The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established a new telephone hotline for citizens to report suspicious or unusual activities involving natural gas drilling. The "Eyes on Drilling Tipline" allows anyone to report activities such as dumping and other "illegal or suspicious hauling and/or disposal activities." Vigilant citizens can call the new toll-free number, 1-877-919-4EPA, or email eyesondrilling@epa.gov.

The EPA encourages citizens to send photos and video of the activities if they have them. So if you or someone you know lives near a gas drilling operation – get your cameras, video recorders, and pen and paper and help the government keep tabs on this egregiously poorly regulated industry.

According to the press release announcing the new tipline, EPA is concerned about the huge expansion of natural gas drilling operations in recent years, and especially drilling in the Marcellus Shale, a huge geologic formation underneath several northeast states, including New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Technical developments in a procedure known as hydraulic fracturing have made these previously inaccessible gas deposits economical to extract in recent years. EPA warns, "Chemicals used in the process are often stored on-site. Spills can occur when utilizing these chemicals or when transporting or storing wastewater, which can result in the contamination of surface water or ground water, which is used for many purposes including drinking water.

The agency is right to be concerned about natural gas drilling, as this factsheet from the watchdog group Oil & Gas Accountability Project makes clear.

Drilling operations pose a threat to environmental and public health in numerous ways. In addition to the threat of spills mentioned by EPA, emissions from toxic waste and burning colossal amounts of diesel fuel pollute the air, drinking water could be threatened by underground leaks of methane and toxic chemicals, and other possible harms.

A loophole in the 2005 Energy Policy Act (known as the Halliburton loophole) reduced EPA's already limited authority to regulate the natural gas drilling industry, and the agency has been able to eke out only a tiny amount of oversight. A bill now creeping through Congress would close the Halliburton loophole and force drillers to disclose to the public what toxic chemicals they are using and threatening water supplies with.

The EPA "wants to get a better understanding of what people are experiencing and observing as a result of these drilling activities. The information collected may also be useful in investigating industry practices."
 

The EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER) is expanding public participation this month, launching a new online discussion forum on the EPA's blog and planning a "video town hall discussion" to discuss the Superfund. In an effort "to enhance the dialogue between EPA and the public," the new online forum and the video discussion will give the public an opportunity to present their views, ask questions, and discuss solutions related to the work of OSWER. As the name implies, OSWER deals with solid waste issues and responses to emergencies like oil spills. The Superfund program, the Risk Management Program, brownfields development, and many different waste and recycling topics fall within this office's jurisdiction.

The online forum discussions are focused around a particular question, posed by EPA. Each month there will be a new question and a new discussion. This month the question is on the topic of community engagement: "How can EPA better engage and prepare local communities, especially economically disadvantaged communities, to meaningfully participate in government decisions on land cleanup, emergency response, and the management of hazardous materials and waste?" There is also a Spanish-language version of this forum.

Since the new administration arrived, EPA has adopted this internet technology for several other forums sponsored by various EPA offices. It has been a useful way to expand the dialogue with EPA beyond the traditional public notice and comment periods announced in the Federal Register. Yet both the public and the agency are still experimenting with this mode of communication. It is not clear yet how the discussions from each month will resolve, or to what extent the conversations will overlap from one month to the next.

Unlike other EPA forums of this type, the OSWER forum seems to be ongoing, not restricted to a particular time period, and there have been comments from EPA posted in response to public comments. Other forums were a very one-way "conversation," with members of the public posting ideas and questions but never getting any response from the agency. So far, this discussion forum includes the two-way communication that marks a healthy discussion. Notably, Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus, the head of OSWER, has responded to several individual commenters. Hopefully additional EPA staff will jump on to the forum, post their own comments, and most importantly, respond to the public's comments.

Other commenters so far include local and federal government officials, businesses, nonprofit groups, and private citizens. It will be worth following the discussions to see what offshoot discussions and additional forums are sparked by this effort, and what policy actions develop.

Not to be restricted to online forums, Assistant Administrator Stanislaus will hold a "Video Town Hall Discussion" on Superfund on December 16, 2009 at 1:00 ET. The first hour of the meeting will present information on several Superfund- related topics. The second hour will be an open forum for any questions relating to Superfund. The public can submit questions by email or call in during the meeting.

Congress yesterday passed a FY 2010 appropriations measure for environmental agencies that exempts factory farms from having to track and report their greenhouse gas emissions. The exemption applies to a rule issued in September by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requiring thousands of large facilities economy-wide to monitor and report their emissions.

The mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reporting rule was issued in response to a Congressional demand included in FY 2008's funding bill. By eliminating huge factory farms from the reporting requirement, members of Congress are deliberately blinding themselves to crucial information needed to make policies to combat climate change. The new funding bill prohibits EPA from spending any money to implement the rule if it covers manure management systems, ensuring that for at least another year, Congress and the public will be ignorant of the climate damage caused by these systems. 

The current rule is estimated to cover 107 livestock facilities that use certain manure management systems to handle the tons of animal waste produced by concentrating thousands of animals in feedlots. These manure management systems, which include enormous "lagoons"of liquefied waste, emit roughly 58.7 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) annually. The manure system operators would only need to monitor methane and nitrous oxide emissions, which are both much more potent global warming gases than CO2, but for comparison's sake, emissions are measured in CO2e. Emissions from these systems have been greatly increasing for years.

Congressional appropriators originally passed the measure calling for the mandatory reporting of GHG to gather information from "all sectors of the economy of the United States."

Iowa Republican Tom Latham inserted the exemption in the House version of the funding bill, and subsequent Republican maneuvers made sure it was in the conference report. According to Latham, "[The reporting rule] doesn't do one thing to improve the standard of living in rural Iowa or any part of this country.  But I will tell you what it does do. It significantly drives up costs for farmers and hardworking American families…"

According to EPA, the GHG registry is "intended to collect accurate and timely emissions data to inform future policy decisions." Apparently Mr. Latham feels he and his colleagues do not need the data, or perhaps are not interested in making informed policy decisions.

As for the costs to "farmers and hardworking Americans," the EPA has provided estimates of the potential economic costs to the 107 livestock facilities likely impacted by the rule. According to the agency, a facility might incur expenses of $857 to $1,812 for labor in the first year and some facilities might see capital costs of up to $961 per year over ten years. So the unluckiest of factory farmers would be hit by up to $2,773 in costs in just the first year.

Keep in mind, we are not talking about the proverbial family farmer grazing a few dozen cows or even a few hundred chickens. The rule impacts the largest of the obscenely large operations. To meet the threshold for having to report its emissions, a facility must have at least 3,200 dairy cows, or at least 29,300 beef cattle. Pigs, the notoriously prolific poop-makers, must number 34,100 before one of the "farms," known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), must report its GHG emissions from its manure management systems. As for broiler chickens, EPA is talking about tens of millions of birds.

A hypothetical extreme cost analysis puts the rule in perspective. If the estimated 107 impacted CAFOs must each pay $2,773 in the first year the GHG rule is in effect, and if the costs were passed on to consumers at a dollar-for-dollar rate, and if the only consumers of the farms' products were constituents of Mr. Latham's district (pop. 585,305), the first-year cost per person would be $0.51.

At a time when agricultural interests are pushing hard to cash in on pending climate change legislation through measures that will pay them for farming practices dubiously considered to offset GHG emissions, one would expect farmers to support having their emissions reported. Without the transparency provided by accurate monitoring, the market for GHG emissions offsets from livestock facilities might be less lucrative.

Before any meaningful policies on climate change - such as a cap-and-trade system - can be implemented, we must have thorough data. We must know who is emitting and how much. Other industries that are estimated to emit less global warming gases than CAFOs are also covered by EPA's rule. Hopefully Congress's recent action is not the beginning of the chipping away at an indispensable tool for averting the worst impacts of climate change.

Two back-to-back announcements by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this week extend the agency's admirable record on transparency since the beginning of the Obama administration. EPA announced two policy changes that increase the transparency of the agency's pesticides programs: opening up the registration process for pesticides to public scrutiny and moving to require all pesticide ingredients be listed on product labels.

Pesticide Registrations

On October 1, EPA announced that the public will now be able to review and comment on the risk assessments and proposed registration decisions for new pesticides. The public will be given 30 days to comment on the agency's analysis prior to the agency's final decision. EPA assistant administrator Steve Owens claimed, "This new process will give the public greater opportunity to participate and understand decisions about new pesticides."

EPA has been criticized for years over the lack of transparency and public involvement in the process that determines what new pesticides are approved for use and how existing pesticides are reviewed. This action engages the public at a key point in the registration process, creating an opportunity to challenge the agency's analysis and proposed decision.

In addition to the risk assessment, it is crucial that EPA also publish the underlying data and methodologies used to develop the risk assessment. The announcement does not indicate these data will also be released. More time for review would be useful as well. Although 30 days is not a long time to review in depth the agency's analysis and the industry science that supports it, it is a welcome "transparency window."

Pesticide Ingredients

Just prior to the announcement opening up the pesticide registration process, EPA responded to two petitions submitted in 2006 calling for disclosure of hazardous pesticide ingredients. The agency announced it will develop a new rule to disclose the identities of all inert ingredients in pesticides including those that are not deemed hazardous – a step beyond what the petitioners requested. Unlike the "active" ingredients in pesticides, so-called inert ingredients need not be listed on the label. However, inerts are often hazardous substances that pose a risk to human and ecological health.

The petitions, one from the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides and 22 other groups and the other from several state attorneys general, identified more than 350 inert ingredients that are considered hazardous under one or more different government programs. For example, creosols are listed as a “hazardous waste” under Superfund regulations, yet they are listed as inert ingredients on labels for pesticide products. According to Beyond Pesticides, "creosols are known to produce skin and eye irritations, burns, inflammation, blindness, pneumonia, pancreatitis, central nervous system depression and kidney failure."

According to the agency's statement, "This increased transparency will assist consumers and users of pesticides in making informed decisions and will better protect public health and the environment." The agency will publish an advance notice of proposed rulemaking – an early step in the process – "in the next few months."

In EPA's response to the petitioners, the head of the pesticides office said she anticipates a "sea change" in how pesticide information is made available to the public. Additionally, according to the response, "EPA believes one way of discouraging the use of the more hazardous inert ingredients in pesticide formulations is by making their identities public." I couldn't agree more, and the history of environmental right-to-know policies bears this out.

The EPA is leading the way on transparency in the new Obama administration. The agency suffered greatly under the previous administration in terms of excessive secrecy, politicized science, and shutting out the public. Now the agency is quickly making up ground lost during the Bush administration and even breaking new ground in transparency and regulation. I hope that momentum continues.