Hill Heat

On Wednesday, September 22, at 9:30 AM ET, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works will hold a business meeting to consider several of President Biden’s nominees, legislation to rename federal buildings, and several General Services Administration resolutions.

Immediately following the business meeting, the committee will hold a hearing on the importance of promoting a circular economy.

• Jeffrey Prieto to be General Counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency. He was a member of the Biden Agriculture transition team. He was a long-time Department of Justice environmental lawyer who helped set up its environmental justice division. His nomination hearing was on June 16.
• Stephen A. Owens to be a Member of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
• Jennifer B. Sass to be a Member of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
• Sylvia E. Johnson to be a Member of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board

The hearing will be conducted via teleconference.

Text of the Science Committee Print and the Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute by Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson.

The proposed $45.4 billion Science Committee ANS includes:

Department of Energy ($20.6 billion)

• $5 billion for regional innovation initiatives
• $10.4 billion for the Department of Energy Office of Science laboratories, including $1.3 billion for the ITER fusion project
• $349 million for the Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy for NREL projects including the new EMAPS program and ARIES grid simulation
• $408 million for the Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy
• $20 million for the Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management
• $1.08 billion in general funds for Department of Energy National Laboratories, including
  • $377 million for Office of Science
  • $210 million for Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
  • $40 million for Office of Nuclear Energy
  • $190 million for Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management
  • $102 million for the Office of Environmental Management
• $2 billion for fusion research and development
• $1.1 billion for Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy demonstration projects, including wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower, vehicles, bioenergy, and building technologies
• $70 million for a new Clean Energy Manufacturing Innovation Institute
• $52.5 million for university nuclear reactor research
• $10 million for demonstration projects on reducing the environmental impacts of fracking wastewater
• $20 million for the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity
• $50 million for the Office of the Inspector General

Environmental Protection Agency

• $264 million to conduct environmental research and development activities related to climate change, including environmental justice

FEMA

• $798 million for Assistance to Firefighters Grants

NASA ($4.4 billion)

• $4 billion for infrastructure and maintenance
• $388 million for climate change research and development

NIST ($4.2 billion)

• $1.2 billion for scientific and technical research, including resilience to natural hazards including wildfires, and greenhouse gas and other climate-related measurement
• $2 billion for American manufacturing support
• $1 billion for infrastructure and maintenance

NOAA ($4.2 billion)

• $1.2 billion for weather, ocean, and climate research and forecasting
• $265 million to develop and distribute actionable climate information for communities in an equitable manner
• $500 million to recruit, educate, and train a “climate-ready” workforce
• $70 million for high-performance computing
• $224 million for phased-array radar research and development
• $1 billion for hurricane hunter aircraft and radar systems
• $12 million for drone missions
• $743 million for deferred maintenance
• $173 million for space weather

National Science Foundation ($10.95 billion)

• $3.4 billion for infrastructure, including Antarctic bases – $300 million for minority-serving institutions
• $7.5 billion for research grants, including at least $400 million for climate change research and $700 million for minority-serving institutions
• $50 million for Office of the Inspector General

Introduced amendments:

• Amendment #R7 offered by Mr. Weber (R-TX)
• Amendment #009 offered by Ranking Member Lucas (R-OK)
• Amendment #R10 offered by Ranking Member Lucas (R-OK)
• Amendment #085 offered by Mr. Posey (R-FL)
• Amendment #022 offered by Mr. Feenstra (R-IA)
• Amendment #R13 offered by Ms. Bice (R-OK)
• Amendment #029 offered by Mr. Babin (R-TX)
• Amendment #030 offered by Mr. Babin (R-TX)
• Amendment #024 offered by Mr. Feenstra (R-IA)
• Amendment #001 offered by Mr. Ellzey (R-TX)
• Amendment #084 offered by Mr. Posey (R-FL)
• Amendment #054 offered by Mr. Sherman (D-CA)
• Amendment #R6 offered by Mr. Ellzey (R-TX)
• Amendment #R11 offered by Mr. Meijer (R-MI)
• Amendment #010 offered by Mr. Baird (R-IN)
• Amendment #031 offered by Mr. Babin (R-TX)
• Amendment #018 offered by Ms. Bice (R-OK)
• Amendment #019 offered by Ms. Bice (R-OK)
• Amendment #010 offered by Ranking Member Lucas (R-OK)
• Amendment #R8 offered by Ms. Bice (R-OK)
• Amendment #010 offered by Ms. Kim (R-CA)
• Amendment #063 offered by Mr. Waltz (R-FL)
• Amendment #064 offered by Mr. Waltz (R-FL)
• Amendment #R4 offered by Mr. Baird (R-IN)
• Amendment #R9 offered by Mr. Feenstra (R-IA)
• Amendment #008 offered by Ranking Member Lucas (R-OK)
• Amendment offered by Mr. Babin (R-TX)
• Amendment #020 offered by Ms. Bice (R-OK)
• Amendment #023 offered by Mr. Feenstra (R-IA)
• Amendment #021 offered by Mr. Garcia (R-CA)
• Amendment #033 offered by Mr. Gonzalez (R-OH)
• Amendment #R2 offered by Mr. Obernolte (R-CA)
• Amendment #R1 offered by Mr. Waltz (R-FL)
• Amendment #R3 offered by Mr. Weber (R-TX)

On Wednesday, August 4, at 10:00 AM ET, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works will hold a hearing on three of President Biden’s nominees to key positions at the Environmental Protection Agency.

• Amanda Howe to be Assistant Administrator for Mission Support of the Environmental Protection Agency
• David Uhlmann to be Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance of the Environmental Protection Agency
• Carlton Waterhouse to be Assistant Administrator of Land and Emergency Management of the Environmental Protection Agency

Uhlmann, nominated to be the chief enforcement officer at EPA, served for 17 years as a federal prosecutor, including seven years as chief of the Environmental Crimes Section at the U.S. Department of Justice.

At the end of the 2020 election season, Uhlmann wrote of the urgency to enact sweeping climate legislation:

The United States may soon have the chance, for the first time in more than a decade, to enact urgently needed legislation to address global climate change—but only if Democrats don’t repeat the mistakes they made at the start of the Obama administration.

The top corporate-polluter law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth warned that Uhlmann’s nomination “is a very strong signal of how serious” the Biden administration’s intention to “increase environmental enforcement” is, and that “companies should prioritize review of environmental compliance and performance and remain vigilant.”

Waterhouse, a Howard University law school graduate and professor, is an “an international expert on environmental law and environmental justice, as well as reparations and redress for historic injustices.” He served as an EPA lawyer from 1991 to 2000. If confirmed, he will oversee the Superfund and related programs.

On Wednesday, June 16, at 10:00 AM ET, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works will hold a hearing on the following nominations:

• Jeffrey Prieto, General Counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency. He was a member of the Biden Agriculture transition team. He was a long-time Department of Justice environmental lawyer who helped set up its environmental justice division.
• Jane Nishida, Assistant Administrator for International and Tribal Affairs of the Environmental Protection Agency
• Alejandra Castillo, Assistant Secretary for Economic Development of the Department of Commerce

Hearing transcript

Hearing page

Nominees:

• Shannon Estenoz, Interior Assistant Secretary of Fish and Wildlife and Parks
• Radhika Fox, EPA Assistant Administrator for Water
• Michal Freedhoff, EPA Assistant Administrator for Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention

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.

• LaTricea Adams, founder, Black Millennials For Flint, Michigan
• Susana Almanza, founder, People Organized in Defense of Earth and her Resources, Texas
• Jade Begay, climate justice campaign director, NDN Collective, South Dakota
• Maria Belen-Power, associate executive director, GreenRoots, Massachusetts
• Dr. Robert Bullard, Texas
• Tom Cormons, executive director, Appalachian Voices, Virginia
• Andrea Delgado, goverment affairs director, United Farm Workers Foundation, founding board member, Green Latinos, Washington, D.C.
• Catherine Flowers, founder, Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, Alabama
• Jerome Foster II, founder, OneMillionOfUs, New York
• Kim Havey, director of sustainability, City of Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Angelo Logan, campaign director, Moving Forward Network, California
• Maria Lopez-Nunez, director of environmental justice and community development, Ironbound Community Corporation, New Jersey
• Harold Mitchell, founder, Regenesis, South Carolina
• Richard Moore, co-coordinator, Environmental Justice Health Alliance, New Mexico
• Dr. Rachel Morello-Frosch, environmental health scientist, Berkeley Public Health, California
• Juan Parras, founder, Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, Texas
• Michele Roberts, co-coordinator, Environmental Justice Health Alliance, Washington, D.C.
• Ruth Santiago, environmental justice lawyer, trustee, EarthJustice, Puerto Rico
• Dr. Nicky Sheats, director, New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, New Jersey
• Peggy Shepard, co-founder, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, New York
• Carletta Tilousi, Havasupai Tribal Council, Arizona
• Vi Waghiyi, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Alaska
• Dr. Kyle Powys Whyte, environmental justice scholar, University of Michigan, Michigan
• Dr. Beverly Wright, executive director, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, Louisiana
• Hli Xyooj, Director of Program Strategies, Hmong American Partnership, Minnesota
• Miya Yoshitani, executive director, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, California

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:

• Climate change mitigation, resilience, and disaster management
• Toxics, pesticides, and pollution reduction in overburdened communities
• Equitable conservation and public lands use
• Tribal and Indigenous issues
• Clean energy transition
• Sustainable infrastructure, including clean water, transportation, and the built environment
• NEPA, enforcement and civil rights
• Increasing the federal government’s efforts to address current and historic environmental injustice

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

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.

RSVP here.

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.