The Senate today slogged toward dueling votes -- which could come as soon as the wee hours of tomorrow -- on the House-passed government funding bill, which cuts $3 billion from U.S. EPA, and a Democratic plan that avoids much of that financial hurt on the agency.
The uncertain timing for the side-by-side test votes came amid heated speculation over the next step in long-term budget talks among the two parties and the White House. Neither Republican nor Democratic senators are expected to maintain party unity on their respective funding measures of choice, and neither the House's $60 billion in overall spending cuts nor the Senate Democrats' $10.5 billion alternative is considered likely to win support from 60 members of the upper chamber.
"They're the ones who wanted to move to" the House's seven-month continuing resolution (CR), which cleared on Feb. 19, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters. "Now they're trying to walk that backwards. ... They cannot stop us from having a vote on [the House CR]. We want the American people to know that [the House CR] is dead, and we'll get there."
Environmental groups and Democrats have savaged the House CR for its massive cuts to EPA and Energy Department efficiency and renewables programs, accusing the lower chamber's GOP majority of setting back Obama administration environmental and research efforts to score political points. Republicans, meanwhile, are intent on securing broad government spending cuts for the current fiscal year as a down payment on further progress scaling back the nation's $1.6 trillion deficit.
"I'm not sure there's a path" to long-term agreement currently visible, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), an Appropriations Committee member, told reporters. "You could probably have a plethora of amendments [to the current CR proposals] and probably not solve the problem."
Indeed, regardless of the political dramas set to unfold on the Senate floor as members of both parties consider defecting on the competing CRs, signs on Capitol Hill today pointed toward approval of another short-term funding bill to stave off a government shutdown. The current law keeping federal coffers open is set to expire March 18, and House Republicans have said they are prepared to bring up another stopgap measure with incremental funding cuts -- the last iteration lasted for two weeks and cut $4 billion, including earmarked money at DOE.
"I wouldn't be surprised" if another stopgap CR is sent over to the Senate as the spending debate continues to unfold, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters.
On the individual level, Senate Democrats aimed to focus their public message on the impact of specific programs sliced by the House CR, while their GOP counterparts depicted the side-by-side votes as a choice between the two parties' broad spending-cut targets.
"[T]here's a frustration there hasn't been enough discussion about what's been put in this House bill," said Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska). "And I think there's not been a discussion more about what the priorities are. We spend more time talking about how much money" should be cut from the budget.
"The way we're looking at this vote is that it's a clear signal that we support the number that the House of Representatives has picked in trying to get this deficit under control," Senate Republicans' conference chairman, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, told reporters.
Pressed to explain how Republican senators could portray their members' vote for the House CR as an endorsement of numbers rather than specific cuts, Alexander said: "[E]veryone knows the Senate's going to reserve to itself its own prerogative about what our priorities are within the reduced level of spending."
At the heart of the priorities debate is the question of whether to impose policy riders on EPA's greenhouse gas emissions rules and other pending agency regulations.
Senate Democrats have maintained a united front against adding riders to government funding bills, and the House's most recent two-week CR omitted such policy restrictions -- but the No. 2 leader in the lower chamber declined to tip his hand on the matter today.
"We have established a formula or construct for the interim stopgap CRs, if that is where we end up and discussions about riders and policy issues are ongoing," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said today.
Reporters Sarah Abruzzese and Katie Howell contributed.
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Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey today said a common technique used to stimulate oil and natural gas wells in the West is not a safety threat to human health or public lands.
But companies that utilize hydraulic fracturing to loosen oil and gas deposits from tight shale formations should voluntarily disclose the chemicals they use to avoid a public "backlash" and ensure natural gas production is able to expand on federal lands, Abbey said.
"We have not seen evidence of any adverse effects as a result of the use of the chemicals that are a part of that fracking technology," Abbey said today following a House hearing on BLM's 2012 budget request.
Abbey said his agency will be hosting three meetings in April in North Dakota, Colorado and Arkansas to discuss the specific technologies used to fracture wells.
BLM also is considering additional regulations that would ensure wells are built to prevent blowouts and keep fracturing fluids from escaping into water supplies or underground aquifers.
"We want to make sure the well integrity is sound," he said, adding that industry already does a "pretty darn good job" using best management practices in constructing wells on public lands.
Top Interior officials, in fact, have been contemplating the disclosure of fracturing chemicals and new well integrity standards as early as August, according to an e-mail exchange obtained by E&E from the state of Wyoming that was part of the state's Freedom of Information Act request.
"Our goal was to [affect a] change in disclosure requirements and advancing/approving state of the art technologies for conducting fracking operations," BLM Deputy Director Mike Pool said in an August 2010 e-mail to Interior Deputy Secretary David Hayes.
Pool added BLM was considering what administrative latitude his agency has to condition drilling permits on new standards as opposed to undertaking a formal rulemaking. "Should have everything flushed out and proposed for consideration by September 2," he wrote.
In November, the Interior Department announced it is considering issuing a regulation to require the disclosure of fracturing chemicals. About 90 percent of wells drilled on public lands now require hydraulic fracturing, the agency estimates.
Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.), an outspoken critic of the hydraulic fracturing process who introduced a bill last Congress to require public disclosure of chemicals, today urged Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to force companies to disclose chemicals used in drilling on public lands. "This is just common sense," he said.
But Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) cautioned Salazar against imposing any nationwide standards for natural gas drilling, arguing that the technology is best regulated at the state level.
"This is not a new technology," Cole said during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing today on the Interior budget. "I would be very careful about a national regulatory system when states already regulate this quite well."
Salazar said he believed the future for natural gas was "very bright" but repeated earlier statements that the failure of companies to disclose information on the fracturing process could turn public opinion against the industry.
Fracturing is "the Achilles' heel that could essentially kill natural gas," Salazar said, adding that Interior would like to finalize its hydraulic fracturing regulations within the next several months.
The fracturing process injects large volumes of water at high pressures to create or enlarge fractures and then pumps a "propping agent" into the well to keep the fractures from closing to allow the flow of oil or gas.
The process has been used for more than 50 years but has recently come under attack from environmental groups and public health advocates who argue companies should be forced to disclose the chemicals they inject in case they are spilled, are discharged or accidentally migrate into underground sources of drinking water.
Wyoming and Colorado have recently established state regulations that include disclosure of chemicals and new standards to ensure wells are fortified to prevent escape of fluids.
The fracturing issue has been raised frequently by lawmakers on Capitol Hill in recent weeks as Interior and U.S. EPA officials defend the Obama administration's proposed 2012 budget.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson last week told House appropriators that she won't let politics trump science as the agency continues a two-year study into whether hydraulic fracturing is a threat to drinking water supplies (E&ENews PM, March 3).
She was responding to findings in a recent series of New York Times articles highlighting potential risks of radioactive drilling wastewater released to surface waters in Pennsylvania, among other public health risks.
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Three House Democrats from New York are urging U.S. EPA to review its decision not to seek a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the New York City watershed.
"We ask that you also look into contamination concerns in New York and look into the withdrawal of the planned call for a drilling moratorium in the New York City watershed," said the letter, signed by Reps. Carolyn Maloney, Maurice Hinchey and Jerrold Nadler.
The letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson pointed to "disturbing" reports in a recent New York Times article about fracturing indicating that politics played a role in an EPA decision not to support calls for a moratorium on use of the high-volume process in the upstate area where the city gets its water.
The Times reported last week that the agency had planned to call for a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the New York City watershed last year. The paper reported that internal documents indicated that the advice was removed from the publicly released letter. The paper quoted an unnamed scientist saying the decision could be explained with one word: "politics" (Greenwire, March 3).
Former Gov. David Paterson (D) last year imposed a moratorium on fracturing until July 1 on "high-volume, horizontal hydraulic fracturing" (Greenwire, Dec. 13, 2010).
An industry spokesman ridiculed the idea of political interference in the agency's decision on the moratorium.
"The reason that EPA decided not to call for an outright ban in 2009, my guess anyway, is that the science for once actually won the day and the tie went to the state, which has been studying this issue now for three years," said Chris Tucker, spokesman for the industry organization Energy in Depth, formed by independent drillers to fight federal regulation of fracturing.
Also today, Hinchey praised the pressure EPA is putting on Pennsylvania regulators to do more monitoring of wastewater from Marcellus Shale gas drilling waste in the state.
"The public needs to know what is happening to this wastewater and what contaminants may or may not be reaching their drinking water systems," Hinchey said in a statement.
Pennsylvania officials had reported radioactivity tests came back "at or below" safe levels. But EPA Regional Administrator Shawn Garvin wrote a letter asking the state to perform additional tests within 30 days on water at treatment plants.
EPA is also requiring that all state-issued permits be reviewed to see whether treatment plant operators handling waste from natural gas drilling are within the law. The state must send data to EPA so the federal agency can decide whether permits are strict enough.
"EPA is prepared to exercise its enforcement authorities as appropriate where our investigations reveal violations of federal law," the agency said.
Recent reports have shown that wastewater from the natural gas industry contains high levels of radioactivity and is being sent to treatment plants not designed for radioactive materials. Processed water is then discharged into waterways (Greenwire, March 8).
Click here to read the letter from EPA to Pennsylvania.
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The Obama administration does not need to threaten congressional Republicans with command-and-control carbon dioxide regulations in order to bring them to the table for a bipartisan climate change bill, one of the Senate's top GOP voices on energy said this afternoon.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said there were more powerful incentives for the GOP to cooperate, including rising oil prices -- which he says will push energy to the legislative front burner and require members of both parties to compromise.
"How do you get a nuclear energy program started without dealing with the environmental community?" he asked. "How do you get domestic exploration expanded without dealing with the environmental community? I'm dying to know that."
Graham worked for months last Congress with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to craft a carbon reduction bill that never received a vote on the Senate floor. Still, he signed his name last week to a bill Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) sponsored that would prevent U.S. EPA from regulating those same emissions.
Democrats last year raised the specter of EPA regulation of smokestack industries to encourage their Republican counterparts to collaborate on climate and energy, but only Graham participated. In the end, Graham withdrew from the measure before it was introduced, citing a disagreement with the Democratic Senate leadership.
Graham said this afternoon that by disarming EPA, Congress would not be making climate and energy legislation harder to pass. He noted that some Democrats have expressed concerns about EPA authority.
"It was going to get pre-empted anyway, at least for a couple of years," he said of the agency's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. "You've got [West Virginia Sen. Jay] Rockefeller and other Democrats who don't want the EPA to regulate carbon. So it's not much of a threat. I think $5-a-gallon gasoline is the best incentive I know to find a rational energy plan that would create jobs, make us more energy independent, clean up the air."
But only one Senate Democrat -- Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia -- has agreed to co-sponsor the Inhofe bill. Many others say they still prefer a bill sponsored by Rockefeller that would place a temporary stay on EPA authority.
For his part, Rockefeller had hoped to draw at least some Republican support to his EPA delay bill, but none has materialized. He told reporters today that he did not blame Republicans for opting for the more far-reaching bill, though he said it was "not a good idea."
"I'm not disappointed in people; I'm disappointed in ideas," he said.
Some Republicans have also cited Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown as a possible Democratic supporter of the Inhofe legislation, but he has said consistently that he is not interested in stripping EPA of its regulatory authority; he simply wants the White House to protect U.S. manufacturers.
"I'm trying to find a way to work with the president," Brown said. "I want these EPA rules to go ahead if jobs are protected and we don't export jobs and export CO2. And we have to figure out a way to do this, and that's why we're working with the White House."
Brown acknowledged that the White House probably lacked the statutory authority to impose de facto tariffs on carbon-intensive goods that enter the United States from countries that lack comparable regulations. He has said such "border protection" measures should be considered.
Brown refused to say whether he would support a bill like Inhofe's or Rockefeller's if the White House does not find a way to protect industry.
"I'm not going to 'might might might,' because I want to see what they're going to do," he said of Obama administration officials.
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A key Senate Republican on energy issues said today that efforts to craft a standard that would require utilities to generate a portion of their electricity from low-carbon sources are "kind of stuck."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who last year temporarily joined Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) in writing cap-and-trade climate legislation, said his work on a "clean energy" standard (CES) is stalled.
"It's just not getting a whole lot of attention right now," he told reporters in the Capitol.
Graham late last year floated legislation that would require utilities to source a percentage of their electricity from low-carbon sources, like renewable energy, nuclear energy and coal with carbon capture and storage. The measure served to counter language pushed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and then-Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) that would have restricted the mandate exclusively to renewables.
But both bills stalled, and Graham's more broad-reaching CES was seen as a path forward on energy policy in the new Congress. Hopes of passing such a measure were buoyed when President Obama called for such a standard during his State of the Union address.
But since then, energy talks have waned as lawmakers have focused their efforts on sorting out a budget for the current fiscal year.
"I think part of it is we just haven't had the time to sit and do it -- we're buried in budget issues -- and we haven't dedicated enough time to move into the arena yet," said Sen. Mark Begich, an Alaska Democrat in talks with Graham about CES language.
Begich said his staff and Graham's staff had held one discussion about CES language, but no details have been sorted out yet. Still, he said he is still interested in discussing the issue.
Graham said widespread discussions will probably remain stalled until gasoline pump prices reach $4 or $5 a gallon. But the ongoing unrest in Libya could be a catalyst, he said.
"I think anything that focuses on the country's dependency on foreign oil and how we're all tied to events outside our control really does help," Graham said.
Bingaman, who is also involved in CES discussions, said last night that he, too, could see the situation in Libya sparking discussions on energy policy, but he is more interested in understanding the issues.
"Frankly, you know everything plays into everything here in Congress, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone uses the current fighting in Libya as an argument either for or against doing something in this area," he told reporters last night. But, he added, "We're trying to do the best we can to understand the issues and see if we can develop a consensus on a [CES] proposal."
Bingaman said discussions were ongoing with other senators, experts and administration officials.
"I can't tell you where they're headed at this point," Bingaman said. "They're still very fluid."
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Oregon Democrat Earl Blumenauer asked colleagues today to sign a letter demanding that House leaders remove plastic foam products from the chamber's cafeterias.
Members and staffers used to eat their lunches in biodegradable containers with corn-based forks, spoons and knives. But when Republicans took over the House in January, they replaced it all with polystyrene foam and plastic. There wasn't much of an outcry: Staffers were tired of compostable utensils that warped in their soups and coffees.
But in a draft letter to House leaders, Blumenauer argues that the new plastic foam containers are putting House employees and visitors at risk. The International Association for Research on Cancer classifies styrene as a "potential human carcinogen," he wrote, and can cause "extensive health effects."
"The irresponsibility of the decision to use polystyrene foam without considering other options is all the more egregious because the cafeteria is not merely used by House members and our staffers," he wrote. "The health of constituents and visitors to the Hill who eat in the cafeteria will be impacted by this short-sighted decision."
So far, 26 Democrats have signed the letter, which will be sent to House leaders Friday. House Administration ranking member Robert Brady (D-Pa.) is "extremely supportive" of the effort and also plans to sign the letter, said spokesman Kyle Anderson.
The letter is Blumenauer's latest criticism of Republican plans to cancel the Green the Capitol initiative, which House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) launched when she became speaker in 2007. Last week, he issued a press release claiming that the program saved more than $5 million annually because of the diversion of landfill waste, the reduction of carbon dioxide and a decrease in electricity usage.
However, it is unclear how much energy-saving projects would suffer if Republicans cut the Green the Capitol program. Architect of the Capitol Stephen Ayers said at a Senate appropriations hearing last week that his office would continue with their energy initiatives regardless.
"If that program is discontinued, I think the immediate savings would be the staff that are focused on that that are funded by the chief administrative officer of the House," he said, later adding: "Most of the energy savings initiatives ... and ideas that come out of that office, we are the implementer of those and, ultimately, they help us meet our statutory energy reduction goals."
House Administration Chairman Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) announced the suspension of the House's composting program -- and the return of plastic foam -- in January, after a review found that the program was not environmentally or fiscally sustainable. Pulping the waste and then driving it to a composting facility meant that the annual reduction of carbon emissions was equivalent to taking one car off the road. And it was costing the House hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.
The program, Lungren said, was suspended "because it is costly and increases energy consumption." : Today, Lungren spokeswoman Salley Wood said the committee had an obligation to look into more cost-effective options. Long-term solutions might include reusable flatware, for example. In the meantime, Restaurant Associates -- the company that runs the cafeterias -- offered the plastic foam products for no additional cost.
But Blumenauer points out in his letter to House leadership that the cafeteria actually makes money. In 2010, Restaurant Associates generated about $879,000 in profits for the chamber's revolving fund. That fund is set aside for renovations and improvements to the cafeterias.
In past years, a large chunk of that money has gone back into the cafeterias to pay for greening efforts, such as biodegradable materials and local food. The practice came under fire in 2008, when then-Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-Mich.) questioned the transparency of such spending as ranking member of the House Administration Committee.
But in Blumenauer's opinion, that was money well spent.
"Any costs associated with composting or any of the other environmentally sound options were always meant to be offset by these profits," he wrote. "Those of us who are concerned about the health and safety of Members, staff and visitors feel that this is certainly a worthwhile use for these proceeds."
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A federal judge in West Virginia today granted a temporary restraining order against a West Virginia mountaintop-removal mining project in response to concerns raised by environmentalists.
U.S. District Judge Robert Chambers stopped the permit hours after the coal mine's owner, Massey Energy Co., announced that the Army Corps of Engineers had issued a permit for its Reylas Surface Mine in Logan County, W.Va. (Greenwire, March 8).
Two environmental groups -- the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy -- filed a complaint about the mountaintop-removal project's potential for burying a stream with debris.
Janet Keating, OVEC's executive director, praised the judge's action. "That's exactly what the judge needed to do," she said in a telephone interview. "We are pretty sure it's not legal. They are filling streams again."
The judge's order stops Massey subsidiary Highland Mining Co. from further action with respect to streambeds, but the company can move forward with a sediment pond, a court clerk said.
The permit issued by the Army Corps allows the company to dump debris into 13,743 linear feet of waterway and authorizes one valley fill and one sediment pond.
U.S. EPA had originally recommended that the Army Corps not grant the permit, but the company modified its plans to accommodate environmental concerns, including reducing the amount of coal it hopes to mine.
"The permit, as authorized, represents the least environmentally damaging practicable alternative while meeting the project's stated purpose and need," the Army Corps said in a release.
Chambers set a hearing for March 22.
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U.S. EPA has agreed to re-examine ballast water treatment standards for ships as part of a settlement negotiated with environmental groups that brings to a close two years of litigation.
Environmental groups, including the National Wildlife Federation and Alliance for the Great Lakes, filed suit in 2009, claiming that new regulations still allowed ships to dump invasive species into U.S. waterways (Greenwire, Jan. 13, 2009).
The legal challenge was part of a longer-term fight to force EPA to regulate ballast water treatment under the Clean Water Act. The agency had resisted such a move until environmentalists won a 2005 case in federal court.
Under the terms of the settlement, EPA will issue a new permit on ballast water treatment after taking a detailed look at what kind of water treatment technology ships should be required to install in order to minimize the discharge of invasive species into U.S. waters.
Species, such as the zebra mussel, have flourished in the Great Lakes and elsewhere. Environmentalists largely blame international shipping for the problem.
Currently, EPA's national permit on ballast water reflects current Coast Guard requirements.
The regulations require oceangoing vessels to conduct mid-ocean ballast water exchange before entering U.S. waters or to retain their ballast water while sailing through the nation's waterways. Ships can also use a Coast Guard-approved, environmentally sound method to manage their ballast water.
EPA also requires mandatory saltwater flushing for all vessels carrying unpumpable ballast water and residual sediment that leave U.S. waters and travel more than 200 nautical miles from any shore. The agency mandates flushing for any vessels engaged in Pacific near-shore voyages that travel through more than one port zone and also journey at least 50 miles from shore.
Environmentalists complained that the regulations did not reflect a thorough scientific analysis and do not stop the spread of invasive species.
The settlement effectively "requires EPA to go back to the drawing board," said Thom Cmar, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who worked on the case.
"We think it's a pretty good settlement," Cmar added. "It's probably the best we could have done."
EPA did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment on the settlement.
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U.S. EPA chief Lisa Jackson today sat down with a bipartisan group of Senate Agriculture Committee members in a bid to assuage their concerns about a handful of agency rules that have raised alarms among farmers and other frequent pesticide users.
The Senate meeting, which Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also attended, comes two days before Jackson is set to face tough questions from the House Agriculture Committee and one month before a court-ordered deadline for EPA to begin requiring certain pesticide users to obtain extra permits under the Clean Water Act.
Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, the agriculture panel's top Republican, said in an interview that "virtually every member there" pressed Jackson on the impact of the April 9 timetable for EPA to begin issuing Clean Water Act permits for pesticide sprays over water in addition to its existing permit plan under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.
"Both the chairman and I have serious concerns about it -- we're trying to get on paper precisely what the policy is," said Roberts, who described the meeting as positive and praised the committee's chief, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), for helping to organize it.
Roberts and another Agriculture panel member, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), are in talks about offering a bill to eliminate the need for the double-permitting mandate, which stemmed from a federal appeals court decision in the 2009 case National Cotton Council v. EPA (E&E Daily, March 3). But the Kansan said today that legislation on the issue, which House members of both parties already are pursuing, might not be necessary if EPA would provide more details on its permitting plans.
"It would be better if EPA could clarify their position by executive order; we wouldn't have to have a bill to begin with," said Roberts, who did not clarify what such an agency order would entail.
Other senators present at the Jackson-Vilsack meeting included Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who said afterward that he is still weighing whether to endorse legislation that would rein in EPA on the permitting issue.
Jackson told senators that "in some cases, with the permits, spraying would not be adversely affected," Nelson told reporters. "We're trying to get more information on that so we understand, so agriculture in Nebraska and across the country can appreciate what changes there are and what changes are not being made."
"What farmers believe now is that 350,000 [of them] are going to have to file individual permit" applications after the new pesticide-use system takes effect, Roberts said, but Jackson "indicated strongly that that's not the case."
Jackson's appearance tomorrow before the House Agriculture Committee could shed more light on EPA's plans to address the April 9 deadline and whether the agency would consider Stabenow's request last week for an extended stay from the court to allow more time for implementation of new permitting rules (E&ENews PM, March 3).
In addition to the pesticide permitting system, Roberts said that senators also brought up pending EPA actions on the definition of "navigable waters" under the Clean Water Act and to limit dust produced by farming operations.
Some members of Congress from rural districts have pressed EPA on its review of the national limits on particulate pollution, which is supposed to be done by October but is running late.
In a set of draft policy recommendations that were released last year, agency staffers suggested a change to the current standard for coarse particles -- a blend of air pollution that includes run-of-the-mill dust -- and some agricultural groups are arguing that the new limits would impose needless costs on farmers.
The agency's scientists said their other standard would not be harder to meet than the current limit, but an analysis by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association concluded that the change could double the number of air pollution monitors violating the standard.
Citing those types of concerns, the House attached language to its seven-month continuing resolution, passed Feb. 19, to block EPA from using its funding to change the coarse particle standards.
"The dust police rule would make it more expensive to feed America," Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) said on the House floor before the lower chamber passed the amendment. "Does the EPA wish that we import all of our food, like we do crude oil? This sounds a little bit un-American to me" (Greenwire, Feb. 25).
When lawmakers pressed Jackson on that point last week, she said it was unfair to criticize the agency when it has not proposed any plan to revise the standards.
The advice from staffers, which has not yet been released in final form, said that policymakers would be justified to keep the current limit or use the new one, Jackson told members of the House Appropriations Committee. She said the agency has recently met with farmers in Iowa and Missouri to discuss their concerns.
"There's been absolutely no regulatory decision made," Jackson said.
Reporters Jeremy P. Jacobs and Gabriel Nelson contributed.
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HOUSTON -- The CEO of the oil and gas supermajor behind the largest oil spill in U.S. history says the experience has changed his company forever and will soon completely change his industry.
Robert Dudley of BP PLC says his company is now built around a safety-first structure that is already leading to work stoppages and delays in the company's global operations and its contractors.
"We are taking what had been a fairly decentralized 80,000-person global organization and making it into a more systematic and standardized one, where decisions are taken at the right levels and everyone understands exactly what standards apply to them," Dudley told his industry peers at IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates' CERA Week conference here.
Dudley also apologized to Gulf Coast communities and industries affected by the spill, which spurred a federal moratorium on offshore drilling whose impacts are felt still. BP shares responsibility, he added, with its partners in the ill-fated Macondo well, Halliburton Co. and Transocean Ltd.
Dudley's speech at the annual energy gathering was his first before a large gathering of oil and gas executives since the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig exploded and started the Gulf of Mexico spill last April.
"We now have a very strong emphasis on having independent third-party verification of blowout preventers," said Dudley, referring to the technology failure that investigators concluded was one of the main causes of the spill. "And we have obtained confirmation from our contractors that they have enhanced the processes they use to check that the maintenance of well control equipment is up-to-date and has been verified by a third party."
BP now has 500 employees committed to upholding new safety and integrity standards globally, led at the executive level by Mark Bly, who led BP's internal investigation of last year's spill, Dudley said. He also said BP has rearranged its compensation and rewards system "emphasizing quality over quantity and value over volume."
Dudley said new performance reviews led BP to shut down a production platform to repair water pumps that extinguish fires. Two more were shut down for concerns about faulty equipment and to allow work on a pipeline to proceed.
BP has also tightened its standards for offshore drilling rigs. Transocean owned the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded and sank off Louisiana, killing 11 workers and starting the spill.
"We have decided we will not take rigs that do not conform to our standards, and there are a number of cases where we have either turned away rigs or are negotiating for modifications, which could bring the rig up to our standards," Dudley said.
In the wake of the disaster, BP posted an annual loss $41 billion and its executives rethought growth strategies. The firm plans to divest itself of half of its U.S. oil refining capacity and seek partnerships with large national oil companies, reflected in the recent deal BP announced with the Russian oil and gas giant Rosneft to explore the Arctic.
Changes are in store for everyone else in the industry, Dudley said.
Because companies have to reach further offshore and into deeper formations to meet the burgeoning energy demand, "the industry faces an unprecedented risk profile in the coming decades," he warned.
With the best prospects now in deeper continental shelf areas and the Arctic, the industry must form more strategic partnerships and approach future energy challenges in a much more coordinated way, he said.
Companies replacing declining onshore basins with new deepwater reserves would be wise to follow BP as it remakes itself, he said, demanding the highest safety standards and best equipment and carefully planning for emergency responses.
"Anyone who does not believe there will be industry-level changes after the Deepwater Horizon accident is, I think, being unrealistic," Dudley said.
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U.S. EPA today added 10 new hazardous waste sites to its Superfund National Priorities List and proposed adding 15 more.
The sites, which range from New York to Texas to Puerto Rico, have been contaminated by substances such as asbestos, cadmium, copper, lead, mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and trichloroethene (TCE), among others.
Now that these 10 sites are on the list, EPA will try to identify the parties potentially responsible for the contamination. For sites where a responsible party is not found, EPA will assess the full extent of the contamination before beginning its cleanup. In those cases, it may take years before funding is needed and the cleanup begins.
With these additions, there are 1,290 Superfund sites currently on the list, according to an EPA release. There are 66 proposed sites awaiting final agency action.
The sites added to the list are a groundwater plume in Elkton, Md.; a lead mining area in Caledonia, Mo.; a silver and copper mining site in Cascade County, Mont.; a trail dump site near the Mansfield Trail in Byram Township, N.J.; a landfill in Nassau, N.Y.; a former fertilizer manufacturing site in Riegelwood, N.C.; a contaminated aquifer in Milford, Ohio; groundwater contamination sites in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico; a contaminated groundwater plume in Caguas, Puerto Rico; and a contaminated groundwater site in Midland, Texas.
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West Virginia officials unveiled a truck today designed to respond to mining disasters such as the explosion at the Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine that killed 29 workers last April.
"The families of the UBB tragedy have said 'don't let this happen again,'" acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) said in a statement. "This mine rescue truck is our response to help fulfill that request."
The truck -- "Rapid Response Task Force 1" -- includes GPS for mapping mines and gas wells, military-grade communications equipment and labs for collecting and testing air samples.
"We have made sure that it is fully equipped to provide mine rescue teams with the tools needed to greatly improve a mine rescue operation if and when called upon in the future," Tomblin said. His office released the statements as the truck was put on display at the state Capitol in Charleston.
Families of mine disaster victims attended the unveiling, joining mine safety officials, including Kevin Stricklin with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.
"This will tell us if a fire is burning. Is it smoldering? Is there no fire? It will give us a better feeling on whether to send rescue teams in and how quickly to send them in," Stricklin said, quoted by West Virginia MetroNews.
Meanwhile, a team led by J. Davitt McAteer, who was appointed by former Gov. and current Sen. Joe Manchin (D), is working on completing a state-level investigation into the Upper Big Branch disaster. McAteer led MSHA under President Clinton.
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After the collapse of cap-and-trade talks in Congress last year, can the dialogue on climate change and emissions regulation be rebuilt in the United States? During today's OnPoint, David Hunter, U.S. Director of the International Emissions Trading Association, explains why carbon market discussions are still relevant in the United States. He also discusses how a clean energy standard would affect existing carbon markets.
Click here to watch today's OnPoint.
Monica Trauzzi: Hello and welcome to OnPoint. I'm Monica Trauzzi. With me today is David Hunter, U.S. Director of the International Emissions Trading Association. David, nice to see you, thanks for coming on the show.
David Hunter: Hey, Monica, thank you.
Monica Trauzzi: David, you're putting together an event in Washington next week, Carbon Forum North America. It's about carbon markets. But with cap and trade essentially dead in the U.S., is an event like that still relevant?
David Hunter: Well, it's an excellent question. I think I might disagree on part of the premise, which is that cap and trade is dead in the U.S. It's actually moving forward in California. Well, in the Northeast there's already an existing cap and trade program and there are other states that may follow California.
Monica Trauzzi: But federal discussions have been thoroughly broken.
David Hunter: But federally, yes. It's hard to dispute that cap and trade took a very bad pounding over the last two years. But I think you have to look at what it has been replaced with instead. So what's now happening is that you've got intermittent state action. You have a series of lawsuits. You have the EPA greenhouse gas regulations moving forward and then you have talk in Congress either of taking the greenhouse gas regulations and delaying them or getting rid of them entirely or replacing them by legislation or passing new legislation, a clean energy standard. And the result of that is that it's a much more complicated picture for business than it had been. So if you're a business and, I mean businesses need to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years to build the energy infrastructure that this nation will need for the next 30 or 40 years. And you've got basically three options for doing that. You can either invest it in low-carbon energy sources, in high-carbon energy sources or just wait and not do anything at all. And the trouble is, if you invest in low carbon, you're not sure whether that will qualify under some rules yet to come. If you invest in high carbon, assuming there are some rules in the future or assuming how these different lawsuits work out, you don't know what sort of, you know, penalties or regulations you'll be hit with in the future. So, as a result, a lot of companies are just sitting on their hands, stuck in inaction.
Monica Trauzzi: So, it sounds like though you're stepping away from using the phrase cap and trade, talking about cap and trade directly. So how do you really rebuild the dialogue without scaring people off by mentioning cap and trade?
David Hunter: Right. Well, I mean I think the thing is and the thing that this country recognizes quite well is that markets generally work quite well. That markets drive innovation, markets drive creativity and markets are a very efficient way of directing capital. So, I mean I think part of it is no matter what way you move forward, whether it's through a clean energy standard or state regulations or a federal clean energy standard, you need to find a way to unleash the power of the market and bring that market creativity in there. And that's part of what we're trying to do with this conference, is to reopen the dialogue on market mechanisms, on how can we find the most efficient way, going forward, of reducing our emissions.
Monica Trauzzi: And how would a clean energy standard impact carbon markets? Is it one or the other or can they work together?
David Hunter: Also a good question. It's hard to say exactly how they work together and it's not really very simple. We have more than 20 state renewable energy programs, some of them allow for market trading, some of them don't. You have also, of course, the state greenhouse gas programs, which some are coming into existence faster than others. You have a potential clean energy standard and then at some point, possibly in the future, you know, more federal action on greenhouse gases. If nothing else, then you have the EPA regulations. So how all of those things interact is complicated. IEDA has actually just created a new clean energy market's working group to look at those questions. But I think, you know, a fundamental underlying point is that we need to find a way to tap the power of markets to have more efficient reductions in emissions.
Monica Trauzzi: And could one solution for this issue surrounding EPA's regulation of greenhouse gas emissions be for them to adopt a market-based approach?
David Hunter: Well, I think it could be. It's not very simple though. I mean EPA certainly has a track record in creating market-based approaches. The original cap and trade system was designed by EPA. It worked very well. That was the SOX and NOX greenhouse gas markets, sorry, the SOX and NOX clean air markets. It has been widely lauded by both environmentalists and industry. So EPA does have a track record in creating a market-based approach under the Clean Air Act. But the exact extent to which they can apply that to greenhouse gases is not clear at all.
Monica Trauzzi: So, with the shift in focus to the states then on emissions regulation, how does that impact the international community and how they think and feel about what the U.S. is doing?
David Hunter: Well, I think it's made the U.S. a more difficult partner. It's more difficult for other countries to have confidence that the U.S. will meet the commitments that President Obama made in Copenhagen a little over a year ago. So, I mean it creates more uncertainty not only for American businesses, but for the international community as well.
Monica Trauzzi: Europe has had some pretty serious problems with their emissions trading system with theft of carbon credits earlier this year. Has this highlighted some fundamental issues with carbon markets and would we risk having a similar problem in the U.S.?
David Hunter: Well, it certainly has highlighted a fundamental issue and the fundamental issue is that you need to have good regulation. If you have proper regulation and, in this case it should probably be by the CFTC, over the markets, then, you know, you're much less likely to have any sort of problem with theft. I mean one other thing that the thefts highlighted is that, in a way, Europe has actually now succeeded in placing a value on carbon. The thing about placing a value on something is that then people will try to steal it. So, in a way, it shows that it is driving decisions, it is influencing sort of the fundamental, underlying thought process and decision making in Europe. In the U.S., we've actually, in our SO2 markets, in the clean air markets we've never had any sort of theft. So I think if you have a strong regulatory body, then those are sort of problems you can prevent against.
Monica Trauzzi: OK, we're going to end it right there. Thank you for coming on the show.
David Hunter: Thank you, Monica.
Monica Trauzzi: And thanks for watching. We'll see you back here tomorrow.
[End of Audio]
Click here to watch today's OnPoint.
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| In the House | In the Senate |
|---|---|
No action. |
No action. |
| In the House | In the Senate |
|---|---|
Hearing on climate science and EPA regulations
Hearing on BLM and Forest Service budget
Hearing on Interior budget
Hearing on Army Corps, TVA, NRCS budgets
Hearing on federal regulations
|
Hearing on Lyons nomination for DOE assistant secretary for nuclear energy
Hearing on fisheries/Magnuson-Stevens
Hearing on DOT budget
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| In the House | In the Senate |
|---|---|
Hearing on federal regulations
Hearing on National Park Service budget
Markup of pesticides regulation bill
Hearing on federal workers' pay
Hearing on USGS budget
Hearing on Army Corps budget
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Hearing on FHWA budget
Hearing on Interior budget
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| In the House | In the Senate |
|---|---|
Markup of Upton's EPA regs bill
Hearing on BLM budget
Hearing on EPA, NOAA budgets
Hearing on NSF budget
Hearing on BuRec budget
Hearing on National Park Service budget
Office of Surface Mining Budget
Hearing on EPA's Impact on Agriculture
Hearing on Forest Service management challenges
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Hearing on DOT budget
Hearing on two energy bills
Hearing on presidential nominations
Hearing on Agriculture budget
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| In the House | In the Senate |
|---|---|
Hearing on Forest Service budget
Hearing on private sector investment in rail
Hearing on NSF/NIST budgets
Hearing on EPA budget
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No action. |
| In the House | In the Senate |
|---|---|
Markup of EPA bill
|
No action. |
| In the House | In the Senate |
|---|---|
Hearing on DOE budget
Hearing on budgets for four Power Administrations
Markup of EPA bill, continued
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Hearing on line-item veto bill
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| In the House | In the Senate |
|---|---|
Hearing on DOE and NRC budgets
Hearing on offshore permitting in the Gulf of Mexico
Hearing on DOE science budget
Hearing on Chesapeake Bay cleanup
Hearing on Fish and Wildlife Service budget
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Hearing on presidential commission's oil spill report
Hearing on EPA budget
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| In the House | In the Senate |
|---|---|
Hearing on American energy
Hearing on USGS budget
Hearing on gasoline prices and domestic energy resources
Hearing on Commodity Futures Trading Commission budget
Hearing on BOEMRE budget
Hearing on DOE stimulus spending
Hearing on NOAA budget
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Hearing on global investment trends in clean energy technologies
Hearing on the Clean Air Act and jobs
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| In the House | In the Senate |
|---|---|
No action. |
No action. |
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