Climate change solutions
We deliver game-changing environmental solutions that have a real impact for people around the globe.
Tom Neltner, J.D. is the Chemicals Policy Director and Lindsay McCormick is a Program Manager.
[pullquote]
Until California Water Board publishes its lists of fixtures that leach minimal lead, we recommend that schools and child care facilities routinely flush newly installed drinking water fixtures for several weeks and retest before allowing children to consume the water.
[/pullquote]
In November, the California Water Board took an important step that should benefit anyone seeking to buy a new faucet, drinking water fountain or other fixture – especially schools and child care facilities. The Board sent letters to more than 300 plumbing manufacturers and certifiers asking them to voluntarily provide information on fixtures that leach minimal lead. Specifically, it seeks to identify fixtures that meet lead leaching limits that are five times more protective than the current limits in the NSF/ANSI 61 standard.
The Board plans to make the compiled responses publicly available and encourage the 14,000 licensed child care centers in the state to buy new fixtures from those on the list when water testing indicates the fixture should be replaced. We anticipate that the Board will utilize the list to identify fixtures to purchase through a $5 million grant program the California State General Legislature established when it enacted AB-2370 last year. The funds are designed to help licensed child care facilities meet the state’s new mandated water testing and remediation program.
Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director, Lindsay McCormick, Program Manager, and Sam Lovell, Project Manager.
See all blogs in our LCR series.
Yesterday, EDF submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on their proposed revisions to the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR), focusing on changes that EPA should to make to the:
We highlighted strengths and weaknesses of the LCR in a blog earlier this week, and we encourage states and communities to consider adopting the positive provisions now in addition to the changes we ask EPA to adopt in these comments. Below is a summary of our comments on these three issues. We plan to address other issues on the proposed revisions to the LCR in later comments.
Lead Service Line Definition
EPA’s proposed change to the current definition of an LSL at 40 CFR § 141.2 is flawed because it continues to exempt goosenecks, pigtails, or other connectors made of lead. These connectors are a major source of lead in drinking water not just because they are made of lead, but because they can release significant amounts of lead particulate into water as they flex with temperature, are scoured by turbulent water flow, and as other conditions change.
The exemption of these connectors from the definition of an LSL would render a water system’s LSL inventory and periodic notices to customers misleading because service lines described as “non-lead” may actually have some lead pipe in them. This will give residents a false sense of security. We recommend that the agency modify the proposed definition by deleting the exemption and explicitly stating that goosenecks, pigtails and connectors made of lead are LSLs.
Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director, Lindsay McCormick, Program Manager, and Sam Lovell, Project Manager.
See all blogs in our LCR series.
In October, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed changes to its outdated Lead and Copper Rule (LCR), the federal regulation designed to control those contaminants in drinking water. As the result of more than a decade of work by dedicated agency experts, the proposal makes several improvements to key parts of the rule, including requirements for lead service line (LSL) inventories and customer notification. LSLs are the lead pipes that connect the main under the street to homes and buildings and are the most significant source of lead in drinking water.
Unfortunately, EPA’s proposed rule has several serious flaws, including that it:
EPA is accepting comments on the proposed revisions until February 12, 2020. We are preparing detailed comments calling for the agency to fix the flaws before finalizing the rule, and we encourage others to comment as well.
Despite these shortcomings, we want to highlight four positive elements of the proposed rule and encourage states and communities to consider implementing them now – not just because they are likely to be required in the future – but also because they set the stage for full LSL replacement. These elements are that water systems must:
In this blog, we provide an overview of these key improvements. In future blogs, we will describe our recommendations to strengthen the rule based on our comments to the agency.
Stephanie Schwarz, J.D., is a Legal Fellow. Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
Over two years have passed since EPA published its first, highly controversial New Chemicals Decision-Making Framework. This document attempted to lay out major changes EPA was making, in response to relentless industry pressure, to its reviews of new chemicals entering the market. Prior to this, EPA had been conducting reviews that largely conformed to the new requirements for these reviews that Congress included in the reforms to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) enacted in June 2016.
Among the many concerning aspects of EPA’s new approach were its herculean efforts to avoid finding a new chemical “may present an unreasonable risk” or that the information available to EPA is insufficient to permit a reasoned evaluation of the chemical. Under reformed TSCA, either of those findings requires EPA to issue an order – as specified under section 5(e) of TSCA – that restricts the chemical, requires testing, or both in a manner sufficient to ameliorate the potential risk.
One of EPA’s new tactics was to illegally bifurcate its review of a company’s “intended” uses of the new chemical from other “reasonably foreseen” uses. The company would get the coveted unfettered approval to enter commerce, based on an EPA review limited to its intended uses; these approvals take the form of EPA issuing a finding that the chemical is “not likely to present an unreasonable risk.” Any review of other reasonably foreseen uses would be relegated (if it took place at all) to a later, wholly separate process that would only be triggered if EPA also promulgated a so-called “significant new use rule” (SNUR). Under such a SNUR, a company seeking to engage in a reasonably foreseen use of the chemical EPA identified would be required to first notify EPA, who would then conduct a review of that new, now “intended,” use.
These SNURs are often referred to as “non-5(e) order SNURs” because they do not follow from EPA’s issuance of an order under section 5(e) – indeed, avoiding such orders was the whole point. We have previously addressed the many problems – legal, policy, and scientific – with this approach; see for example, here and here. These include:
EPA held a public meeting and took public comment on its 2017 Framework at the time it was published. But it never responded to the many comments it received criticizing its framework. And when EPA was sued over its use of the Framework, it dodged the suit by claiming it was not using the Framework (see p. 14 here), leading to the lawsuit being withdrawn. (Later in this post below we discuss that EPA has in fact been repeatedly using the core feature of the Framework.)
Meanwhile, hundreds of decisions made with no public framework
EPA has never made public any subsequent description of its decision-making approach or justification for it, despite the hundreds of new chemical approvals it has been cranking out ever since. EPA has also never responded to the numerous public comments it received criticizing its framework.
Frustration over this situation led to a Congressional call for EPA to publish and then take comment on an updated description of its new chemicals review process. Last January, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler made a commitment to Senator Carper to publish a revised new chemicals framework that would specify: “(i) the statutory and scientific justifications for the approaches described, (ii) the policies and procedures EPA is using/plans to use in its PMN reviews, and (iii) its responses to public comments received,” and to provide opportunity for public comment on the revised framework.
Last month EPA announced that it will hold a “Public Meeting on [the] TSCA New Chemicals Program,” which is to take place tomorrow, December 10. However, while the agenda includes a speaker who will provide an “overview” of what EPA is now calling its “working approach,” EPA’s announcement indicated it would not release any actual document before the public meeting; instead, it will do so “by the end of the year.” And while the meeting agenda provides for “public feedback” at the end of the meeting, the lack of any document to respond to will surely limit the ability of the public to provide meaningful input.
Absent such a public document, the rest of this post will provide our best understanding of how EPA has been reviewing new chemicals over the last two years, based on our scrutiny of each such decision. (more…)
Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director.
When it comes to addressing the challenge of lead service lines (LSLs), recent events in New Jersey have set the stage for long-term progress amid short-term crises. The watershed moment came on October 10, when Jersey Water Works and Governor Phil Murphy held a joint press conference announcing their respective plans to reduce lead in drinking water that featured a shared goal of fully replacing the state’s estimated 350,000 LSLs within ten years. A week earlier, Congress enacted a law, authored by Senator Booker, enabling New Jersey – and other states as well – to secure critical funding by shifting the state’s share of the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (SRF) to the Drinking Water SRF.
With the Governor’s announcement, New Jersey joins Michigan and Washington as the only states to commit to fully replacing LSLs. It also becomes a leader among the 16 states that have adopted policies in the past four years that support the hundreds of communities taking action to replace their LSLs.
As other states consider the LSL challenge, they should look to the process New Jersey used to reach this stage and its close coordination with state agencies.
Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
When EPA released the draft of its risk evaluation for methylene chloride at the end of last month, some were surprised that EPA had identified numerous unreasonable risks presented under a variety of the chemical’s conditions of use.
In an earlier post, EDF provided some context, noting how dangerous the chemical is and raising initial concerns that EPA was once again excluding known uses and exposures, making unsupported assumptions, and applying inappropriate risk benchmarks that were once again leading it to significantly understate the actual risks posed by methylene chloride.
Four weeks later, EDF has confirmed these concerns in spades. Last night we filed 84 pages of comments on the draft risk evaluation, for consideration by EPA’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC), which will meet next week to peer review the draft.
EDF’s deep dive into the draft demonstrates that EPA has employed a host of unwarranted and unsupported assumptions and methodological approaches that lead it to either avoid identifying unreasonable risk when it should have, or to understate the extent and magnitude of the unreasonable risks it did identify. Below we summarize some of the major concerns, which are addressed in detail in our comments. (more…)
