OCEAN
WATCH
Welcome to Ocean Watch; a weekly recap of federal and regional
actions that impact the coastal and marine water quality and ecosystems of the
Mid-Atlantic Ocean. Clean Ocean Action will aggregate and analyze these
actions, and signify the impact and threat level to the Mid-Atlantic using
color coding – Red is a high level threat, orange is intermediate, yellow is a
caution, and green would be a positive action.
Mid-Atlantic
Ocean Watch – Week 1
It has been a busy week for the Trump Administration. While many
of these actions have taken place in Washington DC, and don’t affect the
mid-Atlantic directly, the direction of national energy, climate, and
regulatory policy will have implications and impacts for the mid-Atlantic
region. Uncertainty and a lack of
transparency have come to
define the first week of the Trump Administration’s actions on the environment.
Yet, what may look like purposeful actions to undermine environmental
protections may turn out to just be continued evidence of a chaotic transition
(or perhaps evidence of both). Regardless, this is not comforting news for
those who value clean water and air.
A quick rundown for the
week:
EPA Subjected to Political Review, Regulatory Freeze, Grants
and Contracts Freeze, Gag Order, and Climate Cleansing – THREAT LEVEL ORANGE
Several actions from the Trump
Administration have targeted EPA, ordering the agency to:
o
have all
scientific findings and research reviewed by political staff prior to
publication,
o
halt the issuance
of any pending regulatory actions
o
been placed under
a de facto gag order, silencing the ability of the agency to transmit
information to the public.
o
had their ability
to disburse grants, contracts, and funding frozen pending review, before the majority
of funding was once again allowed to flow within 24 hours,
o
take down their
climate change webpage, before walking back that directive in the same 24 hours.
·
Specifics Below:
§
Political Review: On
Tuesday, the head of communications for the Trump administration's EPA transition
team, stated that scientific findings would be reviewed by the administration
on a case-by-case basis. However, current regulations prevent anyone from
impeding the timely release of scientific findings by EPA’s research and
development scientists. We will continue to monitor the effects of this policy…
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-epa-studies-20170125-story.html
§
Regulatory
Freeze: as part
of Executive Order 1, signed on January 20, the Trump Administration delayed
for 60 days the implementation of all regulatory actions currently pending in
all Agencies (with few exceptions). At EPA, at least 30 regulations met these
criteria including air quality management actions, renewable fuel standards,
and removal of PCBs from lighting fixtures in public schools. Furthermore,
important decisions from EPA on designating, approving, and funding
contaminated site cleanup along the Hudson, Passaic, and Hackensack Rivers hang
in this cloud of uncertainty created by the regulatory action freeze. http://thehill.com/regulation/316049-trump-delays-dozens-of-epa-regs.
To find contaminated sites near you, use this very helpful website: http://www.toxicsites.us/ . New
Jersey is number one in the country with 113 Superfund Sites. NY is number four
with 86.
§
The Gag: The
Trump Administration has also imposed a comprehensive gag order on employees of
the EPA. According to the leaked memo, “no press releases,” “no blog messages”,
and “no new content can be placed on any website” until further notice.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/24/epa-department-agriculture-social-media-gag-order-trump
§
The Funding Freeze: EPA grants are used to support private, state, and municipal level
environmental testing, remediation, research, and education projects. On the 24
(Tuesday), the Trump administration ordered over 3 billion grant funding to be
frozen, throwing into uncertainty which programs and actions would be impacted,
with the potential to disrupt core operations ranging from toxic cleanups to
water quality testing, according to records and interviews conducted by
ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-administration-imposes-freeze-on-epa-grants-and-contracts. By Thursday, reports
surfaced that the freeze had been lifted on the majority of funding,
however the lack of communication and uncertainty regarding the status of
funding has left many federal and state employees unsettled.. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/26/allaying-concerns-epa-lifts-temporary-freeze-grants-states/97103198/
.
§
EPA
Climate Webpage: On Wednesday, January 2, it was reported that
the Trump Administration had instructed EPA to remove the climate change page
from its website. The page includes links to scientific research,
emissions data from individual industrial facilities, and the multi-agency
Climate Change Indicators report, which describes trends related to the causes
and effects of climate change. According to one EPA staffer, “If the website goes dark, years of work we have done on
climate change will disappear." It was also reported that EPA staffers
were scrambling to save data and working to convince the administration to
reverse their decision, at least partly. http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN15906G. Updates
to this initial reporting began to come out later that day, stating
that the EPA's Office of General Counsel was now "walking through pages on
the site" to see what was legally removable, and what legally needed to
remain.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-administration-backtracks-on-plan-to-take-down-epa-climate-web-page/ . In the
meantime, the page remains up.
Climate
Change Related Actions – THREAT LEVEL ORANGE
With the appointment of fossil fuel industry insiders
to key positions, and an aggressive emphasis on the extraction of fossil fuels,
Trump’s first week in office has been bad news for a climate that is already
nearing an irreversible tipping point. Actions at the national level impact our
region’s coastal communities and marine environment. It is imperative for the ocean that fossil
fuel extraction, production, and use be immediately reduced and phased out. With
this in mind, we will review several climate and air quality related actions
that have the potential to cause ocean acidification, sea level rise, and direct water quality impacts in our region:
§
Trump
Energy Plan – one of the
first actions of the Trump Administration was to take down the White House
webpage on climate change and in its place, post the “America First Energy
Plan”. The plan calls for the elimination of environmental regulations such as
the Clean Power Plan (which would also reduce particulate emissions) and the
“Waters of the US rule” which protects headwaters, tributaries, vernal ponds,
and isolated wetlands, as well as emphasizes the expansion of shale oil and gas
development and coal mining.
·
Not only does Trump’s energy plan spell
disaster from a climate perspective (sea level rise, ocean acidification), but
an increased emphasis on fossil fuel development would also accelerate the
development of pipeline, liquefaction, and other industrial infrastructure
across the state which would have direct construction and operation impacts to
air, water, and ecosystems.
·
This is also alarming news for the continental
shelf, as it appears that Trump is moving towards reversing the section 12(a)
OCSLA protections that the Obama Administration implemented prior to leaving
office, as well as the potential for rewriting the OCS lease plan to include
the Mid-Atlantic region in drilling exploration and leasing in the future. New Jersey officials have long opposed drilling in the
Atlantic because any spills could put New Jersey’s estimated $700 billion in
coastal properties at risk as well as its $45 billion Shore-based tourism
industry and the state’s commercial fishing industry, which generates $8
billion annually and supports about 50,000 jobs.
§
Nominations - Oklahoma Attorney
General Scott Pruitt continues to go through the nomination process for
confirmation as head of EPA, as does Rex Tillerson, Former CEO of Exxon Mobile,
as nominee for Secretary of State. Both of these choices are clear wins for the
fossil fuel lobby. Both men have strong oil and gas industry ties. Oklahoma
Attorney General Pruitt is an avowed climate change denier with close ties to the
oil and gas industry who has sued the EPA over a dozen times to block air,
water, and climate regulations. In the
past six years, he filed more than a dozen lawsuits against the E.P.A., in many
cases acting in concert with the very industries that the regulations were
aimed at. Meanwhile, a super pac close to Pruitt,
called Liberty 2.0, was collecting large contributions from these same industries; Murray Energy, the country’s
largest coal company, for instance, gave fifty thousand dollars in August.
http://oklahomawatch.org/2016/12/08/nearly-half-of-donations-to-pruitt-pac-came-from-energy-sector/ Tillerson was CEO of one of the largest fossil
fuel corporations in the world, which funded and spread climate denial science. The
CEO of Exxon-Mobil taking over the State Department (and hence the
international dimensions of U.S. climate change policy) would be a clear
victory for oil and gas interests. Stay tuned for the eventual appointment of
the Regional Administrator for EPA Region 2 (which encompasses the NY and NJ
region).
§
Keystone
XL and the Dakota Access Pipeline –
President Trump signed executive orders 6 through 10, a set of
orders that seek to revive and streamline the permitting process for two high
profile fossil fuel pipeline projects; the Keystone XL and the Dakota Access
Pipeline. The Keystone XL pipeline would largely pump oil from Canadian tar
sands ― a source that is highly energy and
water intensive to extract and considered one of the dirtiest fossil fuels ― to
refineries on the Gulf coast of Texas. Keystone XL would carry 830,000 barrels
of tar sand oil. In 2015, the Obama administration
halted the project by denying permits. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/us/politics/keystone-dakota-pipeline-trump.html?_r=0
Stay Tuned
for Next Week – THREAT LEVEL
YELLOW
o
Congress
readies to wipe out newly passed environmental regulations: Reuters
is reporting that Congressional republicans are ready and raring to use the
Congressional Review Act (which requires simple majority votes) to stop
recently passed regulations from taking effect. On the chopping block include
EPA’s efforts to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas operations on public
lands, coal ash management regulations, and stream protection rules for coal
mining, among other recently implemented regulatory actions. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-regulation-idUSKBN1592AT
o
More
appointments on the way: It is being reported that FERC Commissioner
Cheryl LaFleur will be President Donald Trump’s preferred choice to replace
current chairman Norman Bay as the head of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
(FERC). FERC regulates interstate electricity generation and transmission and
natural gas pipelines. The consensus among industry is that LaFleur, a former
utility executive, will be friendlier to energy industry needs than Bay, who
previously led FERC’s enforcement office, and has led some of the agency’s
recent investigations into market manipulation by energy giants. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/how-trumps-reported-ferc-chair-pick-could-push-a-more-fossil-fuel-friendly?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=GTMDaily
