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DEP Adds Final-Omitted Reg. Limiting Methane Emissions From Conventional Oil & Gas Facilities To Oct. 12 EQB Agenda

By Hobi Nulis April 30, 2024 No comments

Late Friday, the Department of Environmental Protection notified members of the Environmental Quality Board that Part II of the final regulation limiting volatile organic compounds and methane from conventional oil and gas facilities has been added to the agenda of the October 12 Board meeting as a final-omitted rulemaking.

Part I of the regulation covering unconventional shale gas facilities was already approved by the EQB and by the Independent Regulatory Review Commission, but is opposed by Republicans in the General Assembly. Read more here.

Conventional oil and gas facilities account for 80 percent of methane emissions from the oil and gas industry in Pennsylvania because they have done little or nothing to control them.

The regulation would affect 4,719 conventional well owners of approximately 27,260 facilities.

The unconventional shale gas industry accounts for 20 percent because they have implemented some controls. Read more here.

DEP said both parts of the regulation are needed to comply with a mandate from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to adopt controls on methane emissions from oil and gas operations by December 16 or face the potential loss of over $500 million in federal highway funds. Read more here.

Final-Omitted Rulemaking

DEP has recommended to the EQB Part II of the regulation covering conventional oil and gas facilities be adopted as a final-omitted regulation in order to meet the December 16 deadline.

A final-omitted regulation starts the process of promulgating a rulemaking making over, but avoids the step of going through a proposed stage and another public comment period.

Under the Commonwealth Documents Law an agency may use this procedure if it determines starting from the proposed stage is “impracticable, unnecessary or contrary to the public interest.”

In this case the subject of this rulemaking has already gone through an extensive public comment process with hearings when the provisions were a single proposed regulation covering both conventional and unconventional facilities.

DEP separated the final conventional and unconventional provisions as a result of a review by the Independent Regulatory Review Commission, which approved Part I of the regulation unanimously..

Along with the final-omitted regulation, DEP has provided the EQB with a copy of the comment/response document it prepared to comments submitted when the regulations were combined.

DEP said, “A public comment period is also contrary to the public interest because it will delay the implementation of the VOC RACT requirements in this final-omitted rulemaking, resulting in the Commonwealth being unable to satisfy the December 16, 2022, sanction deadline.

“If the Board were to provide notice of proposed rulemaking, and an additional public comment period and public hearings, the Commonwealth would be unable to submit this rulemaking to the EPA as a SIP revision by December 16, 2022.

“The entire rulemaking process in this Commonwealth takes about two years, sometimes longer, from start to finish, and the concurrent resolution process under the RRA further lengthens that timeline.

“Additional delay of this rulemaking would further harm the public interest because the Commonwealth would lose millions of dollars in Federal highway funding and much needed VOC and methane emission reductions.”

Both the Independent Regulatory Review Commission and the House and Senate still have the opportunity to review the final-omitted rulemaking under the Regulatory Review Act. Read more here.

Click Here for more background on this issue.

Also On The Agenda

A final regulation adopting a PFOS/PFOA ‘forever chemical’ Maximum Contaminant Limit in drinking water and a final regulation setting VOC Air Quality RACT requirements for shipbuilding and other operations are also on the agenda.

The meeting will be held in-person and remotely starting at 9:00 a.m. Click Here to register to join the meeting remotely.

For more information and available handouts, visit the Environmental Quality Board webpage. Questions should be directed to Laura Griffin, laurgriffi@pa.gov, 717-772-3277.

(Photo: Conventional well leaking methane in Allegheny County, EarthWorks.)

Bay Journal: With 2025 Chesapeake Bay Cleanup Goal Out Of Reach, Region Plans For What's Next At Oct. 11 Executive Council Meeting

By Hobi Nulis April 28, 2024 No comments

By Karl Blankenship, Chesapeake Bay Journal

With its 2025 deadline a little more than three years away, environmental leaders are publicly acknowledging what’s been increasingly obvious for years — that the Chesapeake Bay region will for the third time miss a self-imposed cleanup deadline.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Chesapeake Bay Foundation recently released separate evaluations of states’ cleanup efforts, and both concluded the region is not on track to reduce the amount of water-fouling nutrients that reach the Bay.

The question of what comes next is expected to be taken up by the Chesapeake Executive Council when it meets in Washington, DC, on Oct. 11.

The council, which is the senior policy-making body for Bay cleanup efforts, is expected to kick off a yearlong planning process to examine next steps and new timelines for Bay restoration activities.

The council includes the EPA administrator; the governors of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia and New York; the mayor of the District of Columbia; and the chair of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, which represents state legislatures.

It has been widely acknowledged within the state-federal Bay Program partnership for months that many of the Chesapeake restoration goals set for 2025 would not be achieved, though officials have been reluctant to publicly admit that their cornerstone nutrient pollution efforts would fall short, likely by a wide mark.

“Historically, people hesitated saying that 2025 isn’t going to be met as we envisioned,” said Adam Ortiz, administrator of the EPA’s Mid-Atlantic region, at a press briefing. “But we’re really interested in keeping it real … the sooner that we speak the truth and plan accordingly, the more successful we’ll be.”

Bay Program officials, he said, are now “engaged in that conversation about recalibrating the timeline for restoration.”

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation also acknowledged that the states are not on track with their nutrient reduction goals and that the 2025 goal will be missed.

In a separate briefing, foundation president Hilary Falk said she looked forward to working with the states to establish “appropriate deadlines” but said those should be “measured in years and not decades.”

The region previously missed cleanup deadlines set for 2000 and 2010. When the 2010 deadline was missed, the Bay Program agreed to develop a more detailed and regulatory plan.

As a result, the EPA in 2010 issued the Bay’s total maximum daily load or “pollution diet.” It assigned specific nutrient reduction goals for each state and major river in the watershed.

The Bay Program then decided that all measures needed to reach those goals should be in place by 2025. To help ensure that progress stayed on track, the states set interim two-year goals, known as milestones.

The EPA is responsible for reviewing progress and can take various actions against states if they fall off schedule.

In early years, states made progress mostly by upgrading wastewater treatment plants and largely postponing the much more difficult task of reducing polluted runoff from farms, cities and suburbs.

Now, most wastewater treatment plants have been upgraded, and about 90% of the remaining nutrient reductions must come from agriculture, an area in which all states are off track.

Pennsylvania, which has by far the most farms, is the furthest behind, at least according to computer model estimates from the Bay Program.

The EPA’s recent review shows that Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and New York all failed to meet the nutrient reduction goals they had set for the 2020–21 milestone period. None were on track to meet their agricultural goals.

The District of Columbia and West Virginia, though, have met their goals.

But Ortiz expressed optimism that the recent influx of hundreds of millions of dollars from several federal programs will accelerate pollution reduction actions in coming years.

Ortiz said the funding “represents historic opportunities” and that the EPA’s evaluations of 2020–21 progress “does not quite capture all the momentum that’s been generated in the last year.”

The Bay Foundation nutrient reduction analysis reached similar conclusions. “There is a very long way to go,” Falk said. “All jurisdictions are behind in meeting commitments to reduce pollution from stormwater and agriculture. Addressing these challenges is the defining challenge of the current partnership.”

According to Bay Program computer modeling, the region is not even halfway to its goal for reducing nitrogen, the most problematic form of nutrient pollution.

States collectively need to reduce nitrogen loads to the Bay by 71.8 million pounds per year to meet Bay water quality goals. Through 2021, the region had achieved a 30.3 million-pound reduction.

But that shortfall does not account for roughly 6 million pounds of additional nitrogen reductions needed to offset the impact of the filling of the Conowingo Dam reservoir on the Susquehanna River, which results in more nutrients flowing downstream.

EPA and state officials acknowledged this summer that goal wouldn’t be completed by 2025.

Nor does that shortfall include about 5 million pounds of nitrogen reductions that are needed to offset the impacts of climate change, which were not accounted for when the nutrient reduction goals were set.

Greater precipitation and increasingly severe storms are washing more nutrients off the land and into waterways.

A proposed update to the Bay Program’s computer model would also make the job tougher.

The update would require another 5 million pounds of nitrogen reductions to offset the impact of growth in the watershed, including increased fertilizer sales, increased farm livestock populations, development and other factors.

Senior state and federal officials in late August agreed to put those model changes on hold after the states’ environment and agriculture officials raised concerns about the accuracy of the model data and questioned if model estimates aligned with water quality monitoring.

[Visit DEP’s Chesapeake Bay Watershed webpage to learn more about cleaning up rivers and streams in Pennsylvania's portion of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Click Here to sign up for regular updates on Pennsylvania’s progress.

[How Clean Is Your Stream?

[Check DEP’s 2022 Water Quality Report to find out how clean streams are near you.]

(Photo: Dirty water flows through the Conowingo Dam, just south the PA-MD border, from Pennsylvania and New York and into the Chesapeake Bay.)

(Reprinted from the Chesapeake Bay Journal.)

Latest From The Chesapeake Bay Journal

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-- Final State Budget Includes Nearly $700 Million In Funding To Support Local And State Environmental, Recreation Infrastructure Projects!

Bills Establishing Incentives For Using Fossil-Fueled Vehicles Introduced In The House, Senate; Eliminates Support For Hybrid, Electric Vehicles

By Hobi Nulis April 27, 2024 No comments

A two-bill package has been introduced in the House and Senate to establish new incentives for the use of fossil-fueled vehicles-- rebranded as “low emission transportation fuels”-- and eliminating rebates and grants for hybrid and electric vehicles.

One set of bills amends the Alternative Fuels Incentive Act to eliminate incentives for hybrid and electric vehicles and replace them with incentives for “low emission transportation fuels”-- natural gas, renewable natural gas, propane, hydrogen, biomass and other fossil fuels-- Senate Bill 1339 (Yaw-R-Lycoming) and House Bill 2870 (Guzman-D-Berks).

The other set of bills adds natural gas, renewable natural gas, propane-- rebranding them as “low emission transportation fuels” to the “biofuel” program under the Biofuel Development And Instate Production Act Program-- Senate Bill 1338 (Yaw-R-Lycoming) and House Bill 2871 (Gleim-R-Cumberland).

The sponsors said they introduced the bills-- “to create a new definition of low carbon fuels that will include “Renewable Natural Gas” (RNG). RNG is a fuel derived from clean waste that is safe to use in all of the same applications as natural gas, including as a transportation fuel for school buses, transit systems, garbage trucks and many other applications.”

But obviously, that’s not all they do.

[Posted: October 7, 2022] PA Environment Digest

Apply Now For Institute Of Conservation Leadership Delaware River Watershed Professionals Of Color 2022 Cohort

By Hobi Nulis April 24, 2024 No comments

Conservation professionals of color in the Delaware River Watershed region can join a one-year cohort led by Institute for Conservation Leadership. The deadline to apply is October 19.

Since BIPOC communities in environmental organizations operate in a space with lower representation and higher barriers to advance their careers, this pilot program is intended to create and support a cohort of young professionals in their work.

There will be special emphasis on staff from organizations in the Delaware River Watershed Initiative and other William Penn Foundation Watershed Protection Program grantees.

The cohort will have opportunities for career development, network building, and skills development to enhance and advance their professional pursuits.

Click Here to apply and for all the details.

(Courtesy WeConservePA.)

[Posted: October 8, 2022] PA Environment Digest