Preview Newsletter
ACC AM May 29
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(ACC Mentioned) PE and PS Prices Rise, While Polypropylene Slips
May 28, 2015 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
North American polyethylene resin prices awoke with a vengeance in May, increasing for the first time in eight months. Regional polystyrene prices weren’t far behind — rising for the second straight month — while polypropylene resin prices ticked slightly down. The 5-cent hike absorbed by North American PE in May was the first ... -
(ACC Mentioned) Plastics-to-Fuel: Creating Energy from Nonrecycled Plastics
May 28, 2015 | Renewable Energy From Waste
This video produced by the American Chemistry Council's Plastics-to-Oil Technologies Alliance shows how companies are transforming used, nonrecycled plastics into oil, fuels, and petroleum-based products. These plastics-to-fuel technologies which complement ongoing recycling efforts, are being embraced as a way to recover clean... -
(ACC Mentioned) Icynene Introduces New 4 Hour Re-occupancy Allowances for Spray Foam Product Applications
May 28, 2015 | Spray Foam
Leading spray foam insulation manufacturer, Icynene, today introduced new 4 hour re-occupancy allowances for homeowners and trades in the United States for two of its high-performance spray foam innovations – light-density open cell Icynene Classic Max and medium-density closed cell Icynene ProSeal. -
(ACC Mentioned) Do Our Bodies Safely Break Down BPA? Fat Chance, Study Suggests.
May 29, 2015 | Environmental Health News
By Brian Bienkowski
A new study suggests the long-held industry assumption that bisphenol-A breaks down safely in the human body is incorrect. Instead, researchers say, the body transforms the ubiquitous chemical additive into a compound that might spur obesity. The study is the first to find that people’s bodies metabolize bisphenol-A (BPA) — a chemical found in ... -
Federal Scientists Update Interagency Panel On Alternative Toxicity Test Advancements
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Pesticide and chemical manufacturers that are required by the Environmental Protection Agency to evaluate the potential estrogenic properties of their products could provide some of the information using high-throughput screening tests under a proposal the agency expects to publish by the end of June, an agency scientist said. -
OSHA Aligns US Workplace Chemical Labeling With Canada
May 28, 2015 | The Hill - Regulation
By Lydia Wheeler
The Occupational Health and Safety Administration said Thursday that it’s working to align its labeling and classification requirements for workplace chemicals with Canada’s. OSHA said it will continue its partnership through the Regulatory Cooperation Council with Health Canada, which first formed in 2013 to keep collaborating on how to... -
Watchdog's New Website Offers Look At OSHA Exposure Data
May 28, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Sam Pearson
An advocacy group released an online mapping tool today that harnesses Occupational Safety and Health Administration data in a bid to bring new transparency on workplace chemical exposures. The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility website lets users search OSHA workplace exposure data by year, state, type of... -
DEHP Linked To Adrenal Hormone Disruption
May 28, 2015 | Chemical Watch
Canadian researchers have summarised recent research on endocrine disruption of the adrenal gland and conclude that in utero exposure to compounds, like the phthalate DEHP, causes an imbalance in adrenal steroid production and development. In a paper published in Frontiers in Endocrinology, Daniel Martinez-Arguelles and Vassilios... -
U.S.-Canada Regulatory Council Plans Joint Agency Initiatives
May 29, 2015 |
By Cheryl Bolen
The U.S.-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council released Regulatory Partnership Statements and annual Work Plans, which are an important step in the two countries' regulatory cooperation, according to the U.S. International Trade Administration. The U.S. and Canada continue to deepen their regulatory cooperation to enhance economic... -
Exposure Thresholds For Respiratory Allergens Needed, Says Ecetoc
May 28, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Emma Davies
An industry task force has highlighted a need for methods to measure exposure thresholds for respiratory allergens. Chemical respiratory allergy causes rhinitis and asthma and is an “important occupational health problem”, says the task force, set up by the European Centre for Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals (Ecetoc). -
EPA, Coast Guard Issue Cleanup Order For Crude Oil Spill in Santa Barbara Area
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
Federal authorities ordered Plains Pipeline LP to continue cleaning up heavy crude oil released in Santa Barbara County from an underground pipeline that ruptured May 19. Issued jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard, the May 27 order establishes requirements for the long-term response action needed to... -
Relic of California's Oil Past Haunts State With Spill Into Pacific Ocean
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Lynn Doan
A pipeline the oil market had all but forgotten resurfaced like a painful memory last week, spilling 500 barrels of heavy oil into the Pacific Ocean. Line 901: A quarter century ago, it was a pipeline full of promise. Today, it's full of— not much, really. Before it leaked May 19, pouring viscous crude into the waters off California's coast, the 24-inch line... -
Section of Pipe in California Oil Spill Removed
May 29, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Zusha Elinson and Alison Sider
Workers on Thursday removed a section of a crude-oil pipeline that ruptured and spilled more than 100,000 gallons of oil off the Santa Barbara County, Calif., coast last week. The piece of pipe will be sent to an independent laboratory in Ohio to determine what caused it to fail, according to a spokeswoman for the federal Pipeline and Hazardous... -
(ACC Mentioned) What They Are Saying About NAAQS
May 29, 2015 | Energy Global
By Claira Lloyd
Cal Dooley, President, American Chemistry Council, “we’re facing a series of regulations, and the cumulative cost of compliance and the burden of permitting is significant. An industry such as ours is poised to make significant investments in growth, but these regulations make that harder.” -
USGS Issues Two Reports Examining Growth Trends for Frac Sand Production
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Michael Bologna
The U.S. Geological Survey has released a pair of research papers describing hydraulic fracturing sand deposits across the country and analyzing anticipated trends for “frac sand” production and consumption. One of the reports, announced May 27, points to 54 million metric tons (Mt) of frac sand produced in the U.S. in 2014... -
DOE Issues Conditional Approval For Alaska Liquefied Natural Gas Project
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
An Alaska-based liquefied natural gas export project that has been decades in the making received the Energy Department's conditional approval May 28. The project, which involves construction of an 800-mile pipeline to send natural gas from Alaska's North Slope to a proposed export terminal in the state's Kenai Peninsula, is backed by... -
Proposed Rule for Arctic Offshore Oil Work Criticized as Too Costly by Industry Groups
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
The Interior Department “significantly and systematically underestimates” the likely costs of proposed regulations for oil and natural gas exploration in U.S. Arctic waters, industry groups said in comments on the proposal. The cost burdens of the proposed rule are so great that they “would profoundly reduce” companies' ability to develop ... -
DOE Approves Alaska Natural Gas Export Facility
May 28, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Elana Schor
The Department of Energy today gave conditional authorization to a high-profile Alaska export facility to ship upwards of 2.5 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas per year to nations that don’t have free-trade agreements with the U.S. DOE’s approval for the Alaska LNG project, a joint venture by the state, BP, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and... -
Court Deems Supplementary EIS Unneeded; Alaska Oil Development Can Go Forward
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Matthew Berger
A supplemental environmental impact statement isn't needed, and a permit for ConocoPhillips to fill wetlands to develop a drill site in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve can go forward, a federal court has ruled (Kunaknana v. U.S. Army Corps, D. Alaska, No. 3:13-cv-00044-SLG, 5/26/15). -
DOE Conditionally Approves Alaska Facility To Export North Slope LNG
May 28, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Katherine Ling
The Energy Department today conditionally authorized the Alaska LNG Project LLC to export liquefied natural gas to countries that do not have a free-trade agreement with the United States from a terminal about 60 air-miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, along the Cook Inlet. -
Government Study Suggests Huge Amount Of Oil in Canada's Northwest Territories Shale
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jeremy Hainsworth
A study by the governments of Canada and the Northwest Territories estimates that the country's far north contains a massive amount of shale oil reserves—nearly 200 billion barrels. How much of that oil could be recoverable from the remote and largely unexplored area, however, is anyone's guess, according to the report... -
EDF Names Former EPA Official As New Executive Director
May 28, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Daniel Bush
The Environmental Defense Fund has named Diane Regas as its new executive director, the green group announced today. Regas, a former U.S. EPA official who spent nearly 20 years at the agency, worked her way up through the ranks at EDF after joining the environmental organization in 2006. Regas led the group's oceans program and served as ... -
Wisconsin Fears Rate Hikes Under Power Plan Rule
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
The Environmental Protection Agency's proposed Clean Power Plan could cost Wisconsin as much as $13.4 billion to comply, increasing electricity rates by 29 percent, Gov. Scott Walker (R) said in a letter to President Barack Obama. The costs for complying with the EPA's proposal (RIN 2060-AR33), which would set carbon dioxide emissions limits... -
Walker: EPA Carbon Rule 'Unworkable' For Wisconsin
May 28, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) told President Obama that his landmark carbon rule for power plants is “unworkable” for the Badger State. Walker, who is expected to announce a run for president next month, stopped short of saying that Wisconsin would not comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) climate change regulation. -
California Air District Seeks Court Review Of EPA Rule to Alter Planning Area Boundary
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
The South Coast Air Quality Management District wants a federal appeals court to review an Environmental Protection Agency decision creating a separate ozone planning area for the tribal lands of the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission Indians (SCAQMD v. EPA, 9th Cir., No. 15-71600, 5/27/15). -
Democrats 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. 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... -
9th Circuit Rejects Coal Firm's Suit Over EPA's Proposed Pebble Mine Veto
May 28, 2015 | InsideEPA
By David LaRoss
A federal appellate court has upheld the dismissal of a coal company's bid for novel early review of EPA's proposal for a rare preemptive Clean Water Act (CWA) veto of the planned Pebble Mine in Alaska, agreeing with the agency's arguments that any legal challenge must wait until regulators take final action on the veto. -
Obama Links Extreme Weather, Climate Change During Florida Hurricane Briefing
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
President Barack Obama used his annual hurricane briefing and a Twitter conversation May 28 to urge Congress to further support resilience efforts in U.S. communities vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Obama, speaking at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, warned climate change is already having impacts on coastal communities... -
Obama: ‘Best Climate Scientists’ Link Hurricanes, Climate Change
May 28, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
President Obama said Thursday the link between more extreme weather and climate change is undeniable, and that the world’s best scientists have made a conclusive connection. Rising sea levels are another consequence of climate change and can make extreme weather even worse, he said at the National Hurricane Center following a tour. -
6 Climate Tipping Points: How Worried Should We Be?
May 28, 2015 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Ilissa Ocko
One of the biggest fears about climate change is that it may be triggering events that would dramatically alter Earth as we know it. Known to scientists as “tipping events,” they could contribute to mass extinction of species, dramatic sea level rise, extensive droughts and the transformation of forests into vast grasslands – among other upheavals... -
New Sierra Club President Sets Sights On Green Diversity Problem
May 28, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Andrew Restuccia
The Sierra Club, the nation’s biggest environmental group, is out to prove that the green movement isn’t just for well-off white people. The 123-year-old organization just elected its first black president. Its board condemned racial profiling in Ferguson. Environmental justice has become one of its core campaigns. -
PHMSA Will Use Crude-by-Rail Order On Notification in Contrast to Final Rule
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Leven
A May 2014 emergency order, which was superseded by a recently finalized rule governing crude-by-rail shipments, will stay in effect until further notice, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration announced May 28. The 2014 order requires carriers operating trains carrying more than 1 million gallons of Bakken crude oil...
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(ACC Mentioned) PE and PS Prices Rise, While Polypropylene Slips
May 28, 2015 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
North American polyethylene resin prices awoke with a vengeance in May, increasing for the first time in eight months.
Regional polystyrene prices weren’t far behind — rising for the second straight month — while polypropylene resin prices ticked slightly down.
The 5-cent hike absorbed by North American PE in May was the first to hit the market since September. In the meantime, the material had absorbed four price drops totaling 16 cents.
There were numerous reasons the price hike took hold, according to Mike Burns, PE market analyst with Resin Technology Inc. in Fort Worth, Texas. Global feedstock costs were higher as a result of oil price increases, he said, while supplies of both PE and ethylene were tight in both Asia and Europe.
These conditions led to above average exports from North America to Latin America, Asia and Europe, Burns explained.
A PE buyer in the Southeast U.S. said that although the May increase took hold, he expects prices to be flat for the next few months, unless Asian prices drop below North American prices, as was the case earlier in 2015.
“If that happens, we would probably see some decreases over here,” the buyer said. “If [Asian prices] stay at current levels, which are pretty close to North American pricing, it makes it easy for the North American producers to hold the price up and export any extra they have and still make the historic integrated margins they are still making today.”
U.S./Canadian PE sales results were mixed in the first quarter of 2015, according to the American Chemistry Council. High density PE sales in the region were up almost 6 percent, with domestic sales growth of almost 3 percent boosted by export sales growth of almost 24 percent.
But U.S./Canadian sales of both low and linear low density PE essentially were flat in the quarter. In LDPE, a drop of almost 9 percent in export sales wiped out a 2 percent domestic sales gain. For LLDPE, domestic sales growth of 1 percent was canceled out by an export sales drop of almost 5 percent.
The North American PS resin market saw a 3-cent hike stick in May. That increase was the second straight monthly increase for the material, following a month of flat pricing in March and a combined drop of 11 cents in the first two months of the year.
Benzene’s role
Higher prices for benzene feedstock again played a role in the May PS increase. Benzene prices jumped 26 cents per gallon in May, reaching the $2.85 mark and bringing the two-month total price hike to 77 cents. Regional PS makers had been seeking increases of 6 cents in May, but settled for half of that amount after successfully lifting prices 5 cents per pound in April.
North American PS sales climbed almost 3 percent in the first four months of 2015, according to ACC. Growth in the market’s flagship food packaging/foodservice end market were especially strong, increasing by more than 5 percent. That sector accounted for about 61 percent of total PS sales in the region for that four-month period.
Regional PP prices trickled down 1 cent per pound in May, marking the second straight monthly decline for that material — and the fifth in six months. North American PP prices now are down a net of 25 cents per pound since December.
The 1-cent PP downturn matched a similar drop in price for propylene monomer feedstock. In April, regional PP makers had successfully increased their profit margins by limiting the resin price drop to 4 cents per pound, even as propylene prices fell 4 cents.
Sales of PP in North America surged more than 7 percent in the first four months of 2015. Domestic sales growth of almost 8 percent was dampened slightly by an export sales decline of almost 7 percent.
Regional sales of PP into injection molding applications soared 11 percent in that four-month period, according to ACC. That growth was led by a 20 percent leap for sales of PP into consumer and institutional products.
At the producer level, Houston-based LyondellBasell Industries saw operating profit at its Olefins & Polyolefins-Americas unit surge 42 percent to $934 million in the first quarter, even as sales fell 24 percent to $2.6 billion. LBI ranks as one of North America’s largest PE and PP makers. The O&P-Americas unit includes PE, PP, ethylene, propylene and benzene.
At Westlake Chemical Corp. of Houston, the olefins unit — including PE — saw first-quarter sales decline 19 percent to $583 million as operating profit slipped 30 percent to $191 million. Lower sales totals at both LBI and Westlake were in part affected by lower selling prices for PE, PP, ethylene and propylene.
Westlake’s first-quarter olefins sales volume in pounds actually was up almost 8 percent vs. the year-ago period. LBI’s first-quarter PE sales volume in pounds was up 6 percent in
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(ACC Mentioned) Plastics-to-Fuel: Creating Energy from Nonrecycled Plastics
May 28, 2015 | Renewable Energy From Waste
This video produced by the American Chemistry Council's Plastics-to-Oil Technologies Alliance shows how companies are transforming used, nonrecycled plastics into oil, fuels, and petroleum-based products. These plastics-to-fuel technologies which complement ongoing recycling efforts, are being embraced as a way to recover clean energy from plastics that cannot be economically recycled.
For video:
http://www.rewmag.com/acc-plastic-fuel-2015-video.aspx
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May 28, 2015 | Spray Foam
Leading spray foam insulation manufacturer, Icynene, today introduced new 4 hour re-occupancy allowances for homeowners and trades in the United States for two of its high-performance spray foam innovations – light-density open cell Icynene Classic Max and medium-density closed cell Icynene ProSeal.
The 4 hour re-occupancy allowance follows many months of detailed research, testing and assessment of the refined Icynene Classic Max and Icynene ProSeal spray foam products based on protocols and procedures developed by the American Chemistry Council – Center for the Polyurethanes Industry (ACC-CPI).
“Through full scale testing and research reviewed by third party research chemists and toxicologists, on our low VOC formulations, re-occupancy times for homeowners can be significantly reduced--from 24 hours to four (4) hours. Refinements to our Icynene Classic Max and Icynene ProSeal spray foam, combined with the use of higher workplace ventilation rates of 40 Air Changes per Hour (ACH), have helped us reduce exposure risks to spray foam installers, non-spray foam trades and most especially for the homeowner,” said Icynene VP Engineering, Paul Duffy.
“This is great news for building owners of all kinds. The reduced re-occupancy allowances mean that homeowners no longer need to be displaced for multiple days when having spray foam insulation installed into their homes. They are able to re-occupy their home and enjoy the advantages of spray foam insulation almost immediately. Plus, the new re-entry and re-occupancy allowances present builders and general contractors with a tremendous opportunity to incorporate Icynene’s high-performance, low VOC spray foam innovations into their upcoming projects due to the minimal impact on construction schedules.” said Mr. Duffy.
The new re-entry and re-occupancy allowances for Icynene Classic Max and Icynene ProSeal are based on an active ventilation rate of 40.0 ACH. For certified spray foam installers, the low VOC Icynene Classic Max and ProSeal formulations also feature low odor properties a cleaner spray application for better sprayability and less clean-up and gun clogging.
The new re-entry and re-occupancy allowances are applicable only for installations of Icynene Classic Max and Icynene ProSeal in the United States.
About Icynene: Established in 1986, Icynene helps to build energy efficient residential and commercial structures in over 31 countries worldwide. Our portfolio of industry leading light density open cell and medium density closed cell SPF solutions are both insulation and air barrier materials for improved indoor air quality and reduced energy costs making Icynene the smart choice for builders, architects, building owners, and homeowners. -
(ACC Mentioned) Do Our Bodies Safely Break Down BPA? Fat Chance, Study Suggests.
May 29, 2015 | Environmental Health News
By Brian Bienkowski
A new study suggests the long-held industry assumption that bisphenol-A breaks down safely in the human body is incorrect. Instead, researchers say, the body transforms the ubiquitous chemical additive into a compound that might spur obesity.
The study is the first to find that people’s bodies metabolize bisphenol-A (BPA) — a chemical found in most people and used in polycarbonate plastic, food cans and paper receipts — into something that impacts our cells and may make us fat.
The research, from Health Canada, challenges an untested assumption that our liver metabolizes BPA into a form that doesn’t impact our health.
“This shows we can’t just say things like ‘because it’s a metabolite, it means it’s not active’,” said Laura Vandenberg, an assistant professor of environmental health at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who was not involved in the study. “You have to do a study.”
People are exposed to BPA throughout the day, mostly through diet, as it can leach from canned goods and plastic storage containers into food, but also through dust and water.
"This shows we can't just say things like 'because it's a metabolite, it means it's not active.' You have to do a study."-Laura Vandenberg, University of Massachusetts AmherstWithin about 6 hours of exposure, our liver metabolizes about half the concentration. Most of that — about 80 to 90 percent — is converted into a metabolite called BPA-Glucuronide, which is eventually excreted.
The Health Canada researchers treated both mouse and human cells with BPA-Glucuronide. The treated cells had a “significant increase in lipid accumulation,” according to the study results. BPA-Glucuronide is “not an inactive metabolite as previously believed but is in fact biologically active,” the Health Canada authors wrote in the study published this week in Environmental Health Perspectives.
Not all cells will accumulate lipids, said Thomas Zoeller, a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor who was not involved in the study. Testing whether or not cells accumulate lipids is “a very simple way of demonstrating that cells are becoming fat cells,” he said.
“Hopefully this [study] stops us from making assumptions about endocrine disrupting chemicals in general,” he said.
The liver is our body's filter, but it doesn't always neutralize harmful compounds. “Metabolism’s purpose isn’t necessarily a cleaning process. The liver just takes nasty things and turns them into a form we can get out of our body,” Vandenberg said.
BPA already has been linked to obesity in both human and animal studies. The associations are especially prevalent for children exposed while they’re developing. USDA People are consistently exposed to BPA, mostly through diet, where the chemical leaches out of products such as canned goods.
Researchers believe BPA does so by mimicking estrogen hormones, but its metabolite doesn’t appear to do so. In figuring out why metabolized BPA appears to spur fat cells, Zoeller said, it’s possible that BPA-Glucuronide is “hitting certain receptors in cells”.
Health Canada researchers were only looking at this one possible health outcome. “There could be other [health] impacts,” Zoeller said.
In recent studies BPA-Glucuronide has been found in human blood and urine at higher concentration than just plain BPA.
Industry representatives, however, argue the doses used were much higher than what would be found in people.
Steve Hentges, a spokesperson for the American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical manufacturers, said the concentrations used in which the researchers saw increased fat cells were "thousands of times higher than the concentrations of BPA-Glucuronide that could be present in human blood from consumer exposure to BPA.
"There were no statistically significant observations at lower BPA-G concentrations, all of which are higher than human blood concentrations,” he said in the emailed response.
Zoeller agreed the dose was high but said “the concentration is much less important than the fact that here is a group testing an assumption that’s uniformly been made.” Vandenberg said the range is not that far off from what has been found in some people’s blood.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is reviewing the Health Canada study but couldn’t comment before Environmental Health News’ deadline, said spokesperson Marianna Naum in an email.
The agency continues to study BPA and states on its website that federal research models “showed that BPA is rapidly metabolized and eliminated through feces and urine.”
Health Canada, which was not able to provide interviews for this article, has maintained a similar stance to the U.S. FDA, stating on its website that it “has concluded that the current dietary exposure to BPA through food packaging uses is not expected to pose a health risk to the general population, including newborns and infants.”
However, the fact that Health Canada even conducted such a study is a big deal, Vandenberg said.“Health Canada is a regulatory body and this is pretty forward thinking science,” she said. “Hopefully this is a bell that can ring for scientists working for other regulatory agencies.”
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Federal Scientists Update Interagency Panel On Alternative Toxicity Test Advancements
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Pesticide and chemical manufacturers that are required by the Environmental Protection Agency to evaluate the potential estrogenic properties of their products could provide some of the information using high-throughput screening tests under a proposal the agency expects to publish by the end of June, an agency scientist said.
The high-throughput tests the agency would propose are more accurate and evaluate more potential estrogenic effects than do the cellular and animal tests for which they could substitute, Patience Browne, who works in the agency's Office of Science Coordination and Policy, said May 27.
Browne was among several federal scientists who updated participants attending an interagency committee meeting about the status of their agency's efforts to evaluate and use emerging methods to predict the toxicity of chemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and food contact materials. The Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM) held the public forum May 27.
Other agencies providing updates included the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The NIEHS deputy research director discussed topics including the institute's toxicity studies of coal-processing chemicals to which West Virginia residents were exposed in January 2014 following a storage tank spill upstream of the intake pipe to a water treatment plant serving Charleston, the state capital (8 DEN A-13, 1/13/14).
Two NIST scientists briefed the interagency committee on a strategy the standards institute has developed to evaluate the quality of alternative toxicity tests.
Chemical and pesticide manufacturers as well as agencies anticipate that the alternative tests eventually will be quicker, cheaper, kinder and at least as effective as traditional toxicity tests that use animals.
Federal Register Notice Expected Soon
The EPA expects to publish a Federal Register notice announcing its proposal to allow use of data from certain high-throughput estrogen-function tests within a month, Browne said.
Agency scientists have said at public forums that the EPA would issue this proposal, but they haven't said when.
For example, Robert Kavlock, EPA's deputy assistant administrator for science, discussed the endocrine disruptor screening program's anticipated use of high throughput and other alternative toxicity and exposure tests at a November 2014 workshop (219 DEN A-13, 11/13/14).
The agency is considering accepting data from a combination of high-throughput screens that evaluate a chemical's potential to affect estrogenic functions as an alternative to data that companies would generate if they used three tests the EPA can require under the endocrine disruptor and screening program, Browne said.
Assays Evaluates Chemical's ‘Bind' Potential
The three tests, or “assays,” evaluate a chemical's potential to bind to the estrogen receptor, to bind to the estrogen receptor and trigger a genetic response and to increase the weight of a female rat's uterus. The third test, called the uterotrophic assay, involves exposing female rats for at least three days, killing them and measuring their uteri, which should be heavier than normal if a chemical acts like the hormone estrogen.
Those three tests are among a battery of 12 assays the EPA can require chemical and pesticide manufacturers to conduct under the first phase, or Tier 1, of the endocrine disruptor screening program.
Tier 1 tests in that program seek to determine whether chemicals have the potential to mimic, block or alter the function of estrogen, androgen or the thyroid hormone. The more expensive and time-consuming Tier 2 tests are designed to determine whether hormonal chemicals cause harm.
18 Screens Evaluated
The EPA has evaluated a combination of 18 high-throughput tests, called screens, and found their combined data better predict estrogenic activity than any single cellular or animal test, Browne said.
Based on that conclusion, the agency will propose allowing companies to submit data from the high-throughput tests in lieu of data from the three cellular and animal assays, she said. The proposal will be subject to public comment, she said.
Anna Lowit, a senior scientist and toxicologist in the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs, discussed a separate agency effort to reduce the use of laboratory animals in toxicity tests.
The pesticides office soon will release for public comment a revised, draft strategy for using toxicity predictions from computer-based simulations as well as cellular and other non-animal tests, Lowit said.
Would Supplement, Replace Data
Data from the alternative tests would supplement or replace data from traditional animal-based toxicity tests, the pesticides office said in a preliminary draft blueprint to move away from animal testing guidance that it released in January (8 DEN A-5, 1/13/15).
The comment period on that preliminary draft closed March 10.
OPP received comments from 16 individuals or organizations, an agency spokeswoman told Bloomberg BNA May 28.
NIEHS will brief Charleston, W.Va., residents in about one month regarding the institute's research on the coal-processing chemicals in the Elk River spill, said Nigel Walker, a deputy director for research at NIEHS.
Evaluating Harm During Life Stages
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asked NIEHS' National Toxicology Program (NTP) to evaluate the potential of those chemicals to cause harm if brief exposure occurred during various life stages, he said.
“People want an answer relatively quickly,” Walker said, referring to Charleston residents.
The toxicology program has used up to eight computer-based, cellular, bacterial, zebrafish and other short-term tests to examine minor components of the mixture of chemicals that was spilled, he said.
The incident provides an opportunity to examine the utility of alternative tests to answer questions that couldn't be answered by traditional toxicity tests due to time or other constraints, Walker said.
NIST Strategy to Detect Test Quality
Elijah Petersen and John Elliott, who work with cell systems at the NIST, briefed the interagency committee and public forum participants on a strategy the standards institute has developed to evaluate the quality of alternative tests.
The seven-step strategy identifies sources of variability in an assay such as differences between what are supposed to be the same types of cells or differences in the amount of cells added to test equipment, Petersen said.
Warren Casey, director of NTP's Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods, said the quality verification strategy NIST developed systematically breaks testing protocols down.
NIST's approach identifies when a variation in a testing method, cell system or other factor could cause divergent results.
Called ‘Extremely Important Concept.'
“This is an extremely important concept. Something we should have done a long time ago and something we're glad they've done now,” Casey said.
“This is analytical validation,” Elliot said. NIST's strategy shows whether a laboratory ran a test correctly, he said.
That complements, but is different from, the biological validation that regulatory agencies must do to make sure the test results are properly interpreted, Elliot said.
Public Communication Question Unanswered
Amy Kyle, a research scientist and associate professor at the University of California's School of Public Health in Berkeley, spoke during the forum's public comment session.
“My reason for coming is that I work with a lot of communities and community-based organizations trying to understand if the chemicals in their neighborhoods are something they should be concerned about,” Kyle said.
The new types of toxicity tests are requiring a whole different way of understanding the cause-and-effect relationship between a chemical and possible harmful outcomes, she said.
“How do we start to develop a vocabulary?” Kyle asked.
Her open-ended question remained unanswered, but Casey, Lowit and Elliot all said they shared Kyle's concerns and want to improve the ways their agencies explain alternative tests and the results the tests generate.
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OSHA Aligns US Workplace Chemical Labeling With Canada
May 28, 2015 | The Hill - Regulation
By Lydia Wheeler
The Occupational Health and Safety Administration said Thursday that it’s working to align its labeling and classification requirements for workplace chemicals with Canada’s.
OSHA said it will continue its partnership through the Regulatory Cooperation Council with Health Canada, which first formed in 2013 to keep collaborating on how to implement a globally harmonized system of classification and labeling.
“We work in a global environment with varying and sometimes conflicting national and international requirements,” said OSHA Assistant Secretary of Labor David Michaels. “Through this partnership, OSHA and Health Canada will work together to reduce inconsistencies among hazard communication regulations and provide concise information to protect workers exposed to hazardous chemicals without reducing current protections.”
As of June 1, the Hazard Communication Standard will require chemical manufactures, distributors and importers to provide safety data sheets that include the manufacturer or distributor name, address, phone number, emergency phone number, recommended use, restrictions on use, emergency procedures, safe handling and storage guidance, and first aid and fire-fighting measures.
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Watchdog's New Website Offers Look At OSHA Exposure Data
May 28, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Sam Pearson
An advocacy group released an online mapping tool today that harnesses Occupational Safety and Health Administration data in a bid to bring new transparency on workplace chemical exposures.
The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility website lets users search OSHA workplace exposure data by year, state, type of business and substances detected.
"More Americans die each year from workplace chemical exposure than from all highway accidents, yet we have no national effort to stem this silent occupational epidemic," PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said in a statement. "In the U.S., environmental protection stops at the factory door."
David Michaels, the Labor Department's assistant secretary for occupational safety and health, has blamed OSHA's shortfalls on a lack of funding and a "broken" regulatory system (E&E Daily, Dec. 12, 2014).
The agency is also working to update limits for workplace chemical exposures, which have not been revised since 1971 (Greenwire, Oct. 15, 2014).
But OSHA is now expecting to accept public comments for a year and has no timeline to propose a rule, according to Labor's most recent regulatory agenda.
The agency plans to issue a final rule by September to complete an electronic reporting system for workplace illnesses and injuries, which could make it easier to view data similar to the PEER database.
PEER previously found in 2009 that OSHA spends less than 5 percent of its budget on workplace health protection. The agency collected three times as many workplace exposure samples in 1988 as it did in 2007, according to data obtained by PEER after one of its board members sued the agency.
The findings show OSHA must "sharply reduce the slow poisoning of American workers," Ruch said.
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DEHP Linked To Adrenal Hormone Disruption
May 28, 2015 | Chemical Watch
Canadian researchers have summarised recent research on endocrine disruption of the adrenal gland and conclude that in utero exposure to compounds, like the phthalate DEHP, causes an imbalance in adrenal steroid production and development.
In a paper published in Frontiers in Endocrinology, Daniel Martinez-Arguelles and Vassilios Papadopoulos of McGill University in Montreal find that the adrenal cortex and sex organs share a common developmental origin in the adrenogenital primordium and are both sensitive to endocrine disruption.
DEHP was initially first recognised as an endocrine disruptor with anti-androgenic properties. High levels of the substance in humans and rats cause reduced ano-genital distance, undescended testes, reduced testosterone and poorer sperm quality. However, disruption of the adrenal gland may affect its role in controlling stress response, blood pressure and the body’s electrolyte balance.
Foetal exposure to DEHP in rats, say the researchers, affected the expression in the adult offspring of angiotensin receptors - key regulators of aldosterone synthesis, which affect electrolyte balance. DEHP also targeted the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) pathway, involved in the lipid metabolism, and increased the import, storage and synthesis of the steroid precursor, cholesterol.
The authors suggest that reduced aldosterone synthesis and an increase in cholesterol mean that DEHP ultimately affects the transport of cholesterol into the mitochondria, where steroid hormone formation is initiated. Evidence supporting this hypothesis was found in the aldosterone-producing cortex of the adrenal gland, where there was an increase in the cholesterol-storing lipid droplets.
The study also observes that a small group of genes are sharply down regulated by DEHP. Serum levels of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PCK1) in adult rats were found to correlate with in utero exposure to the substance. Whether this relationship can be confirmed in a wider range of populations remains to be seen, but the authors suggest that this could be a biomarker for DEHP and other phthalates.
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U.S.-Canada Regulatory Council Plans Joint Agency Initiatives
May 29, 2015 |
By Cheryl Bolen
The U.S.-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council released Regulatory Partnership Statements and annual Work Plans, which are an important step in the two countries' regulatory cooperation, according to the U.S. International Trade Administration.
The U.S. and Canada continue to deepen their regulatory cooperation to enhance economic competitiveness, while maintaining high standards when it comes to health, safety and the environment, the ITA said.
U.S. departments and agencies together with Canadian ministries have been working to develop new frameworks for cooperation since the release in August 2014 of the council's Joint Forward Plan.
Major Objectives
Collectively, these documents outline major objectives for bilateral cooperation over the next three to five years in specific areas of regulatory activity, Howard Shelanski, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, said in a blog post.
“The Regulatory Partnerships are a significant step toward deepening our cooperation efforts,” Shelanski said. “The newly developed frameworks outline how U.S. and Canadian agencies will manage cooperative regulatory activities moving forward,” he said.
The frameworks address such issues as governance between the agencies, obtaining input from stakeholders and ways to promote more effective and efficient regulatory engagement between the two countries for the benefit of both countries’ consumers, manufacturers and producers, Shelanski said.
“These ambitious plans will take time to institutionalize, but I am confident that together with our Canadian partners we can produce meaningful and lasting results,” Shelanski said.
Joint Initiatives
Through the partnership statements and detailed work plans, the U.S. and Canada have planned numerous joint initiatives, including:
• The Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) and Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) will work to establish a single application for crop protection products, like pesticides, that will be accepted in both countries.
• The Department of Transportation and Transport Canada will coordinate and collaborate on Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) communications technology and applications development and implementation for light- and heavy-duty vehicles to ensure they work seamlessly across the border no matter the supplier.
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) will undertake greater cooperation in the environmental management of the marine aquaculture sector.
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Exposure Thresholds For Respiratory Allergens Needed, Says Ecetoc
May 28, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Emma Davies
An industry task force has highlighted a need for methods to measure exposure thresholds for respiratory allergens.
Chemical respiratory allergy causes rhinitis and asthma and is an “important occupational health problem”, says the task force, set up by the European Centre for Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals (Ecetoc).
The task force's primary goal was to assess whether respiratory sensitisation is, indeed, a threshold phenomenon (CW 21 May 2015). The experts, led by Stella Cochrane from Unilever's safety and environmental assurance centre in the UK, reviewed the literature and concluded that there is sufficient evidence that becoming sensitised to chemical respiratory allergens is “dose-related”.
Respiratory allergy develops in two broad phases, although the cellular and molecular mechanisms are not fully understood. First is an induction phase, in which a chemical causes the immune system to become primed. When a sensitised person is exposed to the same chemical at a later date – sometimes years later - they can then develop a full allergic response, resulting in inflammation.
Although inhalation exposure is the main route to sensitisation, there is growing evidence from animal studies that skin exposure may also play a role. This could be particularly important in a work setting, where skin may be exposed to chemicals following spillages, suggest the authors.
Assessing the safety of chemicals, based on their potential to cause respiratory allergy, remains a “significant challenge”, they conclude. There are currently no experimental approaches for identifying exposure thresholds. Nevertheless, they suggest that it may sometimes be possible to derive safe workplace exposure levels, based on occupational exposure data.
Suitable methods for routine hazard characterisation, and for measuring thresholds, are “still some way off”, says the task force. It predicts that alternative (non-animal) approaches could be the answer. “There is, therefore, an urgent imperative to develop approaches to hazard identification and characterisation, and for the determination of threshold values that obviate the need for animals,” it concludes.
The article is published in Toxicology.
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EPA, Coast Guard Issue Cleanup Order For Crude Oil Spill in Santa Barbara Area
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
Federal authorities ordered Plains Pipeline LP to continue cleaning up heavy crude oil released in Santa Barbara County from an underground pipeline that ruptured May 19.
Issued jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard, the May 27 order establishes requirements for the long-term response action needed to clean up thousands of gallons of oil released inland and along the Pacific Coast.
“Our action today is to make sure the oil response work continues until the Santa Barbara County coastline is restored,” EPA Region 9 Administrator Jared Blumenfeld said in a May 27 written statement.
The cleanup order gives the company, owned by Plains All American Pipeline LP, until June 6 to submit a work plan for response activities and identifying how it will sample air, water, rocks and soil. All response activities currently under way must continue until the work plan is approved, the order said.
Also, the enforcement action requires Plains to clean up all remaining oil and petroleum contamination and ensure that no more oil is released.
Coast Guard Captain Jennifer Williams, the unified command federal on-scene coordinator, said the cleanup order identifies Plains Pipeline as the responsible party for the spill.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration issued an order May 21 requiring the company to shut down the 24-inch diameter pipeline that moves crude oil from ExxonMobil's breakout storage tanks in Las Flores Canyon to Plains Pipeline's Gaviota Pump Station (100 DEN A-1, 5/26/15).
Plains is removing the section of pipe that broke and evaluating the condition of the pipeline, as required under PHMSA's order.
Forced Closure of State Parks
PHMSA is investigating the incident that leaked about 2,400 barrels of crude oil and forced the closure of Refugio and El Capitan state park campgrounds and beaches.
Other beaches along the coast have trace amounts of oil and scattered tar balls, but testing is under way to determine if those are related to the spill or due to oil that seeps up from the ocean floor, according to county health officials.
So far, about 145 barrels of oil have been recovered by the response team, which includes the EPA, the Coast Guard, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response, the California Department of Emergency Services, Santa Barbara County's Office of Emergency Services, Plains All American Pipeline and hundreds of trained volunteers.
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Relic of California's Oil Past Haunts State With Spill Into Pacific Ocean
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Lynn Doan
A pipeline the oil market had all but forgotten resurfaced like a painful memory last week, spilling 500 barrels of heavy oil into the Pacific Ocean.
Line 901: A quarter century ago, it was a pipeline full of promise. Today, it's full of— not much, really.
Before it leaked May 19, pouring viscous crude into the waters off California's coast, the 24-inch line was carrying 28,800 barrels a day, mostly to a small refinery near Santa Barbara, at less than a fifth of its capacity (98 DEN A-14, 5/21/15).
It's a relic from another time, an era that peaked in the 1990s when drillers dove into the waters off California's coast chasing billions of barrels lying beneath the ocean floor.
The state was producing so much crude back then that a larger pipeline was built to send California's offshore oil to Texas. Today, Kinder Morgan Inc. has a plan to revive that link—to send Texas oil to California's refiners.
“This line is a remnant, from when huge volumes of California oil were supposed to materialize and never did,” David Hackett, president of energy consultant Stillwater Associates in Irvine, Calif., said of the Plains All American Pipeline LP system that leaked. “Now the shale revolution's changed everything. We're seeing dramatic increases in production elsewhere.”
In 1969, a blowout at a Union Oil platform dumped an estimated 80,000 barrels of crude off the coast of Santa Barbara in what was then the worst spill in U.S. history. Ensuing moratoriums helped cut the state's offshore oil production to a fourth of its August 1995 peak at 204,000 barrels a day.
Are ‘Finite Resources.’
“There are a number of reasons production falls, but there are platforms that have shut since then, and these are finite resources,” Sheri Pemberton, chief of external affairs for the California State Lands Commission, said by phone May 26.
California's total oil production peaked at 1.11 million barrels a day in February 1986. Environmental battles and the unique challenge of boring through uneven layers of rock have curbed new drilling as flows from legacy fields peter out.
Last week's spill may be another blow to California oil production, with environmentalists, including Food & Water Watch, calling on policy makers to phase out drilling in the state altogether. Plains All American spokesman Brad Leone declined to comment, saying the company is focused on its response to the spill.
The drop in oil production in state waters has slowed in the past few years and actually rose in 2013 by 3,000 barrels a day to about 40,000, state data show. Companies have been using technological improvements such as directional and extended-reach drilling to keep platforms alive, according to the California Energy Commission.
State Added Production
“Bringing additional wells online can and did increase total output from state waters,” Gordon Schremp, a senior fuels specialist at the energy commission, said by e-mail May 26.
Those wells face stiffer competition than they did 25 years ago. California's oil refiners have brought in record volumes of cheap oil by rail and barge from shale formations such as North Dakota's Bakken and Colorado's Niobrara. In 2012, North Dakota surpassed California and Alaska to become the nation's second-biggest oil producer.
Posted prices for California's heavy Midway Sunset crude have fallen 46 percent in the past three years, averaging $53.96 a barrel May 27, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil rose 17 cents on May 28 to settle at $57.68 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
California Receiving Canadian Oil
Crude from Canada's oil sands is also showing up at California's plants, as well as the occasional Texas barrel.
That's where Kinder Morgan's Freedom pipeline comes in, the project that would revive the path that once carried California oil to Texas.
Kinder hasn't provided an update to the market on the Freedom project since saying it was gauging interest from potential customers and shippers, company spokesman Richard Wheatley said May 27.
“It's interesting how these pieces of pipe in the ground get repurposed, isn't it?” Hackett asked. “If this one's actually done, it's going to be just one in a long line of pipes that are being repurposed in ways that nobody could have ever anticipated.”
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Section of Pipe in California Oil Spill Removed
May 29, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Zusha Elinson and Alison Sider
Workers on Thursday removed a section of a crude-oil pipeline that ruptured and spilled more than 100,000 gallons of oil off the Santa Barbara County, Calif., coast last week.
The piece of pipe will be sent to an independent laboratory in Ohio to determine what caused it to fail, according to a spokeswoman for the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. The agency ordered and supervised the removal and will station an inspector at the lab to observe the metallurgical testing.
The pipeline will be shipped in two segments—one 19 feet long and the other 31 feet long, said PHMSA spokeswoman Artealia Gilliard, adding that the amount of time it takes to conduct the tests and analysis can vary. “There’s no definite timeline,” she said.
She declined to provide details on the condition of the pipe when it was removed, saying that would be included in the final report.
The pipeline, owned by Plains All American Pipeline LP, remains shut down while investigators seek answers about the cause of the failure on site and in the company’s control room in Texas, according to PHMSA, a division of the Transportation Department.
Also Thursday, Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts sent a letter to PHMSA demanding more information about the pipeline.
“Following one of the most devastating oil spills in California history, we need answers about why this happened, why the response was insufficient and what can be done to prevent another tragic spill like this from happening in the future,” they wrote...
For full story:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/section-of-pipe-in-california-oil-spill-removed-1432854675
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(ACC Mentioned) What They Are Saying About NAAQS
May 29, 2015 | Energy Global
By Claira Lloyd
Cal Dooley, President, American Chemistry Council, “we’re facing a series of regulations, and the cumulative cost of compliance and the burden of permitting is significant. An industry such as ours is poised to make significant investments in growth, but these regulations make that harder.”
ANGA, “safe and responsible oil and natural gas production in shale regions across the country is supporting 1.7 million jobs and US$238 billion in economic activity every year. This has helped fuel a renaissance in manufacturing projected to add 1 million new jobs by 2025. Meanwhile our nation’s air quality has improved dramatically. However, today’s proposed ozone rule from the EPA threatens this progress. It is a step in the wrong direction and would hinder our ability to experience a sustained economic recovery.”
Lisa Murkowski, Senator, Energy and National Resources Committee, “EPA’s proposed tightening of ozone standards threatens to put large swaths of the country into non-attainment and could be the costliest regulation in US history, which would be devastating to the economy…Yet again we’re seeing the Obama administration release an incredibly expensive regulation on the eve of a major national holiday…The administration is clearly hoping to release this at a time when the vast majority of Americans are focused elsewhere, and that alone should tell us something about it.”
Richard Metcalf, Director of Environmental Affairs, Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, “say I want to pave a road in New Orleans. If they expand the emissions standards and New Orleans falls into non-attainment, you’d have to reevaluate every road project and assign it a higher budget.”
Jay Timmons, CEO, National Association of Manufacturers, “this new ozone regulation threatens to be the most expensive ever imposed on industry in America and could jeopardise recent progress in manufacturing by placing massive new costs on manufacturers and closing off countries and states to new business by blocking projects at the permitting stage.”
Will Allison, Director, State Department of Public Health and Environment’s Air Pollution Control Division, “certainly a lower standard will raise additional challenges for the state of Colorado. Natural background levels of ozone in the West are relatively high. And targeting ozone is complicated because ozone isn’t emitted directly but is formed when sunlight hits emissions from vehicles, power plants and factories…All this makes ozone reduction especially challenging. But we have implemented and will continue to look at practical, cost effective strategies for those sources where we can make a difference.”
Bill Kovacs, US Chamber of Commerce, “the EPA’s proposal to lower the ozone standard will have potentially damaging economic consequences for this country. [The stricter standard] translates into restriction on expansion, permitting delays, increased costs to industry and an impact on transportation planning.”
Fred Upton, US Representative, Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, “this validates everything we’ve been trying to say about the potential of energy resources to recharge the US economy. It’s coming and it’s real and it will have an impact.”
James M. Inhofe, US Senator, “today we are breathing the cleanest air since the CAA was passed in the 1970s, and our country should first look to meet the current ozone standard before we even consider adding more burdensome, costly mandates.”
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USGS Issues Two Reports Examining Growth Trends for Frac Sand Production
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Michael Bologna
The U.S. Geological Survey has released a pair of research papers describing hydraulic fracturing sand deposits across the country and analyzing anticipated trends for “frac sand” production and consumption.
One of the reports, announced May 27, points to 54 million metric tons (Mt) of frac sand produced in the U.S. in 2014, with about 70 percent coming from portions of Wisconsin and Minnesota. The report anticipates consumption of 70 million Mt in 2016 based on current growth trends.
“These new USGS compilations will provide comprehensive information about frac sand to mining companies, the petroleum industry, and land managers,” said Mary Ellen Benson, a USGS scientist and the author of “Frac Sand Sources in the United States.”
While neither report addressed potential environmental impacts, the boom in frac sand mining in Wisconsin and Minnesota has been controversial.
Several environmental and public health groups are concerned about potentially dangerous levels of crystalline silica dust in the air near frac sand mining and processing facilities.
Crystalline silica has been classified as a human lung carcinogen by the National Toxicology Program and is treated as a hazardous air pollutant in some states.
Environmental organizations have sued the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, alleging the agency isn't doing enough to compel operators to control their emissions and monitor air quality on a continuous basis.
Highly Pure Silica Sand Mined
Benson's report describes frac sand as an “industrial mineral commodity that consists of a naturally occurring, highly pure silica sand that is used as a proppant during hydraulic fracturing of unconventional oil and gas reservoirs to maximize and extend well production.” Exploration companies add proppants, such as frac sand, to the fracking fluid to prop open fractured rock formations to promote the flow of hydrocarbons during production.
The report notes that the “Northern White” or “Ottawa” sand mined in Wisconsin and Minnesota is highly prized for gas and oil production because of its unique geological properties. Northern White and Ottawa feature a high degree of density, sphericity or roundness and crush resistance.
A second report, titled “Sand Production, Consumption, and Reserves in the United States” by USGS scientist Don Bleiwas, describes the explosive growth in frac sand mining over the last decade and points to continued growth for the foreseeable future.
The report found that frac sand production stood at about 2 million Mt for more than a decade but raced higher in 2004 in response to the fracking boom.
Growth Related to Fracking
“The rapid growth in the demand for frac sand at this time was a direct result of the petroleum industry's start of aggressive horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing programs in unconventional oil and gas targets contained in tight sedimentary formations,” Bleiwas wrote.
Barring the development of alternative technologies or a long-term drop in oil and gas prices, the report projects continued growth in frac sand mining and the exploitation of new mines in Texas, Arkansas and portions of Canada.
The report predicts frac sand will outlast alternative types of proppants due to its strong performance in most applications, its availability and its lower price compared with alternatives.
The two research papers were published in the May 2015 issue of the magazine Rock Products. A USGS Open-File Report focusing broadly on the geology of frac sand will be released later this year.
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DOE Issues Conditional Approval For Alaska Liquefied Natural Gas Project
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
An Alaska-based liquefied natural gas export project that has been decades in the making received the Energy Department's conditional approval May 28.
The project, which involves construction of an 800-mile pipeline to send natural gas from Alaska's North Slope to a proposed export terminal in the state's Kenai Peninsula, is backed by companies such as TransCanada Corp., BP Plc, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil Corp.
The project, which still needs approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and final approval by the Energy Department, is conditionally authorized to export LNG up to the equivalent of 2.55 billion standard cubic feet a day (Bcf/d) of natural gas for a period of 30 years, the DOE said.
‘Major Milestone.'
Although the Energy Department ended its practice of issuing conditional export licenses, instead deferring final approvals until environmental reviews are completed by FERC, a conditional export license for the project, estimated to cost between $45 billion to $65 billion, is seen as necessary to attract investors.
The Energy Department has said it will streamline the permitting process for the project, which was first conceived in the 1970s, because natural gas from Alaska is considered “stranded” and won't affect the natural gas market in the lower 48 states.
“Receiving the conditional license to export LNG to non-free trade agreement countries is a major milestone for the Alaska LNG project and great news for Alaska,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in a statement. “With federal permission in place, those working on the project have the ability to begin selling Alaska gas in the Asian markets.”
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Proposed Rule for Arctic Offshore Oil Work Criticized as Too Costly by Industry Groups
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
The Interior Department “significantly and systematically underestimates” the likely costs of proposed regulations for oil and natural gas exploration in U.S. Arctic waters, industry groups said in comments on the proposal.
The cost burdens of the proposed rule are so great that they “would profoundly reduce” companies' ability to develop Arctic oil and gas resources, a May 27 letter from the American Petroleum Institute , the National Ocean Industries Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said.
The letter from the three groups was part of the public comments filed on the Arctic drilling standards proposed in February by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), two Interior Department agencies. The comment period ended May 27.
“Across the board, the agencies' estimated costs are drastically low, sometimes by several orders of magnitude,” the three groups said.
At the same time, Interior's estimates of benefits were based on an unsupported assumption that a catastrophic oil spill will take place on the Outer Continental Shelf north of Alaska in the next 10 years, the groups said.
The Obama administration has defended the regulations as needed to cope with harsh Arctic conditions (63 DEN A-1, 4/2/15).
Shell, ConocoPhillips Object
Royal Dutch Shell Plc has been working through the regulatory steps with the hope of drilling in the Chukchi Sea north of Alaska this summer.
Shell filed comments saying the Interior agencies grossly underestimated the burden that would be imposed on operators to file a high volume of often redundant reports about their work.
Other companies holding Chukchi leases include ConocoPhillips Co., Repsol S.A., Eni S.p.A., Statoil and OOGC America Inc., a unit of China National Offshore Oil Corp.
ConocoPhillips filed comments saying the proposed rule reflects too narrow a view of the available technology for safe drilling. “The unfortunate consequence of this narrow view is a draft regulations package that burdens and may actually preclude the use of proven technology that would significantly enhance spill prevention,” the company said.
Agencies Urged to Re-Propose Rule
The National Association of Manufacturers filed comments urging BSEE and BOEM to repropose the Arctic rule after reviewing a report written by an advisory group to the secretary of energy, the National Petroleum Council. That report said the essential technology to drill safely for oil and gas in the Arctic exists today (60 DEN A-2, 3/30/15).
The requirements in the proposed rule for specific technologies apparently would preclude practical options, such as different types of drilling rigs, said the letter from the two oil and gas industry associations and the Chamber of Commerce.
The proposed requirements for ability to use containment domes or mudline cellars—holes in the seabed in which equipment such as blowout preventers can be placed—likely would preclude the use of some alternatives to floating rigs, the three groups said. More flexibility for the use of equivalent technology is needed, the groups added.
Would Require Ability to Regain Control
The proposed rule would require the ability to regain control of a leaking well by drilling a relief well in the same drilling season, while water is still free of ice pack. That would require the already short drilling season to be shorter still, allowing enough extra time for a possible relief well.
“The proposed regulations would make it difficult, and in many cases impossible, to complete one well in a single season,” the groups said.
“Any cost-benefit analysis of this rule package should account for the erosion to an operator's portfolio caused by the lost drilling days,” the groups said.
Environmental groups don't want oil and gas exploration in the offshore Arctic and have encouraged citizens to file letters expressing blunt opposition to any and all drilling.
Form Letter Sent to Agency
The docket for comments on the proposed Arctic standards was crowded, especially with a form letter urging denial of all drilling permits in the Arctic, including Shell's requested permit for Chukchi Sea drilling.
Arctic drilling “would be conducted amidst extreme conditions with limited capacity for response and cleanup,” said the form letter, apparently filed by hundreds of individuals. The letter cited not only spill risks but potential contribution to climate change.
“For the sake of all of the children of the world, and their future, please prohibit oil and gas drilling in the Arctic,” the letter said.
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DOE Approves Alaska Natural Gas Export Facility
May 28, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Elana Schor
The Department of Energy today gave conditional authorization to a high-profile Alaska export facility to ship upwards of 2.5 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas per year to nations that don’t have free-trade agreements with the U.S.
DOE’s approval for the Alaska LNG project, a joint venture by the state, BP, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and TransCanada, runs for 30 years. That’s 10 years longer than the usual federal authorization period, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski noted as she hailed the decision.
“With federal permission in place, those working on the project have the ability to begin selling Alaska gas in the Asian markets,” Murkowski said in a statement.
The export project, which could cost as much as $65 billion, is still in the pre-filing stage at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and not expected to come online until 2025 at the earliest.
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Court Deems Supplementary EIS Unneeded; Alaska Oil Development Can Go Forward
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Matthew Berger
A supplemental environmental impact statement isn't needed, and a permit for ConocoPhillips to fill wetlands to develop a drill site in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve can go forward, a federal court has ruled (Kunaknana v. U.S. Army Corps, D. Alaska, No. 3:13-cv-00044-SLG, 5/26/15).
Sam Kunaknana, of the nearby Inupiat Eskimo village Nuiqsuit, and other plaintiffs had challenged the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' decision to not conduct a SEIS in evaluating ConocoPhillips' application for a permit under the Clean Water Act.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska rejected that challenge in a decision filed May 26.
ConocoPhillips is seeking to fill about 60 acres of wetlands to build the CD-5 drill field, expected to provide the first-ever commercial oil production from the petroleum reserve.
The project would require a Section 404 permit under the Clean Water Act, to be issued by the corps. After ConocoPhillips submitted a permit application in 2008, the corps denied it in 2010, citing a failure to demonstrate that the proposed project was the “least environmentally damaging practicable alternative,” as required by the water act (234 DEN A-12, 12/6/11).
Corps Granted Permit in 2011
After the company appealed that decision, the corps granted the permit in 2011. It also decided that a supplementary environmental impact statement was unnecessary in evaluating the application, despite the modifications in the plan presented in the original application and the time elapsed since the EIS was prepared in 2004, after ConocoPhillips originally sought to develop CD-5 and four other drill sites.
EISs are required under the National Environmental Protection Act, and SEISs are required when new information becomes available or substantial changes relevant to environmental concerns are made to the permit application.
In the corps' opinion, the proposal in the permit application didn't contain significant changes or new information relevant to environmental concerns from that contained in the original EIS issued.
Kunaknana and the other plaintiffs challenged that decision and, in 2013, the court rejected the corps' decision that an SEIS was unnecessary and required the corps to “set forth a reasoned explanation” on whether new information about the drill site project required a SEIS.
Court Agrees With Corps
That explanation was presented in a supplemental information report and briefing, filed Sept. 12, 2014. On May 26, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason reversed the previous decision and ruled the corps was correct in deeming a SEIS unnecessary.
She found that due to ongoing consultation with tribes and the public over the years since the original 2004 EIS, the elapsed time didn't necessarily require a SEIS.
Other modifications to the proposal, such as an increase in the size of the drill pad to avoid increasing the footprint if further drill pads are required later, do not constitute substantial changes relevant to environmental concerns, the court found.
In the case of the increase in size, from 9.1 acres to 11.7 acres, the court sided with the corps because the new, larger proposed pad also would be relocated to drier tundra.
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DOE Conditionally Approves Alaska Facility To Export North Slope LNG
May 28, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Katherine Ling
The Energy Department today conditionally authorized the Alaska LNG Project LLC to export liquefied natural gas to countries that do not have a free-trade agreement with the United States from a terminal about 60 air-miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, along the Cook Inlet.
DOE's conditional approval is the first hurdle for the project, which seeks to export up to the equivalent of 2.55 billion standard cubic feet per day of natural gas for a period of 30 years.
The project located in the Nikiski Area of the Kenai Peninsula still needs an environmental review and final regulatory approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It is currently in FERC's pre-filing process.
DOE said it considered the application separately from other applications for LNG terminals in the mainland because Alaska's North Slope has been a "stranded resource unavailable to commercial markets."
Besides the LNG plant, storage and terminal at Nikiski, the up-to-$60-billion project includes a "massive" plant to capture carbon dioxide emissions of the produced gas to be used for reinjection and an approximately 800-mile pipeline from Alaska's North Slope to the liquefaction plant, according to the project's website. There will also be gas offtake points along the pipeline for Alaska communities.
Alaska LNG is a partnership between Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips, BP, TransCanada, Alaska Gasline Development Corp. and the state of Alaska.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, welcomed the announcement as "a major milestone" for the project and accessing the more than 35 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves on the North Slope, with the potential for 200 trillion cubic feet more both onshore and offshore of Alaska's northern coast.
"With federal permission in place, those working on the project have the ability to begin selling Alaska gas in the Asian markets. With this project comes good jobs and a stronger economy and I'm excited to see Alaska at the forefront of LNG exports," Murkowski said in a statement.
Murkowski's office also noted Alaska has a 44-year history of shipping LNG from Cook Inlet to Asia from Nikiski.
The Alaska LNG pipeline has run into a bit of contention recently in state budget negotiations as Gov. Bill Walker (I) has pushed to scale up a small, in-state gasline project known as the Alaska Stand Alone Pipeline -- originally designed solely to bring fuel to Alaska residents -- that state Republican leaders say would compete with the Alaska LNG project (EnergyWire, May 1).
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Government Study Suggests Huge Amount Of Oil in Canada's Northwest Territories Shale
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jeremy Hainsworth
A study by the governments of Canada and the Northwest Territories estimates that the country's far north contains a massive amount of shale oil reserves—nearly 200 billion barrels.
How much of that oil could be recoverable from the remote and largely unexplored area, however, is anyone's guess, according to the report.
The study conducted by Canada's National Energy Board and the Northwest Territories Geological Survey estimated that the volume of unconventional oil in the Bluefish Shale and the Canol Shale are 145 billion and 46 billion barrels, respectively.
The report, dated May 22, compared the Northwest Territories' shale gas potential to the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico—the highest producing oil field in the U.S.—where operators report expected recovery factors of about 3 percent.
“If a three per cent recovery factor was applied to the in-place value for the Canol Shale, the recoverable resource would become 4.35 billion barrels,” the report said.
But the amount of marketable recoverable oil was not estimated because well test results are not yet publicly available and there is still uncertainty about whether the shales are capable of production, the report said.
A National Energy Board market snapshot defines unconventional oil as crude oil trapped within low permeability reservoirs deep below the Earth's surface from which oil will not flow economically to a wellbore without assistance from technologically advanced recovery processes or stimulation treatments, such as horizontal drilling and multistage hydraulic fracturing.
Early Exploration
But the petroleum industry recently has begun targeting the Canol Shale, according to the report.
Fourteen exploration licenses have been granted there since 2010 and seven new exploration wells have been drilled since 2012.
In 2014, two horizontal wells were drilled, the results of which are not yet publicly available, the report said. With the recent decline in oil prices, most companies have put exploration plans on hold in the region, the report added.
The remote area has not been explored enough to discover the economics of producing oil, Aaron Miller, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers manager for northern Canada onshore, told Bloomberg BNA.
“There's not enough baseline information to ascertain if hydrocarbons can be produced economically,” Miller said.
‘Frontier Area.'
Still, the Northwest Territories has been positioning itself as an alternative source of energy production and transportation with the Keystone XL Pipeline and Enbridge Northern Gateway Project stalled (178 DEN A-7, 9/15/14).
Minister of Industry David Ramsay said last year that he favors a Northwest Passage Arctic Ocean sea route option for oil transport, using a Mackenzie Valley route to Tuktoyaktuk on the Beaufort Sea.
That route had been approved for a natural gas pipeline, but the project is now on hold due to poor market conditions and lack of commercial support .
Speaking in Houston May 5, Ramsay told the Offshore Technology Conference that the territory is investing in infrastructure to assist in development.
“We are ready to talk to socially and environmentally responsible companies that want to work and invest with us to develop our resources, build our economy, unlock our potential—and bring our resources to hungry markets around the world,” he said.
But part of the economics of recovering the oil, Miller said, depends on the infrastructure being in place for companies to get to the fields and to transport the oil once it is out of the ground.
“It's still a high-cost jurisdiction,” he said. “It's a frontier area.”
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EDF Names Former EPA Official As New Executive Director
May 28, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Daniel Bush
The Environmental Defense Fund has named Diane Regas as its new executive director, the green group announced today.
Regas, a former U.S. EPA official who spent nearly 20 years at the agency, worked her way up through the ranks at EDF after joining the environmental organization in 2006. Regas led the group's oceans program and served as a senior vice president before being promoted to her new role.
"I am incredibly excited to have Diane in this new position," EDF President Fred Krupp said in a statement. "She is one of the extraordinary leaders in the environmental community."
Other environmental leaders also praised the move, calling Regas a seasoned policy hand with decades of experience working on green issues.
Regas "is internationally respected for [her] sound judgement, warm and congenial temperament, and can-do energy and resourcefulness. EDF and the entire environmental community will be well served by" her, said William Reilly, who served as EPA administrator under former President George H.W. Bush.
EDF today also promoted Gwen Ruta to senior vice president for climate and energy. Ruta had previously served as the group's vice president for programs. The twin promotions were part of a broader reorganization as EDF looks to bolster its work on international environmental issues, the group said.
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Wisconsin Fears Rate Hikes Under Power Plan Rule
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
The Environmental Protection Agency's proposed Clean Power Plan could cost Wisconsin as much as $13.4 billion to comply, increasing electricity rates by 29 percent, Gov. Scott Walker (R) said in a letter to President Barack Obama. The costs for complying with the EPA's proposal (RIN 2060-AR33), which would set carbon dioxide emissions limits for the power sector in each state, make it difficult for Wisconsin to “responsibly construct a state plan that can comply with the requirements of the Clean Power Plan without ignoring our responsibility to ensure safe, affordable and reliable electricity for the people of Wisconsin,” Walker said in the May 21 letter. Despite his concerns, Walker stopped short of saying Wisconsin would fail to issue its own plan to implement the proposed rule, which would trigger a requirement for the EPA to issue a federal plan. To date, only Oklahoma has publicly said it plans not to comply (95 DEN A-6, 5/18/15). Walker's letter is available at http://op.bna.com/env.nsf/r?Open=achs-9wxs9z.
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Walker: EPA Carbon Rule 'Unworkable' For Wisconsin
May 28, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) told President Obama that his landmark carbon rule for power plants is “unworkable” for the Badger State.
Walker, who is expected to announce a run for president next month, stopped short of saying that Wisconsin would not comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) climate change regulation.
But in a letter to Obama dated May 21, he expressed “deep concerns regarding our ability to develop a state plan to comply with the proposal,” and said it is “riddled with inaccuracies, questionable assumptions and deficiencies that make the development of a responsible state plan unworkable.”Walker has long been critical of the EPA’s rule, proposed in June 2014 with a goal of slashing the power sector’s carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030. The EPA plans to make the rule final in August, and then states will have a year to submit their compliance plans before the feds implement their own.
Walker's letter is one of the sharpest criticisms of the plan yet from a governor, although leaders from more than 30 states have said they oppose the rule.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) ordered state agencies in April to ignore the rule and not comply with it, making Oklahoma the only state to clearly declare its intent to disregard the regulation.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a top opponent of the proposed rule, has actively lobbied state governors to ignore it.
“Think twice before submitting a state plan — which could lock you in to federal enforcement and expose you to lawsuits — when the administration is standing on shaky legal ground and when, without your support, it won't be able to demonstrate the capacity to carry out such political extremism,” he wrote in March.
Walker has said very little about his stance on humanity's role in climate change, but environmentalists have accused him of prohibiting the state’s Board of Commissioners of Public Lands from doing any work related to climate.
He’s also signed a pledge never to support a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, organized by Charles and David Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity.
Walker wrote letters to the Obama administration in August and December of 2014 saying the rule would cost Wisconsin $3.3 billion to $13.4 billion, due largely to shutting down coal-fired power plants, a figure that he repeated in the most recent letter.
Apart from the cost considerations and technical problems, Walker said, he is concerned that the EPA cannot legally enforce its rule under the Clean Air Act.
“Absent significant and meaningful changes in the final rule, it is difficult to envision how Wisconsin can responsibly construct a state plan that can comply with the requirements of the Clean Power Plan without ignoring our responsibility to ensure safe, affordable and reliable electricity for the people of Wisconsin,” he wrote.
Ellen Nowak, chairwoman of Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission and a Walker appointee, testified at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in March, saying, “we question the very foundation of this proposal.”
She also refused to say whether she believes that greenhouse gases from human activity are contributing to climate change.
Wisconsin is also among numerous Republican-led states suing the EPA to have the rule overturned, a lawsuit that is unlikely to be successful.
In response to the letter, EPA spokeswoman Liz Purchia fought back, saying the agency is working closely with states on the regulation.
“EPA's Clean Power Plan is built on a time-tested state-federal partnership in the Clean Air Act for EPA to establish public health goals while providing states important flexibility to design plans to meet their individual and unique needs,” she said in a statement.
The final rule coming out in August will take into account the “unprecedented” input on the rule, including 4.3 million comments received, Purchia said.
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California Air District Seeks Court Review Of EPA Rule to Alter Planning Area Boundary
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
The South Coast Air Quality Management District wants a federal appeals court to review an Environmental Protection Agency decision creating a separate ozone planning area for the tribal lands of the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission Indians (SCAQMD v. EPA, 9th Cir., No. 15-71600, 5/27/15).
Filed May 27 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the petition aims to challenge a final rulemaking published April 3 that removed the Pechanga Band's reservation from the air district's extreme nonattainment area for the 1997 eight-hour standard for ground-level ozone and designating the tribal lands as in attainment with the standard.
Southern California air quality officials detailed their concerns in 11 pages of the comments submitted to the EPA when the agency first proposed the rulemaking.
In the comments, the air district said the rulemaking fell short of complying with the legal requirements for redesignations to attainment and conflicted with the EPA's policy on redesignations for Indian Country, including provisions in an earlier action on tribal lands within the South Coast air basin.
Other concerns focused on the air quality monitoring data, the emissions inventory for the reservation and the fact that the maintenance plan the EPA approved for the reservation relies on control measures that don't apply to the tribal lands.
Discrepancy Cited
“There is a discrepancy between the attainment status of the Pechanga Band lands and the adjoining lands,” SCAQMD attorney Barbara Baird told Bloomberg BNA May 28.
In the South Coast Air Basin, the threshold for major stationary sources of air pollution is those that emit 10 tons or more a year. The threshold for major sources of pollution in the Pechanga Band reservation is 100 tons or more a year, she said.
A key concern is the new attainment status for the Pechanga Band reservation will create an incentive for large sources of air pollution to relocate to the reservation where they wouldn't be as heavily regulated as elsewhere in the South Coast Air Basin, Baird said.
Other tribal governments in the air basin could follow, making the air district's job of cleaning up the air in the urban areas of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties and all of Orange County more difficult, she said.
The SCAQMD also is challenging the EPA's rulemaking in 2013 that removed the Morongo Band of Mission Indians tribal lands from its air quality planning area ((S. Coast Air Quality Mgmt. Dist. v. EPA, 9th Cir., No. 13-73936, 11/12/13; (220 DEN A-5, 11/14/13)).
Baird declined to discuss that petition, saying the case is in the court's mediation program.
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Democrats 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.
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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9th Circuit Rejects Coal Firm's Suit Over EPA's Proposed Pebble Mine Veto
May 28, 2015 | InsideEPA
By David LaRoss
A federal appellate court has upheld the dismissal of a coal company's bid for novel early review of EPA's proposal for a rare preemptive Clean Water Act (CWA) veto of the planned Pebble Mine in Alaska, agreeing with the agency's arguments that any legal challenge must wait until regulators take final action on the veto.
In a unanimous, unpublished May 28 disposition, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit says a Feb. 28, 2014 letter where EPA Region 9 announced that it would consider a CWA veto of the mining site near Bristol Bay, AK, is not a “final agency action” subject to court challenge, despite industry claims to the contrary.
“The February 28 letter was not the 'consummation' of EPA’s decision-making process on any issue. The letter did not state whether or not EPA will veto the specification of Bristol Bay as a disposal site for dredged or fill material; it merely indicated that EPA was beginning a review process to decide that question,” says the decision in Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP), et al. v. EPA, et al., by the panel of Senior Judge William C. Canby and Judges Jay Bybee and Paul J. Watford.
The decision comes just two weeks after members of the panel signaled at May 14 oral arguments that PLP would face a high bar to show standing to pursue its suit.
PLP plans to build a hard-rock mine near Bristol Bay, but EPA proposed a novel preemptive veto under CWA section 404(c) of any future water permit for the project due to concerns about potential adverse impacts on the surrounding watershed -- even though the mine developer has yet to submit a formal permit application.
EPA floated the novel veto following a study of mining risks in the watershed that industry has criticized as biased, and based on “coordination” with environmentalists in violation of the Federal Advisory Committees Act.
While the veto proposal is still under consideration at the agency, PLP and its allies in the mining industry claimed that even though EPA has not taken final action, “legal consequences flowed immediately” from the Region 9 letter, in part because while a veto is pending the company cannot obtain a CWA section 404 dredge-and-fill permit from the Army Corps of Engineers.
But the 9th Circuit in its disposition counters that “the letter suspended the Corps’ ability to issue them a Section 404 discharge permit, but this impairment may be only temporary; after the Section 404(c) review proceeding has concluded, the Corps will be able to issue the plaintiffs a permit again, assuming that EPA has not chosen to veto specification of Bristol Bay as a disposal site.”
Although PLP said the situation is similar to the landmark 2013 Supreme Court case Sackett v. EPA, where a unanimous high court opened many EPA compliance orders to pre-enforcement challenges, the judges say the temporary nature of the veto proposal distinguishes it from the orders in Sackett.
“[T]he Court held that an EPA compliance order was final agency action because, among many other things, it imposed a severe and indefinite impairment on the Corps’ ability to issue a Section 404 permit for a particular property,” the decision says.
The 9th Circuit disposition upholds a Sept. 26 order by District Judge H. Russel Holland that said the challenge was premature because the veto is not final and could be abandoned. Holland is also weighing a separate suit by PLP over EPA's report on potential environmental harms from mining in Bristol Bay, PLP v. EPA, where oral arguments over EPA's motion for dismissal were held May 28.
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Obama Links Extreme Weather, Climate Change During Florida Hurricane Briefing
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
President Barack Obama used his annual hurricane briefing and a Twitter conversation May 28 to urge Congress to further support resilience efforts in U.S. communities vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
Obama, speaking at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, warned climate change is already having impacts on coastal communities and would be extremely costly to address if the U.S. doesn't ramp up preparedness efforts.
“The best climate scientists in the world are telling us that extreme weather events like hurricanes are likely to become more powerful,” Obama said during brief remarks. “When you combine stronger storms with rising seas, that's a recipe for more devastating floods.”
He added, “Miami, for example, already has to spend hundreds of millions of dollars just to adapt its water system to the more frequent flooding that it's already experiencing from rising seas.”
The president said leading scientists now believe climate change worsens already extreme weather events and highlighted 2012's Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the New York City area and other parts of the East Coast.
“Climate change didn't cause Hurricane Sandy, but it might have made it stronger,” Obama said. “And 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 our infrastructure in these communities.”
Obama made the trip to Miami for an in-person briefing on the upcoming hurricane season. His latest visit marks the second time in as many months the president's travels to Florida have focused heavily on climate change.
In late April, Obama warned a changing climate would imperil much of the nation's iconic wilderness like the Florida Everglades (78 DEN A-20, 4/23/15).
Should Be Taught in Schools
Later, during a Twitter chat, Obama expressed support for incorporating lessons on climate change and how to address the problem into public school curriculums around the country.
“Kids instinctively understand importance of environment, impact on animals, health. Weave it into science and social studies,” Obama said in a tweet.
Asked if major international greenhouse gas emitters like China and Brazil are doing enough to address climate change, the president said in a tweet that “we will all need to do more with US leading.”
Obama called a joint November 2014 announcement with China on climate change “big” and said the U.S. would be working with Brazil to develop its emissions-reduction plans.
Defends Remarks on National Security Risk
The president also defended May 20 remarks that climate change poses an immediate national security risk. Obama said increasingly extreme weather would cause population displacement, resource scarcity and stressed populations that would increase the likelihood of global conflict.
Republicans in Congress took exception to those comments from Obama and said there were numerous other greater risks to national security before climate change (98 DEN A-13, 5/21/15).
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Obama: ‘Best Climate Scientists’ Link Hurricanes, Climate Change
May 28, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
President Obama said Thursday the link between more extreme weather and climate change is undeniable, and that the world’s best scientists have made a conclusive connection.
Rising sea levels are another consequence of climate change and can make extreme weather even worse, he said at the National Hurricane Center following a tour.
“The best climate scientists in the world are telling us that extreme weather events like hurricanes are likely to become more powerful. When you combine stronger storms with rising seas, that’s a recipe for more devastating floods,” he said.Obama’s remarks came during a visit to the center, whose meteorologists are predicting a “below-normal” Atlantic Ocean hurricane season, with three to six storms likely.
The president cited 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, which caused billions of dollars of damage in the New York City area, as an example.
“Climate change didn’t cause Hurricane Sandy, but it might have made it stronger,” he said. “The fact that the sea level in New York Harbor is about a foot higher than a century ago certainly made the storm surge worse.”
Later, Obama held an unannounced question-and-answer session on hurricanes, climate change and similar issues. He used the opportunity to promote and defend his record on climate.
On the connection between climate and security, a link he has highlighted in recent months, he said, “More severe weather events lead to displacement, scarcity, stressed populations; all increase likelihood of global conflict.”
Obama said increasing the use of renewable energy through research and development, and regulatory incentives is a “key” to moving toward clean energy, and that, while last year’s climate agreement with China is “big,” he and Chinese leaders will work with Brazil to encourage a strong plan to cut carbon there.
The president also defended his decision to allow Royal Dutch Shell to drill for oil and natural gas in the Arctic Ocean.
He said he blocked drilling in sensitive areas like Bristol Bay, but since he can’t completely prevent drilling in the Arctic, “we're setting the highest possible standards.”
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6 Climate Tipping Points: How Worried Should We Be?
May 28, 2015 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Ilissa Ocko
One of the biggest fears about climate change is that it may be triggering events that would dramatically alter Earth as we know it.
Known to scientists as “tipping events,” they could contribute to mass extinction of species, dramatic sea level rise, extensive droughts and the transformation of forests into vast grasslands – among other upheavals our stressed world can ill afford.
Here are the top six climate events scientists worry about today.
1. The Arctic sea ice melts
The melting of the Arctic summer ice is considered to be the single greatest threat, and some scientists think we’ve already passed the tipping point.
As sea ice melts and the Arctic warms, dark ocean water is exposed that absorbs more sunlight, thus reinforcing the warming. The transition to an ice-free Arctic summer can occur rapidly – within decades – and this has geopolitical implications, in addition to a whole ecosystem being disrupted.
2. Greenland becomes ice-free
The warming of the Arctic may also render Greenland largely ice-free. While Greenland’s ice loss will likely reach the point of no return within this century, the full transition will take at least a few hundred years.
The impacts of the Greenland ice melt is expected to raise sea levels by up to 20 feet.
Half of the 10 largest cities in the world, including New York City, and one-third of the world’s 30 largest cities are already threatened by this sea level rise. Today, they are home to nearly 1.8 billion people.
Other vulnerable American cities include Miami, Norfolk and Boston.
3. The West Antarctic ice sheet disintegrates
On the other side of Earth, the West Antarctic ice sheet is also disintegrating. Because the bottom of this glacier is grounded below sea level, it’s vulnerable to rapid break-up, thinning and retreat as warm ocean waters eat away at the ice.
Scientists expect the West Antarctic ice sheet to “tip” this century, and there is evidence that it already began happening in 2014.
However, the entire collapse of the glacier, which would raise sea level by 16 feet, could take a few hundred years.
4. El Niño becomes a more permanent climate fixture
The oceans absorb about 90 percent of the extra heat that is being trapped in the Earth system by greenhouse gases. This could affect the ocean dynamics that control El Niño events.
While there are several theories about what could happen in the future, the most likely consequence of ocean heat uptake is that El Niño, a natural climate phenomenon, could become a more permanent part of our climate system.
That would cause extensive drought conditions in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, while some drought-prone areas such as California would get relief.
The transition is expected to be gradual and take around a century to occur – but it could also be triggered sooner.
5. The Amazon rain forest dies back
Rainfall in the Amazon is threatened by deforestation, a longer dry season, and rising summer temperatures.
At least half of the Amazon rainforest could turn into savannah and grassland, which - once triggered - could happen over just a few decades. This would make it very difficult for the rainforest to reestablish itself and lead to a considerable loss in biodiversity.
However, the reduction of the Amazon ultimately depends on what happens with El Niño, along with future land-use changes from human activities.
6. Boreal forests are cut in half
Increased water and heat stress are taking a toll on the large forests in Canada, Russia and other parts of the uppermost Northern Hemisphere. So are forest disease and fires.
This could lead to a 50-percent reduction of the boreal forests, and mean they may never be able to recover. Instead, the forest would gradually transition into open woodlands or grasslands over several decades.
This would have a huge impact on the world’s carbon balance because forests can absorb much more carbon than grasslands do. As the forest diminishes, the climate will be affected as will the Earth’s energy balance.
However, the complex interaction between tree physiology, permafrost and fires makes the situation tricky to understand.
Other concerns…
As if that’s not enough, there are a few other tipping events that scientists are also concerned about, but they are even more complex and harder to predict. Examples of such events include the greening of the Sahara and Sahel, the development of an Arctic ozone hole and a chaotic Indian summer monsoon.
How do we keep from tipping over?
We know from measurements that the Earth has had many climate-related tipping events throughout its history. Today’s situation is different, because humans are now driving these changes and the warming is occurring at a faster rate.
But as humans we also have the power to change the trajectory we’re on – possibly in a matter of a few years. We think we know how.
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New Sierra Club President Sets Sights On Green Diversity Problem
May 28, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Andrew Restuccia
The Sierra Club, the nation’s biggest environmental group, is out to prove that the green movement isn’t just for well-off white people.
The 123-year-old organization just elected its first black president. Its board condemned racial profiling in Ferguson. Environmental justice has become one of its core campaigns.
That’s a major shift for a political and social movement long viewed as the domain of affluent white activists, and it’s been decades in the making.
Aaron Mair, who became the first black president of the Sierra Club’s board of directors earlier this month, said the group is dedicated to becoming more inclusive.
“The question is: tokenism versus real systematic change, and we at the Sierra Club have embarked on real systemic change,” he told POLITICO in a recent interview.
But critics say the green movement still has a lot to prove, especially after years of focusing on broad, national campaigns, rather than local pollution and health issues facing lower-income minority communities.
“It’s gotten better, but I think we’re still talking about quantitative change, not qualitative change. They haven’t moved beyond tokenism,” said Antonio Gonzalez, the president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, which is partnering with other green groups to register 1 million climate-focused voters of color by Election Day. “Yes, they’ve changed over the last 25 years, but no, they haven’t changed fundamentally.”
Mair agreed that the movement as a whole is “not changing at the pace that it should.”
“For other environmental groups and other big green groups, the clock is ticking,” he said. “Privilege and those old habits need to be broken.”
The green movement’s dearth of diversity has long drawn criticism. In 1990, more than 100 community leaders of color condemned the country’s biggest environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, for ignoring their interests and failing to build more diverse memberships.
“The lack of people of color in decision-making positions in your organizations such as executive staff or board positions is also reflective of your histories of racist and exclusionary practices,” the leaders wrote in a letter to the heads of the 10 top environmental organizations. “Racism is a root cause of your inaction around addressing environmental problems in our communities.”
A quarter-century later, environmental justice advocates and even many officials at top green groups say the movement still isn’t doing enough.
Robert Bullard — who is often called the “father” of the environmental justice movement that seeks fair treatment for people of all races, nationalities and income levels — said green groups’ attempts to become more diverse amount to “incremental progress.”
“We’ve made some good steps, but we’re a long way from being there,” said Bullard, the dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University. He called on big green organizations to work more closely with communities of color and to encourage donors to give money to smaller organizations focused on environmental justice issues.
It’s on those local campaigns that Mair cut his teeth. In the 1990s, he organized protests against a trash incinerator that was causing respiratory problems for the low-income residents of Albany’s Arbor Hill neighborhood, and he later helped encourage the Sierra Club to throw its weight behind a fight against toxics in sections of the Hudson River.
“One of the most powerful things that the Sierra Club and the green movement can do is recognize the totality of human existence no matter where people exist,” he said. “If a waste incinerator or sewage treatment plant isn’t good in a wealthy area, then we must agree that it’s not good in any area.”
A Sierra Club member since 1999, Mair said diversity, equity and inclusion will be his top priorities at the club.
Mair hopes to make the Sierra Club’s membership more diverse by showing people that the group cares deeply about the plight of minority communities. Young people of all races, he said, will be attracted to that message.
“The issue now is unlearning some of the baggage that is part of the old America and learning the values of the younger, millennial generation. They don’t have the same baggage about race,” he said. “The hope is that we start seeing the next generation of youth come together, including those forces that came together around the Obama election. That is the sweet spot for the Sierra Club.”
Sarah Hodgdon, the Sierra Club’s national program director and leader of the staff diversity team, said the group has made progress since 2007, when the board adopted a statement aimed at promoting diversity across the organization.
“It started out where a lot of folks felt like it was another thing to put on the to-do list and we’re really working to make sure it isn’t just another thing we do but a part of everything we do,” she said.
Last year’s massive climate change march in New York City marked a “turning point moment” for the movement, she said. Having been stung by allegations that the movement is too insular, organizers sought to make sure that people “first and most impacted” by climate change led the march, including representatives of environmental justice and indigenous groups.
The Sierra Club is also part of the Building Equity and Alignment for Impact initiative, a coalition of grassroots and national green groups that are working to build a “more inclusive” environmental movement by breaking down barriers between the biggest environmental groups and smaller organizations, and shifting resources to “more equitably service the grassroots organizing sector.”
Using the climate change march as a model, that initiative has set up a task force to identify opportunities for various green-minded organizations to work together more closely. The group is also trying to rethink the way wealthy donors support the environmental movement to focus more on a “bottom-up, collaborative approach, and away from a top-down, funder-driven approach,” according to a May memo from the initiative.
But Hodgdon acknowledged that big environmental groups still need to go further to win the support of many environmental justice groups.
“The trend that I tend to see is that if you’re a white environmentalist, you think there’s a lot of progress being made,” she said. “If you’re a person of color, you feel like there’s a lot more that can be done.”
A July 2014 survey of 191 environmental nonprofits commissioned by the group Green 2.0 found that ethnic minorities occupy only about 12 percent of the leadership positions at the organizations. The membership of the environmental groups surveyed is mostly white at 59 percent.
Women, however, have taken on a much bigger role in the green world, occupying about half of the leadership positions, according to the survey.
Though Mair was elected president of the Sierra Club’s board, the group’s executive director, Michael Brune, is a white man. The League of Conservation Voters, National Wildlife Federation, Environmental Defense Fund, National Audubon Society, Friends of the Earth, NextGen Climate, National Parks Conservation Association and the Wilderness Society are all led by white men. EDF announced on Thursday that it promoted a woman, Diane Regas, to executive director.
The Natural Resources Defense Council is run by Rhea Suh, a Korean-American woman. Environment America, 350.org and Greenpeace USA are all led by white women.
From the very beginning, the establishment environmental movement has been dominated by white men, from John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, to Theodore Roosevelt, the former president and conservationist. But in the 1980s, the environmental justice movement emerged, raising awareness about how pollution hurts low-income and minority communities. Environmental justice advocates began challenging the biggest green groups at every turn.
Black and Latino populations have grown into important voting blocks, with politicians of both parties appealing to them on the campaign trail. And polls consistently show they are more concerned about issues like climate change than white voters.
That has greens taking notice, especially as they become increasingly involved in electoral politics.
“We cannot win these critical battles anymore unless the movement is truly diverse and people feel that they are represented by leaders who really understand their issues,” said Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network.
“This is not rocket science. If you talk about where the growth of the environmental movement will be, it’s in the population that is experiencing the biggest growth,” Bullard said.
Suh, the president of NRDC, said environmental groups can’t thrive without the support of minority communities.
“Our across-the-board sustainability objectives will only succeed if we have a broader constituency and community behind us,” she said in a statement. “The reality is, we are advocates for social change that could be doing a better job with the social part of that equation. We have to if we want to achieve the change part.”
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PHMSA Will Use Crude-by-Rail Order On Notification in Contrast to Final Rule
May 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Leven
A May 2014 emergency order, which was superseded by a recently finalized rule governing crude-by-rail shipments, will stay in effect until further notice, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration announced May 28.
The 2014 order requires carriers operating trains carrying more than 1 million gallons of Bakken crude oil, or the equivalent of about 35 tank cars, to inform state emergency response commissions (SERCs) about the intended movement of the rail cars through counties of those states.
Railroads and others have expressed concern that disclosure of certain information related to crude oil movements by train could present security concerns.
Interested parties such as emergency responders have told PHMSA they are worried that the final tank car and enhanced operational controls rule could limit the availability of emergency response information, the agency said in a May 28 statement.
“That was certainly not the intent of the Rule,” PHMSA said. “To remedy that concern, [the Transportation Department], in coordination with its interagency partners, will take action to ensure that current levels of information will continue to be provided to SERCs, as well as other State, local, and tribal officials, on an ongoing basis.”
“Transparency is a critical piece of the Federal Government's comprehensive approach to safety,” the agency said.
Final Rule Requirements
The final rule, released May 1 and officially published May 8, sets for rail cars used in certain larger shipments of crude oil stricter tank car requirements, speed restrictions and other operational controls (80 Fed. Reg. 26,644; 85 DEN A-14, 5/4/15).
It also sets notification requirements. However, many public interest groups and senators view those requirements as a setback for communities and first responders.
Notably, the agency highlighted that while the final rule didn't specifically require certain information to be directly shared with state emergency response commissions, the “Sensitive Security Information...is available to any emergency responder (including SERCs) with a need-to-know upon request from a railroad or from a State/local fusion center.”
PHMSA also noted in its announcement that railroads and offerors are already required under hazardous material rules to have certain information available on the train, in case of an incident, such as identification and volume of the specific hazardous material.
Additionally, there are federal and industry response and training resources available to responders, the announcement said.
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