EPA Finalizes Ozone NAAQS, Retaining Current Standards

News release from the USEPA

WASHINGTON (December 23, 2020) — Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing its decision to retain, without changes, the 2015 ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) set by the Obama-Biden Administration. With this action, EPA is following the principles established in the earliest days of the Trump Administration to streamline the NAAQS review process and to fulfill the statutory responsibility to complete the NAAQS review within five-years. Today’s action marks the second time in Clean Air Act history that the agency has completed an ozone NAAQS review within the congressionally mandated five-year timeframe. This is a needed departure from previous administrations’ failure to meet statutory deadlines, often taking years longer under court-imposed deadlines to complete reviews.

“For only the second time in agency’s history, EPA is fulfilling its statutory obligation to complete NAAQS review for ozone within a five-year time frame,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “Our actions today show the Trump Administration is fulfilling its promise of protecting human health and environment for all Americans, regardless of where they live.”

The decision to retain the existing ozone standards comes after careful review and consideration of the most recent available scientific evidence and technical information, consultation with the agency’s independent science advisors, and consideration of more than 50,000 public comments on the proposal.

Since the beginning of the Trump Administration, EPA has re-designated to attainment eight nonattainment areas for the 2008 8-hour ozone standards. In this same timeframe, U.S. nitrogen oxide emissions have dropped ten percent and volatile organic compound emissions have dropped three percent. Similarly, national average ozone concentrations have gone down four percent. Since 1990, national average ozone concentrations have dropped 25 percent.

“With air continuing to get cleaner as states implement existing standards, this measure strikes the right balance between protecting public health while supporting recovering communities… We commend EPA for [retaining] existing ozone standards. This proposal supports local communities now fighting to get back on their feet, while continuing to drive improved air quality under existing programs. It is backed by both EPA and its outside scientific advisors,” said U.S. Congressmen John Shimkus (IL-15), Greg Walden (OR-02), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05), Bob Latta (OH-05), Brett Gurthrie (KY-02), Pete Olson (TX-22), David McKinley (WV-01), Morgan Griffith (VA-09), Billy Long (MO-07), Larry Buschon (IN-08), Bill Flores (TX-17), Markwayne Mullin (OK-02), Buddy Carter (GA-01), Jeff Duncan (SC-03), Greg Gianforte (MT-At Large), Scott Perry (PA-10), Alex Mooney (WV-02), Glenn Grothman (WI-6), Randy Weber (TX-14), Carol Miller (WV-03), Troy Balderson (OH-12), Dan Newhouse (WA-04), Dan Crenshaw (TX-02), Tom Tiffany (WI-07), Steve Chabot (OH-01), Doug Lamborn (CO-05), Kelly Armstrong (ND-At Large), and Debbie Lesko (AZ-08). 

In May 2018, EPA issued a “Back-to-Basics” memo to improve EPA’s process for reviewing the NAAQS. The memo laid out goals to get EPA back on track with Clean Air requirements, statutory deadlines, and the issuance of timely implementation rules, to ensure continued improvements in air quality across the country. Today’s action is the first NAAQS review to do so and charts a path to continue this statutory responsibility in the future.   

Background

The Clean Air Act requires EPA to set NAAQS for “criteria pollutants.” Currently, ozone (and related photochemical oxidants) and five other major pollutants are listed as criteria pollutants. The law requires EPA to periodically review the relevant scientific information and the standards and revise them, if appropriate, to ensure that the standards provide the requisite protection for public health and welfare.

In the prior review of the ozone standards, which was completed in 2015, the Obama-Biden EPA increased the stringency of the levels of the ozone standards to 70 parts per billion (ppb), from the 2008 standard of 75 ppb.

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Grant funding updates from NYDEC’s Division of Water

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that $19 million in federal grant funding is available to municipalities through the Consolidated Funding Application for infrastructure projects that protect or improve water quality.

This funding is made available through the Green Innovation Grant Program (GIGP) and Engineering Planning Grant (EPG). 

The Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC) will host a webinar to present the GIGP and EPG programs on January 13, 2021 at 11 a.m.  A recording of the webinar will be available on EFC’s website after January 13.

The webinar will provide an overview of the GIGP and EPG programs as well as guidance on how to apply for grant funds. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions. Register for the webinar on EFC’s website. 

Applications Being Accepted for DEC/EFC Engineering Planning Grant
Applications are now being accepted through the Consolidated Funding Application (CFA) for the Engineering Planning Grant (EPG) until 4:00 PM on February 12 .

Up to $2 million has been made available for this round of funding. The EPG funds production of an engineering report for eligible Clean Water State Revolving Fund water quality projects. For full program details and requirements, view the EPG Round 10 Program Overview (PDF). DEC offers this opportunity in partnership with the Environmental Facilities Corporation.

Applications Being Accepted for EFC’s Green Innovation Grant Program. Applications are now being accepted through the Consolidated Funding Application (CFA) until 4:00 PM on February 12 for the Green Innovation Grant Program (GIGP). Up to $17 million has been made available for this round of funding.

The GIGP provides grants for projects that improve water quality and mitigate the effects of climate change through the implementation of green infrastructure, energy efficiency and/or water efficiency practices. For full program requirements, view EFC’s GIGP webpage.

Seasons Greetings and Happy New Year from DEC’s Division of WaterWinter Water  

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Blank Rome law firm signs new 16-year lease at One Logan Square in Philadelphia, but square footage is TBD

The exterior of One Logan Square.

By Natalie Kostelni  – Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal

Blank Rome, one of Philadelphia’s largest law firms, has signed a new 16-year lease on space in the Center City building where it currently resides — One Logan Square.

What makes the deal unusual and unprecedented, at least in the Philadelphia market, is how much space the law firm will take hasn’t been determined. “I don’t know,” said Grant S. Palmer, CEO and managing partner at Blank Rome when asked how many square feet the firm will occupy under the new lease.

Palmer isn’t being cagy. Blank Rome currently occupies 196,000 square feet at One Logan and its new lease with Brandywine Realty Trust provides an option for it to contract its space when the new lease takes effect and continue to do so going forward. Most leases are typically negotiated to include options to expand a tenant’s space over time but not this one.

“We can give back space at the beginning of the lease. We know we are going to do that but we don’t have numbers,” Palmer said. “We already have more space than we need.”

There is an undisclosed range of space the firm has committed to but it’s a fraction of what it is currently occupying.

Grant Palmer is managing partner at Blank Rome.
Grant S. Palmer

This year has largely been defined by companies large and small delaying long-term decisions on office leases. The pandemic upended how businesses view and use office space, prompting them to wait and see how to approach their use in the future. Two other Philadelphia law firms, Dechert and Baker Hostettler, are still in the market looking for office space.

For Brandywine, One Logan’s landlord, the lease with Blank Rome helps to stabilize the office building. A representative from Brandywine couldn’t be reached for comment.

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On a Trump-loving island in the Chesapeake, a virus outbreak unites instead of divides

The virus was probably abetted by Tangier’s close ties of kinship and history. But those ties have also given the island its best chance at stopping covid-19′s spread, as residents do everything they can to save the lives of neighbors who are, in many cases, lifelong friends or blood relatives.

A Trump flag on Tangier Island. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

By Peter Jamison, Washington Post

TANGIER, Va. — The news at the dock was bad.

As a handful of masked passengers stepped off the Courtney Thomas, one of the only boats still traveling to and from this remote island in the Chesapeake Bay, Susan Parks looked for the oxygen machine that was scheduled to arrive for her patients. The home-health aide could see it was not among the packages and mail being unloaded. The boat’s captain, Brett Thomas, had another reason to look somber as he stepped off his boat beneath a clear December sky.

“I don’t think Mr. Leon’s doing too well,” he said quietly.

A man walking by looked up.

“He’s had a rough go of it?”

“I think so.”

For eight months, the 450 residents of Tangier Island were spared a single case of coronavirus. Now Leon McMann, 89, a Tangier resident who had still been working on his boat the previous winter, was sick. So were many others.

McMann’s daughter and his son-in-law, Mayor James “Ooker” Eskridge. The physician assistant who runs the island’s sole health clinic. Her husband. School teachers, church elders. Thomas’s grandparents. The young and the old.

Over the centuries, Tangier, separated by 12 miles of water from the mainland, has preserved a unique and quirky heritage. Its residents — conservative, religious and intensely social —speak in a maritime brogue that confounds the ears of outsiders. They are simultaneously threatened by and skeptical of climate change, which scientists say could make the island uninhabitable within the next five decades. Most are fiercely devoted to President Trump, who called Tangier’s mayor to tell him not to worry about rising sea levels.

But they are also fiercely devoted to one another. And after the first infections appeared around Thanksgiving, the islanders reacted in a way that once again sets them apart — and that few would have predicted based on their politics.

Across the United States, the pandemic has divided people. Here it has united them. As Americans elsewhere argue over mask mandates, business closures and vaccines, Tangier has carried out a lockdown stricter than those in many large liberal cities. Face coverings are not only required in public spaces indoors; their use outdoors is widespread.

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Energy Department Awards $6 Million to Develop Training Programs for Professionals Working with New Energy Technologies

From EERE News

Today the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded approximately $6 million to five organizations that will develop training programs for emergency responders, building managers and owners, and other officials interacting with solar energy and storage systems, alternative-fuel vehicles and their chargers, and energy-efficient building technologies.

Led by or working with professional associations, work done through these projects could educate hundreds of thousands of U.S. safety and building workers. These professionals are at the front lines as more solar systems are built, more vehicles run on batteries and nontraditional fuels, and more buildings become “smarter” and more energy-efficient. A well-trained workforce familiar with clean energy will improve safety, expedite permitting, reduce liability and insurance costs, and increase consumer confidence.

“As advanced energy technologies are built across America, firefighters, building managers, mechanics, and other workers have new job responsibilities,” said Daniel R Simmons, Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). “These projects will help them work with new energy technologies safely and effectively.”

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And while NJ taxpayers are distracted by the holidays…


New Jersey Playbook
BY MATT FRIEDMAN
It was one thing to give people a day and a half to digest a dense, nearly 220-page bill that would authorize up to $11.5 billion in corporate tax breaks before holding a committee hearing on it.

But lawmakers took opaqueness to a new level Friday by inserting 140 pages of amendments at that committee hearing and expanding the size of the program by a couple billion dollars.

Today, the Legislature is scheduled to vote on the bill.Gov. Phil Murphy and EDA CEO Tim Sullivan have tried to reassure people that this bill has safeguards against the abuses that plagued the last massive tax break program. And the Murphy administration last night rolled out supportive quotes from a bunch of people. But the rushed legislative process speaks much louder than reassurances or statements of support. There is no deadline New Jersey is up against to pass such a massive bill, but they’re acting as if there is.

Murphy in 2019 launched an investigation that uncovered massive special interest self-dealing and a culture of abuse that accompanied previous tax breaks. For years, the champions of these incentive programs have said the state doesn’t spend any money because it’s revenue it wouldn’t otherwise have. But we now know New Jersey was left giving many companies tax breaks, which they most often sold to other companies, to move to places they already planned to move to, or to stay in places they never really planned to leave. That was revenue the state would have otherwise had as we’re facing down a pandemic that’s cut into tax revenue. A pandemic that led the governor to push $4.5 billion in borrowing.

If this program is as good as they say it is, they could try letting people examine it. But apparently they’re pretty confident Democrats in the Legislature are going to “get to yes” on it.

Related news stories:
After scandal and delays, massive N.J. corporate tax credit bill gets major push, with scant scrutiny
Massive $11.5B business tax break bill quickly advanced by N.J. lawmakers, set for full vote Monday

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