'Connor
It’s Kombucha Thursday at the Santa Monica headquarters of The Honest Company, which means that groups of young, stylish workers gather at communal tables in a converted toy factory to slurp fashionable fermented tea. -
Tweaks to House Bill Aim to Clear Up Stakeholder Confusion on Cost
May 28, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
Tweaks to a House plan to update the decades-old federal law regulating toxic chemicals may address some issues raised by advocacy groups and U.S. EPA by clarifying how costs can be considered during the regulatory process. -
Chemical Safety Law Rewrite Triggers Strong Reactions
May 28, 2015 | OpenSecrets.org
By Russ Choma
Next month the House will consider a bill to overhaul how the federal government regulates toxic chemicals. -
EPA Advisors Appear To Boost Industry Approach For Assessing TMBs
May 28, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA science advisors appear to be recommending changes to EPA's draft assessment of the human health risks of three trimethylbenzenes (TMBs) along the lines of suggestions from industry representatives who have urged EPA to consider studies of mixtures containing the TMBs in addition to studies of TMBs alone. -
Obama Admin Orders Cleanup of Calif. Oil Spill
May 28, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Debra Kahn
Federal agencies yesterday imposed deadlines for pipeline operators to clean up last week's crude oil spill off the coast of California. -
EPA’s Amphibious Attack
May 28, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
While retrenching abroad, the Obama Administration remains committed to expanding Washington’s footprint at home. -
Under New EPA Rule, Clean Water Act Protections Will Cover All Active Tributaries
May 28, 2015 | LA Times
By Katie Shepherd
The Obama administration finalized new regulations Wednesday that it says will protect streams, rivers and wetlands that provide drinking water to more than 117 million Americans. -
Dems Buck Obama on Water Rule
May 28, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Dozens of congressional Democrats are joining Republicans to back legislation blocking the Obama administration’s new rule to redefine its jurisdiction over the nation’s waterways. -
Clarifying The Clean Water Act’s Reach
May 28, 2015 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jessica Morrison
After a years-long tussle with Congress and other stakeholders, the Obama Administration on May 27 issued a regulation that spells out which U.S. waterways are protected under the Clean Water Act, the federal law that controls water pollution and aims to conserve wetlands. -
Industry Asks Court to Reconsider Greenhouse Gas Decision
May 28, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jeremy P. Jacobs
More than two dozen industry groups and energy companies yesterday asked a federal appeals court to reconsider its interpretation of last year's landmark Supreme Court decision that largely upheld U.S. EPA's first round of climate change regulations. -
End the Ban On Oil Exports
May 28, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Merrill Matthews, Ph.D.
The country has just taken another step towards energy independence—which also means energy security. -
Watchdog Hits EPA on State Oversight
May 28, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not corrected deficiencies in how it oversees states’ enforcement of federal environmental laws, its internal watchdog said Thursday. -
Obama Tours Hurricane Center, Touts Climate Action Plan
May 28, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Emily Yehle
President Obama emphasized the link between severe weather and climate change today, using his annual briefing on hurricanes to highlight his 2-year-old Climate Action Plan.
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(ACC Mentioned) US Senate Passes TPA Bill with Bipartisan Support
May 28, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The US Senate has voted to approve the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 (S.995), which would set in place Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) or “fast track” trade laws (CW 28 April 2015).
First enacted in 1974, TPA establishes congressional trade agreement objectives, and allows the president to negotiate agreements and bring them to Congress for an up-or-down vote, without the opportunity for amendments.
Supporters say that TPA could expedite the completion of trade agreements, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). “This bipartisan action was a major step that will enable our country [to] complete the two most significant trade agreements in a generation,” said John Kerry, US Secretary of State.
The American Chemistry Council welcomed the Senate’s decision, saying that its TPA better fits the needs of the 21st century business environment than existing trade laws. “We must gain access to important markets, and TPA is an important administrative and substantive step to facilitate access to trading partners around the world,” said the trade group.
Other organisations disagree: “Congress should reject any fast track legislation that allows expedited approval for trade agreements that can undercut our public health and environmental safeguards,” says National Resource Defence Council executive director, Peter Lehner. The group cautions that new trade agreements could undermine existing US policies, such as chemical regulations and food safety measures.
Fourteen Democrats voted in favour of the bill, which passed the Senate with a 62-37 majority. The bill will next move to the House.
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(ACC Mentioned) Two US Retailers Ban Phthalates from Vinyl Flooring
May 28, 2015 | Chemical Watch
US home improvement retailers Lowe’s and Home Depot will ban the use of phthalates in vinyl flooring they sell by the end of the year.
Home Depot, which announced its commitment in April, said the pledge is the result of alternatives becoming available on the market. “[Our] existing products already comply with all laws, but we think this is an alternative our customers will appreciate,” said spokesman Stephen Holmes. However, he did not say which alternatives are being used.
The company has been working on its policy with US NGO Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families since spring 2014.
Mr Holmes said Home Depot will phase out the chemicals by “simply communicating with its suppliers”.
Lowe’s, which announced the same commitment this month, said it is unable to provide details on its phase out for “competitive reasons”. However, a spokesperson said more than 90% of the virgin vinyl flooring it currently sells is phthalate-free and it is on target to meet its goal.
Lowe’s commitment comes weeks after a report by NGO HealthyStuff.org said over half [38] of 65 flooring tiles from five retailers, which it tested, including Lowe's, contained phthalates. The other retailers were Ace Hardware, build.com, Lumber Liquidators and Menards.
However, the American Chemistry Council said the scientific evidence does not exist to support the call to remove phthalates from vinyl flooring. “The report does not look at actual exposure to phthalates, but instead claims that their mere presence in flooring is enough to cause a long list of negative health effects,” the ACC said.
Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families said phthalates are harmful to children’s health and are commonly found in flooring at levels that exceed children’s product standards, set by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The NGO's Mind the Store campaign director, Mike Schade, said in flooring tiles they can migrate to children playing on the ground and have also been found in pregnant women.
There are no bans on any phthalates in flooring in the US. Under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), which was enacted in 2008, three phthalates have been banned in toys:di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP);dibutyl pththalate (DBP); andbutyl benzyl phthalate (BBP).
Earlier this year, the CPSC proposed to permanently ban the use of another five phthalates in children's toys and childcare articles (CW 12 January 2015).
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House Committee Formally Presents TSCA Reform Bill
May 28, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The full text of the bipartisan House bill to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has been published, and formally presented by the leaders of the Energy and Commerce Committee.
The TSCA Modernization Act (HR 2576) is sponsored by Environment and Economy subcommittee chairman John Shimkus (R-Illinois), subcommittee ranking member Paul Tonko (D-New York), full committee chairman Fred Upton (R-Michigan) and full committee ranking member Frank Pallone (D-New Jersey).
The subcommittee advanced a draft of the bill on the 14 May, after a unanimous vote (CW 15 May 2015).
A Senate TSCA reform bill with bipartisan support, the Frank R Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (S 697) was passed by the Environment and Public Works Committee in April and is awaiting time on the Senate floor (CW 29 April 2015).
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Letter: How California Regulates Toxic Chemicals
May 28, 2015 | The New York Times
By David Roe
To the Editor:
Re “Stronger Regulation of Toxic Chemicals” (editorial, May 25):
Endless delay in controlling toxic chemicals is so familiar that your editorial takes it for granted, urging a mere 20 chemical reviews a year instead of the Senate bill’s proposed pace of five a year. But what even reformers ignore is the 300-plus chemicals that California regulators managed to review — and set enforceable limits on — at a pace of over 100 chemicals per year, once the right incentives were put in place by a1986 ballot initiative.
Most of those same chemicals, ones causing cancer or birth defects, are still stuck in the Environmental Protection Agency waiting line a quarter-century later. But in California, they have been effectively regulated already, using the same science that federal laws like the Toxic Substances Control Act call for. In other words, the E.P.A. could make a hundred years’ worth of progress in safety assessments of high-priority chemicals just by being allowed to take a copying machine out to Sacramento.
Delay may be the chemical companies’ preference, but no one should assume it is inevitable or necessary, or that the regulatory homework is too demanding.
DAVID ROE
Oakland, Calif.
The writer, a former attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, was the principal author of Proposition 65 in California, the ballot initiative he refers to.
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How Jessica Alba Built A $1 Billion Company, And $200 Million Fortune, Selling Parents Peace Of Mind
May 28, 2015 | Forbes
By Clare O'Connor
It’s Kombucha Thursday at the Santa Monica headquarters of The Honest Company, which means that groups of young, stylish workers gather at communal tables in a converted toy factory to slurp fashionable fermented tea. Jessica Alba, Hollywood star and company cofounder, sits in the adjacent room. She’ll join her troops shortly, but for now she’s transfixed by a box of tampons that looks more like it holds an expensive candle than Kotex. “Dope!” she declares, approvingly. “We’re using all-organic cotton and plant-based polymer and a bio-plastic applicator,” says the 34-year-old actress earnestly, contrasting that with the plastic content of drugstore tampons and their effect on hormones. Honest’s new feminine care line launches in July. Alba can go similarly deep on almost all of The Honest Company’s 120 products, whether the ingredients in a new organic beeswax sunscreen or the clever insulation pocket hidden inside a chic $170 vegan-leather diaper bag. Yes, she has a pretty face — it seems as if every men’s magazine has named her the most beautiful woman in the world at some point — but it’s the details from which great fortunes stem. Details and hard work. Alba laughs about how she once worked an 86-hour week as the star of James Cameron’s sci-fi TV series, Dark Angel — the series that launched her career. Now, she says, she spends those 86 hours at a vintage teal blue desk, overseeing marketing and brand development for a company that feeds a growing demand for safe, nontoxic products, particularly among young helicopter parents who treat children — and what goes near or inside them — like porcelain. Safety sells. The Honest Company has experienced an absurd level of growth. In 2012, its first year selling products, it hit $10 million in revenue. By last year it was $150 million, and industry insiders are predicting over $250 million this year. The company is focused on growth over profits, boasting a current valuation to match: $1 billion. That figure means Alba, who owns between 15% and 20% of the company, according to a source with knowledge of her investment, is sitting on a fortune of $200 million. She’s on her way to earning a spot on FORBES’ new ranking of America’s Richest Self-Made Women, just $50 million shy of Beyoncé and Judge Judy, who are tied at number 49. The only other two celebrities to make the inaugural list are Oprah and Madonna. The difference is that foursome made their money in their core field, media and music. Alba, at a young age, has done it in a completely unrelated industry. But ask Alba and she’ll tell you she and Honest are just getting started. “If we really want to make a difference in the world and people’s health, it’s billions and billions of dollars, not just one,” she says, surveying the open-plan company floor from a conference room above its wooden rafters.
Like most great ideas, The Honest Company was inspired by a need that wasn’t being filled. In 2008 Alba was newly engaged to Internet entrepreneur Cash Warren and pregnant with their first child. At a baby shower thrown by family and friends, she remembers her mother advising her to use baby detergent to prewash the piles of onesies she’d received as gifts. She used a mainstream brand and immediately broke out into ugly red welts, harkening back to a childhood spent in and out of emergency rooms and doctors’ offices. “She was the most sensitive child,” remembers her mother, Cathy Alba, who wasn’t referring to her daughter’s emotional well-being. Raised on Air Force bases in such places as Biloxi, Miss. and Del Rio, Tex., Jessica’s bad allergies and chronic asthma made her predisposed to pneumonia, which she contracted about twice a year, often leading to two-week hospital stints. Now covered in hives again — and wary of having her baby relive her own experience — Alba spent late nights on Google and Wikipedia researching the contents not just of the offending detergent but also of everything in her bathroom cabinet and under her kitchen sink. “I was like, ‘How can this be safe for babies if I’m having this type of reaction?’” she says. What she found terrified her: petrochemicals, formaldehydes and flame retardants in everyday household products from floor cleaners to mattresses. Some were listed on the ingredients label plain as day, with others disguised under the catchall of “fragrance,” which is entirely legal. Full Coverage: America’s Richest Self-Made Women Armed with Internet printouts and fear for the health of her unborn child, Alba first tried to shop around the problem but grew irritated trying to find natural and eco-friendly products that weren’t either extortionate or seemingly designed for yurt-dwelling vegan yogis. Or both. “I felt like my needs weren’t being met as a modern person,” she says. “I want beautiful design like everybody else. But it shouldn’t be premium-priced, and it should, of course, be safe.” She tried making her own cleaning products out of baking soda, vinegar and essential oils but wound up with something closer to salad dressing. So when she came across Christopher Gavigan, who for seven years led a nonprofit called Healthy Child Healthy World, she, like most new mothers, asked him what to buy. “They don’t want to be that investigatory weekend toxicologist,” says Gavigan. “They just want someone to hold their hand.” He explained that several companies with “green” credentials like Vermont-based Seventh Generation were doing good work across some product categories, but there was no one umbrella brand positioning itself as the go-to for all things eco-friendly, safe and nontoxic. A lightbulb went off for both of them. Pretty soon Alba and Gavigan were polishing off wine on nights and weekends, cooking up a business plan and buying up Web domain names with the word “honest” in them. Through her husband, she met Web entrepreneur Brian Lee, a trained attorney who had hit it big with LegalZoom.com, an online legal-documentation service he cofounded with Robert Shapiro of O.J. Simpson infamy. “I made some introductions for her and said good luck,” says Lee, who looked at Alba’s 50-page PowerPoint in 2009 but didn’t bite. He says now he was simply tied up launching subscription shoe site ShoeDazzle.com with then partner Kim Kardashian. Meanwhile, Alba was busy with her Hollywood career, starring in the likes of Valentine’s Day, Little Fockers and Machete, all of which premiered in 2010.
Alba kept Gavigan on her payroll as a consultant. By 2011 she had turned herself into an expert on consumer products and traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby for updated legislation. She was — and is — particularly focused on reforming the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, which has allowed more than 80,000 chemicals to remain in household products untested. Only five are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency; just 11 are banned from consumer goods. (In Europe that figure is more than 1,300.) “Enough people have to get sick or die from a certain ingredient or chemical before it’s pulled from the marketplace,” says Alba.
For Alba’s husband, Cash Warren, it was a lesson in climbing a steep learning curve. “I didn’t know much about all the chemicals that were in our consumer products, so she educated me on this epidemic,” he says. “It felt massive, so I was a little reserved at first. She jumped into it headfirst.”
She went back to Brian Lee in 2011 armed with data on the rise of childhood diseases and a much more concise ten-page pitch deck. Lee’s mind had changed — not coincidentally, he had recently become horrified when his young son was banned from bringing that classic, all-American lunch the PB&J sandwich to nursery school. Too many kids had severe nut allergies. “Autism, Tourette’s, chronic allergies and asthmas and celiac disease — all of this stuff is on the rise,” Lee says. “I almost had this moment of awakening. Why aren’t we doing something about this?”
Lee got on board with Alba and Gavigan that year, bringing with him a fourth cofounder in Sean Kane, who’d spent a decade selling discount products at Pricegrabber.com. Lee and Alba seeded their new startup to the tune of about $6 million, with another investor, according to a source close to the deal. (The company would not comment on initial investments or its founders’ current personal stakes.) The group called their new firm The Honest Company, as a nod to its values and transparent ingredients.
ONE WALL OF THE HONEST Company’s L.A. office showroom best represents its roots. On it you’ll find rows and rows of diapers, mounted, matted and framed. Each has a whimsical design on the butt. There’s one with a purple-and-green leopard print; there are juicy pink strawberries and a stars-and-stripes print perfect for baby’s first Fourth of July.
These are the diapers that gave The Honest Company its start and indeed still account for a large proportion of sales: About 75% of revenues still comes from online commerce, and the majority of that is from the company’s $79.95 monthly bundles of diapers and wipes.
During Alba’s days scouring supermarkets for safe baby detergent, she often wondered why no one in the retail or fashion world had yet come up with seasonal designs for diapers. “I kind of want them to be cute,” she says. “And the natural diapers: Why do they have to look like your baby’s wearing a brown bag?”
After having her first daughter, Honor, in the summer of 2008 (in 2012 she had another daughter, Haven), Alba also found herself routinely running out of diapers in the middle of the night. She was toying with the idea of a subscription service for nontoxic household essentials — cleaning products, maybe diapers, too. But this was long before monthly cosmetics-sampling startup Birchbox launched, and that business model didn’t really exist.
Creating safe, chemical-free, nontoxic consumer goods from scratch without the infrastructure of, say, a Procter & Gamble or a Kimberly-Clark was a prospect that would cost way more than even the $6 million seed fund. So they went looking to get venture capital into the diaper business. “That’s the only thing we pitched,” says Lee. “It was very strategic as we knew that was the way into your home.”
Lee was a known quantity among the venture capital firms of Palo Alto. Even so, The Honest Company took a gamble approaching backers without having made even a dollar of revenue. “They hadn’t shipped yet when we invested, so it was a leap of faith we don’t normally take in e-commerce businesses,” says Neil Sequeira, a managing director at General Catalyst Partners.
He was a big believer in online-only models, having backed pioneering eyeglasses e-tailer Warby Parker. He also liked the subscription aspect of the business: It took much of the pain — and expense — out of acquiring new customers. “Assuming they like it, the big Super Bowl ads and stuff become less important,” he says. Early on Honest relied on Facebook for efficient advertising instead of traditional campaigns. General Catalyst joined Lightspeed Venture Partners and Institutional Venture Partners in a 2012 Series A that raised $27 million.
That turned out to be just the start. As the diaper business proved its efficacy, Alba and her team — Lee serves as the CEO — reverted to the original concept: a single brand that carried its credibility across all products in the nontoxic universe. Raising a total of $127 million through August 2014, The Honest Company has been able to create more products in different categories — dish soap, kitchen cleaner, detergent, nipple balm, multivitamins and even nursery furniture.
Lee, Alba and their team intended for The Honest Company to remain online, where its revenues grew steadily thanks in part to the actress “trying to yell from the rooftops,” as she describes her marketing efforts. (She has over 5 million Instagram followers on her own account.)
But almost as soon as they launched, high-end mommy-and-baby boutiques with cutesy names (The Pump Station in west L.A. and The Upper Breast Side in Manhattan) cottoned on to The Honest Company, asking whether Lee and Alba had considered selling the brand in brick-and-mortar stores. Stock in these mom-and-pop shops sold out so quickly that when Costco came calling in 2013 wanting to sell baby shampoo in family-size packs, the Honest team relented. Since then Whole Foods, Nordstrom, Buy Buy Baby, Destination Maternity and even discount behemoth Target have started selling The Honest Company’s wares.
Two things stand out on their short-term agenda. First, international expansion. Honest products will debut in South Korea later this year and in China possibly in 2016. And then, most likely next year, a public offering, according to people familiar with the company. Such a move provides a war chest, though that doesn’t seem to be an issue at present. “The company’s outperforming,” says General Catalyst’s Neil Sequeira. “They have pretty much unlimited access to capital and a very strong balance sheet.” Liquidity, then, would seem to be the key driver.
With a big payday in the offing, Alba remains an active presence, much to the delight of her venture capital backers, who had built-in celebrity endorsement from a cofounder. “I think they realized they got a lot of bang for their buck,” Lee says. Alba still makes the occasional film, but she makes quick work of it. She shot her scenes for the upcoming movie adaptation of hit series Entourage in three hours. In 2016 she’ll appear in a sequel to crime-caper mainstay Jason Statham’s The Mechanic. “It took ten days in November and ten days in January, and I got to be in a fun action movie,” she smiles.
Such efficiency is important when you have 130 customer service representatives to train in all things Honest. All told, there are now 350 employees at two offices.
While Alba doesn’t have the time to travel the country educating retailers, she now has the next best person on her staff: her mother. A year ago Cathy Alba came on board at The Honest Company, spending two weeks a month telling store managers at Whole Foods and Buy Buy Baby outposts across the country about her daughter’s struggles with childhood illnesses. Cathy came out of retirement to take the gig. “I’m very much like Jessica,” she says. “All or nothing.”
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Tweaks to House Bill Aim to Clear Up Stakeholder Confusion on Cost
May 28, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
Tweaks to a House plan to update the decades-old federal law regulating toxic chemicals may address some issues raised by advocacy groups and U.S. EPA by clarifying how costs can be considered during the regulatory process.
A committee aide characterized the change as a technical amendment that simply clarified existing language in the bill. Previously, the draft bill to update the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 specified that during the process of evaluating a chemical's risk, the agency is to include "information that is relevant to specific risks of injury to health or the environment and information on potentially exposed subpopulations, but not including information on cost and other factors not directly related to health or the environment."
Lawmakers formally introduced the bill, H.R. 2576 or the "TSCA Modernization Act," this week and recently made the new language available.
The language excluding consideration of cost now has its own subparagraph and was clarified to read that the agency may "not include information on cost and other factors not directly related to health or the environment."
The draft bill had also specified in a different section that EPA "shall not consider costs or other non-risk factors when deciding whether to initiate a rulemaking," though not in the same area where the initial evaluation process is described.
That prompted confusion among stakeholders and U.S. EPA over what role cost would play. Many groups are concerned that considering cost early in the process will hamper the agency's ability to take action on chemicals suspected of causing harm.
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The new language has "clearly improved," said Andy Igrejas, the director of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families.
However, Igrejas said, additional portions of the bill are vague or could potentially burden the agency. For example, requirements that EPA determine regulations to manage the risk of a chemical found harmful are "cost-effective," except if the agency "determines that additional or different requirements ... are necessary to protect against the identified risk," are confusing because "cost-effective" is not defined, Igrejas said.
EPA also must be given the authority to refuse or manage industry-requested chemical assessments, Igrejas said. Under current legislative language, the agency would not have the authority to refuse industry-initiated assessments. While chemical companies would have to fund these assessments, failing to grant EPA discretion on them could burden the agency or distract it from serving the public, Igrejas said.
"If companies came forward with 500 requests in the first year, would EPA have to finish all of them within three years?" Igrejas asked. "I think the plain reading of the bill seems to say yes."
Jim Jones, assistant administrator in EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, also warned about the potential burden of the industry-initiated assessments at a hearing last month. He said that the language "would likely lead to EPA focusing the majority of its limited risk evaluation resources on completing evaluations for chemical substances requested by industry" (E&E Daily, April 15).
The sponsor of the House legislation, Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), said last week that the bill could come before the Energy and Commerce Committee for a markup as soon as next week (E&ENews PM, May 21). He also said he wanted to avoid making additional changes to the legislation.
"You can only screw it up now," Shimkus said. "We're at a high-water mark. You start tinkering with it, things could fall apart."
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Chemical Safety Law Rewrite Triggers Strong Reactions
May 28, 2015 | OpenSecrets.org
By Russ Choma
Next month the House will consider a bill to overhaul how the federal government regulates toxic chemicals. That in itself is a milestone: Despite bipartisan support for the idea, the process has been long and tortured, complicated by millions in lobbying and campaign donations. And the fight may be far from over.For more on chemical safety and regulation, check out our issue profile on the chemical industry.
Lawmakers on both sides wield environmental issues like climate change and pipeline construction as ideological axes. But environmental and health advocates and industry backers alike agree that the regulatory regime for chemical safety needs a rewrite — though what that should look like is a matter of dispute — and each successive news story involving toxics makes the need more urgent. Nearly 40 years after the original legislation in this area, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), was passed, practically no chemicals have been banned or regulated, and chemical manufacturers are dealing with an array of state laws passed because so little action was occurring at the federal level. A new issue profile from the Center for Responsive Politics aims to lay out some of the background of this contentious battle.
The latest effort is the TSCA Modernization Act, which, among other things, would give EPA enhanced authority to require testing of new and existing chemicals and make it harder for states to set tougher standards. A similar provision passed the Senate earlier this year, and the bill flew out of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing with unanimous support earlier this month. It still faces a hearing with the full committee, which is expected early next month, followed by consideration by the full House, which supporters hope will happen by the end of June.
But the bill is far from done, as more amendments and reconciliation with the Senate’s version still lie ahead. And similar bills with promising bipartisan support have failed in each of the last several Congresses. There’s a wide array of interests involved, and the tremendous pressure the chemical industry can bring which can sway even stalwart opponents.
One case in point may be the transformation that former Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M) underwent in his last years in Congress. Udall built his reputation as a fierce environmentalist, but surprised many when he took a leading role in pushing legislation similar to the TSCA Modernization Act last Congress — legislation that was strongly endorsed by the chemical industry itself. Coincidentally or not, Udall’s transformation into someone who could work with the industry came at a point in his career when the industry suddenly began donating to his campaign committee.
Between 1997 and 2013, Udall received just $3,000 from the chemical industry, according to OpenSecrets.org data, but in the last election cycle, he raised more than $49,000 from these companies.
The chemical industry is hardly monolithic, but it is gigantic, at least in Washington’s influence world. In 2014, the industry spent more than $64.7 million lobbying Washington and in the two-year 2014 election cycle spent more than $12 million ondonations to campaigns, PACs and parties. The new OpenSecrets.org issue profileon the battle to reform TSCA includes more detailed information on the industry’s biggest players and a timeline of the ongoing effort to rewrite the toxic chemical rules.
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EPA Advisors Appear To Boost Industry Approach For Assessing TMBs
May 28, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA science advisors appear to be recommending changes to EPA's draft assessment of the human health risks of three trimethylbenzenes (TMBs) along the lines of suggestions from industry representatives who have urged EPA to consider studies of mixtures containing the TMBs in addition to studies of TMBs alone.
The latest draft of the Science Advisory Board (SAB) report reviewing the TMBs Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment indicates that the panel has reached a consensus decision on the C9 mixtures studies, and the recommendations suggest EPA reassess the studies, consider how they might fill data gaps, or better explain why they are not useful.
Along with draft TMB report, SAB also released May 7 draft reports on its reviews of the agency's ammonia andethylene oxide (EtO) IRIS assessments. They are the first three draft IRIS assessments to be reviewed by a new sub-panel of the SAB dedicated exclusively to peer reviewing IRIS assessments and advising the program.
Each report will be peer reviewed by the Chartered SAB during a conference call scheduled for June 8. Once the Chartered SAB approves the reports, they will be transmitted to the administrator in final form.
SAB panelists had struggled to reach consensus on the TMBs assessment, with some members accepting EPA's explanation for why it chose to exclude toxicological studies of mixtures of a larger group of chemicals containing the TMBs, known as the C9 aromatic hydrocarbon, or C9 fraction, and others arguing that the mixtures studies could fill important data gaps about the chemicals' toxicities, particularly on important effects such as neurotoxicity.
But the new draft report backs reassessing the studies of TMBs mixtures, noting that "EPA could potentially utilize data" from these studies to inform data gaps on "the lack of a developmental neurotoxicity study, the lack of a multi-generational reproduction study and the lack of a chronic noncancer (neurotoxicity) study."
Furthermore, the SAB report suggests that EPA could use the mixture studies to reconsider its draft risk estimates. As estimates of non-cancer risk, these calculations include uncertainty factors of as much as 10-fold which are multiplied onto the calculation at the end in an effort to address unknown factors in the risk assessment, such as a very small database of toxicity information, differences between humans, or between humans and lab animals, or other issues.
The report says the mixtures studies could help EPA "determine whether the database uncertainty factor (now 3 fold) and the subchronic to chronic uncertainty factor (now 10 fold) should be modified on this basis. Further, discussion of the existing C-9 mixtures studies should be brought into the main document at this juncture by describing their strengths and weaknesses and relevance to the setting of [non-cancer risk levels] for individual TMB isomers, with particular emphasis on whether they provide evidence to inform the aforementioned data gaps."
SAB's Recommendations
SAB tempers its recommendations by adding that "If data for individual alkybenzenes (toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, styrene) or from the C-9 mixtures studies are used by USEPA to modify the assignment of uncertainty factors, a comparative discussion would be needed to describe similarities and differences between the surrogate chemical (or mixture) and the TMBs and whether the extrapolation across chemicals reduces overall uncertainty or merely reduces uncertainty in one area (e.g., subchronic to chronic extrapolation) only to add back a different type of uncertainty (extrapolation across chemicals)."
Industry representatives throughout drafting and review of the TMB assessment have urged EPA to use the mixture studies to calculate the TMBs' risks. Last fall, a toxicologist with ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences urged SAB members to consider a recent risk estimate of the C9 group by EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP), which is significantly less strict than the draft IRIS numbers for the TMBs.
OPP is providing a reference dose (RfD) of 1.5 milligrams per kilogram bodyweight per day (mg/kg/day), "a value that is at least 2 orders of magnitude higher than the values proposed in the IRIS assessment of TMB," the ExxonMobil toxicologist, David Adenuga, said, quoting OPP's final rule exempting complex C9 aromatic hydrocarbon inert ingredients from the general requirement that the agency establish a tolerance for a safe level of residue that can remain on food products post-application. OPP issued the rule last September.
An RfD is the maximum amount EPA estimates an adult can ingest daily over a lifetime without experiencing related adverse health effects. By contrast, the draft IRIS assessment includes an RfD for each of the three isomers of 0.02 mg/kg/day. EPA's IRIS staff also calculated a reference concentration (RfC), an analogous value for inhalation of 0.05 milligrams per cubic meter of air (mg/m^3).
In the draft IRIS assessment, staff used data on one of the isomers to extrapolate and assess the risks of the other isomers. But IRIS staff also deemed it inappropriate to use studies of a larger group of chemicals containing TMBs, the C9 aromatic hydrocarbon, in the assessments.
"To conclude, we believe that there is a need to return to the drawing board to understand why there is such a huge disparity in the EPA IRIS and EPA/OPP assessments of practically the same substances," Adenuga said.
The TMBs, ammonia and EtO assessments are the first to be reviewed by the Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee (CAAC), a new SAB panel EPA created as part of its efforts to improve the scientific quality, rigor and transparency of the IRIS program following a harsh review from the National Academy of Sciences in its 2011 review of the agency's draft IRIS assessment of formaldehyde.
As a result, EPA in its charge questions asked the CAAC panels that reviewed the IRIS assessments of TMBs and ammonia to opine on EPA's response to the NAS' recommendations. EPA did not include this charge question for the EtO review, which is a second peer review of this assessment after a 2007 SAB committee urged EPA to perform extensive additional modeling of cancer risks in that assessment.
Risk Assessments
Both the ammonia and TMBs assessments praise the efforts that EPA has made to address NAS recommendations but note that they anticipate and expect more changes to how the influential assessments are produced. For example, the TMBs report comments extensively on the preamble that EPA has added at the beginning of all IRIS assessments since the NAS recommendations were released, with the intent of explaining the policies that IRIS assessments follow. The CAAC TMBs review panel warns EPA to be careful to cite existing guidance and not to create new policy in its summary in the preamble.
"Some precepts articulated in the Preamble appear to the SAB as not consistent with existing EPA guidance or announced policy. This raises questions about whether the agency is changing policy from established guidance and whether such changes have been appropriately vetted, and implemented." As examples, the report points to a line in the preamble that says "negative genetic toxicity studies carry less weight than positive ones" and another line that says "funding source can downgrade the credibility of studies."
As another example, the CAAC ammonia panel comments on EPA's search and evaluation of critical studies, an area where NAS has recommended that EPA adopt a more systematic and transparent approach. The panel applauded EPA for demonstrating "significant strides toward the goals outlined by the NRC. However gaps exist. For example, description of study quality remains incomplete. It would be useful to develop overall qualifiers to the studies in the summary tables as per [NAS'] recommendations. Some of the gaps identified during this review may well be because, despite the many policies and procedures outlined in the Preamble, existing EPA procedures and policies do not adequately cover all necessary contingencies. While in some circumstances professional expert judgment is needed, a systematic approach should be adopted to provide more transparency and clarity."
The TMBs assessment indicates that the CAAC anticipates a broader review of the program and its progress toward the NAS goals after completing these first three assessments. "The SAB anticipates that after several IRIS reviews are completed, the [CAAC] will compare the reviews to provide the agency, through the Chartered SAB, with advice and comments on the agency's progress to enhance IRIS assessments."
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Obama Admin Orders Cleanup of Calif. Oil Spill
May 28, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Debra Kahn
Federal agencies yesterday imposed deadlines for pipeline operators to clean up last week's crude oil spill off the coast of California.
U.S. EPA and the Coast Guard jointly ordered Plains All American Pipeline to submit a plan by June 6 to clean up the oil and take environmental samples, following the May 19 spill near Santa Barbara. The release of oil from an onshore pipeline sent 105,000 barrels of crude onto Refugio State Beach, with about 21,000 gallons of that making its way to the Pacific Ocean -- the largest coastal spill in California in 25 years.
Under the order, Plains will have to clean up all oil contamination at the spill site and at other affected areas and will have to submit a plan to measure pollution in air, water, rocks and soil.
Three dolphins, five sea lions and 13 birds have died so far as a result of the spill, state officials said earlier this week (Greenwire, May 27).
"While this defines Plains Pipeline as the responsible party, federal and state agencies will continue to work alongside the responsible party and maintain our priority of safety of the public, personnel and the environment," said federal coordinator Capt. Jennifer Williams.
Nearly 1,000 people are working on the cleanup, representing eight state and federal agencies as well as Plains Pipeline. They have skimmed 10,060 gallons of oily water from the ocean, as well as several thousand cubic yards of sand, soil and vegetation, the federal agencies said yesterday.
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Plains officials said at a press conference yesterday that they had cleaned up most of the oil visible on the ocean surface but that droplets continue to emerge from wave and tidal movements. Divers have also found several underwater pockets of oil about 150 yards east of the beach. Plains is working with agencies to figure out how to collect the underwater oil, the largest deposit of which is the size of a pillow.
Plains officials noted that some of the oil on the surface comes from natural oil seeps, rather than the spill, and said they are working with federal agencies to determine whether any of the underwater oil is also from natural seeps.
They also said they were working with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to excavate the broken section of the 24-inch pipeline and remove oiled soil from underneath the pipe. They said it was too early to speculate on the cause of the pipeline rupture.
"We know that the community is interested in the cause, but we are not in a position to discuss what the pipe looks like -- or anything about the affected piece of pipe -- until after the investigation is completed," said Plains' senior director of safety and security, Patrick Hodgins.
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May 28, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
While retrenching abroad, the Obama Administration remains committed to expanding Washington’s footprint at home. Behold the Environmental Protection Agency’s rewrite Wednesday of the Clean Water Act that extends federal jurisdiction over tens of millions of acres of private land.
The Clean Water Act limits the federal government to regulating the “navigable waters of the United States” like the Colorado River or Lake Michigan. In 1986 the EPA expanded that definition to seize jurisdiction over tributaries and adjacent wetlands. Now it is extending federal control over just about any creek, pond, prairie pothole or muddy farm field that EPA says has a “significant nexus” to a navigable waterway.
The agency defines waters as “significant” if they are “located in whole or in part within 100 feet of the ordinary high water mark,” or, alternatively, within the 100-year floodplain and 1,500 feet of the high water mark of waters already under the government’s jurisdiction. That’s already a lot of water, but there’s more.
The EPA acknowledges that the “science available today does not establish that waters beyond those defined as ‘adjacent’” to these “significant” waters should be regulated. But forget science. The agency says its “experience and expertise” show there are “many” other waters that could have a significant downstream effect. Thus the EPA establishes an additional standard for significance that covers just about anything that’s wet.
So the new rule says the feds can also regulate waters within the 100-year floodplain and 4,000 feet of their claimed bailiwick or land features like prairie potholes and vernal pools that “in combination” have a significant effect. A pothole on farmer Dan’s land may not affect downstream waters, but the EPA could still regulate Dan’s pothole if regulators determine that prairie potholes collectively do.
The sad irony is that the EPA is exploiting an opening created by a Supreme Court case that overturned a federal regulatory abuse. In its 4-1-4 split ruling in Rapanos v. U.S. in 2006, the Army Corps of Engineers had sought to throw a Michigan landowner in prison because he didn’t obtain permits to move dirt on a sometimes-saturated piece of land, which was connected to a drain, which ran into a shallow creek, which flowed into the Kawkawlin River, which emptied into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron.
In a sharp rebuke, Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, explained that “waters of the United States” could not possibly apply to the man’s land that was 11 to 20 miles away from the nearest “navigable” waterway.
The waggish Justice Scalia noted that the Corps’s expansive reading of “waters of the United States” could extend to “the entire land area of the United States,” which “lies in some drainage basin, and an endless network of visible channels furrows the entire surface, containing water ephemerally wherever the rain falls.” He shouldn’t have suggested the idea.
Loath to set a limiting principle, Justice Anthony Kennedy argued that federal agencies could regulate wetlands on a “case-by-case basis” with a “significant nexus” to navigable waterways. That is, wetlands which “either alone or in combination with similarly situated lands in the region, significantly affect the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of other covered waters more readily understood as ‘navigable.’”
Justice Kennedy’s muddled opinion deprived lower courts and property owners of clarity to navigate the Clean Water Act, but it gave the EPA an opening as wide as the Mississippi to regulate. The EPA notes that under “current regulations and practice following these recent decisions, almost all waters and wetlands across the country theoretically could be subject to a case-specific jurisdictional determination.”
As Justice Scalia predicted, Justice Kennedy’s opinion tipped “a wink at the agency, inviting it to try its same expansive reading again.” And so EPA has, though now with Justice Kennedy’s opinion as legal cover. This will make it harder for property owners to challenge the government in court.
The new rule is stirring opposition among farmers, manufacturers, home builders and energy companies that claim it could deny them productive use of their property. This would seem to violate the Constitution’s takings clause. In March, five Democratic Senators supported a nonbinding amendment to block the EPA’s rule-making. Earlier this month, 24 House Democrats joined 237 Republicans by voting to pre-empt the land-water grab.
Congress should try to use its regulatory review powers to overturn the new rule, forcing Members to show whose side they’re on—the average landowner’s or the Washington water police.
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Under New EPA Rule, Clean Water Act Protections Will Cover All Active Tributaries
May 28, 2015 | LA Times
By Katie Shepherd
The Obama administration finalized new regulations Wednesday that it says will protect streams, rivers and wetlands that provide drinking water to more than 117 million Americans.
The Clean Water Rule, drafted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, extends the Clean Water Act’s protections to all tributaries with signs of flowing water. These streams and wetlands can have a crucial effect on the health of downstream waters, agency officials say. For “drinking water to be clean, the streams and wetlands that feed them need to be clean too,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a statement.
Environmental groups applauded the changes, which have been opposed by farm groups, land developers and others who warned they would extend federal regulations onto inland wetlands and ponds that go well beyond the traditional scope of federal oversight .
“President Obama heeded the call of sound science and public input in finalizing this rule,” Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, an environmental advocacy group, said in a statement.
The Sierra Club also backed the new rule. “We think this is an easy decision for anyone who is not in the pocket of big polluters,” Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement.
The new regulations are due to take effect 60 days after publication, but critics in Congress have vowed to block them, and opponents have said they are planning litigation to challenge many of their provisions.
The American Farm Bureau, in a letter to Congress, said the new regulations created confusion and risk by providing too much authority to regulate a variety of areas where rainwater collects.
Republicans in Congress also have expressed concerns. “The administration’s decree to unilaterally expand federal authority is a raw and tyrannical power grab that will crush jobs,” House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said in a statement.
The administration said the move was designed to clarify ambiguities in the Clean Water Act. The uncertainty stems from a 2006 Supreme Court decision that concluded the act protects against illegal discharges into streams and wetlands that connect to navigable waters, but that did not define what qualified as a connection.
Before the new rule, up to 60% of American streams and millions of acres of wetlands were potentially overlooked by the Clean Water Act, EPA officials say. One in three Americans and more than 90% of Los Angeles County residents use drinking water affected by these sources that lacked clear protection from pollution before the rule change, according to the agency.
The new regulations are expected to have a significant effect in California.
They will provide full protection for the first time, for example, to a network of vernal pools that lie along much of the coast. While the Los Angeles River fell under the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act, its tributaries are now also covered.
The new rule as adopted appears to alleviate many of the concerns expressed by California water agencies that the regulations would impose overly broad restrictions over agricultural ditches, stormwater retention basins, recycled water centers and constructed wetlands. Most of those waterways, EPA officials said, are not covered in the final rule.
But Kari Fisher, an environmental attorney for the California Farm Bureau Federation, said the organization was studying the new rule to make sure.
“We … remain concerned with the rule and its potential impact on California farmers and ranchers. As [originally] proposed, the rule would have improperly extended federal regulation to isolated waters such as puddles and ditches, and it would have regulated land use under the guise of regulating water,” she said in a statement.
She said the group had not yet had time to determine how extensively the final rule differed from what was initially proposed. “Unless there are fundamental changes, we’ll remain opposed. We continue to support efforts in Congress to overturn the rule,” she said.
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May 28, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Dozens of congressional Democrats are joining Republicans to back legislation blocking the Obama administration’s new rule to redefine its jurisdiction over the nation’s waterways.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers made the regulation final Wednesday in an attempt to clarify that small streams, wetlands, headwaters and tributaries are covered by the Clean Water Act and the rules that go along with it.
Opponents labeled the rule as a massive “power grab” by the Obama administration that could give federal officials authority over every creek and puddle.
Three moderate Democrats in the Senate and 24 in the House have joined the GOP in opposition, but leave them far from the two-thirds majorities they would need for a veto-proof vote to overturn the rule.
But their support offers a bipartisan vote against the water regulation if they decided to use the Congressional Review Act or another legislative strategy to show opposition to Obama’s action.
Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Joe Donnelly (Ind.) signed on this month with Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and 26 other Republicans as co-sponsors of the Federal Water Quality Protection Act. Heitkamp, Manchin and Donnelly are often skeptics of the Obama administration’s environmental agenda.
In rolling out the final rule Wednesday, the administration questioned the motives of opponents.
“The only people with reason to oppose the rule are polluters who want to threaten our clean water,” said Brian Deese, Obama’s top environmental adviser.
The Senate bill would overturn the water rule and give the EPA specific instructions and a deadline for writing it in a way that senators hope would cover fewer bodies of water and impede less on private and state property rights.
“It’s frustrating that after so much time, the EPA today decided to finalize this rule instead of conducting more consultations and releasing a revised rule as our legislation would require,” Heitkamp said in a Wednesday statement.
“For the past several months, I’ve been working on a bipartisan bill to fix this issue by actually taking into account the needs of our farmers and ranchers, and giving them clarity without adding more federal regulations,” she said.
In his own statement, Manchin accused the EPA of “once again dangerously overreaching its boundaries by expanding the definition of water sources it can regulate.”
He said the rule “will certainly have a significant impact on West Virginia’s economy, hindering businesses, manufacturing and energy production.”
The two dozen House Democrats joined all 237 Republicans present earlier this month to pass the Regulatory Integrity Act, sponsored by Reps. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) and Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), to overturn the rule.
The Democrats included moderate members of the Blue Dog Coalition like Reps. Jim Cooper (Tenn.), Gwen Graham (Fla.) and Sanford Bishop (Ga.).
The group also included representatives of states with heavy agriculture, like Reps. Tim Walz (Minn.) and Henry Cuellar (Texas).
Farmers and ranchers have been among the most vocal opponents of the water rule, saying it would mandate expensive permits and federal review for common agricultural tasks like digging ditches and spraying fertilizer.
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Clarifying The Clean Water Act’s Reach
May 28, 2015 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jessica Morrison
After a years-long tussle with Congress and other stakeholders, the Obama Administration on May 27 issued a regulation that spells out which U.S. waterways are protected under the Clean Water Act, the federal law that controls water pollution and aims to conserve wetlands.
“For the water in the rivers and lakes in our communities that flow to our drinking water to be clean, the streams and wetlands that feed them need to be clean too,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy says of the new regulation.
The highly detailed rule defines and clarifies federal protections for tributaries as well as streams that are intermittent or perennial. For example, it specifically excludes from regulation ditches that have seasonal flows of water. Uncertainty over whether this type of ditch would be included under the Clean Water Act was a major point of contention with the regulation’s opponents.
The rule came under immediate fire from many industry groups and congressional Republicans representing agricultural states. For instance, theU.S. Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobby, says the rule will “significantly broaden federal regulatory jurisdiction over private activities on land and in waterways, wetlands, and drainage ditches.”
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), head of the House of Representatives’ Science, Space & Technology Committee, says the rule gives EPA “the power to restrict Americans from making decisions about their own property.”
Bills moving through Congress—including H.R. 1732 and S. 1140—would force EPA to scrap the new regulation and require the agency to rewrite the rule with broader input from stakeholders. In addition, the rule is expected to be challenged in federal court.
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Industry Asks Court to Reconsider Greenhouse Gas Decision
May 28, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jeremy P. Jacobs
More than two dozen industry groups and energy companies yesterday asked a federal appeals court to reconsider its interpretation of last year's landmark Supreme Court decision that largely upheld U.S. EPA's first round of climate change regulations.
At issue is an April "amended judgment" from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that sought to implement the Supreme Court's decision last June.
The Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote trimmed EPA's authority to require stationary sources of greenhouse gas emissions to install pollution controls because they emit only greenhouse gases, not other air pollutants. The high court upheld EPA's ability to require stationary sources to curtail greenhouse gas emissions by installing best available control technology, or BACT, as part of its Prevention of Significant Deterioration, or PSD, permit if the facility qualifies for the program because of emissions of other criteria pollutants (Greenwire, June 23, 2014).
Additionally, the Supreme Court remanded several issues to the D.C. Circuit, and last month, the D.C. Circuit's amended judgment took a narrow view of the high court's opinion (Greenwire, April 13).
The industry groups, however, are criticizing one aspect of the D.C. Circuit's order.
Specifically, they are challenging the court's action with regard to greenhouse-gas-specific BACT regulations.
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The D.C. Circuit remanded those regulations to the agency to reconsider but did not vacate them.
Industry challengers say the Supreme Court held those regulations were unlawful, and consequently they should be vacated.
They argue that the BACT regulations lack a de minimis level -- meaning an emission limit for greenhouse gases below which a facility that already qualifies for the PSD program would not have to install greenhouse gas controls.
"While the Court held that, as a general matter, BACT rules for [sources already qualifying for the PSD program] might be lawful, it also held that EPA's current GHG BACT Rules are not," the groups wrote in their rehearing petition filed yesterday.
They are asking for either the three-judge panel to reconsider the ruling or for all of the D.C. Circuit's judges to revisit the issue.
The D.C. Circuit rarely grants rehearing petitions.
Click here for the rehearing petition.
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May 28, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Merrill Matthews, Ph.D.
The country has just taken another step towards energy independence—which also means energy security.
Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), along with 10 other Senate cosponsors, have introduced the Energy Supply Distribution Act (S. 1312), whose primary purpose is to end the 40-year ban on exporting U.S. crude oil.
Congress passed a crude oil export ban in 1975 as an understandable, if ineffective, response to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ efforts to use access to crude oil as a political weapon.
OPEC’s decision to cut back oil production left the U.S. with higher gas prices and often long gas lines. For one of the first times Americans felt the helplessness that comes when foreign countries had us at their mercy.
U.S. oil production had already been declining, having reached its peak in 1970 with an average of 9,637 million barrels of oil per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. By 1975 production had declined by 1.3 million barrels a day.
So Congress wanted to ensure that any U.S. oil and natural gas produced in the U.S. stayed in the U.S. The ban allowed the politicians to claim they were doing something without actually doing anything. But it never made much sense.
First, the ban is on crude oil exports, not refined gasoline products. But nobody puts crude oil in their tanks. So Congress banned exporting a product the public can’t use in its original state (crude oil) but not something we could (gasoline).
Second, if the was ban was intended to make us less dependent on foreign oil imports, it didn’t work. While the 1979 and 1981 recessions (with the later being a deep recession) led to a decline in oil imports, by the mid-1980s the economy and oil imports both started surging, peaking in the mid-2000s.
And though consumers used less oil during the recent Great Recession, the primary factor behind the decline in imports since the end of the recession in 2009 is the explosion of oil production. Today, the U.S. is importing roughly the same amount of oil as it did in 1996—only the 1996 import level was part of a sharply rising trend, not a decline as today.
The third reason the ban didn’t make much sense is that it undermined economic efficiency. Crude oil has to be refined before people can use it. But refineries aren’t necessarily in the same place the oil is being extracted—especially today when innovative drilling techniques are opening up oil fields around the country.
And even if they were close, that doesn’t mean the refinery is set up to refine the kind of crude being pumped nearby. The Texas Gulf Coast refineries are very good at refining very heavy crude oil, like that being produced in Canada—hence the drive to build the Keystone XL pipeline to ship it down. In some cases it may make more sense to export crude to another country rather than ship it across the U.S. for refining.
But the biggest reason why the ban makes no sense anymore is strategic. Among the 10 top crude oil exporters are Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and Venezuela. Saudi Arabia is certainly an ally, but it decides how much oil it will or won’t produce based on its own self-interests.
Russia, Iran and Venezuela use access to energy as a diplomatic bargaining tool. And they use the profits from those sales to foment mischief in the world. Providing our allies and other countries with an alternative source for their energy needs helps undermine that mischief.Murkowski chairs the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee. If she is able to move her legislation out of her committee on a bipartisan vote, it has a good chance of reaching the Senate floor, where most Republicans and several Democrats will likely support it.
The U.S. has become the leading oil producing country, according to the EIA. Ending the export ban creates a global market for U.S. oil that will increase production and stabilize prices. The U.S. once dominated the energy markets, with the right policies it can do so again.
Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation, an independent, nonprofit public policy organization based in Dallas, Texas.
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Watchdog Hits EPA on State Oversight
May 28, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not corrected deficiencies in how it oversees states’ enforcement of federal environmental laws, its internal watchdog said Thursday.
The EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) identified the agency’s relationships with states as one of its top management issues this year.
The report came months before the EPA plans to make final its most ambitious regulation in recent years, which will rely on states to limit the carbon dioxide emissions of power plants inside their territories.
The EPA also leans heavily on states to implement federal rules and grants on safe drinking water, hazardous waste disposal, water pollution, air pollution and other programs.
“The OIG has identified EPA oversight of authorized state programs as an agency management challenge since fiscal year 2008,” the watchdog wrote in its report.
“While important progress has been made, our work continues to identify challenges throughout agency programs and locations, and many of our recommendations remain to be fully implemented,” said the independent office, headed by Inspector General Arthur Elkins.
“We continue to perform work in this area and will continue to monitor the agency’s progress in addressing this challenge,” it said.
The report highlighted issues the OIG has previously identified with environmental programs in the United States Virgin Islands and North Dakota, along with more wide-reaching problems with how the EPA oversees state enforcement of drinking water safety grants, air pollution permit fees and sewage discharge permits, among other programs.
The OIG also drew attention to how the EPA combats employee misconduct along with fraud and abuse, which it identified as another top management issue.
“Recent events and activities indicate a possible ‘culture of complacency’ among some supervisors at the EPA regarding time and attendance controls, employee computer usage, real property management and taking prompt action against employees,” it said.
The House Oversight Committee has focused efforts recently on highlighting employee misconduct and making it a high-profile problem.
For example, at least two EPA employees have been accused of viewing pornography on agency computers while at work.
The OIG said the agency formally began the process in March of firing the employees. The proposed firings came 16 months after the OIG was notified about one employee’s porn viewing and 10 months after the other employee.
The OIG wrote about four other top management challenges at the EPA: oversight of the reuse of contaminated sites, managing the safety of harmful chemicals, analyzing the workload of program and regional offices and combating cybersecurity threats.
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Obama Tours Hurricane Center, Touts Climate Action Plan
May 28, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Emily Yehle
President Obama emphasized the link between severe weather and climate change today, using his annual briefing on hurricanes to highlight his 2-year-old Climate Action Plan.
Obama spent the morning touring the National Hurricane Center, one day after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projected a below-average hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean (Greenwire, May 27). In brief remarks after his tour, he discussed this week's severe thunderstorms and flooding that left at least 19 people dead in Texas and Oklahoma.
The floods "remind us that it is never too early for disaster preparation," Obama said, before invoking Superstorm Sandy as an example of how climate change can affect severe weather.
"Climate change didn't cause Hurricane Sandy, but it might have made it stronger," Obama said. "That's why we are seeking to work with Congress to make sure that we are focused on resilience and the steps we can take to fortify the infrastructure in these communities."
Several administration officials joined Obama at the center, including Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, Federal Emergency Management Administrator Craig Fugate and NOAA Administrator Kathy Sullivan. Florida Reps. Ted Deutch (D) and Carlos Curbelo (R) also attended.
Obama toured the center in the morning, listening to guides who explained the technology used to track the storms, according to a White House pool report. Obama asked for details about technological advances and met with various NOAA employees.
"Sometimes we take for granted what our public servants do," Obama said in the briefing. "They may be in the background until disaster strikes and suddenly we realize how much we depend on them."
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