Overnight Energy: Top Dem warns BLM move could bring lawsuits | Economists worry new EPA analysis will undermine air protections | EU expects to miss targets on greenhouse gases

by Rebecca Beitsch - 12/04/19 5:57 PM ET

MOVING….TO COURT? A top House Democrat on Wednesday warned the Trump administration that a decision to relocate Bureau of Land Management (BLM) staffers from Washington would decrease diversity and likely open the agency to discrimination lawsuits.

In a letter to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) warned that by failing to study how a forced relocation of staff could affect the agency’s diversity, the BLM was opening itself up to a legal challenge.

Grijalva, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, argued the oversight was “reckless” and said the charge would already be supported by current agency staffing numbers. Office of Personnel Management data shows that black employees make up less than 3.5 percent of the agency’s workforce and of that number, 41 percent are located in D.C., Grijalva said.

With a significant portion of D.C.-based employees expected to reject the job transfer and instead leave the BLM, he argued that diversity at the agency will plummet.

“If there is a disparate impact on any protected class of employees, the agency would be exposed to significant legal liability that could rival the cost of the entire relocation,” Grijalva wrote.

“DOI [Department of the Interior] could be sued by its own employees under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” he continued. “Without an analysis showing the proposed reorganization would not have a disparate impact, or would serve a legitimate, non-discriminatory business need, BLM’s vulnerability to a successful lawsuit would increase dramatically.

“It would be reckless for DOI to fail to perform such an analysis,” he added.

Furthermore, Grijalva argued that those who do move to the BLM’s new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo., or elsewhere in the West will be in less diverse communities.

“Many of the positions targeted for relocation will be moved to states and communities where the total Black/African-American population is significantly smaller,” Grijalva wrote.

“Given DOI’s persistent struggle to increase diversity in its workforce, further isolating Black/African-American employees by asking them to choose between uprooting their lives and their families and moving to areas with a spare Black/African American population or terminating their BLM employment is counterproductive and unacceptable,” he continued.

Read more about the move here.

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A BIG DAY FOR COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS: A group of economists warned Wednesday that a forthcoming rule change from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will not only weaken the administration’s response to mercury but could undermine the agency’s ability to regulate a wide variety of pollutants going forward.

The External Environmental Economics Advisory Committee (E-EEAC), comprised of economists from major universities, examined the cost-benefit analysis underlying the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) proposal. Under the Trump administration, the results of the analysis shifted from saying the plan would save money due to the overall public health benefits to emphasizing the costs of pollution controls.

The group, which formed after the EPA dissolved its internal Environmental Economics Advisory Committee, says the agency isn’t rolling back the rule itself, but undermining it using a flawed cost-benefit analysis that will open up the rule to a swift legal challenge.

Under the Obama administration, the rule was projected to save between $37 billion and $90 billion dollars. Under the Trump administration, the figure ranged from $4 million to $6 million.

Matthew Kotchen, a member of the group and a professor at Yale, said the EPA’s flawed analysis essentially zeros out “co-benefits,” including the other toxins that would be removed by pollution controls at power plants that would ultimately benefit public health.

“It’s basically the value that the American public receives from this regulation that are not the main targets of the regulation,” he said.

He compared it to buying organic produce. One might choose organic products to be healthy, but those foods may also be tastier and avoid adding pesticides to the environment. The EPA is similarly required to look at the whole picture, he said.

Not doing so undermines the legal basis of the rule, as a regulation that has a greater cost than benefit may not meet the legal standard of being “appropriate and necessary.”

“The reason why it’s important is the eventual consequences of this may be obvious as a legal strategy,” Kotchen said. “A court is not likely to uphold a regulation EPA itself does not think there’s a legal basis for.”

The EPA has stated clearly since it decided to review the rule last year that it does not think regulating hazardous air pollutant emissions meets that legal standard.

“After properly evaluating the cost to coal- and oil-fired power plants of complying with the MATS rule (costs that the Obama Administration estimated range from $7.4 to $9.6 billion annually) and the benefits attributable to regulating hazardous air pollutant (HAP) emissions from these power plants (benefits that range from $4 to $6 million annually) — as EPA was directed to do by the U.S. Supreme Court — the agency proposes to determine that it is not ‘appropriate and necessary’ to regulate HAP emissions from power plants,” the agency said.