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California Proposes Maximum Dose Levels for Six Chemicals
Jun 15, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) is proposing Proposition 65 maximum allowable dose levels (MADLs) for six chemicals. -
US Osha Consults on Cadmium in General Industry Standard
Jun 15, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) is consulting on its proposal to extend the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) approval of the collection of information requirements contained in the cadmium in general industry Standard. -
US EPA Receives Test Data for Solvent
Jun 15, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA has received data for benzene, 1-chloro-4-(trifluoromethyl) in response to a test rule. -
Widespread and Systemic Contamination Found -- at the EPA
Jun 15, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Weston W. Wilson
Despite a press release from EPA proclaiming there is no widespread groundwater contamination due to fracking, EPA now says that their new study of the nation’s natural gas boom should not be seen as proof that hydraulic fracturing is being safely done. -
‘Workers Are Paying For Cheap Gas With Their Lives’
Jun 15, 2015 | PoliticoPro Magazine
By Jennifer Gollan
The Bakken oil boom has been a serial killer. Big oil companies have largely written the rules governing their own accountability for accidents, potentially putting workers at risk. -
Obama Admin's Revised Rule Makes Some Green Groups Squirm
Jun 15, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Annie Snider
Whether the Obama administration will win over industry critics with its revised final water rule remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: Environmental groups are in a tough spot. -
Week Ahead: House GOP Takes Aim at EPA Funding
Jun 15, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A bill slashing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funding and blocking several of its new regulations is scheduled to pass through the House Appropriations Committee. -
Honorable Sees a 'Proactive' FERC on Clean Power Plan
Jun 15, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
By Emily Holden and Rod Kuckro
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should play a "proactive" role in helping states and regions respond to challenges posed by compliance with the forthcoming final version of U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, Colette Honorable, FERC's newest member, said in a Friday interview. -
Letters: Pluses and Minuses of a Carbon Tax
Jun 15, 2015 | The New York Times
A national fee on carbon assessed at the point of extraction is the most powerful, nonregulatory way to demonstrate that fossil fuel energy is no longer a good investment, not for oil companies or for human beings. -
What Do Manatees Have To Do With Obama’s Climate Agenda?
Jun 15, 2015 | National Journal
By Clare Foran
Jim Inhofe and Rob Bishop are joining forces in an attempt to sink President Obama's climate agenda, using the unlikeliest of weapons: manatees.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
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Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
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California Proposes Maximum Dose Levels for Six Chemicals
Jun 15, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) is proposing Proposition 65 maximum allowable dose levels (MADLs) for six chemicals. The substances are being listed on Prop 65 as known to the state to be reproductive toxins with effect from 1 October.
The OEHHA is proposing an oral MADL of 100 micrograms per day for:atrazine;propazine;simazine;2,3-diamino-6-chloro-s-triazine (DACT);des-ethyl atrazine (DEA); anddes-isopropyl atrazine (DIA).
Comments can be made on the proposals until 27 July.
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US Osha Consults on Cadmium in General Industry Standard
Jun 15, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) is consulting on its proposal to extend the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) approval of the collection of information requirements contained in the cadmium in general industry Standard.
Comments must be submitted by 10 August.
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US EPA Receives Test Data for Solvent
Jun 15, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA has received data for benzene, 1-chloro-4-(trifluoromethyl) in response to a test rule.
The substance is used, among other things, as a solvent for industrial cleaning and in aerosols, adhesives, coatings, inks and electronic applications. The test data relates to aquatic toxicity.
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Widespread and Systemic Contamination Found -- at the EPA
Jun 15, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Weston W. Wilson
Despite a press release from EPA proclaiming there is no widespread groundwater contamination due to fracking, EPA now says that their new study of the nation’s natural gas boom should not be seen as proof that hydraulic fracturing is being safely done.
“That is not the message of this report,” said EPA science adviser and deputy administrator Thomas A. Burke. “The message of this report is that we have identified vulnerabilities in the water system that are really important to know about and address to keep risks as low as possible.”
The oil and gas industry has claimed repeatedly that fracking is safe, alleging there's never been asingle case of groundwater contamination from fracking
People who live near fracking wells report a very different picture from devastating health impacts to contaminated drinking water and air pollution.
In 2010, Congress told EPA to study these claims. In 2011, EPA responded, announcing it would do a widespread investigation of the entire industry including the systemic release of toxic gases during fracking.
Under pressure from the industry, the EPA began severely limiting the scope of its investigation.
In 2012, EPA withdrew from any investigation of the air pathways of toxic gas release during fracking, despite hundreds of citizens living near wells reporting air pollution and a robust set of scientists confirming ill health consequences.
In 2013, EPA dropped its study of a marquee ground water contamination case in Dimock, Pennsylvania.
In 2013, EPA dropped its study of ground water contamination in Pavilion, Wyoming and Weatherford, Texas.
After retreating on measuring contamination in already fracked areas, EPA announced it would still conduct ‘prospective studies’ of new sites where baseline ground water data would be collected before fracking occurred. In 2014, EPA dropped all prospective studies.
Having systematically turned its back on groundwater data gathering and analysis, including the groundwater data it had already collected in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and Texas which confirmed water contamination, EPA shamelessly released a draft report this month with the deeply deceptive headline, “no widespread systemic ground water contamination found.”
Actually, as EPA knows, hundreds of specific cases of ground water contamination have been documented. In 2012, Pennsylvania environmental officials found nearly 9 percent of fracked wells fail during their first year. EPA, itself, found that two-thirds of fracked wells have cement gaps with three percent of these faulty wells drilled through drinking water formations, creating a pathway for contamination.
Considering the connectivity of water, even a 3 percent failure rate from the 1.1 million fracked wells in the U.S. is numerically significant and creates what should be considered systemic risk. Indeed, Schlumberger, a leader in oil-field and fracking technology, says that all wells eventually leak.
Toxic gases released during fracking have been demonstrated to cause ill health, cancer, and birth defects. A health study in Colorado found a 30 percent increase in birth defects, including spina bifida and congenital heart failure, for women living within 10 miles of fracked wells. Of course, under pressure from the industry, EPA dropped its study of systemic health risks from toxic gases altogether in 2012.
The growing body of science says that fracking causes water contamination, air pollution and with high leakage rates of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is a climate disaster. EPA’s clean power plan credits utilities for greenhouse gas reductions when they switch from coal to fracked gas. This credit is based on EPA’s calculation that the methane leak rate from fracking is 2 percent, and that the heat trapping character of methane is only 25 times greater than CO2 from coal. Both calculations are incorrect and therefore exaggerate the climate benefits of methane. Current information indicates methane is 86 times more heat trapping than CO2 over the short term, and the amount of methane leaked from fracked wells, according to field measurements by NOAA scientists, ranges from 4 percent to 18 percent.Unless the methane leak rate is reduced to less than one percent, the political promise that replacing coal with natural gas is better for climate protection is hollow, a hoax.
Still, there is a way out. As Stanford Prof. Mark Jacobson’s 2010 paper in Scientific American shows, we can run our world on 100 percent renewable energy. We don’t need natural gas. 100 percent renewable energy is not a pipe dream. It relies on a mix of energy conservation, solar, wind, and hydro primarily. And it can be done today with current technologies
This conversion will not only reduce health and climate risks, it will put money in the pockets of Americans. Additionally, a robust 100 percent renewable energy solution would reduce national security risks from climate change -- the greatest threat to American national security according to the Pentagon.
Woodrow Wilson observed that if big business is to escape government regulation, it would have to strive to capture or own government. Industry’s pressure on EPA resulted in this pitifully limited investigation and the disingenuous press release. One is led to wonder, has Obama’s EPA been kidnapped by America’s fossil fuel hustlers?
Wilson is an environmental engineer retired from the Environmental Protection Agency.
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‘Workers Are Paying For Cheap Gas With Their Lives’
Jun 15, 2015 | PoliticoPro Magazine
By Jennifer Gollan
The Bakken oil boom has been a serial killer. Big oil companies have largely written the rules governing their own accountability for accidents, potentially putting workers at risk.
In the early evening of Sept. 14, 2011, at a bend in the Missouri River in North Dakota, Brendan Wegner, 21, was scrambling down a derrick ladder when the oil well he was working on exploded. Rescuers found his body pinned under a heap of melted steel pipes. His charred hands were recovered later, still gripping the derrick ladder. It was his first day on the rig.
Wegner’s co-workers—Ray Hardy, Michael Twinn and Doug Hysjulien—survived the initial blast. But Hardy, whose nails were bent back by the explosion, exposing the stark white bones of his fingers, died the next day of his burns. Twinn would have his lower legs amputated, and dogged by post-traumatic stress disorder, he killed himself in October 2013. Hysjulien, who suffered debilitating third-degree burns over half of his body, is the lone survivor.
To this day, the explosion—pieced together from interviews, court documents and federal and local reports—remains the worst accident in the expansive Bakken oil fields since the boom began in 2006.
On average, someone dies about every six weeks from an accident in the Bakken—at least 74 since 2006, according to an exclusive analysis by POLITICO MAGAZINE partner Reveal, part of The Center for Investigative Reporting. This is the first comprehensive accounting of such deaths using data obtained from Canadian and U.S. regulators. The number of deaths is likely even higher because federal regulators don’t have a systematic way to record oil- and gas-related deaths, and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn’t include certain fatalities, such as those of independent contractors.
Across the Bakken, deeply entrenched corporate practices and weak federal oversight inoculate energy producers against responsibility when workers are killed or injured, while shifting the risk to others. Oil companies also offer financial incentives to workers for speeding up production—potentially jeopardizing their safety—and avoid paying the full cost of settlements to workers and their families when something goes wrong by shielding themselves behind a web of companies.
An estimated 7.4 billion barrels of undiscovered oil is sitting in the U.S. portion of the Bakken and Three Forks formations of the Williston Basin, a 170,000-square-mile area that stretches from southern Saskatchewan, Canada, to northern South Dakota. North Dakota now ranks just behind Texas with the second-largest oil reserve in the U.S. Both states now account for half of all the crude oil production in the country.
OSHA officials say they are concerned that plummeting oil prices in the past year are prompting energy producers to shortchange safety even more. To others, the deaths and injuries would be preventable if not for a combination of greed, inadequate training and lack of government oversight.
“These workers are paying for cheap gas with their lives and their limbs,” said Peg Seminario, director of safety and health for the AFL-CIO.
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Big oil companies use a network of corporate relationships and protections such as indemnification agreements to insulate themselves from collateral damage after accidents like the one that killed Hardy and Wegner by forcing insurance companies for contractors at the bottom of the pecking order to pay.
If the top energy producers that control sites with fracked wells—in which oil and gas are extracted from shale with high-pressure mixtures of water, sand or gravel and chemicals—are permitted to offload the responsibility to smaller contractors, then there is little incentive to make worksites safer, said Paul Sanderson, a North Dakota attorney who frequently has encountered these agreements.
Oasis Petroleum North America LLC, which is part of Houston-based oil giant Oasis Petroleum Inc., hired contractor Carlson Well Service, which employed Hardy, Wegner, Twinn and Hysjulien, to get its well to produce more oil.
Even though the government did not cite Oasis for responsibility for the accident, the company negotiated four separate settlements for undisclosed amounts with Wegner’s parents, Peggy and Kevin; Hysjulien; Twinn; and Hardy’s wife.
Justin Williams, a lawyer for Hysjulien and Wegner’s parents, contends that Oasis failed to properly “kill” the well, or temporarily close it. He added that Oasis bore ultimate responsibility for making the proper engineering decisions that would have prevented the dangerous pressure buildup.
“It’s a simple engineering calculation,” he said. “They should have people qualified to do so, but they didn’t do that to start with.” Williams added that an expert he consulted said it would have taken no more than three tanker trucks of heavy brine water, costing about $1,500 combined, to properly kill the well.
“The Bakken is the most dangerous oil field to work in the U.S.,” he said. “The energy producers never pay for their mistakes; the insurance company for the contractor pays. It doesn’t give them any incentive to change the procedures that are unsafe.”
Oasis declined an interview, but in a written statement, spokesman Brian Kennedy said the supervisor arranged and oversaw the salt water injections—both the day before and the morning of the explosion—which he maintained rendered the well “static when work began.” He blamed the explosion on “a kick, or sudden and unexpected flow of gas into the wellbore.”
“Indemnity provisions are contained in most commercial contracts in nearly every sector of the economy,” he added.
But, in the Bakken, smaller contractors have little choice but to agree to the terms in their contracts. Their insurance companies often end up shouldering part or all of the costs of settlements with workers and their families.
“The big oil companies have you locked in,” said Connie Krinke, business manager for Diamond H Service LLC, an oil and gas service company based in Bowman, North Dakota.
“You really don’t have the ability to refuse to sign these agreements because most of these companies are billion-dollar companies, and we’re just a small pea in the big pod of people that work for them,” she added.
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When state lawmakers in North Dakota have tried to fix the problem, the oil and gas industry used its considerable influence to kill any reform.
A bill proposed in the state Legislative Assembly in January 2011 sought to prevent companies from adding provisions to oil and gas production contracts that required smaller contractors to indemnify them when people are injured or die because of the action of the companies or their independent contractors.
“If you break it, you buy it,” said Paul Sanderson, a North Dakota lawyer who crafted the bill in response to growing concern among insurers following several oil field accidents. “When a person is not responsible for their actions, they disregard the consequences.”
The bill passed out of the House Judiciary Committee. But the effort was torpedoed nearly a week later after heavy lobbying from the oil industry, he said. The bill was unnecessary and interfered with contracting in the oil industry, a lobbyist for the North Dakota Petroleum Council argued at the time. The bill was defeated 63-27 on the House floor, state legislative records show.
Yet the dangerous nature of the oil and gas industry has prompted four of the largest energy-producing states—Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Wyoming—to adopt statutes that prevent or limit oil companies from shifting liability, including legal costs, jury awards and settlements for workers’ injuries or wrongful death suits, to smaller contractors.
“This bill could have saved lives,” Sanderson said, adding: “When everyone is held responsible for their own conduct … it’s going to create a safer work environment. You have situations where the oil companies know they are not going to be held responsible.”
While large companies often exert the most control over safety on their well sites, there is no specific federal workplace safety standard that applies to the oil and gas industry, which allows producers to dodge severe penalties.Major oil companies hire so-called company men, who are mostly independent contractors, to supervise drilling and other tasks. But it is difficult for OSHA to cite energy producers that do not have direct employees on their worksites.
“No Oasis employee on site,” an OSHA investigator wrote of the 2011 explosion, after noting that Oasis’ company man was an independent contractor. The company was not fined by the government regulator.
Only one energy operator that leases or owns wells has been cited by OSHA for worker deaths in North Dakota or Montana over the past five years, Reveal’s analysis found.
Bill or not, safety is the top priority for oil and gas companies in the Bakken, said Kari Cutting, vice president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, which represents 550 companies. “Any language written in a contract is not going to change where safety is in their priorities. A lot of these companies are very savvy and don’t want to be the headline in any news cycle.”
However, in the absence of comprehensive workplace safety regulations for oil and gas, OSHA frequently invokes standards written by the industry itself, including those from the American Petroleum Institute, to determine whether employees are being exposed to hazards.
For example, companies involved in drilling and well servicing activities such as hydraulic fracturing are exempt from federal workplace safety laws requiring machines and equipment that are undergoing maintenance or repairs to be locked and tagged to prevent injuries. The American Petroleum Institute recommends such practices but does not require them.
For some, this is a direct conflict of interest.
“This premise is counterintuitive to the intent of government oversight. The problem with this scenario is that API is the lobbying arm of the industry,” said Dennis Schmitz, a former oil worker who is the chairman of the MonDaks Safety Network, an organization in North Dakota that promotes safety in the oil fields.
“Over the past five or six years, there’s been a culture that’s been primarily focused on the production side,” Schmitz said. “There’s been a culture of gettin’ it done.”
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Four months before Wegner died, Joseph Kronberg, a 52-year-old father of three, was electrocuted and died at another North Dakota well owned by Oasis Petroleum North America.
Oasis paid bonuses worth a combined $33,000 to 23 of Kronberg’s co-workers in part for working quickly—even after Kronberg died, internal company records show. At a well on the same site where Kronberg died and another nearby well, Oasis paid workers performance bonuses of $150 per day for drilling quickly, compared with $40 a day for drilling safely, records show.
“Safety is tantamount at Oasis,” company spokesman Kennedy said, but when pressed, he acknowledged that in the case of Kronberg’s co-workers, “bonuses should not have been paid, and we regret that they were.”
Internal Oasis documents show that company officials also have actively encouraged company men to set records.
“Nabors 149 just set a new record for Oasis on the Kline with Stoneham 18 following close behind on the Lynn. Congrats guys, keep it up!!” Laura Strong, an Oasis drilling engineer, wrote in a May 27, 2011, email to top company officials and company men.
Strong went on to call the record-holding well, Kline 5300 11-18H, the “Pace setter.”
It was the same well that exploded less than four months later, killing Wegner and Hardy.
In a lawsuit filed in January 2013 in federal court in North Dakota, lawyers for Kronberg’s widow, Margo, asserted that the company fosters a culture of recklessness in which the top imperative is speed.
Drilling and well servicing in the Bakken is high stakes, at an average cost of about $9 million per well, according the North Dakota Industrial Commission’s Department of Mineral Resources. The faster the oil gushes, the faster it gets to market to turn a profit, which averages $27 million per well.
That was true when oil was $100 a barrel. But now that oil has slipped to about $60 a barrel, that pressure has intensified, Schmitz said. In addition, with slimmer margins, he said several companies have fired their safety managers.
On their websites, many energy producers promote a “stop work” culture, in which workers are encouraged to speak out and stop the job if they deem something unsafe. But dozens of workers interviewed in the Bakken said that when they’re drilling, time is money.
Among the most common oil field injuries are amputations, broken bones and burns, which can severely disfigure workers and diminish their career prospects, said Eric Brooks, director of OSHA’s Bismarck Area Office in North Dakota. Despite the dangers, workers are drawn to the Bakken for hefty salaries, some in the six figures.
Jebadiah Stanfill, an oil worker who was among the first to the scene of the 2011 explosion that killed Wegner and Hardy, says he will never return to the oil fields. Now a handyman living in Alabama, he said he still struggles with PTSD, often wearing black work gloves to prevent the sight of his hands from triggering memories of skin sliding off in his palms.
“I always seem to think I still have those men’s skin on my hands,” he said.
Bruce Jorgenson, a supervisor who raced over with Stanfill to aid the men hurt in the 2011 blowout, said he felt rattled when he returned to the site this past March to start drilling a new well.
“The anxiety came back. I relived every minute of it. I’ve been involved in other bad things in the oil field, and this one was the only one that gave me nightmares,” he said.
Even so, Jorgenson said he hadn’t discussed the explosion with his current crew. “I didn’t want them freaked out by it in any way. I wanted their mind on what we were doing.”
On a recent visit, the lone reminder of that day was a modest wooden cross bearing Wegner’s name near the well site. Trucks thundered past.
Data reporter Emmanuel Martinez contributed data research. This story was edited by Fernando Diaz and copy edited by Sheela Kamath and Nikki Frick.
Jennifer Gollan is a reporter for Reveal, covering worker safety, mistreatment and corporate malfeasance. This story was produced and originally published by Reveal, from The Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent, nonprofit newsroom based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Listen to Reveal’s related episode, Power Struggle, here. Learn more at revealnews.org.
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Obama Admin's Revised Rule Makes Some Green Groups Squirm
Jun 15, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Annie Snider
Whether the Obama administration will win over industry critics with its revised final water rule remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: Environmental groups are in a tough spot.
At best, greens were nonplussed by some key changes in the final Waters of the U.S. rule, such as the inclusion of hard-line boundaries for when waters cannot be protected under the Clean Water Act and clearer -- and, arguably, broader -- exclusions for ditches.
"We were disappointed by those areas where the agencies excluded features categorically from the law, especially in those instances where the agencies' expert science advisers urged them not to provide categorical exemptions," Jon Devine, a lead water attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said during an Environmental Law Institute event last week.
But Devine's group is willing to accept some disappointment in exchange for protections the rule offers many waters after eight years of confusion sparked by two muddled Supreme Court rulings and guidance from the George W. Bush administration.
"On balance ... we think that the benefits of restoring guaranteed protections to the waters at the core of this rule is a major improvement," Devine said.
Other groups that had laid the groundwork of support for the rule, including the National Wildlife Federation and sportsmen's groups like Trout Unlimited, have come to the same conclusion.
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Politically, it would have been hard for them to do otherwise. NRDC, NWF, the League of Conservation Voters and Environment America had already invested millions of dollars in ad campaigns, some of which launched before the final rule had even been released.
But not all greens are ready to sign on to the compromise.
Two of the more litigious groups -- the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and Waterkeeper Alliance -- quickly came out against the rule.
"We believe this weakens jurisdiction beyond what is supported by the science and the law, particularly with respect to jurisdiction over tributaries," said Kelly Foster, senior attorney for the Waterkeeper Alliance.
While industry opponents of the rule have lambasted the breadth of the rule's "tributary" definition, Foster argued that the definition leaves out important streams, particularly in the arid West where many flow only a few times a year and may not have the features the definition requires.
"Tributaries are very high on our list of concerns because they are very obviously connected to downstream waterbodies, and here we're talking about discharge permitting," she said. "You discharge into a stream that doesn't have an ordinary high-water mark, that discharge won't be regulated under the Clean Water Act. That's not OK."
While this was a problem in the proposed rule, she said, changes in the final rule that limit the agencies' ability to bring waters under federal jurisdiction through case-specific determinations stand to put them out of reach altogether.
For his part, Foster's boss, Waterkeeper Alliance President Robert F. Kennedy Jr., raised major concerns with the final rule's limited reach over farther-flung, but biologically significant, wetlands like vernal pools. The rule gives some such waters special consideration but does not guarantee their protection and leaves other such waters very likely beyond federal reach.
"I've been around long enough, from when the Clean Water Act was passed, that at that point the courts were ruling that it protected prairie potholes, and it protected ephemeral pools and vernal pools and headwater streams, and those are actually in many ways the most important waterways to protect," Kennedy said in a brief interview at the group's annual conference in Boulder, Colo., last week. "They're more important than the main river body, because that's where the most significant life begins."
Brett Hartl, who directs endangered species policy at CBD, said the Clean Water Act's Section 404 permitting process doesn't just ensure that wetlands damages are offset but also ensures that agency officials with knowledge about endangered species have a line into what's going on on the ground.
Even though, under the Endangered Species Act, people shouldn't be filling in a wetland that serves as important habitat for an endangered species, even if that wetland's not covered by the Clean Water Act, those types of things often slip through the cracks, he said.
"The 404 process at least guaranteed some minimum level of agency oversight because the EPA and Army Corps understand they have to consult if there's a risk of harming species, and without that safeguard it's a lot harder to see little bits and pieces of habitat being protected," he said.
"It's going to be tiny and incremental, but that's how most species decline -- in little, tiny cuts over time," he said.Litigation risks
The question now, though, is what environmental groups can do about their concerns in court.
Industry and state lawsuits opposing the rule entirely are guaranteed. Where and how they will be filed, and how the courts will handle them, though, is uncertain, making litigation strategy extremely complicated (Greenwire, June 5).
Moreover, environmental groups with concerns about the final rule must walk a fine line, generally seeing it as an improvement over the George W. Bush administration guidance and not wanting to have the entire rule thrown out.
"I think we'll probably file a lawsuit against part of the rule; we are going to support the rest of it, strongly support the rest of it," Kennedy said.
"There's a small chance that if you got a really right-wing federal judge that he could throw out the entire rule," he acknowledged, though. "That's a judgment call we're going to have to make. I think there will be argument about it within our organization."
Pat Parenteau, a University of Vermont Law School professor with a long history of Clean Water Act litigation, said the strongest challenge from environmental groups would take on the rule's limited reach over biologically important, but geographically isolated waters, for instance, playa lakes that serve as habitat to the endangered whooping crane.
He argued that EPA could be vulnerable to such a challenge, since an external Science Advisory Board had argued that these types of waters can be important.
Greens "have a hell of a track record," Parenteau said.
"They don't bring frivolous cases. They are going to study the landscape, they are going to find vulnerable targets, and they will shoot when they find it," he said.
Another potential legal challenge: EPA did not do an Endangered Species Act consultation on the rule.
Hartl, with CBD, argued that the agency should have gone through that step, but he said his group is unlikely to raise the issue.
"We're puzzling over it, but it's hard," he said. "I can only imagine what the consequences would be if the whole rule fell apart because of the Endangered Species Act -- that wouldn't be good for anybody."
To be sure, that's the risk that any lawsuit from greens takes on.
But Jan Goldman-Carter, senior manager for wetlands and water resources at the National Wildlife Federation and a key supporter of the rule, said that litigation is risky for both sides.
"Those who might challenge the rule for going too far not only risk derailing the rule and leaving landowners and communities with the confusing, burdensome, and harmful status quo, but losing the expanded exemptions they have secured in the final rule," she said by email.
"Those who challenge the rule for not going far enough risk leaving millions of acres of wetlands and stream miles in legal limbo subject to case-specific decisions and creating bad law that could ultimately preclude long-term protections for many waters," she said.
Reporter Jennifer Yachnin contributed from Boulder, Colo.
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Week Ahead: House GOP Takes Aim at EPA Funding
Jun 15, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A bill slashing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funding and blocking several of its new regulations is scheduled to pass through the House Appropriations Committee.
Republicans are pushing an Interior and Environment funding bill that cuts $718 million, or 9 percent, from the EPA’s budget in fiscal 2016, on top of the 20 percent cut the agency has absorbed since Republicans took the House in 2011.
The bill also includes policy riders meant to block agency rulemaking that is key to President Obama’s environmental agenda.
The EPA’s rules on water oversight, power plant greenhouse gas emissions and even lead content in ammunition and fishing tackle would be blocked under the bill. Democrats on the Appropriations Committee say they will oppose the legislation.
Republicans bumped funding for Interior Department programs related to wildfire prevention, Native Americans and surface mining, and pushed smaller cuts on the U.S. Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service. In all, the bill spends $30.17 billion next fiscal year, $246 million less than current levels and $3 billion less than what Obama requested.
The committee will mark up the bill on Tuesday, and senators could introduce their version of the bill during the week as well.
EPA rules are the subject of hearings at three other congressional committees.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hear testimony on the agency’s coal ash disposal rule on Wednesday.
On Thursday, a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee will hold a hearing on the EPA’s management of the federal ethanol mandate. Janet McCabe, the EPA's top regulator for air and radiation, will testify.
Two House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hold a hearing Tuesday on the EPA’s proposed ozone rule’s impact on manufacturing. The committee’s energy and power panel held a hearing on that issue Friday.
The Senate Energy Committee will hear from two Energy Department nominees on Tuesday: Jonathan Elkind, to be assistant secretary for International Affairs, and Monica Regalbuto, to be assistant secretary for environmental management. The committee’s water and power subcommittee will hold a hearing on seven bills Thursday.
A House Natural Resources Committee panel will hold a hearing on “Arctic resources and American competitiveness” on Tuesday. The committee’s Federal Lands subcommittee will hear testimony from U.S. Forest Service Deputy Chief Leslie Weldon and Karen Mouritsen, the deputy assistant director of Energy, Minerals and Reality Management at the Bureau of Land Management, on six bills.
On Wednesday, the House Small Business Committee will hold a hearing on, “the possibility of lifting the crude oil export ban and the effect its removal will have on United States small businesses.”
Off the Hill, the Vatican will release Pope Francis’s environment encyclical on Thursday. Environmentalists around the world are eagerly awaiting the document, in which the pope is expected to make a moral plea for action on climate change.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) will speak at the Energy Information Administration’s Energy Conference, which starts Monday.
The Environmental Law Institute will host a discussion on oil pollution issues on Tuesday. Rodney Slater, President Clinton’s former transportation secretary, will participate.
The Atlantic Council will host an event on climate change on Tuesday. The ambassadors of the European Union and France, David O’Sullivan and Gerard Araud respectively, will speak.
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Honorable Sees a 'Proactive' FERC on Clean Power Plan
Jun 15, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
By Emily Holden and Rod Kuckro
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should play a "proactive" role in helping states and regions respond to challenges posed by compliance with the forthcoming final version of U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, Colette Honorable, FERC's newest member, said in a Friday interview.
Before joining FERC in January, Honorable was chairwoman of the Arkansas Public Service Commission, as well as president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.
While Honorable and her colleagues are on record in support of EPA, including a so-called reliability safety valve in the final rule, she also wants FERC to use its "tools" to "provide certainty and support for this [EPA] planning effort."
"It might be a technical conference or FERC could direct assessments or studies to be conducted. FERC is going to be needed now more than ever to support the vast work that will have to be undertaken in states, in [organized market] regions and in multistate groups that are not part of regions."
Go to E&E's Power Plan Hub to read more and to see the latest news, state summaries and developments.
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Letters: Pluses and Minuses of a Carbon Tax
Jun 15, 2015 | The New York Times
To the Editor:
Re “The Case for a Carbon Tax” (editorial, June 7):
A national fee on carbon assessed at the point of extraction is the most powerful, nonregulatory way to demonstrate that fossil fuel energy is no longer a good investment, not for oil companies or for human beings. Returning all of the revenues to American households will create jobs, reduce deaths from emissions and put money back into the pockets of two-thirds of American households, through a carbon fees trust fund.
Recent polls by Yale and Stanford show that almost twice as many Americans support a carbon fee and dividend as oppose it. Once again, the American public is showing that it is more forward-thinking than its elected leaders.
Over the next few months President Obama and Congress are in a position to transform the global energy economy and stabilize our planet by promoting a revenue-neutral carbon tax, at home and at the United Nations climate talks in Paris in December.
MARY SELKIRK
Berkeley, Calif.
The writer is a volunteer with the Citizens Climate Lobby.
To the Editor:
A price on carbon is an essential tool in reducing climate pollution, but don’t give short shrift to a proven approach: emissions trading.
Well-designed pollution markets helped cut acid rain in the United States at a fraction of the predicted cost. Similar markets are working today to cut carbon pollution in California, seven Chinese cities and provinces, and other countries and regions home to nearly a billion people in all.
Even the European Union system you criticize has successfully cut emissions, and given the E.U. confidence to adopt a more stringent target.
The goal of climate policy is not simply to price pollution; it is to reduce it. Either a tax or a cap, if well designed, can achieve it. So let’s move beyond this debate and focus on the real issue: the need for ambitious action, at home and abroad, to put the world on a path to a secure and stable climate.
NATHANIEL O. KEOHANE
GERNOT WAGNER
New York
The writers are, respectively, vice president for international climate and lead senior economist at the Environmental Defense Fund.
To the Editor:
Your editorial correctly assesses the Big Six European oil and gas chief executives’ call for a carbon tax as anything but a bold environmental stand. Self-interest motivates their plea for taxes to displace their chief competitor, coal, especially in developing countries using coal to power their economies and lift hundreds of millions from poverty.
Equating federal and state gasoline taxes in the United States to a carbon tax is strained. A better example would be the carbon adder embedded in the Environmental Protection Agency’s power plant proposal.
The agency’s plan relies upon a $33-per-ton carbon penalty to force the use of more expensive electricity over cheaper sources. According to the Southwest Power Pool, the grid operator for eight states, the proposal will require it to effectively impose a $45-per-ton carbon tax on its customers.
The emission reductions under the E.P.A.’s costly power plan over 10 years will be largely wiped out by global emissions in a single year.
HAL QUINN
President and Chief Executive
National Mining Association
Washington
To the Editor:
Both Republican and Democratic members of Congress should consider a border-corrected, 100 percent revenue-neutral carbon fee. A border correction allows us to correct for the difference in energy costs for manufactured products between countries that have a carbon fee and those that do not.
If it costs an additional $1 in carbon fee because doll X was made in the United States, any doll X made in a country that did not have a carbon fee that was going to enter the United States market would pay the fee at the border.
The fee should start low, but be set to increase each year for at least a decade. That would provide a market signal for American entrepreneurs to find innovative ways to provide goods and services using less and less fossil fuel each year.
The border-corrected portion would protect American businesses from countries that do not have a carbon tax of their own, like China. With a border-corrected, 100 percent revenue-neutral carbon fee, we can grow the economy, add local middle-class jobs, increase our competitiveness with China, and make our air and water cleaner.
Isn’t that what every member of Congress wants for America? Isn’t that what we all want for America?
SABRINA S. FU
Ellicott City, Md.
The writer teaches environmental management and science at the University of Maryland University College.
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What Do Manatees Have To Do With Obama’s Climate Agenda?
Jun 15, 2015 | National Journal
By Clare Foran
Jim Inhofe and Rob Bishop are joining forces in an attempt to sink President Obama's climate agenda, using the unlikeliest of weapons: manatees.
The Republican critics of the president's climate push sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy on Monday warning that power-plant regulations set to be finalized this summer could threaten endangered species, including manatees that take refuge in the warm waters surrounding coal plants off the Florida coast.
Their logic goes like this: Obama's landmark climate rule, by curbing carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants, could force the coal plants to close, and that, in turn, could harm the endangered manatee population.
Inhofe and Bishop argue that the administration failed to properly consider this potential impact.
"A regulation that causes designated manatee refuges like Big Bend or Crystal River to shut down or alter their operations would significantly and adversely affect the endangered manatee," the letter states, referring to two coal power-plants in Florida.
Inhofe, the Hill's top climate skeptic and chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Bishop, the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, have vowed to fight tooth and nail against Obama's regulations curbing air pollution from the nation's fleet of power plants.
"It is clear that EPA entirely neglected to assess the ground-level effects of its regulation," Inhofe and Bishop write in their letter, adding: "If the agency determines that its proposed action may have any effect on a listed species, the agency is required to consult with the appropriate Service—even if the effects are beneficial."
The letter also comes with a long list of demands.
Inhofe and Bishop are asking the agency to turn over "all records, documents, analyses, memoranda, and communications" on the potential impact that the regulations will have on endangered species and provide evidence that EPA fulfilled its obligation to analyze those impacts and consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service to determine that the rule could go forward under the terms of the Endangered Species Act.
The rhetorical argument has come up before.
During a March hearing, Bishop asked Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe if the agency failed to consult with EPA during development of the rules, noting that the survival of endangered manatees depends on discharge from Florida coal plants that creates a pool of warm water where manatees huddle for warmth during the winter.
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