Climate science, policy, politics, and action
Nominees:
Today, the White House announced the
members
of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory
Council
(WHEJAC). The advisory council will provide advice and recommendations
to the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (soon to be Brenda
Mallory) and the White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council
on how to address current and historic environmental injustices.
The first meeting of the WHEJAC will be held virtually tomorrow, March 30, and will be open to the public.
The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC) was established by President Biden’s executive order, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad. Biden’s order also established the White House EJ Interagency Council as the successor to the Environmental Justice Interagency Working Group, which was established in 1994 by Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations.
The Environmental Protection Agency will fund and provide administrative support for the WHEJAC.
The council will advise on how to increase the government’s efforts to address current and historic environmental injustice through strengthening environmental justice monitoring and enforcement. The duties of the WHEJAC are to provide advice and recommendations on issues including, but not limited, to environmental justice in the following areas:
The WHEJAC will complement the ongoing work of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, a federal advisory committee established in 1993 to provide advice and recommendations on EJ issues to the Administrator of the EPA.
For updates, subscribe to the EPA-EJ listserv.
An email sent by EPA
associate administrator for the Office of Policy Samantha
Dravis,
a long-time Republican operative, outlines organizational structure
changes that put the Office of Environmental Justice and Office of
Federal Activities under her control.
Dravis previously ran EPA Administrator Scott
Pruitt’s industry-funded, anti-regulatory dark-money group, the Rule of
Law Defense Fund, when he was Oklahoma Attorney General. She was also
legal counsel at the Koch brothers’ Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce
dark-money group. Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2017 8:17 PM
To: OP-Everyone
Subject: Announcement
From: Kime, Robin On Behalf Of Dravis, Samantha
Dear Colleagues,
For the past several months I’ve had the pleasure of learning about the many ways the Office of Policy (OP) contributes to the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency. The analysis and support we provide for the agency’s most critical functions is of the utmost importance to me. As a cross-media and cross-agency office, I believe that the following changes to OP’s organization will enhance our ability to advance Administrator Pruitt’s priorities in line with EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment.
Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ): In order to better serve overburdened communities, OEJ will join the Office of Policy. OEJ will work in partnership with the Office of Sustainable Communities, which will be renamed the Office of Community Revitalization. It is important to both Administrator Pruitt and myself that the most underserved and overburdened communities have a meaningful say in environmental protection and regulation. EPA has, and will continue to consider and incorporate environmental justice concerns into our regulatory process and this move enhances our ability to achieve this core function. It will also enable EPA’s EJ program to maximize its ability to support meaningful engagement and public participation across the agency and lead federal level coordination to consider overburdened community needs and the application of federal resources to meet those needs. Moving OEJ to OP allows OECA, where OEJ was previously located, to focus on its mission of enforcement and compliance assurance.
Office of Federal Activities (OFA): OFA will join the Office of Policy where it will continue to carry out its vital responsibilities under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Also within OFA will be a Permitting Policy Division to build on the successful streamlining efforts in the NEPA program. Together, these organizations will focus on two of the Administration’s top priorities: expediting federal infrastructure projects and streamlining permitting processes. This move will reform the agency’s permitting and NEPA roles that will streamline the entire environmental review process and reduce subjectivity, providing our stakeholders with more clarity and certainty on their projects; ensure staff are able to quickly elevate high visibility issues to the Administrator for resolution; coordinate with the permitting AAs which will allow the agency to drive solutions to expedite the entire environmental review process, as directed by the President under Executive Order 13766, under one central office; and continue the progress that has already been made to strengthen the NEPA program and our partnerships with our sister federal agencies. OFA staff who work on hazardous waste transport issues will move to the Office of Land and Emergency Management, where complementary work resides.
Sectors Team: I have established a Sectors Team within the Office of Policy’s Immediate Office to work with staff across OP and the agency. The Sectors Team will develop strategies that better protect human health and the environment by engaging with partners at all levels to ensure the agency puts forth sensible regulations that encourage economic growth. This team will coordinate with stakeholders to better understand their needs and challenges so as to improve environmental performance and inform smarter and more predictable rulemaking. This work will build upon our experience with the Sector Strategies Program as well as our ongoing work in regulatory and permitting reform.
Operations Office: Over the course of the last year, the Operations Team in the OP Immediate Office started efforts to streamline and improve our administrative and operational activities. To further these efforts, I have established an Operations Office, through which we will consolidate our operations and administrative support functions, leading to increased efficiency and enhanced processes.
Office of Strategic Environmental Management: To fully staff OP’s priorities, including the new functions noted above, many OSEM staff will be reassigned to OFA, ORPM, NCEE, and other areas where additional staffing is critical to meeting OP’s core mission and the Administration’s goals. I appreciate the unique skills and leadership OSEM has brought to numerous cross-cutting EPA priorities over the years and believe that OP’s new organizational structure will allow us to better harness their talents. The team will concentrate on streamlining the agency’s operations, especially in programmatic areas such as permitting.
The new responsibilities outlined here are a testament to OP’s valued expertise and its many past successes. I am excited about the new opportunities for OP, and how we can help the agency achieve its mission of protecting human health and the environment more efficiently and effectively for the American people.
Samantha
Sen Joe Manchin grins as Donald Trump signs legislation rescinding the
Stream Protection Rule in February 2017.
Save EPA, a volunteer organization of former Environmental Policy Agency staffers, has released a guide for activists who wish to counter attempts by the Trump administration to roll back public protections issued by any federal agency. The guide is inspired by the Indivisible project, which began as a guide for activist engagement with Congress by former Hill staffers.
Trump has made systematic deregulation, a longtime priority of the Koch brothers and other corporate-right leaders, a top priority. A January executive order of questionable Constitutional legitimacy called for the elimination of two federal regulations whenever a new regulation is issued.
The first draft of “A Practical Guide For Resisting The Trump De-Regulatory Agenda” explains:
Fortunately, no president can roll back regulations by fiat. The Trump Administration must go through the same process that’s used for making regulations, and that process gives everyone the opportunity to participate. Regulated businesses are sure to participate, since they are directly affected and may save money if regulations are delayed, watered down or repealed. Public interest groups are likely to participate, too, but they can’t be expected to save regulations all on their own. As members of the public that the regulations are designed to protect, we need to be loud and clear that the regulations are important to us. We can’t afford to be silent while President Trump tries to take away our protections.
The guide includes a comprehensive guide to the public comment process, recommendations for how to draft effective comments, and additional tips for influencing regulatory decisions. The guide also recommends Columbia Law School’s Climate Deregulation Tracker.
The guide can be downloaded here.
An accompanying press release offers three recommended actions to take for one current and two upcoming comment periods:
Proposed 2-year stay and reconsideration of methane emissions standards for oil and gas sector – The public comment period is ongoing; comments must be received on or before 11:59 pm August 9. To comment, search for Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2010-0505 on the federal eRulemaking portal. The proposal was signed June 16. EPA web link
Waters of the U.S. rule proposed rescission – A 30-day comment period will begin soon when the rule, signed June 27, 2017, is published in the Federal Register. To comment, search for Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2017-0203, on the federal eRulemaking portal. EPA web link
Withdrawal of proposed Pebble Mine determination – EPA is proposing to withdraw a July 2014 Clean Water Act Section 404© Proposed Determination that would have imposed restrictions on the discharge of dredged or fill material from the potential “Pebble Mine” in Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed. A 90-day comment period will begin soon when the withdrawal notice is published in the Federal Register. Comments can be emailed to [email protected] (reference docket number EPA-R10-OW-2017-0369 in the email subject line). EPA link
National, congressional, community, and faith leaders will share ideas on how we can work together and ensure the Clean Power Plan creates health, wealth, and opportunity for low-income communities and communities of color.
From 9 to 11 am, at the National Press Club located at 529 14th Street NW in Washington, D.C.
Originally published at The Jacobin.
At the beginning of August, President Obama unveiled with great fanfare the “Clean Power Plan,” a “Landmark Action to Protect Public Health, Reduce Energy Bills for Households and Businesses, Create American Jobs, and Bring Clean Power to Communities across the Country.”
Stripping away the poll-tested language, the president was announcing — after epic delays — EPA regulations for carbon-dioxide pollution from existing power plants, finally fulfilling a 2000 George W. Bush campaign pledge. The proposed rule’s compliance period will begin in 2022.
From a policy perspective, the proposed rule is a perfect distillation of the Obama administration’s approach to governance: politically rational incrementalism that reinforces the existing power structures and is grossly insufficient given the scope of the problem.
The information necessary to understand the rule is impressively buried on the EPA website amid “fact sheets” that list out-of-context factoids and fail to cite references from the one-hundred-plus-page technical documents or ZIP files of modeling runs. The structure of the plan is complex (for example, states can choose to comply with “rate-based” pollution-intensity targets or “mass-based” total-pollution targets) and carefully designed to satisfy a wide range of stakeholders.
Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law professor who
argued the losing side of Bush v. Gore, is now defending the coal
industry against the Environmental Protection Agency’s planned rules for
greenhouse pollution from power plants. In a
submission to
the EPA’s comment period for the Clean Power
Plan,
Tribe and Peabody Energy’s notorious
climate-science-denying
lobbyist Fred Palmer argued that coal is a “bedrock” of the United
States economy.
In short, coal has been a bedrock component of our economy and energy policy for decades. The Proposed Rule, which manifestly proceeds on the opposite premise, thus represents a dramatic change in directions from previous Democratic and Republican administrations.
“It is a remarkable example of executive overreach and an administrative agency’s assertion of power beyond its statutory authority,” Tribe and Peabody Energy wrote, in strident language reminiscent of Fox News rhetoric. “Indeed, the Proposed Rule raises serious constitutional questions.”
Tribe and Peabody put great weight in the past history of coal’s importance to the U.S. economy, as opposed to its future. Hillary Clinton, John F. Kennedy, and Jimmy Carter get special mention.
Both Democrats and Republicans should stand in strong support of the rule of law. And both Democratic and Republican Administrations have promoted the prudent use of domestic coal in order to reduce dependence on imported oil. In contrast, the Proposed Rule will require a dramatic decline in coal-fired generation of electricity, in order to implement EPA’s system of state-by-state mandates. In fact, under EPA’s plan, the agency envisions that coal generation would be eliminated altogether in 12 states. The Proposed Rule thus reverses policies that reach back to John F. Kennedy. As Hillary Clinton observed in 2007, “I think you have got to admit that coal — of which we have a great and abundant supply in America — is not going away.”
A public hearing on the EPA’s draft rule for greenhouse pollution from existing power plants will be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the William S. Moorhead Federal Building, Room 1310, 1000 Liberty Avenue.
The hearing will convene at 9:00 a.m. and end at 8:00 p.m.
Please contact Ms. Pamela Garrett at 919-541-7966 or at [email protected] to register to speak at one of the hearings. The last day to pre-register in advance to speak at the hearings will be Friday, July 25, 2014.
A public hearing on the EPA’s draft rule for greenhouse pollution from existing power plants will be held in Denver, Colorado, in EPA’s Region 8 Building, 1595 Wynkoop Street.
The hearing will convene at 9:00 a.m. (local) and end at 8:00 p.m.
Please contact Ms. Pamela Garrett at 919-541-7966 or at [email protected] to register to speak at one of the hearings. The last day to pre-register in advance to speak at the hearings will be Friday, July 25, 2014.
A public hearing on the EPA’s draft rule for greenhouse pollution from existing power plants will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center Main Tower Bridge Conference Area, Conference Room B, 61 Forsyth Street, SW, Atlanta, GA 30303.
The hearing will convene at 9:00 a.m. and end at 8:00 p.m.
Please contact Ms. Pamela Garrett at 919-541-7966 or at [email protected] to register to speak at one of the hearings. The last day to pre-register in advance to speak at the hearings will be Friday, July 25, 2014.