HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. -- Superstorm Sandy made Orrin Pilkey smile.

For more than 40 years, the renowned coastal geologist has preached a message of gloom: The beaches are moving. People need to get out of the way.

His message was unwelcome to many powerful people. Real estate developers slammed Pilkey in the press; wealthy alumni of his academic home, Duke University, heckled him during speeches; revelers in seaside bars challenged him to fistfights; and the town of Folly Beach, S.C., officially declared him persona non grata. Yet Pilkey has persisted and scored some big wins, persuading states to enact new building restrictions on the shore and ban seawalls and other structures that protect buildings but destroy beaches.

But the national conversation spurred by Superstorm Sandy about rebuilding along the coast marks a new high point for the 78-year-old prophet of doom.

"It is so satisfying, what's happening now. People in New Jersey are saying, 'Maybe we shouldn't build back,'" Pilkey said, pausing to sip coffee as he leaned forward across the dining room table in his nearly century-old farmhouse here in North Carolina's Piedmont region. "Thirty-five or 40 years ago, that was really outrageous."

Coastal geologist Orrin Pilkey and his dog, Buddy, in their home in Hillsborough, N.C. After four decades spent preaching about the dangers of building on the shore, Pilkey's ideas are front and center in the debate over how to respond to Superstorm Sandy. Photo by Annie Snider.

Speaking enthusiastically about a storm that killed more than 100 people and caused untold billions of dollars in damage to homes and businesses may sound harsh, but to Pilkey, Sandy's devastation was only a matter of time given the scale of development humans have placed on vulnerable stretches of barrier islands -- one of nature's most delicate systems -- with the protection and even encouragement of the federal government.

Also, consider that the words are coming from a 5-foot-4-inch gnome with a wild white beard, a bouncing belly and an energetic Jack Russell terrier with one pointy ear and one floppy ear sitting in his lap.

Over the years, Pilkey's infectious enthusiasm has spawned a cult following of geologists and environmentalists. He has written engaging, accessible books on beach geology. And he has spread his gospel by taking generations of students, scientists and reporters on tours of North Carolina beaches to see coastal dynamics up close.

"For a long time he was sort of viewed as a prophet whistling in the wind," said Steve Ellis, vice president of the Washington, D.C., watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. "But time has proved him right in the fact that it is unsustainable, what we're doing on our coasts.

Pilkey has been in the game long enough to know how it goes: A storm rolls through, calls for rethinking coastal development trail in its wake, then disaster assistance flows and interest wanes. Ultimately, houses, hotels and roads are almost always rebuilt.

But disaster funding hasn't come quickly this time, and the debate over it arises at a time when Washington lawmakers are fixated on the country's fiscal house.

Pilkey's message resonates with some fiscal conservatives who want property owners rather than the government bearing the risks of living in vulnerable coastal regions. And decades after his early warnings about increased hazards from climate change-induced sea-level rise, the issue is now getting serious attention from leaders in New York and New Jersey, as well as a number of powerful Democrats at the national level.

In fact, the Obama administration's aid request for the storm proposed $30 million for Pilkey's sparring partner, the Army Corps of Engineers, to "develop plans to address long-standing challenges and ensure the health and prosperity of the areas affected by Sandy by building for the future, rather than recreating past vulnerabilities."

Hearing that for the first time, Pilkey exclaimed: "Isn't that wonderful!"

All in the family

The Pilkey home is quieter these days. In its heyday it was a rumble-tumble place, filled with five kids and a menagerie that included dogs, peacocks, free-range chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, a goat and even, briefly, an alligator. (Pilkey's wife, Sharlene, quickly evicted the gator, which her husband brought home from a research trip during his early stint at the University of Georgia's Marine Lab on Sapelo Island. Sharlene was none too pleased when she found the surprise visitor in the shower one morning.)

Neighbors or a rival school's geology department would gather here on weekends for games of touch football out back, which on more than one occasion ended with a trip to the hospital. Pilkey's students and staff would often pop in -- nobody bothers to ring the doorbell at the Pilkey home -- for dinner, a book or a chat.

Family and work have never been separate for Pilkey. Before Sharlene gave up air travel, she worked on his research team and traveled with him advising foreign governments -- work that frequently subjected her to "unladylike circumstances."

"Orrin has a penchant for finding places that are not exactly the best places to stay," she said, relating an unprintable story about an overnight in what turned out to be a "house of ill repute" in Yugoslavia.

Family, in fact, is how Pilkey stumbled into his calling as the voice of the country's beaches.

He was born in New York City but grew up in eastern Washington state where his father, Orrin Pilkey Sr., worked at the Hanford nuclear weapons facility. He and his brother, Walter, spent their days combing the region's arid grasslands collecting Indian arrowheads. That hobby eventually led him to study geology at Washington State University.

During his doctoral work at Florida State University, Pilkey's academic interest focused on deepwater ocean geology. Abyssal plains -- the flattest, smoothest part of the ocean floor -- became his specialty.

"It's really interesting stuff, but probably nobody cared," he said.

By the time Pilkey arrived at Duke in 1965, where his first job was directing the university's marine research institute, he already had a kernel of interest in coastal and barrier island geology.

Then, in 1969, a trio of events came together to point Pilkey toward his life's work.

First, there was a long, hot, dull cruise on a research boat off the Carolina coast, where Pilkey took refuge in the scientists' lounge. There he befriended a fellow geologist from the Smithsonian Institution, and the two started talking about beaches.

That geologist, Jack Pierce, told Pilkey shocking things about seawalls (they protected the property behind them but destroyed the beach in front of them) and beach nourishment (it shielded beachfront property but was paid for mostly by taxpayers who didn't live anywhere near the shore).

"He was fascinated by this, but I was outraged by it," Pilkey recalled.

Then came Hurricane Camille. The storm, one of the 20th century's most lethal, rammed into Pilkey's parents' retirement home in Waveland, Miss.

In the weeks after the storm, Pilkey and his brother made frequent trips to Mississippi to help their parents dig out. The brothers liked working with their hands -- they had spent college summers together as smoke jumpers in Montana -- and as they toiled, they talked about how little the public knew of the dangers of building on the coast.

Shortly thereafter, Pilkey's father retired, only to find that he had few hobbies or interests to fill his time. The brothers, both academics, decided to start book projects with him. Walter's was a textbook on mechanics; Pilkey chose coastal development.

What resulted was a slim handbook titled "How to Live With an Island," published in 1975 by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Economic Resources. The book sold for $1.50.

It focused on Bogue Banks, N.C., an island near Duke's marine institute, but its lessons about how and where to build were broadly applicable to barrier island communities.

It was the first book of its kind, and it struck a chord.

"Holy cow, we got all kinds of attention," Pilkey said. "People wrote and asked if they could quote the book. Are you kidding? Nobody had ever called me up about abyssal plains. There was no particular public interest in abyssal plains, to put it mildly."

Pilkey became hooked on the idea of doing something that had an impact on society. "I got out of the deep sea as quickly as I could," he said.

Four years later, he wrote a book called "The Beaches Are Moving," which was a wild success and even got named an alternate Book-of-the-Month Club selection.

Next, he undertook a series of books called "Living With the Shore" looking at nearly every mile of shoreline in the United States -- each co-written with local authors.

In both his books and his teaching, Pilkey has emphasized making science accessible and relevant to the rest of the world.

"He was always there telling you to apply the method of science to drive what were you doing -- that was really fun," said Robert Thieler, a former doctoral student of Pilkey's who now works as a research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. "But at the same time, he would say, what good is this going to be to the larger society?"

'They're monsters'

Pilkey is not shy. During field trips to the shore, he would often pull up to expensive beachfront homes, sometimes parking in their driveways, and lecture students about the stupidity of having built there. In general he pays little regard to private property lines.

This has resulted in a number of unpaid parking tickets and more than one threat from property owners, but so far no arrests.

Pilkey's harshest criticism, though, is reserved for the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal entity tasked with building shore protection projects.

The Army Corps' military, can-do culture clashes head-on with Pilkey's deference to natural processes.

In his 1996 book, "The Corps and the Shore," Pilkey faults the agency as being too focused on solving near-term problems while ignoring underlying geologic conditions. Barrier islands are all slowly migrating landward, and attempts to stop this will be pricey and ultimately futile, he says. Replenished beaches erode faster than the original beach. Hard structures such as jetties protect some areas but make erosion worse elsewhere.

Pilkey also contends that the Army Corps hides its design failures behind excuses about "unusually strong" storms.

"These people, if you know them individually, they're the kind of people that you would want your children to play with their children," he said. "But as a group, as an agency, they're monsters. ... They're not necessarily driven by what people want; they're driven by the need for that agency to have jobs, to have contracts."

This hasn't gone down well with the corps.

The corp's Wilmington, N.C., district, ground zero for many of Pilkey's fights over the years, declined to comment for the record. But Tom Jarrett, an engineer who worked for the district for 34 years and battled Pilkey over many projects, said Pilkey's arguments are more about philosophy than they are about science.

"In my opinion he was more of an activist than a true scientist," Jarrett said. "He's written a lot of papers and expressed a lot of opinions, but in terms of the scientific backing of particular issues, I would take issue with some of the stuff he's done."

The majority of buildings on the shore are small businesses, Jarrett said, and the protection the corps provides them is vital to the local economy. Moreover, he emphasized, all corps projects must provide more in protection value than they cost.

"The whole deal with protecting coastal development falls down to the bottom line -- is it economical to do? And if not, what are your other options?" he said. "Some places it makes sense to do what Pilkey would like to do everywhere -- and that is abandon the property -- but you have to go through the economic assessment."

Beach locals are often less circumspect in their opinions of Pilkey.

"People here think he's a stupid educated nut," said Carol Dillon, an 84-year-old Cape Hatteras native who owns the Outer Banks Motel and has done battle with Pilkey for more than two decades. "He thinks he knows it all, and he knows nothing about what goes on here in Hatteras Island and how to protect it."

In fact, Pilkey has become so notorious around the state that his name alone is enough to kill a proposal, according to Pricey Harrison, a Democratic member of the state's House of Representatives.

"Now he's become enough of a pain in the neck to some of the development community here in North Carolina that I think if you mention his name in connection with any policy, it's probably toxic at this point," she said.

Impact in Washington

Pilkey hasn't taught full time at Duke since 2006, and although he still relishes a trip to the beach, these days that trip is more often to the human-sized "zen beach" he and Sharlene built in the screened-in porch of their house than it is three hours east to the Carolina coast.

Although he may be raising less of a ruckus on the shore than he once did, his ideas are front and center in the ruckus unfolding in Washington, D.C., as Congress grapples with how to respond to Sandy.

Both the aid bill passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate in December and the one passed Tuesday by the House would flood the corps with cash to rebuild beaches and construct new protections. But fiscal conservatives have registered their displeasure, voting more than 3-to-1 against the $50 billion package that passed the House on Tuesday night. And earlier this month, 67 House Republicans voted against what was thought to be an uncontroversial measure to raise the National Flood Insurance Program's borrowing authority to pay claims promised to victims under the policies they bought.

The bills would also fund studies about infrastructures' ability to withstand future, stronger storms, as well as equipment and research to better predict what those storms might look like.

Ultimately, there is little doubt that much of the Northeast will build back after Sandy. But the disaster has sparked a deeper and longer conversation about coastal development than ever before, and the issues it has raised are likely to be carried forward when the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee takes up work on a major water policy bill.

Many who work on coastal issues say Superstorm Sandy may prove to be a turning point in how the country manages its shores.

"I think there's going to be an effect from Sandy on all beach projects, but I just can't tell you which way it will go," said Harry Simmons, president of the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association, a nonprofit focused on combating beach erosion.

As the debate continues, Pilkey is hardly done offering his suggestions. He has made frequent appearances in the media following Sandy and has been penning high-profile opinion pieces.

He has also been brainstorming with colleagues -- many of them former students -- about studies, projects and ways of getting their message out while the national spotlight is pointed in their direction.

"He has an army of former students who have become strong advocates, as academics or in other forms, and are big proponents for better coastal management policy," said Harrison, the North Carolina representative. "They are now in the right places to carry his message forward."

With months of speculation ended over whether Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will stay for President Obama's second term, the former Colorado senator must now decide which of many policy initiatives he wants to finish before he leaves in March.

There is no shortage of high-profile decisions Salazar could make in the coming months, ranging from a final rule governing hydraulic fracturing to the designation of national monuments on scenic lands throughout the West.

The Colorado native yesterday announced that he intends to leave the agency by the end of March to return to his family, though his exact departure date is unknown (Greenwire, Jan. 16).

Although Salazar, 57, did not discuss his next steps, speculation was rampant over whether -- and where -- he might land in the private sector, and whether he plans to re-enter politics (Greenwire, Jan. 16). His future political ambitions, if he has any, could inform the decisions he makes in the coming months.

Some observers expect Salazar to use his final months in office to burnish his conservation legacy.

He is expected to sign a record of decision greatly expanding protections for wildlife and subsistence hunting in Alaska's 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve.

Salazar unveiled the final proposal in December, promising that it would protect significant caribou herds, migratory bird habitat and sensitive coastal resources, while allowing the future construction of an oil pipeline from the Chukchi Sea, a key priority for oil and gas interests.

Bud Cribley, the Bureau of Land Management's Alaska state director, was scheduled to visit Alaska Native communities on the North Slope this month to discuss the final contours of the plan.

Also in Alaska, it's possible Salazar will oversee the release of a final conservation plan for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In August 2011, the Fish and Wildlife Service preliminarily recommended expanding wilderness protections in the oil-rich coastal plain, a decision that the state's oil backers condemned.

While largely symbolic -- only Congress can declare wilderness, which essential forbids oil and gas development -- an affirmative recommendation on the coastal plain would be a major victory for environmentalists because it would mark the first time Interior has ruled that the area is deserving of wilderness protections.

"Over the next two months, we are hopeful that Secretary Salazar will leave a legacy that includes conservation of Alaska's wild lands," said Cindy Shogan, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League. "Both of these plans have received significant public support with nearly 1.5 million comments."

Neither of those decisions would endear Salazar to Alaska lawmakers, who have fought hard to ensure both NPR-A and ANWR are opened for drilling.

National monuments, oil shale

While both plans would be temporary -- lasting about 15 years -- Salazar may also seek permanent protections through the designation of national monuments, which could only be undone by Congress.

Such designations are the prerogative of the president, but Salazar may pressure the White House to designate a national monument in a rugged river canyon in northern New Mexico or on BLM-managed islands off the coast of Washington state, among other locales.

Such moves, perhaps more than any others, would burnish Salazar's conservation legacy in the minds of environmentalists -- at the risk of inflaming some Western Republicans.

Conservationists are also hopeful Salazar will follow through on a legal settlement requiring him to issue a revised rule governing royalty rates for oil shale, a political flashpoint in Salazar's home state.

The oil shale settlement, struck in early 2011 with a coalition of green groups, gave Interior until last May to re-evaluate a George W. Bush administration royalty rate that was set intentionally low to entice investments.

Plaintiffs thus far have been flexible about the timing of its release -- it has been under review at the White House Office of Management and Budget for several months -- but that may change in light of Salazar's departure.

"Secretary Salazar should be commended for restoring order to a flawed oil shale program," said David Abelson, an oil shale policy adviser for Western Resource Advocates in Boulder, Colo., and one of the plaintiffs. "His work, though, is unfinished, and it remains imperative that he release the revised draft commercial leasing regulations before he leaves office to remove the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over the program."

Salazar has long been a skeptic of oil shale, which, unlike shale oil, has yet to be commercially developed and currently requires vast amounts of water and heat to turn into marketable crude. Salazar would be expected to take a more pro-conservation approach to royalties than any successor.

There is little doubt that Salazar will seek to advance more renewable energy projects in the Southwest and perhaps in the Atlantic Ocean before he leaves office. An announcement advancing a project to site solar panels on previously degraded lands in Arizona is expected as soon as tomorrow, and more records of decision authorizing solar plants would further establish Salazar as a pioneer in the country's expansion of clean energy.

Wilderness, fracking

Many of Salazar's conservation goals also depend on help from Congress.

As a senator, Salazar was credited with pressuring Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to pass a sweeping public lands package early in the 111th Congress, which included Salazar's legislation to protect the Dominguez Canyon in southwest Colorado.

It would not be surprising to see the former senator make another strong push to jump-start the passage of wilderness or parks bills that the 112th Congress failed to approve.

With new leadership at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, of which Salazar was a member, there is renewed hope for bipartisan agreements on public lands packages.

If that happens, look for Salazar to target protections for backcountry areas his agency highlighted in a November 2011 report where designation as wilderness, conservation areas or parks carries strong local or bipartisan support.

On Capitol Hill, Salazar may also advocate strongly for lawmakers to more fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which Salazar as secretary said had been "robbed" over the years. Funding for the program, which is the government's main vehicle for acquiring lands, conserving private lands and supporting urban recreation, was proposed for doubling in the Senate's version of a transportation bill, but the provision was later removed.

A big uncertainty is whether Salazar will seek to finalize a rule to require drilling firms to disclose the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing.

BLM issued a draft rule last spring that would have required disclosure, in addition to strengthening reporting standards for well integrity and management of wastewater, but it was fiercely opposed by the oil and gas industry.

Industry sources have suggested the draft rule has undergone significant changes, though details are scarce.

A coalition of oil and gas groups last September asked Interior to withdraw the proposed rule, arguing that the controversial technique that has led to an oil production boom in places like North Dakota and Texas is already adequately regulated by the states.

Environmental groups have pushed strongly for protections since even before Salazar first pledged to update BLM's rule in the fall of 2010, arguing that the protection of wildlife habitats and water supplies is at stake.

Any final rule is likely to spark intense controversy, something the secretary may want to avoid in his final months in office.

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. -- In the wake of a bruising year-end fight over taxes and government spending, House Republicans gathered last night at a posh resort here to regroup and plan for the future.

Unlike past House Republican retreats, this year's event, which runs through tomorrow, will forgo specific policy forums for a series of more free-flowing discussions that will allow conference members to speak their minds on the issues that are most important to them, GOP aides said today.

Led by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), today's main conference sessions are broken down into two sections, focusing first on the coming 90 days on Capitol Hill before turning to longer-term planning.

The policy discussions "are designed to be rank-and-file-driven," the GOP aide said.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), the newly appointed vice chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said during a break in sessions this morning that there are several energy policy issues that she and her colleagues will be pressing Boehner and Cantor on.

"Members want to get some focus back on the Keystone pipeline," Blackburn said. "That is something they are truly concerned about. They want to see that pipeline built. ... I would anticipate that it's going to be a sooner rather than later issue."

Another issue that she said might be part of both the near- and long-term planning efforts is the ongoing fight to cut federal red tape and regulations that affect job growth in the energy sector as well as families' pocketbooks.

Constituents "are hearing more about the 'war on coal.' That doesn't seem to make sense to them. I've never met anybody that wants to ... pay more on their monthly electric bill," Blackburn said.

"We know some of the EPA rules and regulations have indeed driven up the cost of energy with the way they have gone after so many of our energy producers. Looking at the overreach, that is an item that many of our members want to see put on the table [at this week's retreat], and I join them in that."

But considering some of Boehner's recent troubles with keeping his conference in line -- from a last-minute attempt by tea party conservatives to derail his speakership to two recent floor votes in which Boehner failed to obtain a majority of his conference -- this week's discussion sessions could get heated.

And for their part, Democrats have sought to fan the flames of discord that have developed in Republican ranks in recent months.

In a news release this week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said the retreat comes "after weeks of record low poll numbers, unparalleled dysfunction and unbelievable extremism that have rankled" the GOP conference.

"Tea Party House Republicans have had a rough month -- from the fiscal cliff to Hurricane Sandy, an attempted coup to an upcoming debt default -- they've been unable to explain their extremism and dysfunction to the American people," Jesse Ferguson, a DCCC spokesman, said in the release.

But several of the events at this year's conference seem designed to inspire members and bring them together.

Last night, members heard a keynote address from Erik Weihenmayer, a blind climber who has reached the summits of Mount Everest and several other of the world's highest peaks.

"I've never seen the members more captivated -- no one was even checking their BlackBerry," a GOP aide said.

Today, the conference is set to hear from Andy Andrews, a former homeless man turned best-selling author and motivational speaker. Andrews' presentation is titled "Sailing Above Rough Seas."

Other agenda items include a lunchtime address today from Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) and former Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuno (R). The GOP aide said that presentation will be focused on how the Republican House majority can better coordinate its efforts with those of the country's 30 GOP governors.

Earlier this morning, members also heard a presentation from well-known political analyst Charlie Cook.

A chemical being used by some companies as a safer alternative to the controversial plastics hardener bisphenol A (BPA) has shown the same estrogen-disrupting effects in lab tests, researchers said.

The chemical bisphenol S (BPS) disrupted certain responses in rat cells that control key functions such as reproduction, energy metabolism and behavior in a similar manner and extent as BPA, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

BPS acts like estrogen hormones and disturbs the body's response to natural estrogen hormones in pituitary cells, the study said.

"It's cause for concern," said Cheryl Watson, the study's co-author and professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

"Rats and humans have a lot of cell-system similarities and share the exact same estrogen hormone," Watson said.

Many scientific studies show that compounds that mimic estrogen during the early development of fetuses and children can have adverse health effects, the study said.

The Food and Drug Administration banned BPA in 2012 from use in baby bottles and sippy cups. The chemical is still used as an anti-corrosive in some food and beverage containers.

BPA has been connected to potential heath risks such as diabetes, asthma and altered prostate and was recently linked to a biomarker in children for increased risk of future heart and kidney disease (Greenwire, Jan. 9).

Increased scrutiny and research of BPA led to an effort to find replacement chemicals such as BPS.

BPS is used mainly as a developer in thermal paper products such as sales receipts. Appleton, the leading producer of direct thermal media in North America according to the company's website, swapped out BPA for BPS in 2006.

While Appleton's technical team had not yet looked over the new study, the company's communications manager commented in general about its BPS use.

"The scientific literature about the toxicology of developers used to produce thermal paper has led us to conclude that BPS is a better choice than BPA for overall product safety," said Bill Van Den Brandt, manager of corporate communications at Appleton. "Outside expert opinion supports those conclusions. We welcome ongoing scientific review of BPS and other potential BPA substitutes."

The study noted that the effects of BPS shown in animal models can't necessarily translate to humans, because people have long life spans and don't usually show exposure-based health effects for many years.

But the study said humans have extensive exposure to BPS. The New York State Department of Health recently detected BPS in 97 percent of urine samples from residents of Albany, N.Y., the study noted.

Kurunthachalam Kannan, a research scientist at the Wadsworth Center at New York's Health Department and professor at the State University of New York, and his research team looked at 16 types of paper in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam. Among their findings, the researchers concluded that people may be absorbing more BPS through their skin than they did BPA when it was used more broadly.

"It's a very interesting study," Kannan said of the findings published today. "BPS seems to be as or more toxic than BPA."

But he added that repetition is needed with that type of study to confirm the results.

Watson argued that it is vital to establish effective pre-screening of any new chemicals or their altered forms that appear to be similar to these hormone-disrupting chemicals before they are put into consumer products.

In a move likely to draw opposition from key House Republicans, Amtrak and California transportation officials today announced plans to jointly look for high-speed train systems currently in production that are capable of traveling up to 220 miles per hour.

Joseph Boardman, Amtrak's top executive, and Jeff Morales, chief executive of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, said their partnership would ensure high-speed systems eventually become a reality on the West Coast and along Amtrak's busy Northeast corridor.

"This is about investing in 21st-century, state-of-the-art high-speed rail," Morales said this morning at Union Station in Washington, D.C., noting the collaboration would be a "natural fit" for both organizations. Morales and other California officials are in Washington to participate in ongoing transportation conferences and to meet with senior government leaders.

Boardman said Amtrak today issued a request for information to begin acquiring state-of-the-art high-speed train systems to provide faster service in both regions of the country.

"This is the beginning of the process to reach to industry and really see what is out there in terms of current state of the art and technology and what will be there by the time we're actually ordering the operating cars," Boardman said, adding that a request for proposals could occur by September. He estimated a cost of about $35 million to $55 million per train system.

Moving toward high-speed services in California has been a monumental challenge, pitting landowners against private investors and tasking government officials with alleviating concerns and tensions among stakeholders.

Last year, the California Senate passed a measure backed by Democrats to provide about $8 billion for the development of a high-speed train between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Proponents say the project would serve as a boost for California's economy.

Now, officials say they're on track to break ground this summer on their first operating phase of the rail system -- a 130-mile stretch between the Central Valley cities of Madera and Bakersfield.

The Obama administration has provided about $3 billion for the project. Californians also approved a bond measure for the project in 2008. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has assured lawmakers that private investors in the state would help back the project. And at a talk this week at the Transportation Research Board annual conference, LaHood said high-speed rail systems fulfill the president's "bold vision for American rail."

"Our goal and our dream is to connect 80 percent of the country over the next 25 years," LaHood said. "We have a leader who's made a commitment to get the country high-speed passenger rail, and it's a strong commitment and it will continue."

But on Capitol Hill, Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), the recently appointed chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee with a jurisdiction over railroads, has suggested he would continue to oppose certain aspects of his state's high-speed rail project. Denham has raised concerns about delays and cost overruns, which he says have not been addressed at the state and federal level. Denham and his fiscally conservative colleagues in the House have successfully denied federal funds for the project.

"I want to see a full business plan with their private investors," Denham said recently.

There's also certain opposition to high-speed systems in the Northeast, stemming from Republican criticism of Amtrak's management.

Next month, high-speed rail advocates will host a forum in D.C. to help persuade Denham and others to back the California project. Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are scheduled to attend.

Battle lines are being drawn in California over a legislative push to overhaul a key state environmental law.

At issue is the 1970 California Environmental Quality Act's required "environmental impact reports" for any development project that needs state or local approval -- reviews blamed by the law's critics for permitting delays and increased building costs. The state law is more sweeping than the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires reviews only for projects needing federal approval or funding (Greenwire, Dec. 11, 2012).

"Could it be modified so it's less cumbersome and an easier process to navigate? Absolutely," said a spokeswoman for state Sen. Noreen Evans (D), who's working on a bill to streamline CEQA. "She's seen both sides of the story here, and she obviously is a big defender of CEQA and the most important thing she wants to preserve is the public's input in that process.

"What she intends to do, overall," spokeswoman Teala Schaff added, "is to streamline the process so that it's more user-friendly, less expensive, more transparent, to speed up the process."

Also working on a CEQA bill are state Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D) and state Senate Environmental Quality Chairman Michael Rubio (D). Rubio said he and Senate leadership are looking for "areas that we agree are important components of CEQA that we should preserve, because it has served us well, and there's many of them over the last 40 years." They also will be conferring on "areas that have been abused that we can work on."

Rubio said he wants to prohibit CEQA lawsuits that cite other federal, state and local environmental and land-use laws as long as projects comply with those laws. "Too many times, a project that has met all of the environmental requirements is unfairly delayed or even killed by a lawsuit," he wrote in an op-ed Sunday in The Sacramento Bee.

Environmentalists, on the other hand, want to leave CEQA as the last line of defense against damaging development.

"I can see a scenario where there would be some horse trading over what goes into a bill," said David Pettit, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Southern California air program.

Of Rubio's plan to limit CEQA's scope to areas not covered by other environmental laws, Pettit said, "We're just not going to go there."

A goal for environmentalists in the CEQA fight is to gain ground on climate change. A state court decision last year found a Los Angeles developer didn't have to account under the law for the effects of sea-level rise on a real estate project -- an impact that Pettit and others say must be assessed.

Meanwhile, environmentalists and development interests are sparring over how the law's impacts on development are perceived by the public. NRDC and the California League of Conservation Voters released an analysis yesterday showing about 1 percent of projects that have to comply with CEQA actually draw lawsuits, about 200 cases per year.

Jennifer Hernandez, an attorney at the law firm Holland & Knight, disputed NRDC's characterization of the rates of lawsuits. About half the developers that get sued lose, she said. "Where there's controversy, projects get sued," she said. "I think the question raised is, 'Is there a problem,' and the answer for [environmentalists] is no. ... I just don't think that's a perception that's shared by elected and appointed officials who've had to work with CEQA."

Environmentalists do concede the law could be tweaked. "There's a lot of ways that CEQA can be improved that no one will disagree with," said Kathryn Phillips, executive director of Sierra Club California.

Another environmentalist said areas of agreement on CEQA reform might be too narrow to satisfy people clamoring for wider reforms.

"I don't think that the things we're willing to offer, and the other side would like, I don't think that's what's going to make the development interests happy," said Bruce Reznik, executive director of the Planning and Conservation League, which held a conference on CEQA last weekend at the University of California, Davis. "They're looking for something much more substantial than that."

He added: "I don't know that you can find something that gets to a lot of the core issues ... where you don't have one side or the other still really pissed off."

Reporter Anne C. Mulkern contributed.

National Mining Association CEO Hal Quinn admitted he was wrong.

Before a packed meeting hosted by the U.S. Energy Association at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., yesterday, he said his prediction last year that coal would surpass oil as the word's top fuel by 2020 was incorrect. New forecasts indicate that it could happen sooner (Greenwire, Dec. 18, 2012).

"But let's not focus upon the slight difference between these forecasts," Quinn said, "and instead appreciate the central point of both -- the importance of coal in the global energy mix is the highest since 1971."

Despite being bullish about the growth of coal worldwide, particularly because of demand in the developing world, Quinn recognized the ongoing troubles with American coal companies.

"The coal industry will clearly be adjusting and restructuring and realigning over the next several years," Quinn told the audience. He predicted that more layoffs may be in the future at U.S. mines.

Mining companies are hoping that increased international trade may help turn things around through expanded port capacity in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. Coal exports may reach 125 million short tons this year.

"What a lot of people aren't noticing is that there is quite a bit of Illinois basin coal going out of the Gulf of Mexico," Quinn said.

Public health and environmental groups and many Oregon and Washington state residents are opposing the new coal terminals because of health, safety and climate change concerns. Coal critics also question the bullish estimates of Asian demand and coal's long-term international viability.

Quinn recalled previous doubts about increased port capacity. "Guess what, everybody is glad now we have them," Quinn said in a gathering with reporters after his speech. "Because nobody could foresee what's going on today. It's a BTU-hungry world."

Despite the rush to export, Quinn tried to dispel the notion that overseas demand was the only future for U.S. coal. He said economic recovery and natural gas prices coming up from what he called "unsustainably" low levels would improve the landscape for coal.

Quinn, like most other analysts, predicted continued power plant retirements. But he said the U.S. fleet would be newer, larger and more efficient once the dust settles. Citing new plants like the John W. Turk Jr. "ultra-supercritical" facility in Arkansas, he said higher power needs would help increase demand from mines.

Looking into the future, analysts expect few, if any, new coal power plants to be built in the country, especially because of tougher Obama administration emissions guidelines. Carbon capture and storage, Quinn said, is still years away from widespread commercial viability, even with ongoing development projects.

Calling EPA rules bad public policy built on shaky legal ground, Quinn said government should encourage the construction of new coal plants to replace old ones as a means of promoting diverse energy sources and innovation.

In an attempt to counter critics of coal who see natural gas as a bridge to more renewable sources of energy, Quinn warned against discounting coal.

"After rolling up potential gas demand for a manufacturing renaissance, a transportation fleet transformation and electric power," Quinn said in prepared remarks, "one might reasonably ask whether so many saddlebags will buckle the knees of the natural gas mule."

Federal coal royalties

After his speech, Quinn criticized reports that U.S. taxpayers are missing out on millions, perhaps billions, of dollars from federal coal royalties, especially with increased exports.

A Reuters news service investigation found that companies may be using affiliates to take advantage of low royalties and sell the coal at higher overseas prices. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for more information (Greenwire, Jan. 4).

The Government Accountability Office and Interior's inspector general are probing the issue. And the Office of Natural Resources Revenue is studying whether to change coal valuation from federal and American Indian tracts.

But in a letter last year the trade group said, "NMA disagrees with the primary contention that changes to the regulations are merited by 'significant' changes in the domestic coal market over the last 20 years."

Quinn said yesterday, "Most of that price has nothing to do with what the coal is sold for at the mine. There's a lot of risk shipping coal overseas and once it's over there someone saying at the port, 'Hey, we don't need it.'"

International environmental groups today released two reports detailing the likely climate costs of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline in a last-minute attempt to persuade the Obama administration not to approve it.

Their pitch: Building the proposed pipeline to carry 830,000 barrels of Canadian oil sands oil a day to U.S. refineries will ensure the expansion of some of the highest-carbon fuels now in use while delaying a switch to more climate-friendly alternatives.

"This pipeline is not about a pipeline," Danielle Droitsch, Canada Project director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said at an unveiling of the reports today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. "This is about tar sands development. This is about climate."

A paper released by Oil Change International, an anti-fossil-fuels activist group based in Washington, found that the State Department in its assessment of the proposed pipeline had not considered carbon emissions from U.S. refineries burning petroleum coke from oil sands. The agency had thereby underestimated the greenhouse gas effects of the fuel that would be transported through the pipeline by about 13 percent, the study concludes.

The Canada-based Pembina Institute's report looked at the effect the pipeline would have on the expansion of oil sands development in Canada. The industry already produces 1.8 million barrels a day but is set to produce upward of 5 million a day by 2030, Nathan Lemphers of Pembina told reporters at today's event.

The reports were touted by advocates and lawmakers who hope President Obama will reject a revised proposal for Keystone XL in the next few months. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said in a statement that the reports showed Keystone "is the key that will unlock the tar sands."

"If the pipeline is approved, the world will face millions more tons of carbon pollution each year for decades to come," said Waxman, who serves as top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "After Hurricane Sandy, devastating drought, unprecedented wildfires, and the warmest year on record in the United States, we know that climate change is happening now, we have to fight it now, and we must say no to this pollution pipeline now."

Droitsch said the pipeline decision has become a "primary focus" of environmental and climate change activists.

"The pressure is being felt by the president," she said.

Droitsch noted that the Obama administration had committed to consider all the environmental effects of building the pipeline, and said she therefore expects that the supplemental environmental impact statement being prepared by the State Department will take into account the effects not only of transporting the fuel, but of encouraging its production.

"We don't view this as an inevitable approval," she said, adding that whatever the president decides on Keystone XL, it will go down as part of his legacy on climate change.

Speakers agreed that if the pipeline goes forward, it will serve as a powerful market signal encouraging the oil sands industry to expand. That, in turn, would make it very difficult for the world to keep its postindustrial temperature rise to under 2 degrees Celsius, the threshold at which scientists say the worst effects of climate change can still be avoided.

This is especially true, they said, given the current political situation in Canada, where the Conservative government is allied with the oil sands industry and has taken steps to dismantle environmental rules it views as onerous.

"Because Canada does not have a credible plan for responsibly developing the oil sands, including reducing emissions so Canada can meet its climate commitments, the pipeline should not go ahead," said Lemphers. He touted the need for Canada to promulgate a new greenhouse gas rule for oil and gas production, or to price carbon emissions more broadly.

Wind, solar and other renewable sources are expected to account for about half the new electricity capacity installed worldwide over the next several years, but lingering uncertainty around U.S. energy policy is making the situation more difficult for domestic companies operating in those sectors, according to a report released today.

The Pew Charitable Trusts' report estimates that clean energy development will generate $1.9 trillion in revenue worldwide through 2018, with about $269 billion of that coming in the United States, said Dexter Gauntlett, an energy research analyst with Pike Research, which helped compile the report.

The report is optimistic about renewable energy's growing prominence in energy markets and expects that trend to continue, but it notes that growing international competition -- especially from China -- is reducing the leading role the United States once played in driving clean energy development.

Discussions that Pew convened with business leaders revealed an overarching concern about the lack of a comprehensive policy aimed at promoting renewable energy in the United States. Business leaders said the on-again, off-again nature of U.S. policies has inhibited growth in the sector; that situation was exemplified by last year's costly and time-consuming lobbying push to extend the production tax credit, which was given a lifeline in this month's "fiscal cliff" deal just as it was expiring.

"I can't tell you how strongly we heard that," Phyllis Cuttino, director of Pew's Clean Energy Program, said of the industry's dissatisfaction with a lack of policy certainty.

The report recommends a "relatively narrow, straightforward, and mutually reinforcing policy agenda" to promote continued development of wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and other renewable sources.

It recommends creation of a national clean energy standard -- proposals for which were floated but ultimately failed to gain traction in the last session of Congress -- as well as an extension of renewable energy tax credits through the end of the decade, increased investment in research and development, the return of a clean energy manufacturing tax credit, and policies to price environmental externalities and eliminate existing tax incentives for fossil-fuel-based energy.

House Republicans this week introduced a bill that would extend a pay freeze for federal workers.

Sponsored by freshman Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), H.R. 273 would block a 0.5 percent pay increase mandated by President Obama at the end of last month. This will save about $11 billion, DeSantis said.

The increase would end a two-year pay freeze and is set to begin March 27.

"The president has once again demonstrated his penchant for unrestrained spending by giving federal employees, including lawmakers, an across-the-board pay hike and sticking the rest of us with the $11 billion bill," DeSantis said in a statement after he introduced the bill.

At the tail end of the 112th Congress, the House passed a measure that would have continued the pay freeze, with support from some Democrats. But the Senate didn't take it up, leaving the new Congress to deal with the effort (Greenwire, Jan. 2).

So far, the bill has 28 co-sponsors, including House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who previously led the charge for the pay freeze.

"As President Obama continues to say one thing and do another on deficit spending, it is appropriate for Congress to challenge his unilateral decision to spend $11 billion on non-merit based pay raises for federal workers," Issa said in a statement.

Unions have called on lawmakers to oppose the bill, saying extending the freeze was a form of punishment.

Employees have already sacrificed billions of dollars because of the pay freeze and retirement cuts, said William Dougan, national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees.

"Another year of frozen pay will only do more damage to federal workers, and their families who are struggling just like anyone else in this economy," he said. "This type of political scapegoating is not irresponsible, it is wholly unappreciative of the sacrifices civil servants have already made to help our nation's finances."

The American Federation of Government Employees said Congress must stop politicizing federal pay.

"The salary freeze -- along with the threat of furloughs, layoffs and another complete government shutdown -- are a punishment in search of a crime," union National President J. David Cox said in a statement.

The U.S. Navy's USS Guardian crashed into a protected Philippine coral reef today. No injuries have been reported.

The boat struck a reef at Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park, a World Heritage Site in the Sulu Sea, located 400 miles southeast of Manila. Angelique Songco, head of the government's Protected Area Management Board, said the government fines offenders about $300 dollars per square yard for corals that are damaged.

The crew of the minesweeper is looking for the best method to remove the ship, according to a statement from the Navy. Songco said oil was not seeping from the ship, although about 15 percent of the bow seemed to be caught in the reef. It's unclear how much of the reef is damaged, she said. The ship may be able to float free later today during a high tide.

The Navy isn't the first group to crash into one of the Philippines' reefs. Greenpeace incurred a fine from the Philippines in 2005 when its flagship Rainbow Warrior ran aground on a nearby reef (Associated Press, Jan. 17). -- WW

A smaller version of a new water export system for California's Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta would be less costly and more reliable than other plans on the table, a group of conservation organizations and Bay Area water agencies said.

The group proposes building a single intake and tunnel on the Sacramento River that could carry 3,000 cubic feet of water per second. Additionally, programs such as conservation, recycling and new water-storage development could be used to increase the amount of water in the delta.

The $14 billion to $16 billion proposal would also improve delta levees and restore 40,000 acres of delta habitat, the group said.

The group includes the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Bay Institute, Defenders of Wildlife, the Planning and Conservation League, the Contra Costa Council and Environmental Entrepreneurs.

It is a much smaller proposal than the one supported by Gov. Jerry Brown's (D) administration. His office, as well as federal officials, supports a plan that would build three large facilities to divert 9,000 cubic feet of water a second into two underground tunnels that would feed into existing pipes. The project's estimated cost would be $18 billion.

While none of the ideas proposed by the coalition are new, backers say a formal package would give officials a better idea of the plan's economic advantage.

"All we've done is to compare the incremental benefits of a larger facility with a larger investment in local resources like recycling efficiency," NRDC's Barry Nelson said (Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 16). -- JE

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers neglected to apply for a mandatory permit before it leveled 43 acres of wildlife habitat in the Sepulveda Basin and filled in a pond used by migrant birds.

Last month, Army Corps officials cut down the area, which for about 30 years had been a designated wildlife preserve but was recently reclassified as a "vegetation management area." Local environmentalists are angry over the felled preserve (Greenwire, Jan. 16).

The agency must offer an explanation for its actions by Feb. 11, the board said. The basin is an engineered flood-control zone for the Los Angeles River, and the Army Corps must also comment on its decision to potentially allow sediment to seep into the river.

"The corps did not notify us before it proceeded to destroy wetlands, and that is a great concern to us," said Maria Mehranian, chairwoman of the water quality control board. "The federal Clean Water Act requires anyone working in wetlands to obtain a permit from us. They failed to do so."

At the same time, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating possible endangered species protection violations related to the incident.

Col. Mark Toy, chief of the Army Corps' Los Angeles District, was unavailable for comment on the order from the water board. But spokesman Jay Field said, "We are working with the Regional Water Quality Control Board to provide information we believe will address any concerns" (Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 16). -- WW

The whitebark pine, a tree that produces protein-rich seeds that grizzly bears and other animals feed on, is disappearing from the northern Rocky Mountains. Two Montana groups, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the WildWest Institute, are suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and accusing the agency of stalling efforts to protect the trees.

The groups filed suit Tuesday against FWS Director Dan Ashe and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in Missoula District Court. Their complaint points out that other environmental groups had sought endangered species protection for the trees in 1991 and again in 2008. FWS declared the tree "warranted but precluded" from protection in 2011.

"People who spend time in the high country realize that whitebark pine are dying at alarming rates due to impacts associated with climate change," WildWest Executive Director Matthew Koehler said. "We cannot sit back, do nothing and watch a critically important component of our high-country ecosystem just disappear and go extinct before our eyes. This isn't just about the whitebark pine, but about the future viability of these high-country ecosystems, including the species that rely upon that habitat such as grizzly bears and Clark's nutcrackers" (Rob Chaney, Missoulian, Jan. 17). -- MM

A federal appeals court today decided against rehearing an environmental group challenge to U.S. EPA's decision not to regulate some mercury and other hazardous air emissions from gold mining and processing operations.

Today's action by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit means a Nov. 9 ruling in favor of EPA will stand.

A three-judge panel held then that EPA's interpretation of the Clean Air Act was "eminently reasonable" (Greenwire, Nov. 9, 2012).

The environmental groups that brought the challenge in Desert Citizens Against Pollution and Sierra Club v. EPA said EPA should be required to set standards for air pollutants other than mercury at gold mines and that the agency should have set standards for so-called fugitive emissions of hazardous pollutants, including mercury and hydrogen cyanide, that did not come from the mine's stacks.

More than a dozen Democratic lawmakers yesterday urged a federal court to side with the Securities and Exchange Commission in a lawsuit brought by oil and business interests over the commission's controversial payment disclosure rule.

In an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, 12 Democratic House members said the SEC acted within Congress' intent when it approved the rule, which requires oil, gas and mining companies to disclose, on a project-by-project basis, the payments they make to governments.

"We are filing this brief because we can provide clarity about the original congressional intent" behind the provision, the document said. "The commission acted appropriately and within the boundaries of federal law in promulgating the Resource Extraction rule."

In a separate brief filed yesterday with the court, a pair of senators also defended the provision, which applies to taxes, royalties, fees, production entitlements, bonuses and other material benefits paid to U.S. and foreign governments.

The provision "addresses a major threat to U.S. interests: that abundance of natural resources in developing countries has frequently led to poverty and instability in those countries and, as a result, jeopardizes the national and energy security of the United States," said the brief by Democratic Sens. Ben Cardin of Maryland and Carl Levin of Michigan.

Cardin and Levin were joined in the brief by former Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, who earlier this month left the Senate.

The disclosure requirement was added to the 2010 financial reform act by Cardin and Lugar as a means of reducing corruption and instability in resource-rich countries. SEC commissioners approved the rule in August by a 2-1 vote.

In their lawsuit filed in October against the rule, oil and business groups led by the American Petroleum Institute and U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued that it would cost companies billions of dollars and put the United States at a competitive disadvantage. In court documents, they also argued that the SEC failed to weigh the costs and benefits of the rule and should have provided exemptions for certain countries (Greenwire, Dec. 4, 2012).

The lawmakers who filed the brief yesterday are among the rule's greatest supporters. Along with Cardin and Lugar, they include Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who has been publicly critical of oil interests' opposition to the rule, and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who introduced a version of the provision in the 110th Congress.

Congress, the House lawmakers wrote, didn't give the SEC much leeway when it mandated that the commission approve and carry out the extraction rule. As part of its work on the rule, the commission was not required to do a lengthy cost-and-benefit analysis, they wrote.

The rule, they said, would help reduce instability in key energy-producing regions around the world and will increase investor knowledge and confidence about extraction companies. Because several other countries are expected to follow in the United States' footsteps, they added, it will not "significantly dampen" the competitiveness of American companies.

In their brief, the senators argued that there was no basis to provide any exemptions to the rule, as had been requested by oil, gas and mining groups.

API and the U.S. Chamber can "point to no evidence that the final rule would actually conflict with the existing laws of any foreign country," the senators wrote. "Absent that evidence, there is no practical basis even to consider an exemption, and if the agency allowed exemptions, this would provide an incentive for foreign governments to subvert U.S. law by passing laws that prohibited disclosure."

The D.C. federal court has yet to schedule oral arguments in the lawsuit, which also involves the National Foreign Trade Council and the Independent Petroleum Association of America. Oxfam America, which filed a court brief yesterday, is intervening on behalf of the SEC.

"We are heartened to see prominent members of Congress ... stepping forward to defend the rules promulgated by the SEC," said Ian Gary, senior policy manager of Oxfam America's oil, gas and mining program. "The oil industry should drop its last-ditch effort to deprive investors and citizens of important information regarding billions of dollars companies pour into countries for oil and mineral projects."

Citgo Petroleum Corp. will no longer be a part of an $816 million trial as it looks to settle with the state of New Hampshire, according to a court filing from this week.

"The parties stipulate that Citgo Petroleum shall be severed from the above captioned case until such time as a consent agreement between Citgo and the state is filed with the court," stated a court filing dated Jan. 15.

The case about the pollution of the state's wells with the chemical methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or MTBE, began Monday. The state says oil companies knew of the potential for groundwater contamination when they decided to use the gasoline additive.

New Hampshire filed suit in 2003 against Citgo, Exxon Mobil Corp., Shell Oil Co., Sunoco Inc., ConocoPhillips Co., Irving Oil Ltd., Vitol SA and Hess Corp. Since then, all the companies except Citgo, Exxon Mobil and Irving have settled out of court.

Under the agreement, Citgo and New Hampshire have until Feb. 15 to reach an agreement. Otherwise, Citgo will be reinstated to the case. Sources say the company and state have already reached a deal (Earle/Jeffrey, Bloomberg/Fuel Fix, Jan. 16). -- JE

Federal prosecutors and a unit of BP PLC have asked a federal judge for approval of a $4 billion guilty plea agreement for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.

In November 2012, Houston-based BP Exploration & Production Inc. agreed to plead guilty to 14 counts and pay $4 billion to resolve all criminal charges. The plea included 11 counts of felony seaman's manslaughter.

"The plea agreement imposes severe corporate punishment, appropriately reflects the criminal history of other companies with the BP group of companies, the serious nature of the instant offenses, and the impact of the Macondo blowout and spill on the Gulf Coast and our nation as a whole; and deters BP and other deepwater drillers from permitting such a catastrophe to occur in the future," said Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, said in a federal court filing.

But the plea deal has drawn opposition from those who were injured and the relatives of the men who were killed in the rig explosion and spill. More than a dozen letters have been sent to U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance, asking her to reject the agreement. Most of the letters ask for a "sincere" apology and punishment that would be as severe as their losses.

"We have been compensated, but no amount of money will bring my father back," wrote Ashley Manuel, daughter of rig worker Keith Blair Manuel. "If I had my wish, it would be that the three representatives who sat in my grandparents' living room and lied to my face about the accident would sit in jail and feel the same pain and loss I feel" (Brubaker/Feeley, Bloomberg, Jan. 17). -- JE

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission today handed the solar industry a potential victory after proposing to ease roadblocks that small solar generators face when trying to connect to the electric grid.

The agency's action responds directly to a petition that the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) submitted to FERC last year proposing to change FERC policies that have limited the amount of solar power that can be added to homes in booming regions like California, Hawaii and New Jersey (Greenwire, Feb. 16, 2012).

FERC voted 3-2 to approve the reforms, receiving backing from FERC Commissioners Cheryl LaFleur (D), Philip Moeller (R) and John Norris (D). FERC Commissioner Tony Clark (R) recused himself due to a requirement that he sit out for about a year on cases the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners may have handled, because he was a former president of that organization.

FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff also recused himself because he served as the general counsel for a Nevada utility in the past -- formerly PowerLight Corp. -- that developed solar projects. "I just think it's appropriate to step out of those cases where I have former clients," Wellinghoff told reporters today.

Sunny states have seen solar panels bloom on rooftops at a record pace, bolstered by falling prices and generous subsidies. Grid operators, in response, have capped the amount of rooftop solar installations.

SEIA had argued that policies FERC laid out in 2005 -- and states adopted -- had become discriminatory and asked the commission to allow small solar generators to quickly connect to the grid if they met certain criteria, or passed "screen tests."

FERC's proposed reforms fall in line with much of what SEIA was seeking, including language that would allow generators to ask transmission providers for a study to help them better determine points where they can interconnect to the grid. The generators, however, would be required to pay for the studies, which can cost around $300.

"This added transparency could increase the efficiency of the interconnection process for both transmission providers and interconnection customers," FERC said.

But the commission didn't grant all of SEIA's wishes. The industry group had asked the commission to allow projects up to 10 megawatts to use a "fast track" process to connect to the grid, which involves the generators passing a number of tests. Instead, the commission is proposing a formula that allows projects no larger than 5 MW to use the speedy process.

Still, Rhone Resch, president and CEO of SEIA, said in a statement that FERC's proposed rule could potentially double the amount of solar generation capacity in the fast track lane, even while ensuring the grid is reliable. "On behalf of our member companies, we look forward to working with FERC and interested stakeholders to see this rule to implementation and help to bring more affordable, reliable solar energy to the American people. SEIA also urges the states to consider using FERC's proposed updated rule as a model and starting point for updating their own interconnection rules," Resch said.

Comments are due 120 days after the proposals are published in the Federal Register.

Moeller thanked SEIA for raising the issue, and Norris said adding more renewables to a strapped grid "is a big deal, in my mind."

"This just makes sense to me, and I'm glad we're making these incremental improvements to our rules to accommodate changes in the system," Norris said. "This is moving our country forward in the right direction."

LaFleur said FERC is responsible for making sure that existing policies change with the markets and that costs are spread fairly. The proposed rule changes, she said, will protect solar generators while respecting grid reliability, noting that solar installations have grown by more than 40 percent during the past decade.

Marginal Midwestern farmland -- tracts not used for food crops -- can produce enough biofuels to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide spewed annually by about 10 million mid-sized cars, according to new research.

While the notion of using marginal lands for biofuel production is several years old, the study published in the current issue of Nature is the first to quantify the biofuel potential and possible emission benefits of marginal lands. The study used 20 years of data from 10 states.

"This research shows that these lands could make a major contribution to transportation energy needs, while providing a substantial climate and -- if managed properly -- conservation benefits," said Phil Robertson, a Michigan State University professor of ecosystem science and a co-author of the study, in a statement.

Researchers compared six types of traditional and advanced biofuel systems: conventional and no-till corn-soybean-wheat rotation, alfalfa, poplar, marginal lands that have been abandoned and left to revegetate, and abandoned fields that have been helped along with fertilizer.

They measured several factors -- including greenhouse gas emissions, soil-carbon stocks and yields -- using data from the National Science Foundation's Kellogg Biological Station Long-Term Ecological Research site at Michigan State.

The results showed all systems were net sinks of greenhouse gases when the emissions avoided from producing fossil fuel were taken into account.

Grasses and other vegetation in both the unfertilized and fertilized abandoned fields -- marginal lands where no food crops were grown -- absorbed substantially more CO2 than the other systems.

Using marginal lands for biofuel production, the study says, would not interfere with food-cropping systems or have any indirect land-use effects.

Measuring productivity of different systems and using models to map the Midwest, researchers found, under a conservative estimate, that marginal lands could provide enough biomass to produce 215 gallons of cellulosic ethanol per acre or 5.5 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol a year. The numbers are based on a scenario in which biomass is collected from an 80-kilometer radius around potential biorefineries.

Those levels equal about 25 percent of the 2022 target for cellulosic biofuel production under the federal renewable fuel standard and, compared to using fossil fuels, reduce carbon dioxide emissions by the equivalent of taking 10 million medium-sized cars off the road, according to an accompanying critique of the study by German researcher Klaus Butterbach-Bahl and Kenyan researcher Ralf Kiese.

"Because it is based on long-term data, this is the first convincing analysis of the impact of biofuel-production systems on global warming," Butterbach-Bahl and Kiese wrote.

Researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Maryland also participated in the study. The research was funded by NSF, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center and MSU AgBioResearch.

Nuclear activists made their final plea to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday to hold a trial-like hearing before allowing the restart of crippled reactors at the San Onofre plant on California's West Coast.

"This was our only chance to go eyeball to eyeball, our only chance," said Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer with Fairewinds Associates representing Friends of the Earth.

Anti-nuclear groups are calling for the crippled San Onofre reactors, about 45 miles north of San Diego, to remain shut down despite the operator's request to restart at least one unit for a five-month period.

The reactors have been offline for about a year, since Southern California Edison discovered a leak in tubes carrying hot radioactive water in steam generators that are used to produce power. The utility later discovered the tubes were worn down by mysterious vibrations. Edison is now lobbying to restart Unit 2 but has removed fuel from Unit 3.

An NRC investigation last year found that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which manufactured the generators, used a faulty computer model to gauge steam and water flow, which triggered vibrations that damaged the tubes (Greenwire, June 19, 2012).

But Gundersen told an NRC petition review board yesterday that Southern California Edison's order to change the design of the generators is solely to blame, and the utility should have tried to amend its license years ago to account for the large-scale equipment changes.

Doing so would have triggered an NRC investigation and prevented such a costly mistake, Gundersen said.

Friends of the Earth is calling on the NRC to suspend the utility's license until it is amended to account for the steam generator design changes. It is not clear when the NRC will act, but the agency has said it could decide on a potential restart as early as March.

Gundersen argued that Southern California Edison's problems were foreseeable and that the generator debacle is one of the worst mistakes at a nuclear plant in the past decade.

"In the past 10 years, nobody has screwed up a piece of equipment more than the steam generators at San Onofre," he told the review board.

But Gundersen's argument was also limited by the NRC's decision not to release documents detailing the tube failures. Gundersen said the agency denied his request to gain access to the documents even though he volunteered not to share the information (Greenwire, Jan. 4).

"We're boxing in the dark," he said.

Southern California Edison rebutted Gundersen's assertions in a filing to the NRC last week and maintained that changes to the steam generators did not require a license amendment.

The Hanford nuclear reservation's waste treatment plant in Washington state should stop work because of quality concerns, the plant's engineering director said in an internal memo before he left his job.

Work should halt "to avoid further nuclear safety compromises and substantial rework," said leading engineering department official Gary Brunson in a December memo obtained by watchdog group Hanford Challenge. Brunson, who left his position this month, couldn't be reached for comment.

The document has surfaced a day after DOE said workers could safely restart construction at the nuclear waste cleanup plant. The construction at the plant, called the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, would begin after it was put on hold for seven months (Greenwire, Jan. 16).

In the memo, Brunson questioned the quality of the plant, which would process radioactive waste stored in 177 tanks. He urged an independent review and that "all activities affecting engineering design, nuclear safety, and construction and installation of all structures, systems and components be stopped."

DOE said in a statement, "The department will continue, and as appropriate, ramp up construction work not impacted by the remaining technical issues" (Scott Learn, Portland Oregonian, Jan. 16). -- WW

The Department of Energy yesterday announced the selection of the Bonneville Power Administration's deputy administrator to lead the agency.

Bill Drummond, who has worked in the energy industry for more than 30 years and has been with BPA since October 2011, next month will take the helm of the agency, which markets power from Columbia River hydroelectric dams, operates the surrounding power grid and runs the Northwest's only nuclear power plant. He replaces Administrator Steve Wright, who retires at the end of this month after 12 years at BPA.

"The leadership of BPA is critically important because America's continued global competitiveness in the 21st century will be significantly affected by whether we can efficiently produce and distribute electricity to businesses and consumers, seamlessly integrating new technologies and new sources of power," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement. "I look forward to working with Bill Drummond to help lead BPA's transition to a more flexible, resilient, and reliable electric grid and establish much greater coordination among system operators in partnership with its customers."

Before joining BPA, Drummond managed the Western Montana Electric Generating and Transmission Cooperative. He also led the Public Power Council and has been a leader on a variety of regional and national task forces and committees.

Critics are concerned about an Energy Department waste-reduction plan to sell tons of scrap metal from government nuclear sites.

The proposal adheres to DOE's policy of "reusing materials whenever possible," the department said in a document released last month. Tens of millions of tons of metal is recycled each year, the department said. And the 14,000 tons of metal from nuclear sites that could be sold makes up a fraction of that. While the metal would come from "radiological areas," the dose the public would be exposed to would be low, it said.

The department estimates the sale could bring in $10 million to $40 million a year for the agency.

But environmentalists and trade groups have expressed worries.

"We are concerned about what could happen in the marketplace if you have to worry about radioactive material possibly being in your eyeglass frames," said Thomas Danjczek, president of the Steel Manufacturers Association, a trade group whose members use recycled metals. "Why is the government trying to hurt the image of American products?"

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) called the plan "unwise" and suggested in a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu that it "should be immediately abandoned."

The government has recycled metal from its nuclear sites in the past. Shipments were suspended following a 2000 report from DOE's inspector general that found testing procedures in place were inadequate. The proposed plan indicates that procedures have since improved (John R. Emshwiller, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 16). -- WW

Tom Albanese, CEO of the multinational mining and metals corporation Rio Tinto Group, resigned after the company revealed a $14 billion writedown of value with two recent acquisitions.

After 20 years with the company, the acquisitions of Canada's Alcan aluminium group and Mozambique coal miner Riversdale put an end to Albanese's career at the mining giant.

Sam Walsh, the head of the company's iron ore division, will replace Albanese.

"[Alcan] was always a bad deal, and Albanese was lucky not to carry the can for it back in 2008," one of Rio Tinto's 10 largest investors said. "Mozambique is more of a surprise, but the industry's record on acquisitions is appalling, and Rio is not alone in destroying shareholder value."

Rio paid $44 billion (including debt) to buy Alcan in 2007 and was left with debts and a $15.2 billion rights issue (Clara Ferreira-Marques, Toronto Globe and Mail, Jan. 17). -- MM

Jim Rogers, CEO of the utility formed by the merger of Duke Energy Corp. with Progress Energy Inc., said the $32 billion deal was worth it, despite backlash over management changes and a state investigation into the deal.

The North Carolina probe into the merger ended with a settlement in which Rogers must step down by the end of the year. Rogers, 66, has been rumored to be a candidate to replace Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

But Rogers said the investigation was prompted by a misunderstanding: The state saw the deal as a merger between equals, but Duke Energy saw it as an acquisition of a smaller company.

"The birthing process of the creation of the largest utility in the country has been quite difficult," he said in an interview yesterday. "I think the baby is going to be beautiful."

The state Utilities Commission was prompted to action when Progress CEO Bill Johnson was promoted to lead the combined company and then fired.

Rogers is proud of the job he has done so far. According to Duke calculations, the total returns of the three companies he has led since 1988 rank No. 2 among U.S. utilities (Bruce Henderson Charlotte Observer, Jan. 17). -- MM

After the explosion of one of its natural gas pipelines, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. ran a $10 million ad campaign featuring its CEO saying the company "lost its way" before the disaster.

In a California Public Utilities Commission hearing about whether the utility violated safety laws leading up to the explosion, a top official said the ads did not refer to safety.

"I don't believe we lost focus on safety," said Jane Yura, the company's vice president for gas operations standards and policies. "But I believe we lost focus in terms of keeping up with the changes in the industry and improving our practices and our processes. And we had been a little static as a result."

The September 2010 explosion and subsequent fire killed eight people and ruined 38 homes in San Bruno, Calif. The company could face more than $500 million in fines.

A blue-ribbon panel concluded the company was more concerned about profits than safety and called its corporate culture "dysfunctional" (Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 16). -- MM

A Google Inc.-backed project has hired the contracting firm that constructed the Hoover Dam to build the first part of an offshore transmission system off the coast of New Jersey.

Bechtel Corp. is slated to start building the project in 2016. Project developer Atlantic Grid Development LLC's entire plan would link 7,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbine capacity to shore. It would carry as much as 3,000 MW of power to 1 million households by 2019 (Greenwire, Jan. 15). Called the New Jersey Energy Link the system is slated to cost $1.8 billion, the developer said in a statement.

"The transmission system in New Jersey could benefit greatly from this line," said Atlantic Grid CEO Robert Mitchell. "It will be the most efficient way to deliver offshore wind to shore."

The United States has no offshore wind farms operating or under construction, although there are several proposed projects in the pipeline along the East Coast. Atlantic Grid officials are looking to build in New Jersey because of strong support for offshore wind there, Mitchell said (Andrew Herndon, Bloomberg, Jan. 17). -- WW

Three broadly used pesticides made by Switzerland's Syngenta and Germany's Bayer pose a threat to honeybees, the E.U. Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said yesterday.

Responding to the report by EFSA, the European Commission said that if the findings are confirmed, it would take the necessary steps, raising the possibility of E.U.-wide restrictions on three pesticides.

EFSA analyzed clothianidin and imidacloprid, which are produced primarily by Bayer's agricultural unit Bayer CropScience, and Syngenta's thiamethoxam, the active ingredient in Cruiser OSR.

Bees are important pollinators of flowering plants, including many fruit and vegetable crops.

The E.U. scientists found no link between use of the pesticides and the phenomenon known as bee colony collapse disorder (Charlie Dunmore, Reuters, Jan. 17). -- KJ

Public health advocates yesterday sought to ramp up pressure on the White House to issue a proposal that would cut the amount of sulfur in gasoline and consequently result in less harmful tailpipe air emissions.

The coalition, including the American Lung Association and American Heart Association, said the so-called Tier 3 standards are "urgently needed" and asked the White House to finalize them by the end of the year.

"Nearly 159 million Americans still live in areas where the air is too dangerous to breathe," the advocates wrote in a letter to President Obama. "Cleaner gasoline will benefit their health immediately."

EPA is considering a proposal that would cut the limit of sulfur allowed in gasoline from 30 parts per million to 10 ppm, bringing the United States in line with several European countries and California, which has already set more stringent standards.

The letter marks the second time in two weeks that proponents of the proposal have called on the White House to issue it (Greenwire, Jan. 10). EPA is widely believed to have the regulations written, but the rules stalled last year in the face of refining-sector opposition.

The sector argues that the regulations will lead to gas price increases and could force some refineries to shutter. Industry groups met with Obama confidante and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett last March, and the Tier 3 proposal was discussed (EnergyWire, Oct. 2, 2012).

Advocates said in the letter that the standards are a cost-effective way to reduce emissions of harmful volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides.

"The National Association of Clean Air Agencies estimates that by lowering the sulfur content in gasoline, the nation could immediately reduce the amount of air pollution equal to removing 33 million cars and light trucks from our roads," they wrote. "Reducing the sulfur in gasoline will build on the strong foundation of your efforts to increase fuel efficiency and cut carbon pollution in half by 2025."

EPA has said the cost of the regulations would be only about a penny per gallon. The agency also indicated on its 2013 agenda that it plans to release the proposal by April, though those dates often slip.

Some agency observers have suggested that when Obama chooses a successor to outgoing EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson could play a role in the timing of the proposal. Because of the significance of the regulations, the White House may want to issue them after the Senate confirms a new administrator.

It is unclear when Obama will nominate Jackson's successor. Current deputy Bob Perciasepe will handle the job in an acting role when Jackson leaves next month after the State of the Union address. Perciasepe is seen as a possibility to fill the job permanently, as are a host of other candidates, including former Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) (Greenwire, Jan. 8).

In addition to the Lung and Heart associations, the American Public Health Association, the American Thoracic Society, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, Health Care Without Harm, the National Association of County and City Health Officials, and the Trust for America's Health signed onto the letter.

They said the regulations can't wait.

"Americans have the right to breathe clean and healthy air," they wrote. "In our work to improve the health of our patients and the public, we know first-hand that the air too many Americans breathe puts their health and their lives at risk."

Click here for the letter.

Hundreds of flood-control systems around the country may fail and endanger people and property, the Army Corps of Engineers has found as it conducts its first nationwide inventory of levees.

Of the 2,487 structures reviewed, the agency had rated 1,451 of them. Of those, 326 were deemed unacceptable and in need of repair. Another 1,004 required correcting, and 121 were found to be acceptable.

The problems range from decayed pipes and pumping stations to houses built too close to the systems.

It is up to local governments to upgrade levee systems, but that could cost hundreds of thousands -- or, in some cases, millions -- of dollars.

"It's just not right to tell a little town like this to spend millions of dollars that we can't raise," said Judy Askew, mayor of Brookport, Ill., a town with a population of 1,000 on the banks of the Ohio River.

Some officials say the federal agency is exaggerating dangers. And some of the deficiencies had been approved or not objected to by the federal government (Flesher/Burdeau, Associated Press, Jan. 17). -- JE

Beijing's skies have been covered with a toxic cloud for nearly a week, and Li Keqiang, the No. 2 leader in China's Communist Party, asked the city's residents to be patient during the long-term cleanup.

Lower-level officials took steps to reduce traffic and factory emissions to clear the worst outbreak of smog on record. But that move is likely to produce only short-term relief from a chronic problem.

"It is really just a temporary measure, and in the longer term you really have to get at the root causes like coal-burning factories," said Ming Sung, chief Asia-Pacific representative with the U.S.-based Clean Air Task Force.

Environmentalists and analysts credit the problem to a complex mix of causes, including overreliance on industry, dependence on coal, poor enforcement of pollution laws, and incentives for local officials to promote economic growth above all else (David Stanway, Reuters, Jan. 17). -- KJ

Workers are using a new mobile refrigerator-degassing unit, imported from Germany, to dispose of old refrigerators under a new program in Ghana to move away from the use of secondhand fridges.

The ban on secondhand refrigerators came into effect at the start of the year (Greenwire, Jan. 2). Imported secondhand refrigerators now are confiscated, and the government is offering a rebate for Ghanaians who trade in their older machines.

At issue are the older devices' use of toxic chlorofluorocarbons, which are banned under the Montreal Protocol. But the primary reason the older refrigerators were banned, according to Energy Commission Deputy Director Kofi Agyarko, was to ease the impact on the national grid.

"Ghana has a lot of used refrigerators -- we conducted a study which revealed that we had in excess of 2 million and that, on average, they were consuming 1,200 [kilowatt-]hours of energy in a year," Agyarko said. "That compares with energy-efficient refrigerators in Europe and the United States, which consume 250 kilowatt-hours in the whole year. That tells you the way we were wantonly dissipating our energy resources."

Owned by City Waste Management, the degassing unit is said to be the first of its kind on the continent. It separates the machines so parts can be recycled or disposed of. Plastics are recycled into flip-flops and plastic containers by Ghanaian companies, and metals and more hazardous materials are sent to recycling plants in Europe. The company is the only manager for the government-rebate program.

Some Ghanaians say they don't like the new ban on secondhand refrigerators. Previously, one Ghanaian said, the secondhand units available were higher quality and European-made. But now, the new refrigerators on the market are lower-quality, Chinese-made models (Afua Hirsch, London Guardian, Jan. 17). -- WW

How do industry leaders in the United States believe energy policy uncertainty is affecting investments and innovation? During today's OnPoint, Phyllis Cuttino, director of Pew's Clean Energy Program, discusses a new report based on roundtable discussions with more than 100 industry leaders pointing to the need for consistent, long-term energy policies. Cuttino also discusses the potential for a clean energy standard under the new Congress.

Click here to watch today's OnPoint.