Livestock Producers Request Relief From Ethanol Mandate

The silver lining in the current drought may be some reconsideration of ethanol mandates.  Currently, gasoline refiners have to purchase a certain amount of ethanol, made largely from corn in the US, to meet EPA renewable fuel quotas. While ostensibly an oxygenator, the ethanol  is really a payoff to grain farm interests because it creates a huge market for corn and increases prices.   With corn prices high already as a result of the drought, beef, pork and chicken suppliers are being squeezed as feed costs soar.  They are asking EPA for a waiver of the renewable fuel standard, so that less corn goes into ethanol and more can go to livestock.  Perhaps at some point there will be a reconsideration of whether the government should be requiring use of ethanol in the first place.

Bloomberg has a report here.

Will Future NAAQS Violations Be Modeled Rather than Monitored?

The DC Circuit Court has affirmed EPA's adoption of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide National Ambient Air Quality Standards. National Environmental Development Association v. EPA approved the SO2 NAAQS, in which 

EPA mandated that States must meet a new 1-hour SO2 standard using a 99th percentile form, set at 75 ppb maximum SO2  concentration.  75 Fed. Reg. at 35548.   The goal of the new standard is to prevent asthmatics from being exposed to shortterm, five- to ten-minute bursts of SO2 , which EPA found could cause lung function decrements in asthmatics.  Id. 

In American Petroleum Institute v. EPA the Court approved the new  NOx  NAAQS, which mandates that  

 “the three-year  average of the annual 98th percentile of the daily maximum 1-hour average concentration  [be] less than or equal to 100 ppb.”   Primary National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Nitrogen Dioxide, 75 Fed. Reg. 6474, 6531 (Feb. 9, 2010) (codified at 40 C.F.R. § 50.11(f)).  The EPA concluded this standard was needed “to provide protection for asthmatics and other at-risk populations against an array of adverse respiratory health effects related to short-term NO2 exposure.”  Id. at 6502.

Another important issue was also presented in these cases -  the manner in which the NAAQS  may be enforced. In the preamble to the SO2 final decision, EPA had stated that it would rely on air modeling (computer guesses of emissions)  in addition to air monitoring (actual air pollution emission measurements) to determine compliance.

 In the preamble to the final rule, EPA also explained that, based on comments it received,  “we are revising our general anticipated approach toward implementation of the new 1-hour NAAQS.”  75 Fed. Reg. at 35550.  Instead of assessing attainment of the standard primarily by monitoring the ambient air, as it had stated it would in the proposed rule, EPA suggested it would use a “hybrid analytic approach” that would combine monitoring with computer modeling to determine compliance. 75 Fed. Reg. at 35551.

The Sierra Club has already served notice that it will rely on modeling to bring actions against power plants that it believes cannot achieve the standards. See the blog article from Bart Cassidy of  Manko, Gold, Katcher and Fox about the Sierra Club and Earthjustice's citizen suit against a coal-fired plant that they allege is violating the new one-hour SO2 standard based on modeling they have performed.

Solar Insanity

The West Virginia Division of Environmental Protection has  just spent almost $300,000 of the federal government's money on a rooftop solar array that will generate hot water and electricity.  It will produce $4000 in savings the first year.  According to the DEP, the savings are the equivalent of 2 average West Virginia homes, which would be about right, based on my own usage. 

This is an insane use of tax dollars.  At 2% interest, $4000 in savings doesn't even begin to cover interest  on the cost of the array, much less pay off principal. With no interest, it would take over 70 years to pay off the principal. There is no reference to the cost of maintaining the system,  and photovoltaic arrays require  maintenance like any other system. Nor is there any indication of what efficiency was assumed in determining the power that could be generated by the array, and whether the  amount of electricity the DEP has calculated assumes some cloudy days and varying sunlight  intensity during the day.  

I don't blame the DEP, which is only using federal grant money that would otherwise go elsewhere.  It's just a shame that the money is being spent on a project like this anywhere. 

Here's the Daily Mail story on the boondoggle.  The DEP press release follows.  

A two-year project to bring solar energy to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Charleston headquarters is nearing completion. When recently installed solar panels atop the roof begin producing electricity later this summer, the DEP’s Kanawha City facility will become the first state government agency building to be partially powered by the sun.
 The $291,168 pilot project, being funded federally through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also includes the rooftop installation of a solar thermal hot water system. Mountain View Solar & Wind out of Berkeley Springs was contracted to do the work.
 Based on the current electricity usage at DEP headquarters, the solar electricity and solar hot water project is expected to initially offset 15 percent of the DEP’s electricity consumption each year and produce close to
$4,000 in first-year savings.
 “This project will increase our energy efficiency which, in turn, will reduce our energy and water consumption, as well as associated utility, operations and maintenance costs,”
said Greg Adolfson, the DEP’s sustainability officer.
 In addition, the project will augment and complement West Virginia’s Alternative and Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard that requires investor-owned utilities with more than 30,000 residential customers to supply 25 percent of retail electric sales from eligible alternative and renewable energy resources by 2025.
 The DEP’s solar photovoltaic (PV) system consists of 108
(235-watt) solar panels and covers approximately 2,730 square feet of the DEP building’s roof. The panels will produce 30,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year, enough to power two average-sized homes in West Virginia.
 The solar thermal hot water system includes four flat plate collectors on the roof and two 120-gallon storage tanks in the DEP’s mechanical room. The system is expected to produce enough hot water to supply the entire DEP building.
 For more information about the DEP solar project, please contact Greg Adolfson at 304-926-0499, ext. 1332.
  

Supreme Court to Interpret Clean Water Act

The US Supreme Court has decided to take 2 Clean Water Act cases next  year that will have relevance to West Virginia.  Both come from the Ninth Circuit, which must be the most reversed circuit in the land.  The first is an appeal by Los Angeles County of a decision that  it is responsible for the discharge of pollutants that it doesn't generate  through its  storm water conduits. The  Los Angeles Times reports that

The Los Angeles County Flood Control District has argued it is not to blame for the tainted runoff -- even if it were so polluted with oil and grease that it caught fire -- because it does not generate the pollutants. The agency has said the thousands of miles of storm drains and flood channels it oversees are mere conduits for upstream polluters, including dozens of cities and industrial sites.

The county appealed last year's federal appeals court ruling that it did not matter if the flood control district was the source of the pollution because it still controlled its flow toward the ocean.

It will be interesting to see what the Supreme Court will do. Many cities are in the same position - they have constructed and operate storm water systems that convey all manner of pollutants that they don't generate.  Animal wastes, lawn chemicals, dirt, road salt, and  almost anything imaginable  can wash into streams through the city system..  Sometimes the storm water flows are directed to waste water treatment plants,  which overwhelm treatment systems  during heavy rains, creating combined sewer overflows of untreated sewage and runoff.  If the Court decides cities aren't responsible for the pollutants they convey but don't generate, they would certainly have an incentive to decouple storm water and sanitary systems where possible.

The second  appeal is of the Ninth Circuit's decision requiring NPDES permits for storm water runoff from   logging roads.  (Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, U.S., No. 11-338,certiorari granted 6/25/12).. EPA disagreed with the Ninth Circuit decision, but urged the Court to allow it to stand while it addressed the matter through  regulation. The Supreme Court decided to hear the appeal anyway. Alex Kovski of Bloomberg News reports it in this fashion: 

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upended decades of Environmental Protection Agency policy that avoided application of National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permitting requirements to millions of miles of forest roads used primarily for logging operations.
In 2010, the Northwest Environmental Defense Center won the Ninth Circuit decision, which was reaffirmed in 2011, saying stormwater runoff from two logging roads in Oregon's Tillamook State Forest must be considered a “point source” subject to NPDES permitting if the water is channeled in any way (Northwest Environmental Defense Center v. Brown, 640 F.3d 1063, 9th Cir. 2011).

West Virginia is filled with logging roads, and the timber industry will follow this with interest.