EcoWatch

Court Rules Pruitt Broke the Law for Smog Rule Delay

 Lorraine Chow    March 13, 2018

Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt. BipHoo Company/Flickr

A federal judge ruled Monday that Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), broke the law for failing to implement his agency’s ozone pollution rule.

Judge Haywood Gilliam of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said Pruitt violated the Clean Air Act for failing to announce by Oct. 1, 2017 which areas in the country have unhealthy levels of smog, a rule set by the 2015 ozone standard.

According to The Hill, Pruitt only announced findings for areas that complied with the Obama-era rule, but not for areas out of compliance. The EPA boss initially tried to stall the Oct. 1 deadline by a year but reversed course.

“There is no dispute as to liability: Defendants admit that the administrator violated his nondiscretionary duty under the Clean Air Act to promulgate by October 1, 2017, initial area air quality designations,” Gilliam wrote, citing a Justice Department court filing in January that acknowledged the EPA failed to meet the deadline.

Gilliam ordered the EPA to finish the process for the entire country by April 30, with the exemption of areas in San Antonio, Texas, which the agency must comply with shortly thereafter.

In 2015, the Obama administration strengthened standards for ground-level ozone to 70 parts per billion based on extensive scientific evidence about the effect of smog on public health and welfare. Smog can exacerbate asthma attacks for children and vulnerable populations.

Sixteen state attorneys general as well as a broad coalition of health and environmental organizations—including the American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club—sued Pruitt in December for failing to meet the deadline for designating areas.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who led the litigation, celebrated Monday’s decision.

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency admitted in this case that it failed to do its job and meet its deadline under the Clean Air Act,” he said. “The stakes are high. The smog-reducing requirements at issue will save hundreds of lives and prevent 230,000 asthma attacks among children. That’s worth fighting for.”

New York Attorney General Schneiderman, one of the AGs who sued the administration, added: “We’ll keep a close eye on the EPA’s compliance with today’s order, and our coalition stands ready to act to protect our residents and our states from Washington’s toxic policies.”

Environmental groups also celebrated the ruling.

“Everyone deserves to breathe clean air. And because of the Clean Air Act, we’re legally entitled to it. The court got it right when it ordered the EPA to finish making ozone designations sooner than the agency requested,” said attorney Seth Johnson, who represented Earthjustice, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the groups. “Cleaning up ozone air pollution is especially important for kids, seniors, and people with asthma. Many of our largest metropolitan areas have unhealthy smog levels. These include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Cleveland, Denver, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and San Antonio. The court’s decision will help save hundreds of lives by getting the cleanup process going.”

Mary Anne Hitt, the director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, had a similar sentiment. “This is a victory for everyone who breathes, and is clear evidence that Scott Pruitt’s frequent attempts to delay and obstruct federal clean air safeguards is against the law. The severity of Pruitt’s attempts [is] a matter of life and death. Delaying the implementation of these life saving smog standards puts the health of thousands of kids at risk.”

EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman told Reuters, “We look forward to working with co-regulators to continue the designations process for the 2015 standards for ground-level ozone; we are evaluating the information provided by governors in February 2018 as part of that process.”

CNN

EPA’s proposed repeal will make Americans sicker

By Harold P. Wimmer and Stephen C. Crane       March 13, 2018

Source: CNN

(CNN) Right now, the Environmental Protection Agency is in the midst of a process to repeal the Clean Power Plan, adopted in 2015 as the first national strategy to reduce carbon pollution from existing power plants. Taking steps to reduce carbon pollution, as outlined in the Clean Power Plan, not only limits this major driver of climate change, but reduces other toxic air pollution from power plants at the same time.

The EPA’s analysis that was published to support the proposed repeal outlines a flawed approach to evaluating the risks of pollution — specifically particulate matter, which is a mix of very tiny particles emitted into the air. When inhaled, this pollution can cause asthma attacks, lung cancer and even early death.

The EPA has cherry-picked data to conceal the true health costs of air pollution. Its revised calculations diminish and devalue the harm that comes from breathing particulate matter, suggesting that below certain levels, it is not harmful to human health. This is wrong.

The fact is: There is no known safe threshold for particulate matter. According to scores of medical experts and organizations like the World Health Organization, particle pollution harms health even at very low concentrations. Attempting to undercut such clear evidence shows the lengths the EPA, and by extension the Trump administration, will go to reject science-based policy that protects Americans’ health.

The EPA’s attempts to argue the contrary come as more medical reports affirm that climate change, at large, remains an increasingly dire threat to human health.The Clean Power Plan would result in significant reductions in carbon dioxide, which drives climate change, and an array of other dangerous pollutants, including particle pollution.

Across the globe, there is a resounding consensus among the health and medical community that climate change is already harming human health. This isn’t just a matter of seeing the looming future disaster; human health is suffering now as a result of damage to our climate caused by human activity — and some people are paying the ultimate price.

EPA cuts could risk a public health emergency

Health and medical professionals nationwide are seeing the effects of climate change on their patients. As far back as 2014, an American Thoracic Society survey of physicians found that 89% of respondents said climate change is happening, and 77% said they have seen increases in chronic disease severity from air pollution in their patients.

The EPA’s own analysis finds that repealing the Clean Power Plan could result in up to 4,500 premature deaths every year in the United States. How is this deadly outcome acceptable to President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, whose agency’s mission is to protect public health and the environment?

The EPA has a special responsibility to protect those who are most vulnerable, including children, the elderly and people with respiratory diseases — not increase their suffering. Instead, with the proposed Clean Power Plan repeal, the EPA appears to be granting power plants a license to pollute, at the expense of Americans’ health.

Simply put, America will measure the cost of repealing the Clean Power Plan in asthma attacks, emergency room visits and premature deaths that should have been and can still be avoided.

Unfortunately, the EPA has demonstrated its willingness to manipulate scientific evidence in such a way that benefits polluting industries, despite the negative consequences to Americans’ health. With relentless pressure from these industries to block, weaken or delay clean air safeguards, it is unlikely this will be the last time it tries this.

For the public, our doctors and our patients, the urgency of this issue cannot be emphasized enough. We urge the EPA to stand up for the health of all Americans and enforce, rather than repeal, the Clean Power Plan.

Harold P. Wimmer is the national president and CEO of the American Lung Association. Stephen C. Crane, Ph.D., MPH is the executive director of the American Thoracic Society. The views expressed in this commentary are their own.

EcoWatch -GMO-

EPA Considers Allowing Bee-Killing Pesticide to Be Sprayed on 165 Million Acres of U.S. Farmland

Center for Biological Diversity       December 19, 2018

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will consider allowing the bee-killing pesticide thiamethoxam to be sprayed on the most widely grown crops in the U.S. The application, if approved, would allow the highly toxic pesticide to be sprayed directly on 165 million acres of wheat, barley, corn, sorghum, alfalfa, rice and potato.

The proposal by the agrochemical giant Syngenta to dramatically escalate use of the harmful neonicotinoid pesticide came last Friday, on the same day the EPA released new assessments of the extensive dangers posed by neonicotinoids, including thiamethoxam.

“If the EPA grants Syngenta’s wish, it will spur catastrophic declines of aquatic invertebrates and pollinator populations that are already in serious trouble,” said Lori Ann Burd, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s environmental health program. “You know the pesticide-approval process is broken when the EPA announces it will consider expanding the use of this dangerous pesticide on the same day its own scientists reveal that the chemical kills birds and aquatic invertebrates.”

Neonicotinoids have long been known to pose serious harm to bee populations. But the new EPA assessments found the commonly used pesticides can kill and harm birds of all sizes and pose significant dangers to aquatic invertebrates.

Western bumblebee by Steve Amus, USDA.

Thiamethoxam is currently widely used as a seed coating for these crops. This application would allow it to be sprayed directly on the crops, greatly increasing the amount of pesticide that could be used.

The just-released aquatic and non-pollinator risk assessment found that the majority of uses of the neonicotinoid on currently registered crops resulted in risks to freshwater invertebrates that exceeded levels of concern—the threshold at which harm is known to occur.

The EPA did not assess risks associated with spraying the pesticides on the crops it announced it was considering expanding use to on Friday. But it is likely that increasing the number of crops approved for spraying would dramatically increase that risk.

In January the EPA released a preliminary assessment of on-field exposures to thiamethoxam that found all uses of the pesticide—on foliar, soil and seeds—result in exposures that exceed the level of concern for acute and chronic risk to adult bees. But the agency has taken no steps to restrict use of these products and is now considering expanding their use.

The EPA will review a proposal to spray a bee-killing pesticide that works by attacking the bee’s central nervous system. NICOLAS TUCAT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Despite growing scientific and public concern about neonicotinoids, the application for expanded use of thiamethoxam was not announced by the EPA but quietly posted in the Federal Register.

“For years the EPA and pesticide companies bragged that by using treated seeds they were avoiding spraying insecticides, and despite the science showing that these treated seeds were deadly to birds, claimed that they were environmentally beneficial,” said Burd. “But we can expect the Trump EPA to now ignore the risks to birds and bees and approve these ultra-toxic pesticides to be sprayed across hundreds of millions of U.S. acres.”

Neonicotinoids are a class of pesticides known to have both acute and chronic effects on aquatic invertebrates, honeybees, birds, butterflies and other pollinator species; they are a major factor in overall pollinator declines. These systemic insecticides cause entire plants, including pollen and fruit, to become toxic to pollinators; they are also slow to break down and therefore build up in the environment.

A large and growing body of independent science links neonicotinoids to catastrophic bee declines. Twenty-nine independent scientists who conducted a global review of more than 1,000 independent studies on neonicotinoids found overwhelming evidence linking the pesticides to declines in populations of bees, birds, earthworms, butterflies and other wildlife.

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

The evidence points in one direction – we must ban neonicotinoids … ›

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ThinkProgress

EPA happy to waive ethics rules for industry lobbyists joining the agency

Nearly half of the political appointees at Trump’s EPA have strong industry ties.

Mark Hand       March 9, 2018

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

President Donald Trump’s executive order on ethics, signed one week after his inauguration, has not stopped the administration from appointing lobbyists and industry officials to key positions at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other government agencies.

Trump’s order mandated that any political appointee who worked as a registered lobbyist within two years of their appointment be barred from participating in any matter related to their previous job. According to a new Associated Press report, though, nearly half of the political appointees hired by the EPA in the first year of the Trump administration have strong industry ties, creating serious concerns about conflicts of interest.

The AP report shows that Trump administration has either blatantly ignored the executive order or granted waivers to former lobbyists that allow them to work on issues involving their former clients.

The administration’s hiring of large numbers industry lobbyists — and then granting them ethics waivers so they can work on issues related to their former clients — also violates Trump’s pledge during the presidential campaign to “drain the swap” of the revolving door of government and industry officials. Needless to say, the astounding number of former industry officials and lobbyists brought on board by Trump has only worsened, not improved, Washington’s corporate lobbying and corruption problems.

Influx of anti-regulation political appointees turns EPA’s mission on its head

Craig Holman, who lobbies in Washington for stricter government ethics and lobbying rules for advocacy group Public Citizen, told the AP that not only are key provisions simply ignored and not enforced, when in cases where obvious conflicts of interest are brought into the limelight, the administration readily issues waivers from the ethics rules.

The EPA released a report earlier this week that listed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s “accomplishments” over the past year. As summarized by Alex Formuzis at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, the report lauded the EPA’s decision to stop the ban of a pesticide that the agency’s own scientists wanted banned because it causes brain damage in children. Pruitt bragged about rescinding a rule to protect streams that provide drinking water for millions of Americans. In the report, he also proudly looked back at his push to repeal the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s landmark rule to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for power plants.

Pruitt’s environmental rollbacks could not have happened without the help of the agency’s industry-linked political appointees. ProPublica has tracked the total number of lobbyists the Trump administration has hired and puts the count currently at 187, many of whom have been appointed to positions in which they can do favors for the clients they used to represent.

One blatant example at the EPA is the hiring of Erik Baptist, who worked until 2016 as a registered federal lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, the top trade group for the oil and gas industry, where he pushed Congress to repeal the Renewable Fuel Standard. Baptist now works as a top EPA lawyer who was granted approval by White House counsel Don McGahn to advise Pruitt on issues surrounding the renewable fuel law.

AP reporters reviewed records that showed McGahn has issued at least 24 ethics waivers to top administration officials at the White House and executive branch agencies. The waivers were signed months ago, but the Office of Government Ethics disclosed several of them on Wednesday.

Given how many waivers have been granted over the past year, Holman said he believes Trump’s pledge to drain the swamp was little more than campaign rhetoric.

Ethics rules were much stricter under President Obama whose administration issued about 70 waivers during his eight years in office. The waivers were more narrowly focused and offered a fuller legal explanation for why the waiver was granted, according to the AP.

While about half of the political appointees at the EPA have strong industry ties, about one-third of the 59 EPA hires tracked by the AP worked as registered lobbyists or lawyers for chemical manufacturers, fossil fuel producers and other corporate clients.

Jeffrey Sands, a lobbyist for Syngenta, a pesticide manufacturer, was granted permission by McGahn to work for Pruitt as his senior adviser for agriculture. Following a request from the EPA, McGahn determined it was “in the public interest” to allow Sands to work as Pruitt’s senior adviser for agriculture. In a memo, obtained by E&E News, McGahan said Sands’ “extensive expertise” in farming issues warranted the waiver from the president’s ethics pledge.

Trump’s new EPA appointee violates his own ethics order, senators say

Another top EPA official, Dennis Lee Forsgren, deputy assistant administrator in the agency’s water office, was granted a waiver so he could work with the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, one of his former lobbying clients, during last year’s hurricane season. Before joining the EPA, Forsgren also worked as an attorney for HBW Resources, a fossil fuel lobbying firm known for orchestrating campaigns on behalf of industry clients.

EPA spokesperson Jahan Wilcox told the AP that all agency employees work with its ethics office regarding any potential conflicts they may encounter during their time at the agency.

Early in Trump’s administration, the EPA appointed former energy lobbyist Elizabeth “Tate” Bennett as deputy associate administrator of the agency’s Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations, the agency’s primary liaison between Congress and state governments.

Bennett came to the EPA from the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), which represents more than 900 rural, consumer-owned electric utilities. As an organization, NRECA opposed nearly a dozen EPA regulations, including the Clean Power Plan, the Waters of the United States rule, and the Steam Electric Effluent Limitation Guidelines rule, which sets limits on the amount of toxic metals that can be discharged into water from power plants.

The influx of all of these former industry lobbyists at the EPA aided Pruitt in his organized an assault on several Obama-era regulations. The Trump administration has “slowly been stocking” the EPA with appointees with “serious conflicts of interest,” wrote Keith Gaby, senior communications director of climate, health, and political affairs for the Environmental Defense Fund.