Barrasso, Whitehouse Float CO2 Capture Bill: “A coal-state Republican and New England Democrat outspoken about climate change joined forces yesterday in introducing Senate legislation to boost technologies that would remove carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and the air. The ‘Utilizing Significant Emissions With Innovative Technologies (USE IT) Act’ from Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) would make several changes to federal law, including amending the Clean Air Act to direct U.S. EPA in supporting carbon utilization and air capture research. The legislation also would require the Council on Environmental Quality to establish guidance on CO2 pipelines and carbon capture facilities, and clarify that projects qualify under the permitting review process established by the 2015 Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. That measure, signed by then-President Obama, authorized billions for infrastructure. The ‘USE IT Act’ further would establish task forces in consultation with federal agencies to advanced carbon capture technologies and identify permitting challenges. It would set up a federal Direct Air Capture Technology Advisory Board. Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) are co-sponsors. Because the bill is under EPW jurisdiction, it is not focused on financial incentives. "This bipartisan bill will help innovators around the country, including a growing number of businesses in Rhode Island, to come up with new ways to take carbon pollution out of the air and either stow it permanently underground or turn it into usable products," Whitehouse said in a statement. Barrasso said that the bill would promote the long-term use of coal, natural gas and oil, and "keep America on the path to energy dominance."

[E&E News, 3/23/18] https://goo.gl/86VgrV

Climate, coal leasing take center stage in federal court: "When a pair of environmental groups went to court in 2014 to push coal leasing reforms, their challenge was set against a drastically different backdrop. The Obama administration wasn't meeting their demands to more fully address impacts from fossil fuel development, but it appeared willing to listen. The Western Organization of Resource Councils and Friends of the Earth filed suit in November 2014, asking a district court to force the Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management to pause federal coal leasing and conduct a broad review of the program. Obama officials fought the case and won. But while the environmental groups pushed an appeal, the government gave some ground: Then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced a moratorium on new federal leasing and launched a programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) focused on climate change and royalty rates. A year ago, the Trump administration abandoned the review and restarted leasing. Interior officials now focus on achieving "energy dominance" by knocking down any barriers to domestic fossil fuel production. WORC and Friends of the Earth head back to court today to renew their 2014 requests, arguing that continuing coal leasing without a PEIS violates both the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. They say the district court got it wrong when it dismissed their initial case in 2015, and they're asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to reverse the order. If courts don't intervene, the environmental groups argue, Interior will carry on with coal leasing without ever thinking big-picture about the climate impacts. "If Interior's view is that it need not account for the climate-change costs of the coal-leasing program because greenhouse emissions do not cause global warming, it must say that, and both defend that scientific analysis under NEPA and suffer the political consequences of that formal assertion," they wrote in a brief last fall. "Likewise, if it wants to acknowledge those costs but continue operating the coal-leasing program by discounting them relative to the economic benefits, it must say that and let the public be the judge of the balance it has struck. "What it cannot do is hide the ball indefinitely, leaving the public to guess at both the environmental costs of one of the Nation's predominant sources of carbon pollution and the agency's views on what many voting citizens believe to be the defining environmental-protection issue of our time." Interior has pushed back on the claims, saying the groups have no case because NEPA lawsuits must focus on concrete agency actions. The case is set for oral argument at 9:30 a.m. today before Judge Karen Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee; Judge Sri Srinivasan, an Obama appointee; and Senior Judge Harry Edwards, a Carter appointee. Natural Resources Defense Council co-founder Richard Ayres, who now runs his own practice, is representing the environmental groups alongside attorneys from Goldstein & Russell PC, a firm that specializes in Supreme Court litigation. The D.C. Circuit is livestreaming audio on the court's website."

[E&E News, 3/23/18] https://goo.gl/RsYkjh

Feds grant waiver of law protecting dolphins for proposed sediment diversions: "The National Marine Fisheries Service on Wednesday (March 21) granted a waiver to two proposed Mississippi River diversions from provisions of a federal law that protects bottlenose dolphins and other species from harm. The waiver will allow construction of the proposed Mid-Barataria and Mid-Breton sediment diversions and the proposed Calcasieu Ship Channel Salinity Control Measures to advance without having to comply with parts of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The projects are part of the state's plan to reduce coastal land loss. The action was immediately praised by U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who helped get the waiver for the three projects without further study of whether they would harm marine mammals. "This is a step towards restoring and protecting Louisiana's coastline," Cassidy said in a news release. "I appreciate the administration paving the way for these improvements." The fisheries service, part of the Department of Commerce, oversees ocean fishing and environmental issues, including marine mammals. In documents released with the one-paragraph waiver, fisheries service officials explained that Congress had directed them to issue the waiver without following any of the provisions that are aimed at protecting endangered and threatened marine mammal species from death, injury or health effects. Those provisions include requirements that an environmental impact statement first be conducted and that public hearings be held before a waiver is approved. The agency did consult with the federal Marine Mammal Commission, which issued a 3-page letter that also explained its ability to comment on the waiver was limited by congressional action. State officials have been concerned since 2015 that the dolphin issue would at least delay the federal permitting process for the Mid-Barataria diversion, which the state hopes to begin building in 2020. That's when the fisheries service told the corps that the additional freshwater added to the Barataria Basin might be a problem. The diversion is proposed to funnel as much as 75,000 cubic feet per second of water and sediment during high river periods. In its 2015 letter to the corps, the fisheries service explained that dolphins are typically found in water with salinity levels ranging from 20 to 35 parts per thousand. In Barataria Bay, salinity levels greater than eight parts per thousand were found to be critical for suitable dolphin habitat. Levels lower than that for as short a period as a few days or a week can cause significant health issues or death, the letter said. "The proposed Barataria Bay and Breton Sound Mississippi River diversions are expected to reduce salinity to less than 4 ppt (parts per thousand) throughout the majority of the resident dolphin habitat for more than four months of the year, depending on the diversion scenario," the letter said. "The extent of the freshwater would essentially eliminate suitable estuarine and nearshore coastal habitats for the Barataria Bay and Mississippi River Delta dolphin stocks." The Army Corps of Engineers, in part because of the dolphin issue, has said the permitting process for the Barataria diversion will likely take until 2022, and even longer for the Breton project, whose planning is not as far along. The waiver provision required by Congress does requires the state, in consultation with the secretary of the Department of Commerce, to minimize impacts on marine mammal species and population stocks, and to monitor and evaluate the impacts of the projects on those species. In a notice published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, the fisheries service said it already has begun a coordinated series of studies with state officials aimed at both minimizing impacts and monitoring. The notice also points out that the waiver does not extend to the other federal permits that the state must receive before building the three projects, including those required by the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act.

[New Orleans Time Picayune, 3/23/18] https://goo.gl/iNJTBH

Suit Seeks Info on Illegal Migrants’ Impact on Federal Lands: "A Washington-based organization that favors tighter restrictions on immigration filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking records from the U.S. Forest Service related to the impact of illegal immigration on federal lands under its management. The plaintiff, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and its legal arm, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), argue that the federal government has largely ignored the environmental degradation that has resulted from illegal immigration. “One of the most underreported stories about illegal immigration is the damage it causes to the environment in border areas,” IRLI’s executive director, Dale Wilcox, said in a prepared statement. “Tons of trash, abandoned vehicles and dangerous campfires are common along the border. The federal government needs to be transparent with the American people about the destructive impact illegal immigration has on our environment.” Axelrod noted that a number of environmental organizations have raised concerns and threatened lawsuits over the ecological impact of the wall President Donald Trump wants to build along the southwest border. “We really just believe environmental groups are ignoring the fact that not having a secure border harms the environment,” she said. Axelrod and IRLI represent a group of organizations and individuals in a lawsuit filed in 2016 alleging that the Department of Homeland Security repeatedly has failed to consider the impact of mass migration in environmental impact statements produced under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). That suit is awaiting a federal judge’s ruling on a motion by the government to dismiss the case. Axelrod said the FOIA lawsuit is unrelated but added that information it turns up could prove useful in the NEPA litigation. She said one of the plaintiffs in that case is a retired Forest Service officer who was devastated over the environmental damage he saw. Illegal immigrants pollute rivers and trample on fragile ecosystems, Axelrod said. She added that smugglers cause intentional damage as well. “Sometimes they even set fires to keep people off their trail,” she said."

[LifeZette, 3/21/18] https://goo.gl/mizbdi

Montana Delegation Praises Forest Management Changes In Omnibus Bill: "Today the U.S. House passed the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill with strong bipartisan support. It funds the federal government through September. The bill now heads to the Senate where NPR says it is also likely to pass with bipartisan support. Wednesday, Montana's Republican Senator Steve Daines said there's good news for the Treasure State in the spending bill. "We secured some very important forest management reforms." Daines points to eliminating what he calls "NEPA paperwork" on national forest projects of 3,000 acres or less aimed at reducing hazardous fuels. NEPA is the National Environmental Policy Act. Critics like the Center for Biological Diversity say exempting 3,000 acre parcels from that law is bad for forests and wildlife. The spending bill also removes requirements to review some federal lands for critical Canada lynx habitat. Daines praised the spending bill for ending so-called "fire borrowing" - that's raiding the U.S. Forest Service budget to pay for wildfire suppression instead of paying for fires like other natural disasters. "It allows the Forest Service to use more of its funds on timber management, forest management and recreation programs, rather than fire suppression," Daines said. Democratic Senator Jon Tester agreed that the Forest Service needs relief from wildfire suppression costs. "These costs drain resources that are needed to build and maintain trails, do research, and yes, cut a few trees," Tester said. Congressman Greg Gianforte says the spending bill has fewer changes to forest management than in legislation that he sponsored which was passed by the House late last year . "The measures in this omnibus, although directionally correct, do not go far enough to address the threat and the devastating impact of severe wildfires," he said. Gianforte and Daines both said further legislation is need to end what they call frivolous environmental lawsuits. The groups that file the suits say they wouldn't stick if the Forest Service followed environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act. It’s unclear when the final vote in Senate will be. The Trump administration has indicated that the president would sign the bill. Congress is trying to pass the omnibus spending bill before midnight Friday, when current federal government funding runs out."

[MTPR, 3/23/18] https://goo.gl/PWVX31

Withheld Teton Park records earns lawsuit: "A federal government watchdog group is suing Grand Teton National Park for failing to release records suspected of revealing illegal predecisional deal-making with cellphone companies. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, is alleging a violation of the Freedom of Information Act relating to a June request for a trove of documents and correspondence with wireless companies. Executive Director Jeff Ruch said he begrudgingly tolerated the delayed fulfillment of the records request for eight months, but then he learned through a separate Yellowstone National Park records request that Grand Teton had contracted with a real estate analyst to appraise 11 cell towers and 55 miles of fiber-optic cable. “Generally individual parks are cooperative, and if they give us any kind of information and they’re willing to produce records within a time frame then we don’t sue them,” Ruch said. The Jackson Hole Daily’s request to Grand Teton for an interview Thursday was denied. Park officials, who learned of the lawsuit the same day, issued a statement. “The National Park Service is developing a telecommunications infrastructure plan and environmental assessment for Grand Teton National Park and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway,” the statement said. “Public scoping was conducted in June and July 2017.” It was this scoping process, which precedes National Environmental Policy Act review, that prompted PEER’s Freedom of Information Act request. Ruch dubbed a four-page scoping newsletter the park released last summer as “very vague,” but it did include mention of applications from wireless companies to build cell towers, which caught his eye. “Grand Teton says they’ve been getting rights-of-way applications since 2013,” Ruch said. “So for five years, they’ve been keeping this in the dark. This is an area where parks are often erratic and noncompliant.” A policy included in the Park Service’s reference manual states that parks must alert the public of receipt of cell tower applications within 10 days, he said. The public wasn’t notified of Grand Teton’s applications until 2017, meaning their had been a four-year lag. There are two cellphone towers within Teton park boundaries, one at Jackson Hole Airport and one at Signal Mountain. The contract Grand Teton entered into with the real estate analyst will appraise 11 towers, each 80 feet high and most mimicking pine trees or flag poles. Each tower will accommodate up to four carriers. They would be located at Moose, Beaver Creek, South Jenny Lake, North Jenny Lake, Signal Mountain, Jackson Lake Lodge, Colter Bay, the AMK Ranch, Lizard Creek Campground and Flagg Ranch."

[Jackson Hole News and Guide, 3/23/18] https://goo.gl/oRuwC2

Justin McCarthy

Digital Director, NEPA Campaign

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