Overnight Energy — Presented by Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance — Trump targets EPA mercury rule | Supreme Court appears divided on frog case | Wheeler defends EPA rollbacks
EPA TAKES AIM AT MERCURY POLLUTION RULE: The Trump administration is advancing a proposal that could weaken the legal justification behind a major 2011 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule limiting mercury pollution.
EPA spokesman John Konkus on Monday said that the proposed change was sent to the White House on Friday for review by Office of Management and Budget, as the New York Times first reported Sunday.
It is the final step before the rule change can be released to the public for comment.
The rule would be yet another in a string of regulatory changes that could greatly benefit the coal industry.
The proposal wouldn’t repeal the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule, which at an estimated compliance cost of $9.6 billion, is the most costly rule in the EPA’s history. It has been blamed for shutting down scores of coal-fired power plants.
Instead, it would change the cost-benefit analysis by removing “co-benefits,” or benefits that the regulation brought from reducing air pollutants that were not directly regulated.
The Trump administration believes it is improper to count those benefits in the cost-benefit analysis. The Obama administration estimated the rule would bring more than $80 billion in benefits, but the mercury-related gains were only a small part of that at about $4 million.
“The draft proposed rule sent to OMB is aimed at correcting the agency’s approach to weighing costs and benefits consistent with the [Supreme] Court’s direction,” Konkus said.
“It is not intended to roll-back or reduce important health protections associated with the continued reduction of mercury.”
Wheeler defends action: Acting EPA chief Andrew Wheeler defended the action later Monday, saying the underlying rule isn’t being repealed and accusing the Times of mischaracterizing the proposal.
“Whoever was their source either didn’t understand what we’re proposing, or they purposely mislead the New York Times,” he said at a children’s health event at EPA headquarters.
A reporter pointed out that the EPA already took action, under Obama, to answer the Supreme Court’s objections about cost-benefit analysis.
“We don’t believe the proposal before actually addressed the Supreme Court concerns that they raised. So that’s what our proposal’s about,” Wheeler said.
What’s next: OMB review is supposed to take as much as 60 days, but it depends on any number of factors.
After that, the EPA is free to unveil the proposal and invite public comment on it.
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JUSTICES DIVIDED OVER FROG CASE: A shorthanded Supreme Court started off its new term Monday seemingly split on what’s become a big dispute over a tiny endangered frog.
Fresh off summer recess, the justices spent their first hour back on the bench grappling with whether the federal government can legally designate a 1,500-acre tract of private land in Louisiana a “critical habitat” for the dusky gopher frog when the amphibian doesn’t live on the property and can’t live on it without altering the land.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, members of the court’s conservative wing, questioned how far landowners should be expected to go to create a livable habitat for endangered or threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
“What’s the limit?” Roberts asked.
Weyerhaeuser Company, which is challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) 2012 designation along with the property’s other owners, argues the land now used to harvest timber is unsuitable for the frog.
The amphibian needs isolated, ephemeral ponds in an open canopy forest to breed, as well as open non-breeding land close to the ponds and open land covered with herbaceous plants connecting the two.
Timothy Bishop, the challenger’s attorney, argued the timberland would have to be totally remade to support a frog that hasn’t been seen on the property since 1965. The frog is currently known to only live in Mississippi.
“This is an intensive 1500-acre tree farm,” Bishop said. “The trees are planted 10 to 12 feet apart. There is no groundcover because the sunlight does not reach the forest floor, and we don’t want it to because that interferes with tending to the trees.”
But Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler said the land contains rare breeding ponds that need to be preserved to support the frog’s survival.
“Here the restoration efforts are entirely in sync with the use of the land,” he said. “I mean, there are uplands with trees. As I say, they could be thinned.”
Court won’t take Grand Canyon uranium case: The Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging the government’s ban on uranium mining in the Grand Canyon, a major blow to industry groups hoping to mine for the nuclear material.
The court said it would not hear the case brought by the National Mining Association and the American Exploration and Mining Association, which challenged the Interior Department’s ban as being based on an unconstitutional provision of the law.
The rejection leaves in place a December appeals court decision that upheld the ban.
In 2012, Obama administration Interior Secretary Ken Salazar instituted the ban, partly because the neighboring Havasupai Tribe relies on groundwater from the area to survive.
“The lands in and around the Grand Canyon have always been the homeland of the Havasupai People,” Muriel Coochwytewa, the tribe’s chairwoman, said in a statement Monday.
“Our ancestors lived and died amongst the sacred sites that cover this land. The mineral withdrawal is a necessary way to protect the land and the water that our people and our village depend upon, and we are grateful that the Supreme Court has agreed with the 9th Circuit’s conclusion ― that our lands and our people must be preserved.”
WHEELER DEFENDS ROLLBACKS AT CHILDREN’S HEALTH EVENT: The EPA’s Wheeler on Monday emphatically defended his agency’s environmental policy rollbacks as he argued that the EPA is significantly contributing to children’s health.
At the event in a courtyard at the EPA’s Washington headquarters celebrating Child Health Day, Wheeler faced numerous questions from reporters about how the Trump administration’s efforts to ease major regulations will impact children, a population considered especially vulnerable to pollution.
Wheeler repeatedly maintained that the EPA isn’t touching “health-based” standards, and criticized the accounting methods that forecast widespread health impacts from the changes he is carrying out.
“We set the health-based standards based on what is necessary to protect health, including children,” he told reporters.
He said the proposals to roll back greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and power plants pertain to energy efficiency.
“Neither one of those is health-based standards per se,” he said. “We have our separate health-based standards. We have not changed those. They’re still in effect. They’ll still be in effect next year, tomorrow.”
Wheeler said that the EPA’s own figures showing health impacts for the rollbacks — such as that the proposed replacement for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan would cause 1,400 additional deaths — are based on “co-benefits,” or the benefits obtained from reducing pollutants that are not directly regulated, like nitrogen oxides and particulate matter.
“We believe the math the Obama administration used is a little suspect,” he said.
BIG OIL BACKS NAFTA DEAL: The American Petroleum Institute (API) is backing the Trump administration’s latest iteration of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), calling the proposal “critical.”
Following the announcement that Trump had helped the U.S. come to a trilateral agreement with Mexico and Canada on Sunday, API on Monday urged Congress to approve the measure that the administration is calling the United States, Mexico, and Canada Agreement (USMCA).
“Having Canada as a trading partner and a party to this agreement is critical for North American energy security and U.S. consumers,” API said in a statement on the deal.
“Retaining a trade agreement for North America will help ensure the U.S. energy revolution continues into the future.”
Click here for five things to know about the deal. Trump took a victory lap on Monday, but congressional approval is still up in the air.
ON TAP TUESDAY:
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will meet to vote on public lands bills. Senators are expected to consider bipartisan legislation to indefinitely renew the just-expired Land and Water Conservation Fund and to create a new fund to use energy revenue from federal land and offshore to pay down the National Park Service’s nearly $12 billion maintenance backlog.
OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY:
General Electric Co. ousted John Flannery as its CEO, replacing him with Larry Culp, Reuters reports.
The partners in a planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia, have made the final investment decision to go ahead with the project, the Vancouver Sun reports.
A Northern California billionaire will reopen access to the beach next to his property after the Supreme Court declined Monday to hear his case, the San Jose Mercury News reports.
FROM THE HILL’S OPINION SECTION:
Cutter W. González, policy analyst in the Armstrong Center for Energy and the Environment at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, says California’s solar panel and clean energy mandates will make living there more expensive.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
Check out stories from Monday and the weekend …
– Supreme Court rejects industry’s plea to hear Grand Canyon uranium mining case
– Big oil backs new NAFTA deal
– EPA chief defends rule rollbacks while at children’s health event
– Court appears divided over protected land for frog in first case of term
– Trump moves to target EPA mercury regulation
– Republicans accelerate efforts to overhaul Endangered Species Act
– Key conservation fund for parks set to expire
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