Weekly Newsletter | April 5, 2019
Issues
Mayor defends energy industry’s efforts to mitigate effects of development. This week, the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing focused on ‘Lessons from Across the Nation: State and Local Action to Combat Climate Change.’ There, federal lawmakers heard from state and local leaders about the importance of addressing the environmental issues impacting their constituents.
Namely, Midland Mayor Jerry Morales told the committee that the energy industry in his area has stepped up considerably to make investments in infrastructure, conservation, health care, education and general quality of life. When asked if communities are better off “because of oil and gas development from the aspect of health interactions and education and future job opportunities,” Morales said “yes” and went on to describe how technology is improving oil and gas development.
The Midland, Texas Mayor went on to point out the collaborative approach between industry, government and other interested parties in creating plans to help protect vulnerable species, including the lesser prairie chicken and dunes sagebrush lizard. According to Morales, “These are ways the industry and government can be responsible for climate and communities and can still be productive economically for Midland and also Texas, the United States and the world.”
Wyoming Governor to review sage-grouse habitat program. Wyoming governors have overhauled the state’s sage-grouse conservation strategy every couple of years since its adoption in 2007, but this time will be different. Gov. Mark Gordon indicated earlier this week he would review an ongoing program to protect sage-grouse habitat, but he said the program’s primary elements and protections would remain unchanged.
The announcement comes after U.S. officials recently adopted a new sage-grouse policy giving states more flexibility to enact or scale back protections for the birds, which inhabit 11 Western states.
Gordon said he would seek public comments through April to “inform his review” of an existing sage-grouse executive order, extending the comment period by the Sage-grouse Implementation Team (SGIT). He said he wanted to “identify areas where we can improve upon what is already working while keeping a steady course.”
Wyoming is home to the majority of the sage-grouse across the West and the largest areas of good habitat. Gordon made sure to note Wyoming’s deep investment in a good outcome for the bird alongside “responsible development,” in his statement Wednesday.
Bob Budd, chairman of Wyoming’s SGIT, said Gordon’s call for feedback was an attempt to be as transparent as possible. Budd had asked members of SGIT to provide comment to the governor during a meeting earlier this year, but noted the governor wanted to make sure the general public was part of that conversation as well.
“I think this is just a very responsible approach from the governor to say ‘If there are things we need to look at, let me know,’” Budd said.
Public comments on revising the governor’s executive order are being accepted via email at wgfd.hpp@wyo.gov.
In the News
Solicitor nominee faces heavy workload, serious scrutiny. E&E News, Sub req’d. Legal challenges abound for Daniel Jorjani, formally nominated yesterday to fill the long-vacant position of Interior Department solicitor. They come with the territory, and a vast territory it is. In New York City, Jorjani’s narrowing of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act faces major lawsuits. In Roanoke, Va., the Southern Environmental Law Center is pressing him and other Interior officials for allegedly failing to turn over endangered species documents. And in Washington, D.C., nine Minnesota groups and businesses have targeted Jorjani’s December 2017 opinion effectively greenlighting the issuance of mineral leases to a company planning a copper-nickel mine near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. “My clients would be repelled by water and noise pollution and other harm to the Boundary Waters,” Steve Piragis, owner of the Piragis Northwoods Co., said in a 2018 statement announcing the lawsuit. “Others will cease to visit at all because it will no longer be the place they love and remember.” The lawsuits naming Jorjani in his current capacity as principal deputy solicitor are not, in themselves, unusual. Lawsuits rope in top department officials all the time; it’s nothing personal. The Obama administration’s Interior solicitor, Hilary Tompkins, was named in federal lawsuits, as well.
Wyden seeks IG probe of Bernhardt over pesticide study. E&E News, Sub req’d. A Democratic senator who harshly denounced acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt yesterday is now asking for an investigation into allegations the Trump administration official suppressed a sensitive pesticide report. In a four-page letter today, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) urged Interior’s Office of Inspector General to examine Bernhardt’s handling of the Fish and Wildlife Service study that examined the impact of several chemicals on vulnerable species. “I am deeply troubled by what appears to be a political appointee meddling in the scientific process at USFWS in its analysis of toxic pesticides and their effect on the environment and hundreds of endangered species,” Wyden wrote. Wyden’s request for an investigation escalates the pressure brought earlier this week by Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, and two colleagues, who asked Bernhardt to release the report on impacts of malathion and chlorpyrifos (E&E Daily, March 27). Wyden’s letter to acting Inspector General Mary Kendall also came on the heels of a tense exchange yesterday at Bernhardt’s secretarial confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Trump permit revives pipeline work. E&E News, Sub req’d. President Trump today issued a presidential permit authorizing the construction, operation and maintenance of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The order does not mention an environmental review. The White House issued the order approving the pipeline’s construction and operation under conditions TransCanada Keystone Pipeline LP laid out. In doing so, Trump also announced he’s revoking a previous permit issued March 23, 2017, by the State Department. The new permit immediately authorizes TransCanada Corp. to begin building the $8 billion, 1,200-mile pipeline to carry oil sands crude from Alberta to Texas refineries. The permit appears intended to shield the Keystone XL decision from judicial scrutiny and from being overturned by federal courts. Instead of being issued by the State Department after an environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act, the new permit cites only Trump’s authority as president. In November 2018, a federal judge halted construction and ordered the government to take a closer look at climate impacts from Keystone XL after the president revived the project shortly after taking office (Energywire, Dec. 18, 2018).
Trump admin sues Calif. over delta standards. E&E News, Sub req’d. The Trump administration yesterday sued California over new state water quality standards, saying they would illegally restrict deliveries to farmers. In December, California regulators updated the water quality standards for the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta for the first time in 23 years. They were aimed at saving endangered salmon and steelhead by requiring increased flows on San Joaquin River tributaries (Greenwire, Dec. 13, 2018). The Trump administration and its allies in Congress have sharply criticized the standards, which require 40 percent of “unimpaired” flows on three tributaries — the Tuolumne, Stanislaus and Merced rivers — to reach the delta from February to June. And in a bit of legal jiujitsu, the Justice Department and Bureau of Reclamation challenged them yesterday under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the state’s rigorous environmental statute. Spokesmen for the State Water Resources Control Board did not return a request for comment on deadline. The board’s move in December was viewed as a last-ditch effort to save the fish species, whose populations have plunged to dire levels in recent decades. While some conservation and environmental groups supported the standards, many said they didn’t go far enough.
Trump loyalist Cramer wants energy ‘grand bargaining’. E&E News, Sub req’d. North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer believes the Green New Deal vote in the Senate earlier this week could become more than an opportunity for each party to score political points. “To me, it looks like a grand bargaining opportunity,” said Cramer, a former three-term House Republican who ousted Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp this fall in a race in which oil and gas interests spent heavily on both candidates. “Neither of us is going to get anything if we don’t give the other side something,” Cramer told E&E News recently. The conciliatory approach is surprising from the Peace Garden State’s junior senator, who in the House was an unabashed supporter of President Trump’s energy dominance agenda. In the lower chamber, he called himself a climate skeptic, hooted “Yes!” at Trump’s first State of the Union address when the president mentioned opening the Keystone XL pipeline and even was shortlisted for Energy secretary. Cramer insists he remains one of the strongest supporters of the energy industry on Capitol Hill and notes, like many of his constituents, he sees the Green New Deal as “radical.” But Cramer says his willingness to talk across party lines on the issue is a necessary nod to the shift in politics since last fall’s election and his new role as senator.
Judge upholds amphibian critical habitat. E&E News, Sub req’d. A federal judge has upheld the sprawling 1.8-million-acre critical habitat designated for the Yosemite toad and two other vulnerable amphibian species. In a 16-page decision issued late yesterday, the Washington, D.C.-based judge rejected a challenge to the critical habitat brought by the California Cattlemen’s Association, the California Wool Growers Association and the California Farm Bureau Federation. The 2017 Trump administration appointee, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, concluded the farm and ranching groups lacked the necessary standing to sue. “Ultimately, the cattlemen have failed to establish that any of their members have suffered an injury in fact traceable to the [habitat designation],” McFadden wrote. “Nor have they shown that the relief sought would redress the injuries alleged.” The conservative Pacific Legal Foundation represented the California farmers and ranchers. Environmentalists hailed the decision, which also affects the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog and the northern population of mountain yellow-legged frogs. “This is a huge victory for these incredible, highly imperiled frogs,” said Jenny Loda, a biologist and attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, adding that “the livestock industry won’t be robbing them of habitat protection they desperately need.”
Mystery solved: Elite study deems red wolves distinct. E&E News, Sub req’d. The red wolf is a distinct species, an elite scientific panel concluded in a politically sensitive report published today. Answering a fundamental question asked by Congress, a research committee formed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that the red wolf taxonomically stands apart, while cautioning that additional genomic evidence could later change that assessment. “There has been substantial controversy regarding the species status of the red wolf,” the report acknowledged. Cutting through the clutter, though, the researchers determined that the “extant red wolves are distinct from the extant gray wolves and coyotes” and that available evidence supports the idea that “extant red wolves trace some of their ancestry from the historic red wolves.” The nine-member research committee, chaired by Florida State University biologist Joseph Travis, also determined that the Mexican gray wolf is a valid subspecies of the gray wolf (Greenwire, March 20). “The genetic evidence published to date also overwhelmingly supports the Mexican gray wolf being a subspecies of the gray wolf,” the study states.
