CLEAN WATER act 2

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WATER is more general

AHA/ NOTE EVERY TIME GOP OPENS MOUTH STARTS W/ WE ALL WANT CLREAN AIR/WATRER THEN NEXT SENT GUTS IT

NO LNX TWT HEATED

The nation’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., took a swim with his family in a poop-contaminated stream this weekend.

The New York Times reports:

Rock Creek, which flows through much of Northwest Washington, is used to drain excess sewage and storm water during rainfall. The creek has widespread “fecal” contamination and high levels of bacteria, including E. coli, and the city has banned swimming in all of its waterways for more than 50 years because of the widespread contamination of Rock Creek and other nearby rivers.

Kennedy has not responded to requests for comment to explain why he did this. Many have speculated that it’s because Kennedy does not believe in germ theory, the foundational scientific principle that germs—like bacteria, viruses, and parasites—cause disease.

On Bluesy, epidemiologist Dr. Elizabeth Jacobs writes: “RFK Jr. doesn’t believe in germ theory, so him hopping into a sewage-filled creek reminds me of Immanuel Pfeiffer. He’s the anti-vaxxer who in 1902 went right ahead and took his unvaccinated self to a smallpox ward and lo and behold became very ill with smallpox.”

But that doesn’t ring entirely true, because Kennedy has always said he believes contaminated water causes disease. In his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci, he wrote that he believes in miasma theory, which “emphasizes preventing disease by fortifying the immune system through nutrition and by reducing exposures to environmental toxins and stresses." He’s said he believes in “fortifying the immune system through healthy living, clean water, and good nutrition."

In fact, protecting clean water was once integral to Kennedy’s public identity. In 1999, he was named a ‘Hero of the Planet’ by Time for his work cleaning up the Hudson River with the Riverkeeper Association. Kennedy was also a founder of the Waterkeeper Alliance, “where he took on pollution from coal mines, coal-fired power plants and factory farms,” reports Inside Climate News. Kennedy has called Waterkeeper “my life’s work,” and said it “will always be my proudest achievement.”

But today, Kennedy is the top health official in an administration decimating America’s clean water protections. Trump has said his goal is to cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 65 percent, which environmental groups say would be “devastating” for clean water. Already, Trump’s EPA has started the process of significantly reducing the types of waterways that are protected under the Clean Water Act, in order to allow landowners, farmers, ranchers, and home builders to dump livestock waste, construction runoff, and industrial effluent into small streams and wetlands.

Waterkeeper, Kennedy’s old organization, has called this move a “disaster” for clean water in this United States. It points out that polluting small streams and wetlands “also contaminates downstream waters, decimating fisheries and recreational waters, jeopardizing businesses and agricultural production, and increasing local water treatment plant costs.”

That’s why Waterkeeper has become an outspoken opponent of Trump’s anti-clean water agenda. Since taking office, Trump has withdrawn regulations limiting “forever chemicals” in waterways; paused enforcement against coal companies whose waste is leaching into groundwater; and cancelled a program to protect Alabamans from raw sewage, among many other things. “Collectively, these actions alone threaten to reverse more than a decade of progress to reduce highly toxic pollutants from the environment,” Waterkeeper said.

But while Kennedy’s old environmental group is sounding the alarm about the health risks of polluted water, Kennedy—the nation’s top health official—is posting pictures of himself swimming in it. The reason is clear: He’s trying to convince himself and others that he remains a legitimate environmentalist. Worse, he’s trying to provide green cover for Trump, who he insists is bonafide nature-lover. It’s more than environmental theater; it’s environmental propaganda.

Kennedy’s form of environmentalism is the equivalent of toasting all-natural marshmallows over a tire fire. It might make for a good photo, but it’s actually poison. True environmentalism requires protecting natural resources, listening to scientists, and prioritizing public health over polluter profits. Kennedy used to understand that. Now, he’s full of crap.

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the Biden administration's Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced a permanent ban on a pair of carcinogenic chemicals widely used in U.S. industries, including dry cleaning services and automative work.

According to the Washington Post:

The announcement includes the complete ban of trichloroethylene—also known as TCE—a substance found in common consumer and manufacturing products including degreasing agents, furniture care and auto repair products. In addition, the agency banned all consumer uses and many commercial uses of Perc—also known as tetrachloroethylene and PCE — an industrial solvent long used in applications such as dry cleaning and auto repair.

Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, applauded the move but suggested to the Post that it should have come sooner.

"Both of these chemicals have caused too much harm for too long, despite the existence of safer alternatives," Kalmuss-Katz.

The EPA's decision, reports the New York Times, was "long sought by environmental and health advocates, even as they braced for what could be a wave of deregulation by the incoming Trump administration."

The Timesreports:

TCE is known to cause liver cancer, kidney cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and to damage the nervous and immune systems. It has been found in drinking water nationwide and was the subject of a 1995 book that became a movie, “A Civil Action,” starring John Travolta. The E.P.A. is banning all uses of the chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which was overhauled in 2016 to give the agency greater authority to regulate harmful chemicals.

Though deemed "less harmful" than TCE, the Times notes how Perc has been shown to "cause liver, kidney, brain and testicular cancer," and can also damage the functioning of kidneys, the liver, and people's immune systems.

Environmentalists celebrated last year when Biden's EPA proposed the ban on TCE, as Common Dreamsreported.

Responding to the news at the time, Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), said the EPA, by putting the ban on the table, was "once again putting the health of workers and consumers first."

While President-elect Donald Trump ran on a having an environmental agenda that would foster the "cleanest air" and the "cleanest water," the late approval of EPA's ban on TCE and Perc in Biden's term means the rule will be subject to the Congressional Review Act (CRA), meaning the Republican-control Senate could reverse the measure.

In his remarks to the Times, Kalmuss-Katz of Earthjustice said that if Trump and Senate Republicans try to roll back the ban, they will be certain to "encounter serious opposition from communities across the country that have been devastated by TCE, in both blue and red states."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/this-billionaire-gop-governors-coal-company-is-poised-to-get-a-big-break-from-his-own-regulators-propublica/

west Virginia environmental regulators are proposing to reduce the fines that a coal company owned by the state’s governor could pay for water pollution violations that are the focus of a federal court case. The move comes after the company stopped paying penalties required as part of a settlement four years ago to clean up its mines across the Appalachian coalfields.

Environmental groups allege that the Red Fox Mine, a large strip-mining site in southern West Virginia owned by Gov. Jim Justice’s Bluestone Coal Corp., continues to exceed discharge limits for harmful substances. The suit could result in substantial payouts — the maximum potential federal penalties are nearly $170 million — that would go to the U.S. Treasury.

In the weeks before a trial in the case, lawyers for Bluestone filed documents detailing a draft deal worked out separately with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. The state agency, whose administrator is appointed by Justice, has agreed to settle the violations for a fine of $125,000, according to a court filing by the environmental groups’ lawyers. (State and federal governments share the authority to enforce water pollution rules.) Lawyers for Bluestone are asking the judge to throw out the federal case, saying the state settlement and hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal fines the company already paid for the same violations should resolve the matters.

Lawyers for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and other groups say the state settlement doesn’t moot their suit, and they urged a federal judge not to grant Bluestone’s request to throw out the case.They called the state action “a self-dealing administrative order” and said the proposed penalties “are insufficient to deter future violations, leaving a realistic prospect of continued noncompliance.” At best, the lawyers say, the amount paid would offset potential fines in the federal court action.

The fight to force Justice’s empire to follow pollution rules, the groups say, symbolizes the larger ongoing fight over how aggressively to regulate an industry that remains politically powerful, even as its economic influence declines.

The state’s environmental regulators are seen as friendly to coal companies, so the reduced fines are in keeping with prior actions. In one significant example from a decade ago, a $20 million federal settlement with Massey Energy revealed that West Virginia officials were not even reviewing disclosures that Massey had filed reporting thousands of water pollution violations.

“Coal companies pollute,” said Vivian Stockman, executive director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “There seems to be little consequence to carrying on business in disregard for the law. This has been the case over decades.”

The proposed settlement is the latest in which government agencies overseen by Justice have had to regulate businesses owned by Justice, a billionaire whom Forbes has labeled the richest person in the state. He owns a vast array of businesses, including coal mines, resort hotels and agricultural interests, many of them regulated by the state agencies that report to him.

An investigation this year by ProPublica found that companies run by the governor’s family have accumulated $128 million in judgments and settlements in cases brought by vendors and other businesses and government entities over unpaid bills. Justice companies that own or are affiliated with the historic Greenbrier Resort have said in court filings that they are “near financial insolvency.”

Mike Carey, a lawyer for Bluestone Coal, called any suggestion that the company is getting preferential treatment “completely baseless.”

The court records filed in the federal case indicate that state regulators first proposed the settlement more than a year ago, and that it then included a suggested penalty of $883,000. But in its new proposal, which must face public comment before it is finalized, WVDEP proposed a $2.1 million fine, but then dropped that to $125,000. The agency noted that’s the maximum allowed under state law but did not explain why it had earlier proposed a larger amount.

While Justice’s adult children have day-to-day control over the family’s business operations, the governor continues to guide the empire. Justice has repeatedly said his role as governor poses no conflict, and he wants nothing from the state for his businesses or his family.

The last tussle over the governor’s coal mines came to a head in 2016, when weeks before Justice won that year’s general election, his company agreed to pay a $900,000 fine for past violations, penalties for future violations and millions of dollars for new pollution control measures.

The deal resolved more than 23,000 water pollution violations between 2009 and 2014 by Justice mines in West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama, then under the umbrella corporate parent, Southern Coal Corporation, according to court records filed as part of that settlement. (Southern Coal, like Bluestone, was also owned by the Justice family.)

“This settlement is designed to bring the companies into compliance with the Clean Water Act and requires actions that should prevent future violations,” Assistant Attorney General John Cruden said at the time.

But hundreds of times since that 2016 federal deal, those mines discharged more solids, iron, manganese, aluminum and other pollutants than allowed by their environmental permits, the company’s own public reports show.

Justice’s companies have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for those violations, which are fairly common and seen as a cost of doing business in the coal industry. In August 2019, the environmental groups filed suit against Bluestone, alleging excess discharges of selenium, which can be toxic to fish and other aquatic life.

State and federal agencies have somewhat overlapping authority to regulate coal industry pollution. Federal law also allows citizens to file suit over Clean Water Act violations, both to seek fines, payable to the government, and to force measures to stop further violations.

Then, this year, the Justice companies “apparently stopped paying” some of the stipulated penalties, citing the lawsuit, according to a court filing by the plaintiffs. In a May report to federal regulators, Bluestone Coal marked a list of some of those selenium violations as “in litigation payment not applied.”

A federal judge has cited that report and noted unpaid stipulated penalties for 40 selenium violations that date back to July 2018.

A spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency said that the earlier settlement does not allow Bluestone to stop paying stipulated penalties, but she declined to say what action, if any, federal officials might take “because this is an active enforcement case.”

Carey said that the report indicating those fine payments were being held back because of the litigation “was an error.”

In a court filing Tuesday, Carey indicated that a $35,000 payment for some of the fines was made on Sept. 4. Carey also alleged that the environmental groups had offered during settlement negotiations to resolve their lawsuit, and give the company three years to come into compliance, if Bluestone Coal would donate $600,000 and 850 acres of land near the New River Gorge, a scenic area, to the West Virginia Land Trust, a group that tries to protect wilderness in the state.

Bluestone Coal lawyers had earlier tried to have the selenium case dismissed, arguing that it was preempted by the 2016 settlement.

But in a ruling in June, U.S. District Judge David A. Faber in Bluefield, West Virginia, declined to throw out the case, saying that the continuing violations, and Bluestone Coal’s failure to comply with a timeline for installing a treatment system, showed the need for the citizen suit. Then, in July, Faber issued a second ruling that found Bluestone liable for the selenium violations. The judge noted that Bluestone Coal could be liable for more than 3,000 days of water permit violations, which could amount to a maximum fine of $169.2 million, according to the citizen groups.

On Tuesday, Faber postponed a Sept. 23 bench trial meant to determine a remedy for the violations. Instead, he scheduled a hearing that day on Bluestone’s request to have the case thrown out.

Like his political ally President Donald Trump, Justice has been clear that he wants to curb government regulations meant to protect the environment, especially as those apply to the coal industry and other fossil energy operations.

In his first State of the State address in February 2017, Justice said that, under his administration, the state Department of Environmental Protection would stop saying “no” to business and industry. A week later, he belittled WVDEP inspectors when he told a natural gas industry group that they would have to stop showing up for work with “a tank top and flip-flops on” and looking like they “haven’t shaved in three months.”

At the WVDEP, Justice put in charge a former coal company executive and energy industry consultant, Austin Caperton. In an early speech once he took office as WVDEP secretary, Caperton said he “doesn’t trust” the science that says human activities such as burning fossil fuels are warming the planet, a position that puts him at odds with mainstream science.

As recently as 2017, the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement issued a report outlining continuing failures by the state to police water pollution by coal companies. OSMRE has said it is continuing to monitor WVDEP’s efforts to improve oversight of the coal industry.

Over the years, selenium pollution has been especially tricky for coal companies to deal with, presenting expensive and long-term treatment challenges. Violations have prompted other citizen group lawsuits like the one against Bluestone and scientific studies that warned of stream damage from the selenium discharged by mining operations.

In response to questions about Bluestone Coal and its policing of the coal industry more broadly, the WVDEP provided a statement that indicated it was considering a change in the selenium limits for the Red Fox permit that, if approved, would “resolve that component of the enforcement action for the site.”

icn 1119

Trump EPA Targets More Coal Ash Rules for Rollback. Water Pollution Rules, Too.

BY JAMES BRUGGERS

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09082019/epa-fast-track-pipeline-permits-clean-water-act-rule-change-trump-executive-order

The Trump administration is proposing changes to federal regulations that could fast-track the approval of natural gas pipelines and other energy infrastructure. Environmental advocates say the move will weaken the ability of states and tribes to protect their waters.

The proposed changes to Clean Water Act permitting rules, announced Friday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, would limit the amount of time states and tribes can take to review new project proposals to a "reasonable period" of no more than one year, with the definition of "reasonable period" left to federal agencies to determine and the clock starting from the inital request for a permit, with no pauses or restarts.

It also would limit states to considering only water quality and allow the federal government to override states' decisions to deny permits for projects in some situations.

"This proposed rule change would hobble the most important tool that states have to protect significant waters, from prized trout streams to essential drinking water sources," said Bradley Campbell, president of the Conservation Law Foundation.

States need time and access to information to properly analyze the potential water quality impacts of proposed infrastructure projects, particularly pipelines. "Putting limitations on that and the types of information they can consider is a problem," said Matthew Gravatt, deputy legislative director for the Sierra Club.

Gravatt said the changes also would limit states' authority to protect their waterways from effects such as erosion and sedimentation by restricting their permit decisions to only considering the potential for discharges into the water from a point source. When Washington state rejected a water quality permit for a coal terminal in 2017, it cited several environmental repercussions of the project, including air pollution and the findings in an environmental impact statement that included climate change.

The proposed rule changes follow an executive order President Donald Trump issued in April directing his administration to accelerate and promote the construction of pipelines and other energy infrastructure.

Specifically, Trump directed the EPA to propose revisions to the rules for permits issued under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, which gives states and some tribes the authority to assess the potential impact infrastructure projects might have on rivers and other navigable waters within their borders.

"Our proposal is intended to help ensure that states adhere to the statutory language and intent of [the] Clean Water Act," EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former fossil fuels lobbyist, said in a written statement. "When implemented, this proposal will streamline [the] process for constructing new energy infrastructure projects that are good for American families, American workers, and the American economy. "

Industry groups said the rule change would provide project developers with greater regulatory certainty.

"A well-defined timeline and review process for water quality certifications are integral to developing infrastructure that reliably provides clean and affordable energy to American families and businesses every day," said Robin Rorick, vice president of midstream and industry operations at the American Petroleum Institute.

Sen. Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, blasted the proposal.

"President Trump and EPA Administrator Wheeler like to tout that this administration has made 'crystal clear water' a top priority," Carper said in a written statement. "But the only thing today's proposed rule makes crystal clear is that this administration prioritizes the false promises of 'energy dominance' over clean water, even if it means defying the intention of Congress, undermining the Clean Water Act and abandoning all pretense of cooperative federalism to do so."

Expect Legal Challenges

Once finalized, the proposed changes face inevitable legal challenges.

The EPA's plan conflicts with decades of legal precedents, said Jennifer Danis, a staff attorney at Columbia Law School's Environmental Clinic. "There is a vast body of precedent that confirms the critical importance of states' primacy over and expertise in protecting their own waters," she said.

Carper and two other Democratic senators, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Cory Booker of New Jersey, expressed similar views in a letter to the EPA following Trump's executive order this spring.

"After nearly five decades and multiple opportunities to amend the 1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Act, Congress has never seen the need to significantly revise Section 401(d)—even after the Supreme Court's 1994 decision explicitly affirming state authority to impose conditions based on state law," the letter stated.

"Our concern is that your purported deference to states and tribes flies in the face of your mandate to speed up federal permitting, and there is nothing cooperative about robbing states and tribes of the time and careful analyses they require to protect their invaluable water resources," the senators wrote.

A New York Pipeline Rejected Over Water Issues

Significant delays in pipeline projects due to state water permits are rare, with most projects certified by the state and federal regulators within a year, Danis said.

"I think any delays in the large gas infrastructure projects are largely a result of shoddy and incomplete applications or route selection that's going to imperil fragile and protected resources," she said.

Wheeler, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, pointed to the Constitution Pipeline, a proposed 124-mile pipeline that would transport natural gas from Pennsylvania into New York, as an example of a pipeline that was stopped. The project was denied a water quality permit by state officials in New York, a decision that has since been appealed by the Williams Companies, Inc., the project developer.

Christopher Stockton, a spokesperson for the company, praised the proposed rule changes.

"Williams supports efforts to foster coordination, predictability and transparency in federal environmental review and permitting processes for energy infrastructure projects," Stockton said in a written statement.

EPA will accept public comment on the proposed rule changes for the next 60 days. In his executive order, Trump wrote that the EPA should have the rule change finalized by May 2020.

Published Aug. 9, 2019

PUBLISHED UNDER:

https://thinkprogress.org/oil-lobby-groups-epa-secret-science-proposal-clean-water-rules-9de63644deed/

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EPA’s ‘secret science’ proposal being used by Big Oil to undermine clean water rules

Fossil fuel trade groups don't want the EPA to update a 1970s-era list of polluting petroleum chemicals.

KYLA MANDEL

MAR 22, 2019, 8:00 AM

Internal emails reveal two major fossil fuel trade groups are lobbying to stop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from updating a decades-old list of toxic chemicals found in petroleum wastewater — and they’re using the Trump administration’s controversial “secret science” proposal to make their case.

The EPA currently monitors for 16 types of chemicals in wastewater, or effluent, released by petroleum refineries under the Clean Water Act. However, in the more than 40 years since the list was developed, scientific understanding around the number of chemicals and their toxicity levels has grown. As a result, the EPA is in the early stages of determining whether the priority list of chemicals needs to be updated.

But according to emails released to the Sierra Club and reviewed by ThinkProgress, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) are lobbying to limit the scope of the EPA’s study.

The fossil fuel trade groups want to ensure that two categories of chemicals known to be toxic to aquatic life, and potentially harmful to humans, are excluded from the study: alkylated polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (alkylated-PAHs) and naphthenic acids (NAs). The industry even goes so far as to state that including these in a study would risk “legal challenges.”

These two sets of chemicals are not currently on the EPA’s priority list. There are hundreds of different variations of PAH chemicals and levels of toxicity (alkylated-PAHs, for instance, are a derivative of the main “parent” PAH compounds). Burning coal and oil is the main source for these chemicals.

Yet, according to Jan Andersson, a chemistry professor at the University of Münster in Germany who has studied the EPA’s list, roughly 97 percent of the PAH chemical compounds found in crude oil are alkylated chemicals, making any lobbying against their inclusion quite significant. Meanwhile, NAs are found primarily in the byproduct of tar sands oil; the non-biodegradable compounds are stored in giant tailings ponds.

Excluding these types of chemicals from the EPA study would therefore serve to preemptively limit the scope of any potential rule changes in the future.

“They’re trying to cook the books at the very earliest stages of a study for petroleum refinery and ignoring the considerable data that’s out there that alkylated-PAHs are absolutely at least as toxic, if not more toxic, than the ones everybody monitors for right now,” Betsy Southerland, former director of the EPA’s Office of Water’s Office of Science and Technology, told ThinkProgress. Southerland worked for the EPA for 30 years before resigning in 2017 in response to the change in leadership.

At high or prolonged exposure, PAH chemicals can cause tumors in aquatic life and birds as well as impact their reproduction, development, and immunity. Studies show that NAs have similar impacts, along with causing liver and heart damage in mice. Some known health effects to humans from PAH exposure include eye and skin irritation, nausea, and diarrhea, as well as longer-term impacts such as kidney or liver damage and asthma-like symptoms.

Scientists are still studying how the various chemicals impact humans; a range of PAH chemicals are classified as suspected or possibly carcinogenic to humans. What is known though, is that alkylated-PAHs are likely more toxic than other types of PAHs. They also take a longer time to biodegrade in the environment.

The ‘secret science’ argument

Issued by the EPA in 1976, the list of 16 types of PAH chemicals is used to determine which chemicals must be monitored for risks to drinking water and human health. Under the Clean Water Act, petroleum wastewater effluent guidelines establish a national floor — a baseline limit — for these chemicals. So, if there is a discharge of waste such as the release of industrial wastewater, stormwater runoff, or oil spills, only these 16 chemicals are tested to determine the level of toxicity.

The simplicity of the list has made the process easily applicable and cost-effective, and other countries have also turned to it as a resource. The list hasn’t just been used to monitor wastewater, either — environmental studies frequently use it as a basis for research. However, as a 2015 article co-authored by Andersson and published in the academic journal Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds notes, the list leaves out three large groups of these chemical compounds, including alkylated-PAHs. As the paper states, crude oil and coal are “rich” in alkyl compounds.

Despite the potential impact on human health and the environment, the levels of these chemicals currently found in petroleum wastewater is unknown; that’s one thing the EPA’s study would determine. PAH concentrations can vary from site-to-site and by the source of the crude oil. The findings would then help guide any necessary changes to the list of chemicals that should be regulated.

As part of its argument against the EPA measuring these chemicals, the trade groups are using the EPA’s proposed “secret science” rule to argue against disclosure of NAs because that would constitute a risk to companies’ proprietary data.

The proposed rule, also known as the “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” rule, was introduced last April by former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt. The rule has been supported by climate science deniers and effectively aims to restrict the use of scientific evidence in the rule-making process. The plan has been stalled under Administrator Andrew Wheeler, but if adopted, it would require the EPA to rely only on scientific studies where the underlying data used by the researchers is made public. Critics argue the bill would severely limit the kind of science the EPA could use in justifying regulations (excluding public health data, for instance) and would place a number of unnecessary burdens on EPA scientists.

Some in the chemical and fossil fuel industries, both of which maintain close ties with the Trump administration, have also warned that the rule would expose confidential corporate information. In a June 8, 2018 letter attached to an email to Brian d’Amico, branch chief at the EPA’s Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water, API and AFPM wrote that using the industry’s own proprietary method of analyzing naphthenic acids would be a “clear contradiction” to the EPA’s proposed secret science rule.

“Independent validation is clearly not possible when a proprietary analytical method is used to generate the data,” the organizations argued. “In the interest of transparency, per its own proposed rule, EPA should abandon the use of this proprietary method in the Detailed Study.”

“Data derived from these methods could result in the EPA facing substantial scientific and legal challenge,” API and AFPM warned.

In other words, under the hypothetical scenario where the EPA decides to update its chemicals list at a time when the secret science rule is officially adopted, it would require the results of the EPA’s effluent study be made public, as that would be considered underlying data used to introduce the new chemicals rule. But doing so would, in the eyes of the fossil fuel industry, violate their proprietary methods used to analyze the chemical and so the chemicals should instead be simply excluded from the very beginning to avoid such a scenario.

“Quoting a rule that has not even gone final yet for the reason why [the EPA] shouldn’t be allowed to monitor it is pretty outrageous,” said Southerland.

The EPA did not respond to a request for comment from ThinkProgress about whether or not it will be studying the two types of chemicals the fossil fuel industry has been lobbying against. The API and AFPM also did not respond to requests for comment.

‘Obsolete’ list

The fossil fuel industry is also arguing that the EPA doesn’t have sufficient data to claim that these two groups of chemicals should be regulated. As Roger E. Claff, senior scientific adviser at API, wrote in a February 2018 email to d’Amico, among the concerns is a “lack of toxicity data for decision-making.”

But as Southerland explained, that’s precisely why the EPA is initiating its study; growing scientific findings suggest these chemicals are highly toxic and therefore updates might be warranted. Meanwhile, she said, “API is saying ‘hell no.'”

Andersson made the case for updating the list in his 2015 paper. The 1976 list was created based on what was commercially available at the time, but many more variations of PAH chemicals exist now. Meanwhile, toxicology has improved understanding of the adverse health impacts of a wide range of these chemicals, and “a wealth of new compounds have been added to the inventory of confirmed or suspect carcinogens.”

“This list of compounds is not suitable,” Andersson told ThinkProgress. “Most of them are pretty innocuous… [there are] many that are much more toxic that don’t appear on this list because in 1976, people didn’t know about them. This list looks pretty obsolete.”

‘Collaboration through the years’

The first meeting between the EPA and the fossil fuel trade groups on this issue occurred in May 2016, under the Obama administration. And as a January 2018 slide show presentation to the Trump administration shows, the industry highlighted its “collaboration through the years” with the EPA.

Internal emails released to the Sierra Club show a January 2018 presentation by API to the EPA.

INTERNAL EMAILS RELEASED TO THE SIERRA CLUB SHOW A JANUARY 2018 PRESENTATION BY API TO THE EPA.

Of course, some degree of collaboration is needed in order for the EPA to properly conduct its study and gather the necessary data. However, the internal emails provide insight into the scale of influence the fossil fuel lobby is trying to exert at the very early stages of decision making.

Dalal Aboulhosn, who works on federal water policy for the Sierra Club, said this shows how under the current administration industry “is allowed to come in and pretty much write their wish list.”

On water specifically she said, there has been a pattern of industry approaching the EPA under both Pruitt and Wheeler with policy ideas before the EPA has actually decided to move on the issue. Shortly after, a change is announced.

“It’s very blatant and it’s across the board when it comes to issues in the agency, and we’re seeing it very starkly on water issues,” Aboulhosn said.

Indeed, after arguing last June that “the science and data for the toxicity of NAs and alkylated-PAHs are still a work in progress,” the two trade groups go so far as to suggest that, should the EPA wish to study them, the agency must address these two groups of chemicals “in a project outside of the Study.”

They argue the EPA should make a new official rule in order to create a new “method” for studying these chemicals. This separate project should undergo “the appropriate public notice and comment period required to gain method approval,” the trade groups’ letter states.

This, however, would be highly uncommon given public notice and comment periods typically apply to new regulations, or changes to existing regulations (such as repealing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan or introducing the “secret science” rule); it would also serve to delay the process by several years.

“It sounds like they’re trying to set some new bar to any future detailed studies,” Southerland said, “where no analyses can be done unless there’s a standard method… that would be a bar not just for petroleum refinery but every industry category.”

It quickly becomes a “chicken and egg” situation, Southerland said; you need a study to determine if a new rule is needed, but the industry is arguing you need a new rule before conducting the study.

But as the June 2018 industry letter to the EPA reads, “API and AFPM members believe in due diligence and support EPA in developing sound science.”

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16012019/coal-ash-groundwater-contamination-map-arsenic-power-plant-utility-reports

The clearest picture yet of coal ash contamination in the United States is emerging, with utilities reporting serious groundwater contamination in at least 22 states.

At dozens of power plants across the country, including many in the Southeast, utilities have found coal-ash pollution severe enough to force them to propose cleanup plans. Those plans will likely become the next front in a decades-long battle over how to manage one of the nation's largest industrial waste streams—one tainted by toxic heavy metals.

But as widespread as the contamination appears to be, environmental advocates are finding a measure of hope, even as the Trump administration pushes to roll back federal rules for managing and cleaning up contamination from the billions of tons of coal-burning wastes that have piled up across the country.

All power plants in South Carolina, for example, are removing the ash from their unlined ponds to prevent them from leaking pollution into nearby waterways. The governor of Virginia this month called for the complete removal of coal ash ponds within the Chesapeake Bay watershed. And environmental advocates have won rulings in state and federal courts, keeping the pressure on utilities to take action to protect human health and the environment.

"It's a flicker of hope, but there is an ill wind," said Lisa Evans, a senior attorney at Earthjustice who has fought for better protections from coal ash for years, referring to concerns about the Environmental Protection Agency's concessions to utilities under the Trump administration.

"But even if the Trump administration moves in to sweep away cleanup requirements, we now know the extent of the groundwater contamination, and it will be hard for them to leave communities with contaminated groundwater," she said. (A move by the Trump administration to relax the rules is being challenged.)

'We Have a Long Way to Go'

Utilities for decades have annually produced more than 100 million tons of coal burning wastes, including ash and scrubber sludge. The ash contains contaminants like selenium, mercury, cadmium and arsenic associated with cancer and other serious health effects, according to the EPA.

The Obama administration in 2015 put in place the first national regulations for coal-burning wastes, favoring dry storage in landfills over wet storage in ponds. Those rules require utilities to conduct groundwater monitoring at ponds and landfills, close leaking ash ponds, clean up polluted groundwater and disclose their studies and actions on their websites.

...

https://www.alternet.org/environment/trumps-funding-restrictions-are-preventing-scientists-figuring-out-whats-fouling

Our nation’s first national river, the Buffalo River in Arkansas, was befouled last summer by algae that sickened people, but the U.S. Geological Survey under Trump can’t decide if a nearby pig farm and more than 3 million gallons of pig waste each year are to blame.

“If there’s more money, we’d love it,” Justus said.Biologist Billy Justus said the agency doesn’t have the funding to do the research to figure out whose pollution caused the algae to grow.

Cousins Jason Henson, Philip Campbell and Richard Campbell own C&H Hog Farms which was awarded an operating permit by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality in 2012. The state recently denied the business a new permit, but the farm is continuing to operate while it fights that decision.

The hog farm supplies the U.S. operations of JBS SA, the world’s largest meat processor. In Brazil, police recently arrested a controlling shareholder of the firm in connection with an investigation into illegal campaign contributions.

Former President Richard Nixon signed legislation in 1972 putting the Buffalo River in the stewardship of the National Park Service. The river runs for 153 miles from its start in the Boston Mountains through limestone bluffs and forests before joining the White River. People were baptized in the Buffalo River. Tourists hike along the Buffalo or kayak on it.

Former NASA astronaut Jim Reilly was confirmed by the Senate in April to lead the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Trump administration’s lack of interest in determining whether pig shit is contaminating our nation’s first national river is just one more example of Trump and his administration coddling up to polluters. Trump shrunk Bears Ears National Monument in Utah which could be explored for oil drilling and wants to lease 2.85 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve.

“People swim, fish, and paddle in the Buffalo River, and may be subject to contact with untreated swine waste,” said Dane Schumacher of theBuffalo River Watershed Alliance.

The hog farm is on Big Creek near Mount Judea in Newton County, 6.6 miles upstream of the Buffalo River. The liquefied manure is temporarily stored in holding ponds before workers spray it on fields.

The Buffalo River area is riddled with caves and sinkholes in land that water flows easily through. Many Newton County residents get their drinking water from wells.

Scientists injected dye into wells near the hog farm and found the ground was so porous that the colored water flowed into sinkholes and then beneath the Buffalo River and also migrated upstream.

https://www.epa.gov/wotus-rule

Security Guards 'Forcibly' Prevent Reporters From Attending EPA Hearing — And Shove One Out of The Building

An EPA spokesman claimed the room had reached capacity.

By Elizabeth Preza / AlterNet May 22, 2018, 7:02 AM GMT

The Environmental Protection Agency “forcibly” blocked reporters form attending a Tuesday summit with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, at one point grabbing a “reporter by the shoulders” and shoving her out of the building.

As the Associated Press reports, the EPA blocked news organizations including the AP and CNN from attending the heading on contaminated drinking water.

“Guards barred an AP reporter from passing through a security checkpoint inside the building,” the AP reports. “When the reporter asked to speak to an EPA public-affairs person, the security guards grabbed the reporter by the shoulders and shoved her forcibly out of the EPA building.”

In a statement, EPA spokesperson Jahan Wilcox said the reporters weren’t invited because there wasn’t enough space.

“This was simply an issue of the room reaching capacity, which reporters were aware of prior to the event,” he said. "We were able to accommodate 10 reporters, provided a livestream for those we could not accommodate and were unaware of the individual situation that has been reported

ej org dynergy coal ash illinois

"With the Trump and Rauner administrations rolling back enforcement of national and state environmental laws, advocates are urging a federal court to step in and order Dynegy to take more aggressive action. Environmental groups fear that steady erosion of the riverbank could trigger a catastrophic spill, similar to disasters at coal plants in Tennessee and North Carolina where ash impoundments ruptured and caused millions of dollars in damage.

'Dynegy left a toxic mess on the banks of one of Illinois' most beautiful rivers and has done nothing to stop the dangerous, illegal pollution from fouling waters enjoyed by countless families who kayak, tube, canoe and even swim in the river,' said Jenny Cassel, an attorney with Earthjustice, one of the nonprofit groups behind a lawsuit filed Wednesday that accuses Dynegy of violating the federal Clean Water Act."

https://www.ecowatch.com/coal-ash-river-illinois-2573918063.html

Trmp Admin. Blocked Toxic Chemicals Study Fearing 'Public Relations Nightmare'

Officials with the White House and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA) tried to block a critical report on a class of toxic chemicals after a White House aide warned that a "public relations nightmare" would follow after its release, according to emails reported by POLITICO on Monday.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)—a unit within the Department of Health and Human Services—was poised to release a report on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) polluting water supplies in sites around the country, including chemical plants and military bases.

The ATSDR draft assessment on PFAS chemicals concludes that they "pose a danger to human health at a far lower level than EPA has previously said was safe." The ATSDR recommends a safety level for PFAS exposure in drinking water that's six times lower than the EPA's current recommendations.

"The public, media and Congressional reaction to these new numbers is going to be huge," the unidentified Trump aide wrote in an email obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists through the Freedom of Information Act.

"The impact to EPA and [Department of Defense] is going to be extremely painful. We [DoD and EPA] cannot seem to get ATSDR to realize the potential public relations nightmare this is going to be."

The email from the unidentified aide was forwarded on Jan. 30 by James Herz, a political appointee who oversees environmental issues at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

In another email on Jan. 30, Nancy Beck, a former chemical industry lobbyist who now heads the EPA's chemical safety office, suggested that the OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs "can step up and coordinate interagency review" of the ATSDR study.

POLITICO noted that the draft study remains unpublished more than three months later.

PFAS are man-made chemicals used in products such as non-stick cookware, water-repellent clothing, stain resistant fabrics and carpets. These substances are persistent, resist degradation in the environment and can bioaccumulate, meaning their concentration in bodies can increase over time.

Exposure to PFAS is a major public health concern. According to the Environmental Working Group, the chemicals have been linked to several types of cancer, thyroid disease weakened childhood immunity and other health problems. They contaminate drinking water systems serving 16 million Americans in 33 states, including military bases and chemical-manufacturing plants nationwide.

As POLITICO pointed out, the ATSDR document could lead to significant cleanup costs at these sites. "Some of the biggest liabilities reside with the Defense Department, which used foam containing the chemicals in exercises at bases across the country. In a March report to Congress, the Defense Department listed 126 facilities where tests of nearby water supplies showed the substances exceeded the current safety guidelines," the publication reported.

In response to the revelations, Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) sent a letter to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee asking it to investigate and hold hearings.

"Congress must hold hearings and investigate how it is possible that the EPA, the White House, and HHS have, for months, possessed research that could have helped families understand the health impacts of their exposure to toxic chemicals, but instead, have failed to even tell anyone that this study exists at all," Shea-Porter said in astatement.

"Unlike Scott Pruitt's Pollution Protection Agency, there is still one government agency clearly trying to safeguard the public from these dangerous chemicals," said Environmental Working Group president Ken Cook in a statement. "Only Scott Pruitt and the Trump administration would consider reducing drinking water contamination for the American people to be a 'nightmare.'"

Trump’s EPA Is Moving to Undo Fracking Wastewater Protections

By Sharon Kelly

Back in 2008, residents of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and surrounding areas received a notice in the mail advising them to drink bottled water instead of tap water—a move that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) internal memos at the time described as "one of the largest failures in U.S. history to supply clean drinking water to the public."

The culprit: wastewater from oil and gas drilling and coal mines. This included fracking wastewater that state officials had allowed to be dumped at local sewer plants—facilities incapable of removing the complex mix of chemicals, corrosive salts and radioactive materials from that kind of industrial waste before they piped the "treated"water back into Pennsylvania's rivers.

The levels of corrosive salt in some of the oil and gas wastewater was so high that at some sewage plants, it was suspected of killing off the "good bacteria" that removes fecal coliform and other dangerous bacteria from raw sewage.

State and federal regulators responded with a mix of voluntary requests and, eventually, rules designed to stop drillers from bringing their wastewater to ill-equipped water treatment plants.

Eight years after the Pittsburgh incident, in 2016, the EPA finished writing the rules that would stop that kind of failure from reoccurring, specifically forbidding sewage treatment plans from accepting untreated wastewater from fracked wells.

A few months earlier, the EPA had announced its long-awaited national study of the risks that fracking-related pollution posed to American drinking water supplies. That study specifically examined the impacts of using sewage plants and commercial wastewater plants to handle fracking waste. It made special note of the dangers of toxic chemicals called trihalomethanes that were created during the treatment process, as well as the likelihood that "radium, metals, and organic compounds can also be discharged."

Changing the Rules Again?

Now, the Trump administration's EPA is announcing that it wants to study the industry's wastewater all over again. The Trump-era study will examine oil and gas wastewater, asking, in the administration's words, "whether any potential federal regulations that may allow for broader discharge of treated produced water to surface waters are supported."

In other words, Trump's EPA is questioning whether the rules should be changed, allowing wastewater from oil and gas wells, including fracked wells, to make its way into America's rivers, streams, lakes and reservoirs after some treatment....

https://www.ecowatch.com/farm-bill-endangered-species-environment-2561444014.html

house agric conaway pesticides

Trump Administration Seeks to Gut Water Pollution Safeguards, Putting Communities at Risk

By Mary Anne Hitt

A Hollywood scriptwriter couldn't make this up. One day after new data revealed widespread toxic water contamination near coal ash disposal sites, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt announced a proposal to repeal the very 2015 EPA safeguards that had required this data to be tracked and released in the first place. Clean water is a basic human right that should never be treated as collateral damage on a corporate balance sheet, but that is exactly what is happening.

This proposal clears the way for polluters, and polluter-funded politicians, to write weak standards for groundwater monitoring and coal ash cleanups, and attacks several core health and environmental protections included in the standard that was enacted in 2015. This comes as the first round of water testing, carried out under the new EPA standard, revealed some shocking results. As the New Republic reported:

"At more than 70 sites across the country, toxins like arsenic, mercury, and radium are leaching into groundwater from pond-like storage pits filled with the sludgy leftovers of coal burning. That's the most alarming takeaway from reports that the coal industry was required to submit to the Environmental Protection Agency this month, part of the first-ever federal regulations of the waste product known as coal ash ... So far, the reports have shown coal ash leaking into groundwater at storage sites in Iowa, Nebraska, Arkansas, Georgia, Montana, Washington, Michigan and Florida."

Coal ash is the toxic waste left over from coal-burning power plants and contains some of some of the deadliest known toxic chemicals, including heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury, and chromium. For decades, coal ash disposal was subject to no EPA oversight, and this waste was dumped into giant unlined pits, where toxic chemicals then seeped into water and soil and blew into the air in many communities nationwide. Exposure to these toxics raise the risk for cancer, heart disease, and stroke, and can inflict permanent brain damage on children.

Pruitt's latest proposal would replace science-based federal requirements that would fairly and consistently address water quality issues nationwide with a patchwork of state-by-state requirements that can easily be influenced by polluter interests. And yet federal requirements were put in place because state regulators had not implemented adequate water protections against coal ash! In reality, state oversight failed families for decades, resulting in catastrophic spills like those in Kingston, Tennessee, and the Dan River in North Carolina, as well as slow-motion disasters still unfolding in dozens of communities nationwide. My colleague Connie Wilbert in Wyoming is worried about exactly that, as she expressed in this article:

"We aren't seeing the state take a strong position on any number of issues related to fossil fuels in general," said Wilbert, director of Sierra Club Wyoming. "This proposed revision introduces a level of flexibility that we're pretty uncomfortable with."

I recently spent time with families in North Carolina that have been living on bottled water for over 1,000 days due to coal ash pollution, rallying outside the headquarters of Duke Energy and calling on the company to clean up their mess. The stories of these families were heartbreaking, and they aren't alone. Today, more than 1,400 coal ash waste dumps are spread across the nation, and in at least 200 cases, the toxic waste is known to have contaminated water sources. More than 1.5 million children live near coal ash storage sites. Seventy percent of all coal ash impoundments disproportionately impact low-income communities.

The EPA's 2015 coal ash protections were basic common sense—they required utilities to test the water near their coal ash dumps to make sure hazardous chemicals were not leaking into drinking water sources. Requirements to monitor the water around dump sites—and to clean it up, if poisoned—went into effect at all coal ash dumps in 2018, and as noted above, the first round of findings from these reports was horrifying.

Further proving the point of just how terrible this idea is, the first state to take back the reins of managing its own coal ash is Pruitt's home state of Oklahoma, which has an abysmal and notorious track record that ThinkProgress described this way:

"In the eastern part of Oklahoma, near the Arkansas border, sits a small town named Bokoshe. Along with a population of just 512, Bokoshe also happens to be home to several old coal mines, which have been turned into landfills for another sort of coal product: coal ash, the toxic byproduct that results from burning coal ... For more than 20 years, residents of the town, plagued by high rates of asthma and cancer, have appealed to state and federal regulators for help. And for years those pleas have gone largely unheard, thanks to the complex web of regulations that address—or more often, fail to properly address—coal ash."

This is the legacy Pruitt's proposal will leave for dozens more communities. We will fight it in the streets and in the courts, to prevent it from being finalized. He and the Trump administration are trying to pull the wool over the American people's eyes about the dangers of gutting our clean water protections against coal ash, so that rich coal magnates will not have to pay to properly dispose of their toxic byproduct.

Weakening protections against coal ash is a betrayal of all the families across this country who have been living on bottled water for years, or have lost their health and property, due to coal ash pollution. Families are looking to EPA to solve the coal ash problem—not abandon them.

The EPA will take comments on this proposal until April 30 and will hold a hearing on these rollbacks in the Washington, DC area on April 24. Please join us in letting Scott Pruitt know that the American people won't stand for this polluter power grab.

Mary Anne Hitt is the director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign.

Pruitt Appears in Big Beef Video Urging Farmers to Kill Clean Water Rule

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt appears in a video sponsored by the beef industry calling on farmers and ranchers to file official comments on a proposal to withdraw and rewrite the Obama-era "Waters of the United States" rule (or WOTUS) before the Aug. 28 deadline.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) video was produced by the beef lobbying organization's policy division, Beltway Beef and was released last week. Notably, NCBA spent $117,375 in lobbying last year.

"When comments are made a part of a record—as rule-making—we have an obligation to review them," Pruitt says. "It helps inform our decision-making process; it helps us make better decisions. And so we want farmers and ranchers across this country to provide comments."

The video, filmed in Colorado during Pruitt's cross-country State Action Tour, directs viewers to a BeefUSA.orglink to submit comments on the proposed repeal. The site includes sample text to submit to the Federal Register.

"We're trying to fix the challenges from the 2015 rule," Pruitt says in the NCBA clip, "where the Obama Administration re-imagined their authority under the Clean Water Act and defined a Water of the United States as being a puddle, a dry creek bed, and ephemeral drainage ditches across this country, which created great uncertainty ... and we are fixing that, and then we're hearing from stakeholders about how to get it right as we go forward." [CF PAC LEG BS]

But law experts told E&E News that Pruitt's interpretation of the 2015 rule—which extends Clean Water Act protections to streams, wetlands and any water body that shares a "significant nexus" with clearly navigable waters—as "misleading" and "inappropriate."

For one, WOTUS specifically states that puddles are not considered waters of the U.S. E&E News also pointed out that the rule also excludes dry creek beds that do not have a bed, bank and high-water mark and ephemeral ditches that "flow only after precipitation."

Incidentally, as Oklahoma's former attorney general, Pruitt had sued the EPA over WOTUS, alleging that it amounted to executive overreach and a regulatory burden.

Environmental groups worry that nixing the Obama rule puts the country's waterways at risk. Waterkeeper Alliance warned in June: "Adopting a narrow definition of 'waters of the United States' (WOTUS) long sought by industry [will] allow uncontrolled pollution and destruction of our nation's rivers, streams, lakes and wetlands."

The EPA has since issued a response to its administrator's video appearance.

"As administrator Pruitt says in the video, receiving public comments from across the country helps EPA make informed decisions on proposed rules," an EPA spokeswoman said. "Just like the administrator's countless other interviews, there was no script and no cost to EPA to accommodate the National Cattlemen's Beef Association's request for a brief interview regarding EPA's State Action Tour and WOTUS."...

https://www.ecowatch.com/toxic-water-2473267362.html

63 Million Americans Were Exposed to Potentially Unsafe Water in the Past Decade

By Agnel Philip, Elizabeth Sims, Jordan Houston and Rachel Konieczny

As many as 63 million people—nearly a fifth of the country—from rural central California to the boroughs of New York City, were exposed to potentially unsafe water more than once during the past decade, according to a News21 investigation of 680,000 water quality and monitoring violations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The findings highlight how six decades of industrial dumping, farming pollution and water plant and distribution pipe deterioration have taken a toll on local water systems. Those found to have problems cleaning their water typically took more than two years to fix these issues, with some only recently resolving decades-old violations of EPA standards and others still delivering tainted water, according to data from the agency's Safe Drinking Water Information System.

Many local water treatment plants, especially those in small, poor and minority communities, can't afford the equipment necessary to filter out contaminants. Those can include arsenic found naturally in rock, chemicals from factories and nitrates and fecal matter from farming. In addition, much of the country's aging distribution pipes delivering the water to millions of people are susceptible to lead contamination, leaks, breaks and bacterial growth.

Experts warn contamination in water can lead to cancer, gastrointestinal diseases and developmental delays in children.

The EPA estimates local water systems will need to invest $384 billion in the coming decades to keep water clean. The cost per person is more than twice as high in small communities as it is in large towns and cities. The EPA and water treatment industry consider the coming years a crucial period for American drinking water safety as pipes and treatment plants built in the mid-20th century reach the end of their useful lives.

"We're in this really stupid situation where, because of neglect of the infrastructure, we're spending our scarce resources on putting our fingers in the dike, if you will, taking care of these emergencies, but we're not doing anything to think about the future in terms of what we should be doing," said Jeffrey Griffiths, a former member of the Drinking Water Committee at the EPA's Science Advisory Board.

As water systems age, 63 percent of Americans are now concerned a "great deal" about drinking water pollution, according to a Gallup poll released in March that showed such worries at their highest level since 2001. Drinking water pollution has long been a top environmental concern for Americans—above air pollution and climate change, according to the same poll.

http://www.ecowatch.com/epa-factory-farm-report-pollution-2355997089.html

Court Orders EPA to Close Loophole, Factory Farms Required to Report Toxic Pollution

The DC Circuit Court ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Tuesday to close a loophole that has allowed hazardous substances released into the environment by concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to go unreported.

"We applaud the DC Circuit Court's clear decision to enforce this vital environmental safeguard to protect public safety," said Earthjustice attorney Jonathan Smith, who helped argue the case before the court.

...

http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-clean-water-rule-2292421509.html

...Passed under former President Barack Obama, the Clean Water Rule extends Clean Water Act protections to streams and wetlands. As The Hill observed Tuesday, Trump's move is seen as "an opening shot by Trump against the EPA, which was a frequent target of criticism from Republicans for alleged overreach under Obama's tenure."

Though implementation of the rule has been on hold due to ongoing litigation, the move drew outrage from environmental groups, who see it as a necessary provision for the protection of clean water.

The White House has not yet released the full text of the order but it reportedly directs the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to formally consider rolling back the rule, which Pruitt is sure to oblige given that while serving as Oklahoma attorney general he sued the agency he now heads against implementation of the Clean Water Rule.

http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/02/trump-to-sign-repeal-of-obama-era-coal-mining-regulation/

Donald Trump is expected to sign legislation repealing a regulation finalized in the final weeks of the Obama administration that would have severely restricted coal mining in Appalachia.

Both chambers of Congress passed resolutions under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) repealing an Interior Department rule on coal mine discharge into nearby streams.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to rollback federal regulations targeting coal mining. Trump said he’d sign the repeal bill because he’s “committed to reviving America’s coal mining communities, which have been hurting for too long.”

Trump said in a statement that the $1.2 billion Stream Protection Rule “duplicates existing protections in the Clean Water Act and is unnecessary given the other Federal and State regulations already in place.”

The Senate passed the CRA repealing the Stream Protection Rule Thursday afternoon. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota joined Republicans in supporting the rule’s repeal. The House passed a CRA on the rule Wednesday.

Environmentalists –obviously– oppose repealing the Stream Protection Rule, saying the rule protects streams from coal mine pollution.

“Regulatory safeguards that keep our air and water safe from toxic pollution are crafted using a democratic process and based on the best available science”, Trip Van Noppen, president of Earthjustice, said in a statement.

But Republicans said environmentalists only like the rule because it effectively bans coal mining in much of Appalachia. They also say the rule was written behind closed doors with little input from states.

“I have led the fight against this rule since my first days in the Senate because it simply isn’t common sense and kills jobs in our state,” Manchin said in a statement. “I am glad we were able to come together to pass this commonsense reversal of these harmful Obama-era regulations.”

From the beginning, the Stream Protection Rule was plagued by problems.

The Obama administration released the Stream Protection Rule in December 2016, after spending 7 years crafting the rule. It was meant to replace the Bush administration’s Stream Buffer Zone rule.

The Obama administration hired a new contractor to redo an environmental review conducted by the Bush administration in 2008.

The Interior Department, however, fired the contractor after the Associated Press found the stream rule would result in 7,000 coal mine job losses and hurt production in 22 states.

Congress got involved, even subpoenaing Interior for records on its rulemaking process. Administration officials consistently refused to provide lawmakers with all the records they requested.

Eight states withdrew from agreements they had with Interior to cooperate on the rule because the Obama administration wouldn’t share information, and 19 states sent a letter to the Interior Department asking they update them on the rule. The letter was ignored.

The U.S. Interior Department finalized a contentious rule to protect rivers, streams and forests from the negative impacts of surface coal mining. The Stream Protection Rule is the first update to the department's regulations in 33 years, and is one of the Obama administration's last major moves to protect the environment. Specifically, the rule was established to "avoid or minimize impacts on surface water, groundwater, fish, wildlife, and other natural resources," according to the DOI.

"The responsible rule released [December 20] represents a modern and balanced approach to meeting the nation’s energy needs," U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell said on Monday. "Regulations need to keep pace with modern mining practices, so we worked closely with many stakeholders to craft a plan that protects water quality, supports economic opportunities, safeguards our environment and makes coalfield communities more resilient for a diversified economic future."

10/16

omfg

http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/09/23/trump-touts-drilling-potential-botches-facts-shale-industry-conference

....

...

Rally, Protest Outside Shale Insight 2016

Outside the convention center, about 150 protesters gathered for a rally and march.

“It's not really about jobs, it's about money,” said Erin Kramer, a protester and organizer with OnePittsburgh. “Trump illustrates that to a T — with the package of that mass capitalism you also get a whole bunch of hate, a whole bunch of racial unrest and human rights violations.”

Conference organizers indicated that Hillary Clinton was invited to attend, but told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that she declined, citing scheduling conflicts.

While Trump repeatedly called on the shale gas industry to help him get out the vote in November, before the event, it seemed he still had work to do to gain their enthusiastic support.

Within the Republican party, Trump has been an extraordinarily divisive figure, with many prominent Republicans refusing to endorse him. And when it comes to contributions from oilfield workers, Trump's reception from them has been notably muted.

“As of last week, Republican nominee Donald Trump raised a paltry $245,000 from individuals working in the oil and gas industry, according to figures provided by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics,” NPR's State Impact recently reported. (By contrast, Mitt Romney raised $5.9 million from the oil and gas industry in 2012.)

In Pittsburgh, Trump arrived for his speech late, then kept the executives, who included top officials at major oil and gas companies, waiting as conference organizers informed the crowd that Trump was pausing to spend another several minutes giving an interview, rather than speaking to the hundreds of businesspeople and journalists there to hear him speak.

But once he arrived on stage, Trump tried hard to make his own support for the fossil fuel industry quite clear.

“Producing more American energy is a central part of my plan to make America wealthy again, especially for the poorest Americans,” he said. “I knew I'd have to make that statement in order to get you guys a little bit enlivened. Oh well, you'll like the rest of what I've got to say even more.”

Trump also used a significant portion of his time at the podium to comment on protests over the police killings of black Americans, and it was those remarks that drew the most attention from the national media. He decried recent protests in Charlotte, North Carolina, which were sparked by the police killing of Keith Lamont Scott, father of seven, who neighbors say was waiting for his son to arrive on a school bus.

Even before the police released video of that death, whose circumstances they've disputed, Trump had made up his mind about who he was behind. “The men and women in blue need your support,” Trump told the crowd. “They need your thanks and they need your gratitude.”

He seemed to suggest that Black Lives Matter protests were fueled not by anger over the police killings of black Americans, but by drugs. “And if you're not aware, drugs are a very, very big factor in what you're watching on television at night,” Trump told the crowd.

Clinton supporters quickly seized on Trump's remarks, especially his comments disparaging the protests over police violence.

“Today, in a room full of oil executives, Trump blamed the Charlotte protests on 'drugs' and insinuated that his administration would have no 'compassion' when it comes to criminal justice,” Brad Woodhouse, president of Correct The Record, which describes itself as “a pro-Hillary Clinton Super PAC,” said in a statement. “Despite weeks of so-called outreach to communities of color, Trump today showed us who he really stands with: wealthy fossil fuel special interests.”

To be sure, Trump was in Pittsburgh primarily to discuss another conflict — the fight over the fate of the fossil fuel industry.

“It's war,” Trump said. “And you people know it's war.”

The stakes are indeed high. Climate scientists warn that if the world's remaining oil, gas, and coal are burned, the climate consequences would be extraordinarily catastrophic.

In an open letter this week, 375 members of the National Academy of Scientists, including Steven Hawking, issued a grave warning. “It is of great concern that the Republican nominee for President has advocated U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord,” the scientists wrote. “The consequences of opting out of the global community would be severe and long-lasting — for our planet's climate and for the international credibility of the United States.”

Trump made it clear that if he was elected, his administration would go further, repealing several measures aimed at curbing climate change.“We will eliminate the highly invasive 'waters of the U.S.' [Clean Water Act] rule and scrap the $5 trillion Obama-Clinton climate action plan and the Clean Power Plan,” he told the crowd.

Then he left the room to a standing ovation.