SF Gate

Judge: Enbridge Line 3 project should follow existing route

Steve Karnowski, Associated Press       April 23, 2018

Photo: Richard Tsong-Taatarii, AP. In this Aug. 21, 2017, file photo, automated welding takes place as sections of the replacement Enbridge Energy Line 3 crude oil pipeline are joined together in Superior, Wis. An administrative law judge … more

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota regulators should approve Enbridge Energy’s proposal for replacing its aging Line 3 crude oil pipeline only if it follows the existing route rather than company’s preferred route, an administrative law judge recommended Monday.

The proposal has drawn strong opposition because Enbridge’s preferred route would carry Canadian tar sands crude from Alberta across environmentally sensitive areas in the Mississippi River headwaters region where American Indians harvest wild rice and hold treaty rights.

Administrative Law Judge Ann O’Reilly’s recommendation that the Public Utilities Commission should order that the replacement follow the existing route sets up further disputes, however, because the existing line crosses two Ojibwe reservations where tribal governments have made it clear that they won’t consent and want the old line removed altogether.

O’Reilly wrote that Enbridge has established that the project is needed, but that the negative consequences to Minnesota of the company’s more southerly preferred route outweigh the benefits. The cost-benefit analysis shifts in favor of approving the project if Enbridge builds the pipeline in Line 3’s existing trench, she said.

Hundreds of people are fighting for and against a proposed oil pipeline that could run through Minnesota.

The judge noted that Enbridge’s easements with the federal government that allow the company to run six pipelines through the two reservations, including Line 3, expire in 2029, and the commission can’t require the tribes to consent to replacing Line 3 within their reservations. But she said commission approval of in-trench replacement would likely encourage Enbridge and the tribes to “accelerate discussions that must inevitably occur prior to 2029” anyway.

The commission is expected to make its final decision in June. O’Reilly’s recommendations aren’t binding on the commission, but they’re the product of an extensive public hearing and comment process and voluminous filings, so they’ll be hard for the commissioners to disregard. Commission Chair Nancy Lange acknowledged at a hearing last month that whatever the commission decides, the dispute is likely to end up in court.

Enbridge said the project is necessary to ensure the reliable delivery of crude to Midwestern refineries.

“Enbridge is pleased that the Administrative Law Judge has listened to the extensive evidence that there’s need for this safety-driven maintenance project,” the company said in a statement. “We will be taking time to review in more detail the recommendation that we use the existing right-of-way, and will have additional comments to follow.”

Environmental and tribal groups — including the Sierra Club, Greenpeace USA and Honor the Earth — said there’s no good reason to allow Enbridge to build the project, regardless of what route it takes.

If the project is approved, some opponents have threatened a repeat of the protests in North Dakota near the Standing Rock reservation that delayed work for months on the Dakota Access pipeline, in which Enbridge owns a stake. Similar concerns over the role of tar sands oil in climate change, and indigenous rights, have fueled opposition to Kinder Morgan’s proposal to expand its Trans Mountain pipeline from Alberta to an export terminal in British Columbia.

Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge says the existing line, which was built in the 1960s, is subject to corrosion and cracking and can run at only half its original capacity because of its accelerating maintenance needs. The Jobs for Minnesotans coalition of business, labor and community leaders backs the project, saying it will create 8,600 well-paying jobs with a total economic impact on the state of $2 billion.

Line 3 carries crude oil 1,097 miles (1,765 kilometers) from Hardisty, Alberta, through North Dakota and Minnesota to Enbridge’s terminal in Superior, Wisconsin. Enbridge says the replacement would restore its original capacity of 760,000 barrels per day. Enbridge wants to shift much of the last half of the current 282-mile (454 kilometer) route in Minnesota into a more southerly, 337-mile (542 kilometer) corridor to Superior. Enbridge estimates the overall cost at $7.5 billion, including $2.6 billion for the Minnesota segment.

Enbridge has already begun work in Canada and Wisconsin. Construction sites near Superior have been the scene of protests and several arrests.

“We urge the PUC to listen to the voices of thousands of Minnesotans who have marched, submitted public comment, and testified against Line 3 and reject this dangerous pipeline once and for all,” Margaret Levin, director of the Sierra Club’s Minnesota chapter, said in a statement.

Tara Houska, national campaigns director of Honor the Earth, said the tribes have made it “crystal clear” that a new line is not acceptable to them.

“Tar sands pipelines carry too much environmental and economic risk to move forward, especially since all these pipelines cross Indigenous lands,” Rachel Rye Butler, tar sands campaigner for Greenpeace USA, said in a statement.

ThinkProgress

Fox News host calls on Trump to fire Scott Pruitt

But President Trump still has full confidence in Pruitt.

Natasha Geiling       April 23, 2018

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks to the press at a news conference at the EPA on April 2, 2018 in Washington, D.C. Credit: Jason Andrew/Getty Images

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt is facing more friendly fire after this weekend, as a fourth Republican representative along with a Fox News host called on Pruitt to resign following a barrage of scandals.

On Sunday, in response to a question on Twitter, Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ) said that Pruitt “should resign” and that he was the “wrong fit from the start for [sic] agency dedicated to protecting our environment.”

Frank LoBiondo: Yes EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt should resign. Wrong fit from start for agency dedicated to protecting our environment. #EarthDay2018 reinforces our need to promote pristine planet via clean air & water, leaving it better for future generations. Requires leadership & balance. https://twitter.com/buckeye1960osu1/status/987829657096654853

LoBiondo is the fifth Republican lawmaker, and fourth Republican representative, to call for Pruitt to resign. In the House, Reps. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY) have all called for Pruitt to step down. In the Senate, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) remains the only Republican to call for Pruitt’s resignation, though a number have expressed concern with Pruitt’s apparent various ethical lapses.

Last week, 170 lawmakers — all Democrats — from both the House and the Senate introduced a resolution calling for Pruitt to resign.

170 lawmakers sign resolution calling for Scott Pruitt’s resignation, including zero Republicans

But Pruitt is also facing fire from outside of the halls of Congress. On Sunday, former adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron and L.A.-based Fox News host Steve Hilton called for Trump to fire Pruitt, arguing that the EPA administrator has become a walking example of the kind of “swampy” mentality that Trump promised to end.

“What we need is for President Trump to take the lead, fire Scott Pruitt, and throw out the lobbyists from his administration,” Hilton said.

Hilton’s call for Pruitt’s resignation isn’t the first time that Fox News has taken an antagonistic position towards the administrator’s growing canon of scandals.

In early April, Fox News reporter Ed Henry pressed Pruitt on whether he approved raises for two political aides despite the White House not approving those pay increases. Pruitt denied he had knowledge of the raises, but later reporting revealed that Pruitt was privy to the details.

The growing chorus calling for Pruitt’s resignation comes as new information broke late last week about Pruitt’s dealings with a lobbyist couple from whom he rented a room in Washington.

In early April, ABC News reported that for a six month period during his first year as administrator, Pruitt rented a luxury condo on Capitol Hill from the wife of Steven Hart, a prominent D.C. energy lobbyist. Pruitt paid just $50 a night for the condo, and his daughter stayed there for a period of time during the summer while she was interning in D.C. — leading ethics experts to question whether the agreement constituted a gift from the lobbyist family.

Everything we know about Scott Pruitt’s infamous Capitol Hill apartment

Pruitt and Hart maintained that neither engaged in any business between the EPA and any of Hart’s clients while Pruitt was staying in the condo. On Sunday, however, the Guardian reported that Pruitt and Hart did indeed meet at the EPA in July of 2017 (while Pruitt was staying in Hart’s wife’s condo) to discuss efforts to preserve the Chesapeake Bay.

Also on Sunday, White House legislative director Marc Short told NBC’s Chuck Todd that President Trump still has full confidence in Pruitt.

“Scott Pruitt is doing a phenomenal job and the president is happy with him,” Short said on “Meet the Press.”

On Friday, Hart announced that he would be stepping down from his role of chairman at Williams & Jensen, a D.C.-based lobbying firm that represents companies like Exxon and Enbridge.

The Guardian

Pruitt promised polluters EPA will value their profits over American lives

Dana Nuccitelli, The Guardian            April 23, 2018 

Pruitt is one of TIME’s 100 most influential people for his efforts to maximize polluters’ profits 

President Trump listens to EPA Administrator Pruitt after announcing decision to withdraw from Paris Climate Agreement in the White House Rose Garden in Washington. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

TIME magazine announced last week that Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is among their 100 most influential people of 2018. George W. Bush’s former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman delivered the scathing explanation:

If his actions continue in the same direction, during Pruitt’s term at the EPA the environment will be threatened instead of protected, and human health endangered instead of preserved, all with no long-term benefit to the economy.

As a perfect example of those actions, the Daily Caller recently reported that at a gathering at the fossil fuel-funded Heritage Institute, Pruitt announced that the EPA and federal government will soon end two important science-based practices in evaluating the costs and benefits of regulations.

Regulating pollutants has “co-benefits,” like saving lives

When the EPA regulates pollutants, the practice often yields what are called “co-benefits.” For example, limiting allowable mercury pollution can force dirty coal power plants to install pollution-control equipment or shut down. Since coal plants produce other pollutants like soot, the regulations not only reduce mercury levels, but also particulate matter in the air. The latter isn’t an intended consequence of the regulations, but creating cleaner air and healthier Americans are unintended “co-benefits” of limiting another pollutant.

In doing cost-benefit analyses, the EPA accounts for all direct benefits and indirect co-benefits of its regulations. Certain industry groups and conservative pundits don’t like that approach, because they care more about polluter profits than they do about clean air and healthy Americans. However, during the George W. Bush administration in 2003, the Office of Management and Budget issued a guidance saying that it’s important to consider co-benefits:

Your analysis should look beyond the direct benefits and direct costs of your rulemaking and consider any important ancillary benefits and countervailing risks. An ancillary benefit is a favorable impact of the rule that is typically unrelated or secondary to the statutory purpose of the rulemaking (e.g., reduced refinery emissions due to more stringent fuel economy standards for light trucks)

Pruitt wants to disregard this Bush-era guidance and instead consider only the costs and benefits of regulating the “targeted pollutant” (mercury, in our example). They want to ignore the lives saved by also incidentally reducing particulate matter pollution. To be blunt, this makes no sense, unless your goal is to protect polluters at the expense of public and environmental health.

As a backup argument, industry groups argue that the EPA overestimates these co-benefits because particulate matter (specifically, PM2.5) isn’t harmful to human health below a certain threshold value. Not coincidentally, Pruitt’s EPA hired a scientist who has argued that American air is “a little too clean for optimum health.” However, EPA looked at the associated science and issued a memo in 2012 concluding:

Studies demonstrate an association between premature mortality and fine particle pollution at the lowest levels measured in the relevant studies, levels that are significantly below the [National Ambient Air Quality Standards] for fine particles. These studies have not observed a level at which premature mortality effects do not occur. The best scientific evidence, confirmed by independent, Congressionally-mandated expert panels, is that there is no threshold level of fine particle pollution below which health risk reductions are not achieved by reduced exposure.

The bottom line is that when considering all effects, the benefits of EPA pollutant regulations often far outweigh their costs. However, the American public sees the benefits in the form of cleaner air and water, better health, and avoided premature deaths, while industries bear the costs of complying with the regulations by reducing their pollution. Hence industry groups and their allies in the Pruitt EPA are trying to cook the books to favor profits over public health. It’s worth reflecting on the disparity between the president’s claims that EPA’s goal is to achieve “record clean Air & Water” and its apparent actual goal of maximizing polluter industry profits.

Climate costs get a similar treatment

At the Heartland Institute gathering, Pruitt also promised that the Trump administration will stop using the ‘social cost of carbon’ – an estimate of how much carbon pollution costs society via added climate damages – in crafting regulations. The Obama administration first started using the social cost of carbon in cost-benefit analyses of various government regulations. For example, when the Department of Energy considers stricter energy efficiency standards for appliances, it will account for the benefits of slowing climate change by reducing electricity consumption. Industry groups challenged that policy in court, but the Obama administration won.

Under Trump and Pruitt, the EPA has started engaging in bogus accounting to deflate the estimated social cost of carbon, and now Pruitt has promised they’ll stop using it altogether. It’s simply another way for the EPA to put industry profits above public health benefits.

Environmental groups are ready to take Pruitt to court

Pruitt hasn’t yet made good on these promises to the polluting industries, but if he does, environmental groups are confident they can beat him in court. David Doniger, senior strategic director of the National Resource Defense Council’s climate & clean energy program told me:

If Pruitt finalizes the Clean Power Plan repeal or any other rule by revising consideration of co-benefits in this way, or dropping them entirely, you can be 100% sure that we and others will sue, probably in D.C. Circuit challenges to his actions. We are confident the courts will hold this reversal of practice arbitrary and capricious. The only sound way to assess the benefits of a rule, and to weigh them against costs when that is allowed, is to assess all the benefits that can be reasonably expected to come from the action. 

It’s worth remembering that “The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment.” The mission of the Pruitt EPA seems to be maximizing polluting industry profits at the expense of human health and the environment.

It’s also important not to let Pruitt’s rank corruption and scandals distract from the damage he’s doing to EPA’s mission. As Christine Todd Whitman noted, the whole world is worse for Trump having nominated and the Senate GOP having confirmed Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA into a new era of maximizing industry profits and pollution at the expense of public and environmental health.