Tomorrow will be the 120th day since the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) began its review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) star-crossed proposal to declare coal ash that is not safely recycled to be a hazardous waste. The number is significant because it marks the end of OIRA’s allotted review period for the proposal, under the Executive Order that governs OIRA.
The date will likely come and go without fanfare. By rights, OIRA ought to either release the proposal for public comment or return it to EPA for rewriting. You’d think OIRA would be eager to get the thing off its plate, since its staff have been compelled to sit through no fewer than 33 separate meetings on the subject in recent months, no fewer than 28 with industry lobbyists opposed to the rule. But I harbor no expectation of an announcement. It’s more likely that OIRA will just keep working to browbeat EPA staff into rewriting it to the point that the coal industry calms down.
Readers of CPRBlog may recall that coal-fired power plants, while providing half of the nation’s electric power, generate an astounding 136 million tons of toxic coal ash annually. They dump much of it into what are euphemistically called “surface impoundments,” but in fact are no more or less than big holes in the ground that remain open to rainfall from above and water seepage from below—hence the equally distressing labels “coal ash slurry” and “coal ash sludge.”
Full textAccording to recent statements from the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) press office, Administrator Cass Sunstein and staff are adamantly committed to granting an audience with OIRA senior staff to anyone who asks to see them about anything, and most especially pending health and safety rules. So not only are special interests granted second, third, fourth, and fifth audiences with OIRA staff after far more qualified political appointees and technical experts at agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration have considered but refused to acquiesce to their demands, OIRA imposes no limits on how many times the same interest group—and even the same individual lobbyist—comes to the White House to whine. The most blatant example of this pseudo-transparency-turned-lobbyist-free-for-all is the uncontrolled swarming of special interests with respect to the pending EPA proposal to treat coal ash as a hazardous waste unless it is safely recycled. Here’s the scorecard as of February 6, 2010.
Full textOIRA Meetings on Coal Ash, as of February 6, 2010
(Click links to see attendees and examine documents presented to OIRA staff.)
Parties Supporting EPA Proposal (5)
- Public Interest Groups (4): 12/16/09, 12/11/09, 12/10/09a; 11/13/09
- Environmental cleanup industry (1): 1/27/10
Parties Opposing EPA Proposal (28)
- Power Plant Industry and affiliates (5): 12/22/09, 11/12/09b, 11/04/09, 10/28/09, 10/16/09
- Coal mining industry (1): 11/10/09
- Reuse industries and reuse users (22): 1/28/10, 1/21/10, 1/21/10a, 1/19/10, 1/15/10, 1/12/10, 1/8/10, 01/04/10, 12/18/09, 12/15/09, 12/14/09a, 12/10/09, 12/09/09, 12/7/09, 12/1/09, 11/30/09, 11/23/09, 11/17/09, 11/16/09, 11/13/09a, 11/12/09a, 11/12/09
This post is the seventh and final in a series on the new CPR report Obama’s Regulators: A First-Year Report Card.
The White House can influence the performance of protector agencies by the way it structures the regulatory landscape in which these agencies operate. Specifically, it can adjust the contours of this landscape in ways that either encourage or discourage proactive and effective action by the protector agencies. The manner in which it manages the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)—a small bureau within the Office of Management and Budget that oversees the president’s regulatory policy and reviews individual regulations—is particularly significant in this regard. During the Bush Administration, OIRA operated as a strong deregulatory force. During the first year of the Obama Administration, this obscure but powerful office too often continued on that path.
Under President Obama, OIRA has continued to provide agencies that are themselves major polluters, the Department of Defense, for example, and regulated industries with a venue in which they can attack regulatory agencies and their health, safety, and environmental regulation. As part of its implementation of the regulatory review process, OIRA hosts meetings on rules that it has under review, meetings that are attended by the agency developing the rule and interested stakeholders. So far, the vast majority of these meetings have involved representatives from regulated industries or polluting agencies complaining about proposals under development by the protector agencies. For example, in June, OIRA hosted a meeting in which Department of Defense representatives sought to pressure EPA into abandoning reconsideration of a Bush midnight regulatory decision not to regulate perchlorate—a toxic chemical used in rocket fuel—under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The Department of Defense opposes such regulation because it would impose substantial cleanup costs on the agency. The meeting appears to have worked, as EPA has taken steps to delay regulating perchlorate.
Full textSue Sturgis has a nifty post at Facing South checking in on the doings of members of congress who represent states or districts that have cases of groundwater pollution from coal ash sites. Writes Sturgis:
On July 9, 2007, EPA's Office of Solid Waste published a report titled "Coal Combustion Damage Case Assessments" [pdf] documenting 24 cases of proven environmental damage and 43 cases of potential damage caused by current coal ash disposal practices nationwide. As it turns out, many of those damage cases are in the home states of Congress members opposing strict coal ash regulations.
Dozens of members representing areas affected by coal ash pollution have signed letters to the administration opposing strong regulation (one of the letters was sent just last month). Check out the post for the full rundown.
Full textA critical test of the Obama Administration’s commitment to reviving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is teeing up behind closed doors at the White House. Once again, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is cast in the role of regulation killer, supported by a slew of state and other federal agencies that are polluters in this scenario. Other players include a nearly hysterical segment of the electric utility industry, which argues that labeling coal ash as a hazardous waste will prove prohibitively expensive, as well as a coalition of public interest activists that includes Robert Bullard, the father of the environmental justice movement. The story has ample drama: a provable case of racial discrimination, companies as haughty as any on Wall Street, and an appealing heroine, Lisa Jackson, the embattled EPA Administrator, who is the public face of this Administration on the environment but, in a discordant replay of history, could be forced to fall on her sword by anonymous White House economists. (Remember Bush II’s Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey, pushed to resign by the machinations of Vice President Dick Cheney? Jackson has less prominent opponents, but just as much on the line.)
An industry victory on the issue would suggest that presidential appointees, confirmed by the Senate and presented to the American people as accountable for everything from food and drug safety to toxic chemical exposures in the workplace, are not really in charge of their agencies but instead could be compelled to become puppets for a White House staff any time a powerful industry screams loudly enough.
The most recent chapter in this saga begins in Kingston, Tennessee three days before Christmas, 2008. A six-story-high earthen dam used to contain a coal ash waste pond at a power plant operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) collapsed, releasing more than 1 billion gallons of jet black sludge laced with arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, selenium, and thallium. By volume, the spill was more than 100 times larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster, covering more than 400 acres of homes, farms, businesses, roads, rivers, and irreplaceable wetlands. (See table at end of this post listing the chemicals commonly found in coal ash and their negative health effects.)
Full textThe New York Times editorial page weighed in on coal ash today, saying:
The [EPA’s] recommendations, which have not been made public, are now the focus of a huge dispute inside the Obama administration, with industry lobbying hard for changes that would essentially preserve the status quo. The dispute should be resolved in favor of the environment and public safety.
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This debate is being conducted behind closed doors, mainly at the Office of Management and Budget, where industry usually takes its complaints and horror stories. A better course would be to let the E.P.A. draft a proposal, get it out in the open and offer it for comment from all sides. The Obama administration promised that transparency and good science would govern decisions like these.
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Two developments to note on coal ash from recent days:
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Over the weekend, the Associated Press ran a story on the results of its enterprising investigation into the toxic content of children’s jewelry imported from China. Pressed to abandon the use of toxic lead in toys and jewelry, manufacturers have apparently begun using an even more dangerous metal, cadmium, which can cause neurological damage – brain damage – to children and give them cancer. AP tested 103 pieces of jewelry bought in American stores within the last few months, and found that 12 percent contained at least 10 percent cadmium. One item, a cute little Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer trinket, was 91 percent cadmium.
Addressing the question that leaps to mind – How did these extraordinarily dangerous trinkets get onto store shelves in the first place? – reporter Justin Pritchard writes these utterly terrifying and completely truthful words:
A patchwork of federal consumer protection regulations does nothing to keep these nuggets of cadmium from U.S. store shelves. If the products were painted toys, they would face a recall. If they were industrial garbage, they could qualify as hazardous waste. But since there are no cadmium restrictions on jewelry, such items are sold legally.
Of course, this is just the latest in a series of startling tales of dangerous products making it to market in the United States – poisoned peanut butter, toxic drywall, lead-painted toys, and more. Not to put too fine a point on it, but such products often kill people – sometimes immediately, from acute exposure to toxins, and sometimes over a longer period of time by way of cancer. If folks are lucky, their lives simply become miserable, with headaches, nausea, respiratory and heart problems a daily occurrence.
Full textAs reported in a post Saturday, OMB has become the epicenter for industry efforts to head off an EPA regulation concerning coal ash. There have been 17 meetings between industry interests and OMB officials. When questioned about the large number of meetings, an OMB spokesman said, "This has been a very regular, very normal deliberative process on a very complex rule.” For progressives who had hoped that OMB in the Obama administration would not replicate OMB in the Bush administration, this is disappointing news.
Industry swarmed to OMB after EPA had submitted a draft rule on coal ash to OMB for its approval. Under a presidential order, agencies like EPA must submit significant new regulations, like the coal-ash rule, to the White House for review prior to the time that they are officially proposed. Unhappy that their efforts to persuade EPA to propose a different rule had not worked, industry groups went to the White House to get the draft rule rewritten. The industry tactic is time-honored. In Republican administrations, OMB opened its door to industry interests, and it regularly intervened to force agencies to weaken regulatory proposals. Public interest groups have been watching OMB in the Obama administration to see if this practice might change.
James Goodwin, a CPR analyst, was one of the first to draw attention to OMB’s multiple meetings concerning the coal ash rule. Goodwin also found that OMB was regularly meeting with industry groups on other issues, but seldom meeting with public interest groups. CPR’s president, Rena Steinzor, has written OMB objecting to this unbalanced approach.
Full text"White House, EPA at Odds Over Coal-Waste Rules" reads a headline in Saturday's Wall Street Journal. It's worth a look.
The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has in fact continued to host meetings with outside groups regarding EPA’s work on a rule for controlling the disposal of hazardous coal ash waste. Since my last post on this topic, OIRA has hosted 10 more meetings on this topic. (These latest meetings were held between December 9 and January 4.) This brings the grand total of OIRA coal ash meetings to 21—all in a time span of less than 3 months!
The meetings are particularly significant since the industry is lobbying OIRA before EPA has even issued a proposed rule. By law, a proposed agency rule is followed by a public comment phase, where industry would have the full opportunity to make their case (see my previous post for more detail on the process).
Seven of the recent meetings were with industry groups, including representatives of industries that “reuse” coal ash, and the power industry (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). OIRA held an additional three meetings on the topic with public interest groups (see here, here, and here). In all then, OIRA has hosted 17 meetings with industry groups on coal ash and four meetings with public interest groups.
The WSJ's assessment is that the White House and EPA are "at odds" over the issue. EPA’s decision in December to postpone the completion of a proposed rule was certainly notable. And one thing is clear: The industry will continue to try to use OIRA to push EPA into developing a weak coal ash rule that benefits its own parochial interests at the expense of the public’s interest. We'll continue to keep an eye on it.
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