First step to a solution on nuclear waste: End Yucca Mountain https://lasvegassun.com/news/2019/jan/14/first-step-to-a-solution-on-nuclear-waste-end-yucc/ By Judy Treichel, Jan. 14, 2019 There is an interesting phenomenon at the Department of Energy when it comes to the disposal of high-level nuclear waste.
This is a circular dilemma, going nowhere.
In 2010, then-Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced that the DOE would withdraw the license application that had been submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, seeking construction authorization for a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. Officials and residents in Nevada were delighted — a wake was held to commemorate the death of the project, in fact.
However, the celebration was premature because Chu’s decision was challenged in court, where it was decided that the project must continue as long as there was funding.
But after years of successfully fighting to block funding for the project, it’s time for a new strategy. It’s time to permanently shut down the project.
Bringing Yucca Mountain to an end after more than 30 years of battle and expense to national taxpayers, rate payers and the people of Nevada is the right thing to do. The site cannot isolate or contain deadly poisonous waste for the thousands of years. A restart of the program would eventually cost more than other options and result in failure.
The waste is still a problem, but the good news is that although there are increasing amounts of it needing management and disposal, the pile is growing more slowly because old commercial nuclear power plants are being shut down.
Any country using nuclear power, however, recognizes that it must enact a workable plan for the permanent disposal of its waste. The U.S. is no different.
Many nuclear nations have faced problems very similar to the dilemma we’re facing in our nation, but the countries that appear to have programs moving toward their goals have discovered that the only possibility for success is if they engage the public first.
If we were to permanently pull the plug on Yucca Mountain, we wouldn’t be alone in stopping a mistake like this. That’s exactly what happened in the United Kingdom.
The first attempt at high-level nuclear waste disposal there went down because the government attempted to force a dump into an area that didn’t want it. The next program sought the consent of the public, but fizzled amid inadequate follow-through. Now, the decision has been made to make a clean break – stop and make a new start.
We should follow that example.
We all agree that there needs to be permanent disposal for dangerous, highly radioactive waste.That can only happen if all disposal options are considered, and the public is consulted and in agreement with any new program.
There must be trust and confidence in the agency or entity that is given the job of running a program. Both a government blue ribbon commission and an academic group have issued reports on the matter recently, and each said that any facility siting must be consensual with fully adequate public involvement. Both agreed that the implementer of a new program must be an entity other than the Department of Energy.
For more than 60 years, through atomic weapons testing and nuclear waste battles, Nevada has been treated unfairly and dishonestly by government agencies. We have spent our time and money fighting to stop the damage being done by weapons tests and preventing a nuclear waste dump that we know will not be safe.
Yucca Mountain should be declared unsuitable because it cannot safely isolate the waste.
It is time for the battle to end, so a new beginning can be possible.
Judy Treichel is executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force.
PG&E ex-CEO gets $2.5 million severance amid wildfire woes
Former PG&E CEO Geisha Williams lands $2.5 million in cash for severance pay despite being in charge during lethal wildfires of 2017 and 2018
PG&E to file for bankruptcy due to wildfire lawsuits; shares tank
Utility cites ‘challenges’ from California wildfires, East Bay Times, By LEVI SUMAGAYSAY | lsumagaysay@bayareanewsgroup.com and GEORGE AVALOS | gavalos@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group January 14, 2019 Citing “extraordinary challenges” from the devastating 2017 and 2018 California wildfires, PG&E said Monday that it will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the utility that serves 16 million Californians gave the 15-day notice required by law for filing for bankruptcy, one day after it announced the departure of Chief Executive Geisha Williams. The company’s stock dropped by more than half Monday in response to the early-morning announcement……..
One estimate, from Moody’s Investor Services, puts PG&E’s wildfire liabilities at $15 billion but PG&E said it may face liabilities of $30 billion or more. In its filing Monday, PG&E said it is aware of about 50 complaints from at least 2,000 plaintiffs related to November’s Camp Fire and said it expects more. It also said it knows of about 700 complaints on behalf of at least 3,600 plaintiffs from the 2017 California wildfires. PG&E further stated that if it is found liable for the 2017 and 2018 fires, “punitive damages, fines and penalties could be significant.” ………
San Francisco-based PG&E’s shares plunged 52.4 percent to close at $8.38 on Monday. Since October 2017, when it first became clear that PG&E might be liable for some wildfires, PG&E’s shares have nose-dived by 88 percent……… https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2019/01/14/pge-to-file-for-bankruptcy-shares-tank/
To replace the lost nuclear power, PG&E plans to expand energy efficiency, its use of renewable energy, and energy storage that would exceed current state mandates. California’s historic 2015 energy law requires that power companies get 50 percent of their electricity from renewable sources, such as solar or wind, by 2030. PG&E aims to produce 55 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2031. At present, about 30 percent of the utility’s electricity comes from renewable sources, said Keith Stephens, a PG&E spokesman. The state requires that utilities reach 33 percent by 2020. …….https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2016/06/21/pge-to-close-diablo-canyon-nuke-plant-in-10-years/
Uranium workers can face illnesses decades later. Many workers don’t know that help is available.Star Tribune, Heather Richards 307-266-0592, Heather.Richards@trib.com, Jan 14, 2019
By demanding “balance,” the industry transformed climate change into a partisan issue. We know that was a deliberate strategy because various internal documents from ExxonMobil, Shell, the American Petroleum Institute and a handful of now-defunct fossil fuel industry groups reveal not only the industry’s strategy to target media with this message and these experts, but also its own preemptive debunking of the very theories it went on to support.
many took the industry’s bait, routinely inserting denialist claims into stories about climate science in the interest of providing balance:
How the fossil fuel industry got the media to think climate change was debatable, WP, By Amy Westervelt, Amy Westervelt is an audio and print reporter who covers climate and gender, and sometimes the intersection of the two. Her podcast Drilled is about the creation and spread of climate denial and her first book “Forget ‘Having It All'” was published by Seal Press in November 2018., January 10 2019
Late last year, the Trump administration released the latest national climate assessment on Black Friday in what many assumed was an attempt to bury the document. If that was the plan, it backfired, and the assessment wound up earning more coverage than it probably would have otherwise. But much of that coverage perpetuated a decades-old practice, one that has been weaponized by the fossil fuel industry: false equivalence.
Although various business interests began pushing back against environmental action in general in the early 1970s as part of the conservative “war of ideas” launched in response to the social movements of the 1960s, when global warming first broke into the public sphere, it was a bipartisan issue and remained so for years. On the campaign trail in 1988, George H.W. Bush identified as an environmentalist and called for action on global warming, framing it as a technological challenge that American innovation could address. But fossil fuel interests were shifting as the industry and its allies began to push back against empirical evidence of climate change, taking many conservatives along with them.
Documents uncovered by journalists and activists over the past decade lay out a clear strategy: First, target media outlets to get them to report more on the “uncertainties” in climate science, and position industry-backed contrarian scientists as expert sources for media. Second, target conservatives with the message that climate change is a liberal hoax, and paint anyone who takes the issue seriously as “out of touch with reality.” In the 1990s, oil companies, fossil fuel industry trade groups and their respective PR firms began positioning contrarian scientists such as Willie Soon, William Happer and David Legates as experts whose opinions on climate change should be considered equal and opposite to that of climate scientists. The Heartland Institute, which hosts an annual International Conference on Climate Change known as the leading climate skeptics conference, for example, routinely calls out media outlets (including The Washington Post) for showing “bias” in covering climate change when they either decline to quote a skeptic or question a skeptic’s credibility.
Data on how effective this strategy has been is hard to come by, but anecdotal evidence of its success abounds. In the early 1990s, polls showed that about 80 percent of Americans were aware of climate change and accepted that something must be done about it, an opinion that crossed party lines. By 2008, Gallup found a marked partisan divide on climate change. By 2010, the American public’s belief in climate change hit an all-time low of 48 percent, despite the fact that those 20 years saw increased research, improved climate models and several climate change predictions coming true.
By demanding “balance,” the industry transformed climate change into a partisan issue. We know that was a deliberate strategy because various internal documents from ExxonMobil, Shell, the American Petroleum Institute and a handful of now-defunct fossil fuel industry groups reveal not only the industry’s strategy to target media with this message and these experts, but also its own preemptive debunking of the very theories it went on to support.
It need not have been such a successful strategy: If news purveyors really wanted to be evenhanded on coverage of climate change, they could certainly weave in the insights of more conservative scientists — those whose predictions err on the sunnier side of apocalypse. Instead, many took the industry’s bait, routinely inserting denialist claims into stories about climate science in the interest of providing balance: In an analysis of 636 articles covering climate change that appeared in “prestige U.S. outlets” from 1988 to 2002, researchers from the University of California at Santa Cruz and American University found that 52.65 percent presented climate science and contrarian theories as equal. The practice continued into the mid-2000s. As recently as 2007, PBS NewsHour invited well-known (and widely debunked) former weatherman Anthony Watts on to counterbalance Richard Muller, a former Koch-funded skeptic who had shifted his view…………
It’s well past time the media stopped allowing itself to be a tool in the fossil fuel industry’s information war. Oreskes likens the push for “balance” on climate change to journalists arguing over the final score of a baseball game. “If the Yankees beat the Red Sox 6-2, journalists would report that. They would not feel compelled to find someone to say actually the Red Sox won, or the score was 6-4,” she says. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/10/how-fossil-fuel-industry-got-media-think-climate-change-was-debatable/
Can America Live with a Nuclear North Korea? National Interest, MilitaryTechnologyWorldICBM
Question: Can America live with an atomic North Korea, and could any presidential administration openly admit it can? The answer: Yes it can, and no it couldn’t.
Forcibly disarming Pyongyang could and probably would involve sacrificing thousands of American and Korean lives. Here’s a crude yardstick. The Korean War, a conventional conflict to preserve an independent South Korea, cost the United States some 37,000 military lives. Many more service folk suffered wounds. Thirty-seven thousand. That’s more than fivefold the combined American military death toll from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars since 9/11. And that leaves aside countless more Korean military and civilian lives expended fighting to the current standstill along the inter-Korean border.
It’s hard to see how war could be waged more cheaply than it was in 1950-1953 when the principal combatants, not to mention North Korea’s ally China and neighbor Russia, all boast nuclear weapons to accompany formidable conventional forces. And Washington must not delude itself into thinking air and sea power can do the job alone, any more than aviators and mariners repulsed the North Korean invasion in 1950. It took land forces back then—and today, in all likelihood, ground combat would be required to destroy the dug-in North Korean nuclear complex.
Any military strategy worth the name would demand that U.S. Army and Marine forces again seize and control ground—allowing them the leisure to ferret out underground facilities and armaments.
In short, a new Korean War would not be a come-and-go affair. Such a forecast is solidly grounded in the classics of strategy. For instance, Admiral J. C. Wylie points out that the proper goal of military strategy is to impose control on the foe. Aircraft and missiles flit by overhead while ships remain offshore. Though formidable, their presence is too intermittent to qualify as control. That being the case, he pronounces the soldier slogging through mud the “ultimate determinant” of who emerges the victor. The soldier goes and stays. “He is control,” proclaims Wylie. No control, no strategic success.
Nor is it obvious that winning control is crucial in Northeast Asia………
Chances are, then, Washington will continue to insist on complete disarmament on the Korean Peninsula but will refrain from using force to bring about that happy end. …….https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/can-america-live-nuclear-north-korea-41387
Entergy sold its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to a dismantling firm, a first-of-its-kind deal that offers a blueprint for Indian Point’s future
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Entergy sold its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to a New York dismantling firm Friday, finalizing a deal that could offer the blueprint for Indian Point’s future after it shuts down in 2021.
The deal with NorthStar Group Services represents the first time a nuclear power plant has transferred its license to a company that take over the lengthy process of dismantling nuclear reactors and securing spent radioactive fuel.
It’s likely more will follow.
With nuclear power plants struggling to compete against the cheap price of natural gas, more than a dozen nuclear plants across the U.S. have, in recent years, shut down or announced plans to close…….https://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/westchester/2019/01/11/entergy-sells-its-vermont-yankee-nuclear-power-plant-ny-firm/2552170002/
Green New Deal Has Broad Bipartisan Support (Though Most Voters Haven’t Heard of It), DESMOG, By Justin Mikulka • Wednesday, January 9, 2019 A version of the Green New Deal (GND) — an FDR-style plan to address climate change by shifting America to a just and renewably powered 21st century economy — is widely popular with American voters of both parties, according to a recent survey.Perhaps unsurprisingly, this proposal has stronger support among Democrats but still polls well with Republicans. The survey found that 81 percent of registered voters said they either “strongly support” or “somewhat support” a rapid transition to 100 percent renewable electricity and other green technology initiatives.
However, the poll, conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YCCC), also found that very few voters were aware of the Green New Deal: 82 percent said they “knew nothing” of the proposal. Notably, the poll’s language focused on renewable electricity and job creation, but made no mention of the full decarbonization and social overhaul of the American economy that also are central tenets of the full Green New Deal.
In reporting the results, the YCCC noted the likelihood that once Republican voters became aware that the Green New Deal is being championed by Democrats, their support for the idea will decrease. This survey asked respondents about support for some of the basic concepts of the Green New Deal without associating it with either major political party.
Even though polls have shown that the majority of Republicans believe in climate change, research shows that if a proposal is made by the Democrats, Republican voters are less likely to support it. The same was true of Democratic voters and proposals made by Republicans.
Naturally, climate deniers and right-wing media like Fox News and The New York Post already are attacking the concept and its most visible champion, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), foreshadowing the GND‘s slide into the partisan.
Many in the climate and energy media sphere already have attempted to pin down what exactly the Green New Deal is and how it came to be, with David Roberts at Vox going deep and long, and Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone diving in this week because “The Green New Deal is suddenly on everyone’s lips.”
In the Yale survey, however, respondents were told that members of Congress say the Green New Deal “will produce jobs and strengthen America’s economy by accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy.”
Survey respondents were given some specifics for how this would be accomplished, which included generating 100 percent of America’s electricity from renewable sources within 10 years, upgrading the nation’s energy grid, focusing on energy efficiency, and training for jobs in the new green economy.
While this is a good general description of the GND, there is much more detail in a draft bill from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, which even has an FAQ section………… https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/01/09/green-new-deal-bipartisan-support-yale-survey?utm_source=dsb%20newsletter
There was some positive news this year — most importantly the decreased possibility of war in Korea — but, overall it was bleak. Let’s get right to it.
1. The New Nuclear Arms Race is the clear winner as the greatest global nuclear threat of 2018. Each of the nine nuclear-armed states is building new weapons and the United States, instead of strengthening the global nuclear safety net, is actively shredding it.
In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced five new nuclear weapons he said Russia was building in response to the U.S. decision to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. All are designed to circumvent defenses. Russia has also deployed a small number of ground-based cruise missiles whose range exceed that permitted by the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that President Ronald Reagan negotiated. In October, President Donald Trump said he would pull out of this arms elimination pact, despite the objections of NATO allies.
Destruction of the INF Treaty is likely a prelude to allowing the New START treaty to die. This pact, negotiated by President Barack Obama, limits long-range strategic forces. If both go, it will be the first time since 1972 that U.S. and Russian nuclear forces have been completely unconstrained.
“The untimely death of these two agreements would add fuel to a new arms race and further undermine stability and predictability between Washington and Moscow,” warned former National Security Council senior director Jon Wolfsthal.
In mid-December, 26 Democratic senators wrote Trump “out of deep concern that your administration is now abandoning generations of bipartisan U.S. leadership.” They feared that Trump and his administration wanted “to double down on new, unnecessary nuclear weapons while scraping mutually beneficial treaties.” This, they said, “risks the United States sliding into another arms race with Russia and erodes U.S. nonproliferation efforts around the world.”
Some countries, perhaps many of them, may see the building of new arsenals and the killing of restraining treaties as a material breach of the U.S. and Russian pledges in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, up for review in 2020. “Today, pessimism about the future of the nuclear nonproliferation regime is again on the rise,” writes Harvard professor Rebecca Davis Gibbons. More countries, armed with more nuclear weapons would likely encourage greater risk-taking, leading to more conventional conflicts and the great risks of escalation.
2. President Trump remains a unique global nuclear threat. The danger comes from the combination of his nuclear policies, his ability to command the launch of a nuclear weapon at anytime, for any reason, and his intensifying domestic political crises.
Any president in this period would face the problems of restraining nuclear-armed adversaries, maintaining a U.S. nuclear deterrent, and rolling back the nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran. But Trump’s policies have made several of these problems worse. His Nuclear Posture Review would build new, and more usable, nuclear weapons at a price tag of almost $2 trillion while abandoning any effort to restrain global arsenals. This not only fuels an arms race, it breaks the deal with the Senate that “investments in the U.S. nuclear weapons deterrent…must be accompanied by pursuit of continued arms control measures,” as the 26 senators wrote.
Serious concerns about Trump’s mental stability have raised serious questions about the wisdom of a system that gives the president sole, unchecked authority to launch America’s nuclear weapons……… https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2018/12/biggest-nuclear-threats-2018-will-follow-us-new-year/153838/?oref=d-dontmiss
Permit changes at WIPP face challenges https://www.abqjournal.com/1267913/permit-changes-at-wipp-face-challenges-ex-new-governor-urged-to-reconsider-predecessors-decision.html, BY MARK OSWALD / JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
U.S. Sen. Tom Udall is encouraging Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s new administration to reconsider a state government decision made just before she took office Jan. 1 that changes how radioactive waste volume is measured at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, in effect allowing more waste to placed in the underground repository near Carlsbad.
Udall said last week that limits on how much waste WIPP can hold were critical to federal-state negotiations that led to WIPP’s creation “and were a major reason New Mexico agreed to this mission in the first place.”
“I am encouraging the new administration to take a hard look at this action, and hopeful that it will pause and reconsider this last-minute change that has major ramifications for our state,” the senator said in an email statement.
The controversial state permit modification for WIPP, approved by then-New Mexico Environment Department Secretary Butch Tongate on Dec. 21, changes the way waste volume is calculated to exclude empty space inside waste packaging. With the alteration, WIPP becomes only about a third full instead of 50 percent full.
And there have been indications that the federal Department of Energy – which oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons operations – wants to bring new kinds of waste to WIPP, which the additional space could accommodate. That’s one reason activists opposed the volume calculation change.
In May, DOE Secretary Rick Perry said in a letter to a key member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that 34 tons of excess weapons-grade plutonium was headed to WIPP. Perry at the time was pulling the plug on a troubled, costly and long-delayed effort at the DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina turn the plutonium into fuel rods for nuclear power plants.
Perry confirmed that DOE is removing plutonium from South Carolina, adding, “We are currently processing plutonium for shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and intend to continue to do so.”
“I certify that the Department will work with the state of New Mexico to address the capacity issues related to receipt of the full 34 metric tons at WIPP,” Perry wrote in his letter to U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb.
Udall said at the time he had serious questions about whether there was enough room at WIPP to store additional waste from Savannah River, given “the clear legal limits” in the 1992 federal act creating WIPP that resulted “following a lawsuit New Mexico won against DOE when I served as Attorney General.”
Udall added: “If DOE is asking New Mexico to take on additional waste missions beyond what is authorized by current law, unilateral action (by DOE) is absolutely not an option.”
WIPP now takes transuranic waste, largely contaminated items and material leftover from plutonium work, including protective clothing. Changing what kind of waste WIPP can hold would require another permit change.
Udall said last week, “If New Mexico is being asked to take on additional waste missions beyond what is authorized by current law, New Mexicans need to have a say – and we should only agree to a new agreement that is in the overall best interest of New Mexico. There needs to be ample time for public input and awareness, and we must ensure that the safety of workers and the public is protected long into the future.”
James Kenney is Lujan Grisham’s recently dubbed secretary-designate of the state environment department. He said in an interview last week that he needs more time to analyze the previous administration’s decision on WIPP volume measurements before speaking on it, but the topic remains “high on (his) list” of priorities.
The change in how the volume of waste is measured came after a request by DOE and WIPP operating and managing contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership, LLC. There was public comment period and a three-day public hearing in Carlsbad.
The plutonium that had been slated for conversion to fuel in South Carolina would likely be first diluted with an inert, cement-like material, essentially turning it into waste, an idea called “dilute and dispose” that was conceived by the Obama administration as cheaper than trying to make the excess weapons plutonium into fuel rods.
Cheaper prices of natural gas and renewable energy have impacted the competitiveness of more traditional generation fuels.
Renewable additions are projected to more than double gas in 2019. Last year, natural gas capacity additions outpaced renewable energy additions for the first time since 2013. 2018 was also a landmark year for new capacity additions, as EIA expected nearly 32 GW of new capacity — the most in a decade.
The estimates, based on EIA data, do not include additions in the residential and commercial solar sectors, which are expected to be an additional 3.9 GW by the end of 2019.
In 2019, EIA is tracking about 6.1 GW of combined-cycle gas plants and 1.4 GW of combustion-turbine gas plants, expected to be mostly online by June, in order to meet high energy demand during the summer peak. The rest of the expected additions include wind, solar and about 2% of other renewable and battery storage capacity.
Renewable capacity typically comes online at the end of the year, according to the EIA. This matches the upcoming changes in renewable energy tax credits. The wind production tax credit will phase out completely at the end of the year from its current status at 40% of 2015 levels. On the solar side, this is the last year for a full 30% investment tax credit for developing solar energy systems, which will begin to phase down in 2020.
Utility integrated resource plans (IRPs) are beginning to show that renewables can beat out older coal plants, as the Northern Indiana Public Service Company demonstrated through its 2018 IRP analysis last fall, assessing a scenario to eliminate the resource by 2028.
Half of the 4.5 GW of coal-fired capacity expected to retire in 2019 comes from the Navajo Generation Station (NGS), which has not found enough customers for its power generation despite support from a number of groups and the Trump administration to keep it open. Last September, private equity firm Middle River Power dropped its bid to purchase the plant.
In addition, the Pilgrim nuclear plant, set to retire in May, and Three Mile Island, scheduled to retire in September, follow announcements from the plant operators of “severe economic challenges.” Exelon’s Three Mile Island failed to clear the PJM Interconnection capacity market auction in 2017 and Entergy based the decision for Pilgrim on a range of financial factors, including low current and forecast wholesale energy prices.
While the Trump administration has worked to support existing coal and nuclear power plants and to create economic conditions to add new coal and nuclear capacity, trends are pointing away from nuclear and coal additions.
“I don’t think there are any trends in the current electricity market that favor the idea of building new coal or nuclear power plants,” Tim Fox, vice president of ClearView Energy Partners, told Utility Dive.
The natural gas plants set for retirement largely consist of steam turbine plants, mostly located in California. They are older units that came online more than 50 years ago. Other capacity retirements for the year include a hydroelectric plant in Washington state and smaller renewable and petroleum capacity.
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The Energy 202: Senate Democrats warn EPA may be ‘afoul’ of law by prepping Wheeler for confirmation during shutdown, The Hour, Dino Grandoni, The Washington Post, January 11, 2019 A group of Senate Democrats says the Environmental Protection Agency may be violating spending laws by preparing the agency’s acting chief, Andrew Wheeler, for his confirmation hearing during a partial government shutdown.
Four members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee – Thomas Carper of Delaware; Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island; and Benjamin Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, both of Maryland – sent a letter to the agency questioning whether it is improperly using resources to help Wheeler get ready for his confirmation hearing before them next Wednesday.
The move underscores the extent to which Senate Democrats are ready to fight President Donald Trump’s second pick to run the EPA after the former chief, Scott Pruitt, and now Wheeler have sought the reversal of many environmental regulations implemented under President Obama.
In response to the letter, the EPA told The Washington Post it is well within its rights under Justice Department guidelines to work toward getting the agency a Senate-confirmed leader.
The EPA is one of the agencies that isn’t receiving funding as the partial government shutdown drags into its 21st day over the standoff surrounding President Trump’s border wall. Only about 800 of the EPA’s 14,000 employees have been deemed essential to work through the shutdown. The vast majority of those remaining at work are “necessary to protect life and property.”
Only a handful of other employees – six top-level political appointees and a dozen others “necessary to the discharge of the President’s constitutional duties and powers” – are still allowed to work during a shutdown, according to the agency’s Dec. 31 contingency plan.
But according to the Democratic senators, five EPA employees have been involved in coordinating meetings with senators, who will have to approve Wheeler to serve as the agency’s permanent chief after President Trump this week formally tapped him for the position.
An EPA notary also worked to certify an ethics form for Wheeler, who worked for years as a lobbyist.
“It is difficult to understand how preparing you for next week’s confirmation hearing credibly falls within any of the categories listed in EPA’s Contingency Plan, particularly the category of employee that is ‘necessary to protect life and property,’ ” the senators wrote in their letter to Wheeler, sent Thursday.
“Using EPA resources in this manner may also run afoul of the Antideficiency Act,” they added, referring to the law requiring a federal agency’s expenditures not exceed the amount appropriated by Congress.
……… The EPA has been without a Senate-confirmed chief since the White House forced Pruitt to resign in July amid investigations into his ethical and managerial decisions.
While happy to see Pruitt gone, many environmentalists are fiercely oppose to Wheeler’s nomination after he spent years representing coal mining and nuclear energy firms in Washington.
They have long been critical of the EPA under both Pruitt and Wheeler for pursuing the rollback of Obama-era rules. During the shutdown, however, much of that work rewriting regulations has been put on pause.
But activists still take issue with Trump and Senate Republicans working to advance Wheeler’s nomination while other EPA employees are furloughed, such as those working to inspect factories for pollution or prepare cleanup plans for toxic waste sites.
“It’s a shocking waste of precious resources to spend any staff time preparing Andrew Wheeler’s nomination,” Collin O’Mara, president and chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation, said while calling for a delay in the hearing. https://www.thehour.com/news/article/The-Energy-202-Senate-Democrats-warn-EPA-may-be-13526124.php
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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