CPR President Rena Steinzor and board member Robert Glicksman sent a letter today to White House Science Adviser John Holdren and OIRA Administrator Cass Sunstein regarding OMB's role in EPA science decisions. The letter concerns two recent episodes involving OMB that we wrote about this week: one regarding the EPA's Endocrine Disrputor Screening Program (EDSP) and the other regarding the agency's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS). From the letter:
Both of these episodes pre-date Professor Sunstein’s confirmation and may well be the product of staff steeped in the culture of OMB regulatory review under the Bush Administration. The episodes represent a direct assault on scientific integrity because they involve attempts to reverse conclusions by agency experts at the behest of regulated industries whose central objections were rooted in concerns about potential future compliance costs, not the accuracy of EPA’s science. Compounding the offensiveness of this interference is the fact that the decisions that were derailed involved efforts to analyze scientific research that were preliminary to any regulation of industry activities.
The letter asks Holdren and Sunstein to clarify the extent of OMB’s role in reviewing agency science.
Full textThe EPA today released a 15-page Clean Water Act Enforcement Action Plan prepared by the agency's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.
Back in early July, Lisa Jackson had directed the enforcmeent office to develop a plan, and to "report back to me within 90 days with your recommendations." The EPA seems to be saying the plan released today is the final ("EPA Administrator Announces Plan to Retool and Reinvigorate Clean Water Enforcement Program.")
The announcement came as the House Transportatoin and Infrastructure Committee held a hearing this morning on CWA enforcement, including testimony from Jackson and various stakeholders.
We'll have more on this later.
Full textCongratulations to CPR Member Scholar and board member Rob Verchick! Rob has been appointed to the position of Deputy Associate Administrator in the EPA's Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation (OPEI).
Full textI thought that the Alan Carlin story -- the 'suppressed' climate change skeptic at EPA -- was over.
After the initial debunkings, the story kept going, but then I thought the NYT really put it to rest in late September. Apparently not for everyone.
Carlin, many have noted, is an economist at EPA, not a climate scientist. He has one Ph.D. - in economics. But that's no matter. The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel wanted more on the story, and wrote this. Strassel refers to Carlin as a "career EPA scientist." What a scoop!
Full textThe full 821-page bill is up here.
That's not to be confused with the 801-page pre-draft everyone was checking out yesterday, or the 684-page one earlier yesterday.
They’ve also got a section-by-section outline of the bill.
We'll have much more soon.
Full textMuch of the battle to preserve and protect water resources happens at the state and local levels – in any number of policy choices advocated and made by individuals, organizations, companies, and governments. In recent years, water activists have begun to deploy a new tool geared to shape these decisions. Long-established in legal jurisprudence, the public trust doctrine holds that certain natural resources belong to all and cannot be privately owned or controlled because of their intrinsic value to each individual and society.
Restoring The Trust: Water Resources & The Public Trust Doctrine, A Manual For Advocates, by CPR Member Scholar Alexandra Klass and Policy Analyst Yee Huang, explores the specific application of the public trust doctrine to the protection of surface water and groundwater resources. The Manual introduces water and environmental advocates to both the opportunities and limitations of applying the doctrine to water protection efforts and encourages reconsideration and reassessment of the legal doctrine to confront the challenges facing modern freshwater management at the state level. The Manual identifies areas where the public trust doctrine applies to existing state water laws and in litigation (an accompanying index shows the state constitutional and statutory provisions and cases on water resources & the public trust doctrine)
Yee Huang previewed the report in a series of blog entries:
Enjoy.
Full textThis just in: trying to stop climate change will cost the world about $50 trillion a year, but the impacts of climate change will only cost about $1 trillion a year, so the choice is clear! That's the thesis of Bjorn Lomborg's op-ed in Monday's Washington Post.
Presumably the flooding of much of Bangladesh doesn't count for much, since those lives are totally worth less than ours, etc.
Update: For more on this, see Joe Romm and Miles Grant.
Full textThe Chemical Safety Board released its report Thursday on the 2008 explosion at the Imperial Sugar plant in Georgia, finding that the incident was "entirely preventable" (Reuters article, full report). Ken Ward Jr. gave helpful context for the announcement and followed up afterward with the criticism from unions for the Chemical Safety Board's "decision to not repeat its previous recommendations that the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration write tough standards regulating combustible dust in America’s workplaces." Celeste Monforton applauded Georgia Senators Chambliss and Isakson for calling on OSHA to issue regulations on combustible dust.
Also on Thursday, a study by PEER announced that "Workplace Exposures Rise as OSHA Health Inspections Fall" --
The U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration is doing fewer health inspections despite more workplace exposures to toxic and hazardous substances, according to an analysis released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). While workplace exposures are linked to the premature deaths of 10 times more workers than all workplace accidents combined, OSHA now spends less than 5% of its limited resources on workplace health protection.
Last but not least, another item from Monforton, "Dispelling an OSHA Myth," tells the story of a plant in North Carolina that is laying off 300 workers in the wake of a June explosion that killed three people. So much for the story line that jobs are lost because OSHA rules are too strict.
Full textAs first reported by Law 360 on Thursday:
In a decision reversing a ruling in favor of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a federal appeals court has chastised the agency's Office of Civil Rights for what the court said was its apparent failure to consider alleged civil rights violations in a timely manner.“What the district court initially classified as an 'isolated instance of untimeliness' has since bloomed into a consistent pattern of delay by the EPA,” wrote Judge A. Wallace Tashima in the three-judge panel's opinion, filed Thursday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Here's the opinion, and more from Greenwire. Chris Winter of the Crag Law Center, the Rosemere Neighborhood Association's attorney in the case, declares in a press release: “For years, EPA’s Office of Civil Rights ignored civil rights complaints from all across the country. This case sheds light on a long-standing national struggle for justice. OCR is in desperate need of reform.”
Full textLate this afternoon the Senate ended debate, in a 63-35 cloture vote, on the nomination of Cass Sunstein for Administrator of the Office of Information and Reuglatory Affairs (OIRA). Here's a quick look back at what CPR scholars have said about the Sunstein nomination and the role of OIRA in regulatory policy:
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