William Ruckelshaus, EPA Administrator

From Living on Earth, PRI, December 6, 2019

PHOTO: William Ruckelshaus swearing in as the first Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Seen from left to right: President Richard M. Nixon, William Ruckelshaus, Jill Ruckelshaus (wife), Chief Justice Warren Burger.

William D. Ruckelshaus served as EPA Administrator from 1970 to 1973, and again from 1983 to 1985.

STEVE CURWOOD: Only one person has ever served as an Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under two Presidents, and that’s William D. Ruckelshaus, who died the day before Thanksgiving. William Ruckelshaus was in fact the first EPA Administrator, appointed by President Nixon in 1970, and in addition to laying the foundation for the agency and defining its mission, he oversaw the implementation of the Clean Air Act in 1970. Soon after he was tapped to run the FBI as acting director and then named deputy Attorney General. He was also fired by President Nixon during “Saturday Night Massacre” for refusing to dismiss the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Back in 2010 we spoke with William Ruckelshaus about his career and his reflections on how the EPA had its origins in Earth Day activism that put pressure on President Nixon to protect the environment.

RUCKELSHAUS: To centralize that enforcement and regulatory responsibility at the national level made it much more difficult for industry to escape reasonable rules guiding their emissions into the air and water by running to a safe haven—to some state that did not as strictly enforce the standards. So, I felt that we had to initially show the American people we were serious about this by strictly—not only setting the standards—but strictly enforcing them to let people know that we meant business.

CURWOOD: Now, you come back for a second bite of the apple of the EPA when you become administrator again—what, it’s 1983, it’s during the Reagan administration. Tell me, why did you come back and what changed for you in terms of your sense of the agency’s mission?
RUCKELSHAUS: I came back because the agency was in trouble and Burford who had been appointed by President Reagan had gotten herself in a whole lot of trouble, as did other appointees. They sort of bought the line that often is taken by Republicans in the administration that a lot of this social regulation—regulation to protect health, safety, and the environment—is an overreaction and the result of a sort of nanny state. She got in a lot of trouble as a result and president Reagan asked me to come back and help straighten the agency out.

CURWOOD: Now, wait a second—you’re a Republican.
RUCKELSHAUS: Right, well, I guess I still am. Barely.

CURWOOD: I believe you did support Barack Obama for president.
RUCKELSHAUS: Yeah, that’s right. I haven’t changed my mind all that much in the last 40 years, but the Republican Party certainly has moved. What I think the Republican Party has done recently is sort of give up on the environment. They rarely talk about it. I don’t think many of the candidates, or even their constituents think about it that often. And I think that’s a shame because these problems, many of them are real and need to be addressed in an aggressive way, or we’ll get in real trouble.

CURWOOD: William Ruckelshaus, the first and fifth Administrator of the EPA, died November 27th at the age of 87. He will be missed.

Related links:
- Listen to the full interview with EPA Administrators William Ruckelshaus and Lisa Jackson

- E&E News “William Ruckelshaus, twice EPA chief, dies”

- NYTimes | “William Ruckelshaus, Who Quit in ‘Saturday Night Massacre,’ Dies at 87”

Are birds made of paper, to be manipulated?

Editorial of the Morgantown Dominion Post, May 14, 2018

EPA & Interior policy shifts focused on economics, not health or wildlife

Protecting the environment and wildlife often calls for balancing benefits and costs. No, it’s not written as such into relevant legal codes or regulations. And though this tradeoff is almost a matter of course for wildlife, it’s also apparent in many decisions for humans. However, the nation’s Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency are about to put an exclamation mark on that idea.

First, Interior is about to change how agencies under its umbrella enforce the more than 100-year-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Formerly, potential penalties served as incentive for businesses and agriculture to take reasonable measures to avoid killing birds. For instance, installing netting over oil waste pits or restricting certain pesticides spare thousands of birds annually. In other words, taking reasonable steps at a reasonable cost to protect bird populations.

But now, the Interior Department has decided it will only prosecute those that “d e l i b e r a t e l y” kill birds, not those that kill them by “accident.” This treaty has never attempted to altogether end the deaths of birds from unintentional consequences (wind turbines, skyscrapers, vehicles and power lines come to mind). There’s an unwritten understanding that such deaths are unavoidable. What this treaty does is aim to prevent those deaths that can be prevented. But to argue that gross negligence does not translate into criminal intent is as good as a blank check to ignore practical protections for birds.

Meanwhile, the EPA is intent on putting a price tag on the protections the Clean Air Act provides for breathing. The EPA now wants to calculate what the economic impact of your need to breathe clean air is.

Formerly, federal law and court decisions have required the EPA to focus on public health — not what it cost businesses or tax revenues — to set limits on pollution. Now, before defining regulations on pollution, smog, soot, etc. it will need to determine their impact on the economy. We don’t have a problem with having all the facts about such issues, but protecting public health should win every argument.

The EPA was never a perfect agency but once it cared as much about the environment as it now does the ability of polluters to get rich. This shifting of the principles of the EPA and the Interior Department to “reform” regulations can only muddy their efforts. What is clear though, is these policies tip the scales for wreaking havoc on clean air and wildlife.

National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) are for harmful pollutants

>>> Editorial of Morgantown Dominion Post, Earth Day, 2018

Oddly, the largest secular holiday in the world this year happens today — on a Sunday. It is estimated that more than a billion people will celebrate Earth Day in more than 190 countries. Unlike many of our holidays this is not just an American concept of a celebration that can be traced to elsewhere!

The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, is embedded in events on America’s campuses, public schools and its communities. More than 20 million people celebrated and peacefully demonstrated then in favor of environmental reform. By that year’s end — Dec. 2, 1970 — the Environmental Protection Agency was created by an executive order of President Nixon. Its initial mission was to administer the Clean Air Act (also enacted in 1970), to reduce air pollution and enforce other landmark environmental legislation to come.

By the mid-1990s the EPA was enforcing 12 major statutes, including laws applied to ocean dumping, safe drinking water and asbestos hazards. This federal agency’s accomplishments are historic and have literally changed the world. For example, EPA enforcement was primarily responsible for a decline of up to one-half of most air-pollution emissions in the U.S. from 1970 to 1990.

Space does not allow us to list the EPA’s achievements, including significant improvements in water quality and waste disposal or agreements with automakers to install catalytic converters in cars.

Though vilification of the EPA predates the Trump administration, the EPA now prioritizes the very industries it’s supposed to regulate over the environment it’s sworn to defend. As mission statements go, the EPA’s is unequivocal: “Our mission is to protect human health and the environment.” We note that just so anyone today who had any doubts can rest assured.

But the truth is, the EPA’s administrator, Scott Pruitt, since taking office has driven this agency over an environmental and ethical cliff. He has halted guidelines to curb oil and gas facilities’ emissions. He has set his sights on regulations that protect wetlands ands streams. And he proposes to undo efforts to generate electricity by cleaner methods. This month, Pruitt also announced plans to scuttle requirements for cars and trucks to become more fuel efficient by 2025.

On the ethical front he spends millions on a 20-man around-the-clock security detail, first-class flights and a $43,000 soundproof phone booth. Yet, today we are more upset about the ongoing initiatives to not just relax, but to vacate environmental protections. Make no mistake these protections not only go the core of the EPA’s mission. They go to the core of planet Earth’s very existence.

https://www.dominionpost.com/wp-content/uploads/bsk-pdf-manager/2018/04/2018-04-22.pdf

How to Tackle Climate Change Head On 

From the Article by Danielle Baussan and Daniel J. Weiss, Center for American Progress, December 14th

Largely due to destruction caused by recent climate-related extreme weather events in the U.S., there is a new urgency in our nation to adopt additional carbon pollution reduction measures. In 2011 and 2012, 21 such events each caused $1 billion or more in damages. This new evidence demonstrates that our climate change problem is much more imminent and severe than previously thought. Instead of idly waiting for the next devastating storm, flood, drought or heat wave to hit, we should tackle climate change head on by further reducing our carbon pollution.

The World Bank, International Energy Agency and U.N. Environment Programme have all issued reports since the presidential election last month predicting a steep escalation in carbon pollution in the atmosphere over the coming decades. These warnings heighten the necessity of reducing carbon and the other pollutants responsible for climate change. If we don’t take action now, we will inevitably face more devastating changes to our weather, water, land, air and food supply.

The Obama administration has proposed—and should promptly finalize—a carbon pollution standard for new power plants. Additionally, it should develop, propose and promulgate a standard for existing power plants, as they are the single largest unregulated carbon pollution source, comprising 40 percent of total U.S. emissions. The Clean Air Act provides the executive authority to require such emission reductions without congressional action, which would likely be delayed or blocked considering that many congressional Republican leaders adamantly deny the existence of human-induced climate change.

What follows is an introduction to cleaning up carbon pollution using existing executive authority.

U.S. carbon pollution projected to rise over next 30 years

Carbon pollution is the primary greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change. According to the latest projections by the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. is about halfway toward its goal of reducing its carbon pollution by 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2020. The implementation of the Obama administration’s new limits on carbon pollution from automobiles will achieve greater pollution reductions every year. Even with this progress, however, the Energy Information Administration recently projected that carbon pollution from the energy-generating sector—the source of most U.S. pollution—will only be five percent lower in 2040 than it was in 2005 if we stick to current policies.

Legal authority to cut carbon pollution

In 1970 Congress passed and President Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act, a pollution-control regime that still exists today. The act developed a flexible regulatory system to limit pollutants from stationary and mobile sources. Twenty years later Congress passed the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which increased the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s authority to reduce the pollution responsible for acid rain, airborne toxics, hazardous pollutants, ozone-depleting chemicals and more smog-forming pollutants. Though it has been a long time—22 years—since the Clean Air Act was updated, it is still an effective and flexible tool for responding to new and ongoing scientific and public health challenges. It also produces a huge net economic benefit by reducing health care costs related to air pollution. In fact, the EPA estimates that “direct benefits from the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments are estimated to reach almost $2 trillion for the year 2020, a figure that dwarfs the direct costs of implementation ($65 billion).”

The EPA can develop safeguards for unregulated pollutants

The Clean Air Act allows the EPA to limit air pollutants from stationary sources such as chemical plants, utilities and industrial plants, as well as automobiles and other mobile sources. The act grants the EPA the authority to let states develop individual plans to meet national health standards. It also allows the agency’s administrator to prescribe standards for any individual pollutants if he or she determines that such a pollutant “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” This is known as an “endangerment finding.”

At the turn of the 21st century, the evidence of the public health and economic threats posed by climate change grew. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Republican nominee George W. Bush promised to reduce carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants. Six weeks after taking office, however, he broke that promise. His administration essentially ignored any concrete steps to reduce the carbon pollution responsible for climate change in its May 2001 National Energy Plan devised by Vice President Dick Cheney—who largely consulted with Big Oil, coal and utility companies.

The Supreme Court decides that gaseous carbon compounds can be pollutants

In the wake of Bush administration inertia, states that were concerned about their growing vulnerability to damages from climate change sued the EPA under the Clean Air Act to force the government to take action. In 2007 the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and as such, the agency’s administrator must consider whether these pollutants “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” If the administrator finds that this is the case, he or she has the authority to limit pollutant emissions.

The Obama administration makes a carbon pollution endangerment finding

In December 2009 the Obama administration’s head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, adhered to the recommendation of agency scientists and finally made the endangerment finding for six major greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide. Jackson noted that the “impact on morbidity and mortality associated with higher temperatures” provided support for “a public health endangerment finding.”

Carbon pollution limits will apply only to the largest emitters

The Supreme Court decision and subsequent endangerment finding paved the way for the EPA to develop the first limits on carbon pollution from stationary sources, such as power plants and oil refineries, under the Clean Air Act.

This work began with the so-called “tailoring rule,” which limits carbon pollution reduction permits to only the largest industrial sources. Without the tailoring rule, the Clean Air Act would have required permits for sources emitting as little as 100 to 250 tons of a pollutant per year, depending on which pollutant. The EPA, however, found that this would “overwhelm the capabilities of state and local … permitting authorities to issue permits.”

The first phase of the tailoring rule, announced in September 2009, instituted operation permits for “anyway sources”—those sources that would have to get a pollution permit for other reasons besides greenhouse gas emissions—if they increased those other emissions by 75,000 or more tons per year of a carbon dioxide equivalent. The second phase of the tailoring rule required permits for newly constructed greenhouse gas emitters if they spewed at least 100,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide equivalent. It also required permits for existing modified structures if their net greenhouse gas emissions increased by 75,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide equivalent. The third phase of the tailoring rule considered—but ultimately rejected—the idea of lowering the carbon dioxide equivalent thresholds; it did, however, establish plant-wide applicability limitations to streamline the permit process.

The EPA determined that under this tailoring rule, “only 15,550 sources will need operating permits” and that nearly all of these facilities already had them. The agency noted that, “Without the Tailoring Rule 6 million sources would have needed operating permits” because the regulation would have covered millions of small emitters, as well. This would have overwhelmed states’ efforts to issue permits and could have effectively halted pollution control permits and systems.

The agency adopted the tailoring rule to ensure that “emissions from small farms, restaurants, and all but the very largest commercial facilities will not be covered by these programs at this time.” This means that only the biggest and baddest polluters would have to limit their emissions. Even with the tailoring rule, 67 percent of all stationary-source greenhouse gas emitters are covered by limits developed by the EPA. Big coal, utility and oil companies, along with other interests opposed to climate protection, have attempted to overturn this sensible rule, but the courts have so far denied these efforts.

Visit EcoWatch’s CLIMATE CHANGE and CLEAN AIR ACT pages for more related news on this topic. 

Near the end of the month of July, the EPA proposed new Clean Air Act regulations on the exploration and production of natural gas, aimed at reducing air emissions.  The rules will reduce Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) emissions from fracked wells by 95%.  For the gas industry as a whole, VOC emissions will be reduced by 25%, air toxics by 30%, and methane by 30%.

But here’s the part that everyone really likes to hear: it’s profitable.  By capturing gas and selling it (instead of flaring or venting it into the atmosphere), the EPA estimates gas companies will make a net $29 million by 2015.

The rule is currently open for public comment for the next 60 days.  The EPA hopes to finalize the rule by February 2012.

Read more here…