EPA Funding to Accelerate Ag Pollution Reductions in Pennsylvania

Projects Eyed in ‘Most Effective Basis’

Chesapeake watershed

Environmental Protection Agency News Releases

PHILADELPHIA (August 12, 2020) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced it is seeking applications to administer nearly $3.4 million to improve water quality in Pennsylvania streams and rivers and the Chesapeake Bay by reducing excess nitrogen from agricultural operations.

At the same time, EPA is providing an additional $300,000 to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to assist with projects that will result from the nearly $3.4 million appropriation.

Pennsylvania received the largest share of a pot of $6 million for targeted restoration actions across the Chesapeake Bay watershed.  The $6 million is part of an increase in the FY 2020 EPA Chesapeake Bay Program budget designated for “state-based implementation in the most effective basins.”

“This is part of EPA’s commitment to helping states in the watershed achieve their goals of restoring local waters and the Chesapeake Bay,” said EPA Mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator Cosmo Servidio.  “These funds will get pollutant reduction projects on the ground in Pennsylvania in the quickest and most efficient way possible.”

In a separate announcement on July 14, 2020, EPA reallocated $3.8 million to support priority actions in Pennsylvania to reduce agricultural-related pollution.

Today’s EPA Request for Applications (RFA) will fund one or two multi-year cooperative agreements to accelerate the implementation of best management practices in Pennsylvania’s most effective basins, and to track, verify and report progress.

The intent of the RFA is to assist Pennsylvania in achieving its 2025 water quality goals under the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (Bay TMDL) and its Phase III Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP).

EPA analyses have shown that reducing nitrogen through improved agricultural practices in the bay watershed is far less costly – and more effective – than reducing phosphorus to improve water quality.

Each state in the Chesapeake Bay watershed submitted Phase III WIPs, in which they committed to reduce nitrogen loads from the agriculture sector from 2019 to 2025. The following funding allocations were calculated as a percentage of the total of each bay jurisdictions’ WIP commitments:

  • Pennsylvania: $3,695,112
  • Virginia: $1,110,191
  • Maryland: $695,940
  • Delaware: $364,540
  • New York: $79,536
  • West Virginia: $54,681

The District of Columbia, the remaining jurisdictional partner, does not have an agricultural commitment in its Phase III WIP.

Each of the 383 basins in the Chesapeake Bay watershed was evaluated as part of a relative effectiveness determination. A total of 26 of the top 30 most effective basins are located in Pennsylvania, including all of the top 15.

As an upstream jurisdiction in the nation’s largest estuary, Pennsylvania has a significant impact on the Chesapeake Bay and much of its watershed and has a pivotal role in the ongoing restoration effort. The Susquehanna River provides about 50 percent of the freshwater flows to the estuary, about half of the nitrogen, and more than a quarter of the phosphorus.

According to its Phase III WIP, Pennsylvania only meets 75% of its numeric planning target for nitrogen by 2025, resulting in a 10-million-pound nitrogen gap.  Pennsylvania is planning to achieve more than 90 percent of its nitrogen reductions in the agriculture sector and has initiated county-wide pilot efforts in Lancaster, York, Adams, and Franklin counties to target the implementation of the most effective pollutant reduction practices in those locations with the largest opportunities for reducing pollutant loads.

Achieving the projected water quality goals in these counties, including initiating additional efforts to close the nitrogen gap, will require increased coordination and collaboration with the agriculture sector, as well as increased and accelerated levels of BMP implementation.

For more information and to see a copy of the RFA, visit: https://www.epa.gov/chesapeake-bay-tmdl/epa-r3-cbp-20-03  

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EPA Releases Final Chemical Risk Evaluation for 1-BP


OPPT Update Header

Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the final risk evaluation for 1-bromopropane (1-BP). Under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), EPA is required to evaluate the risks associated with existing chemicals in commerce using the best available science before taking action to address any unreasonable risks. Today’s final risk findings complete the risk evaluation process required by TSCA for 1-BP.


EPA used feedback received from the public and the scientific peer review process carried out by the Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals to inform the final risk evaluation. The final risk evaluation for 1-BP shows that there are unreasonable risks to workers, occupational non-users, consumers, and bystanders for 16 out of 25 conditions of use. EPA did not find unreasonable risks to the environment or to the general population for all conditions of use.

The next step in the process required by TSCA is developing a plan to reduce or eliminate the unreasonable risks found in the final risk evaluation. EPA is moving immediately to risk management for this chemical and will work as quickly as possible to propose and finalize actions to protect workers, occupational non-users, consumers, and bystanders.

There are several actions EPA could take to address these risks, including regulations on how the chemical is used, or limiting or prohibiting the manufacture, processing, distribution in the marketplace, use, or disposal of this chemical, as applicable. As with any chemical product, EPA strongly recommends that users of products containing 1-BP continue to carefully follow all instructions on the product’s label and safety data sheet.
View the 1-BP final risk evaluation and supporting documents.

Background1-BP is used as a solvent in commercial and industrial applications and as a reactant in the manufacturing of other chemical substances. Common commercial uses of 1-BP are as a solvent in vapor degreasing, dry cleaning, spot cleaners, stain removers, adhesives, sealants, and automobile care products. Consumer uses include adhesives, degreasers, cleaners, and automobile care products.

In June 2020, EPA granted two petitions to add 1-BP to the Clean Air Act list of air toxics. 

Exposure to the general population from ambient air is not part of this risk evaluation. The agency will take a separate regulatory action to add 1-BP to the Clean Air Act list of Hazardous Air Pollutants. After 1-BP is added to the list, EPA may revise air toxic standards for source categories that emit 1-BP or add new source categories for sources of 1-BP emissions.

EPA plans to issue final risk evaluations for the remaining eight of the first 10 chemicals by the end of 2020. Learn more about the risk evaluation process required by TSCA: https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/how-epa-evaluates-safety-existing-chemicals.

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In first ad, Dem DePasquale wants you to go where everybody knows his name

By John L. Micek  Tuesday Morning Coffee, Pennsylvania Capital-Star

(Screen Capture)

Good Tuesday Morning, Fellow Seekers.

Democratic 10th Congressional District candidate Eugene DePasquale is on the air with his first campaign ad, a biographical spot called “Restaurant,” that punches up his blue-collar roots as the son of a Pittsburgh bar owner.

“I grew up in a bar. My family was working class,” DePasquale says in the 30-second spot filmed inside a bar that should be plenty familiar to thirsty central Pennsylvanians — the Sturges Speakeasy on Forster Street in Harrisburg, across the street from the Capitol.

“When I wasn’t bussing tables, I umpired Little League games and worked as a janitor to pay for college,” he continues, wiping down the bar and pouring suds. “I learned a lot of life lessons from the people in my neighborhood.”

DePasquale told the Capital-Star that his family owned a bar in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood.

It was initially called Allie’s, before it changed its name to the Panther Hollow Inn in 1981. As the name suggests, the bar sat between the campuses of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. It has since closed, his campaign said.

The spot will start airing today in the greater Harrisburg media market, which includes all three counties in the district: Cumberland, Dauphin and York counties, and run through Election Day.

DePasquale’s campaign would only say it was “investing six figures a week,” on the spot, which will air on broadcast and cable outlets in the district, as well as online.

Congressman Scott Perry, R-10th District, answers a question at a Hummelstown public meeting with constituents on July 30th, 2019. (Capital-Star photo by Stephen Caruso)

While it doesn’t say it out loud, or mention his name, the ad feels like a deliberate attempt to neutralize some of the working class cred claimed by GOP incumbent U.S. Rep. Scott Perry. While overwhelmingly suburban, the district also takes in some of the more rural and blue-collar precincts of Cumberland and York counties.

In a 2018 interview with PennLive, Perry said he grew up the son of a single mother (who eventually remarried); had no relationship to speak of with his birth father, and grew up in a house without electricity or indoor plumbing. In fact, “for a period of several years, Perry has [2018] told campaign audiences, the family lived using a generator for power, taking their water from a pump, and making full use of an outhouse on the property,” PennLive reported.

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This giant climate hot spot is robbing the West of its water

By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
Photos by Carolyn Van Houten

ORCHARD CITY, Colo. — On New Year’s Day in 2018, Paul Kehmeier and his father drove up Grand Mesa until they got to the county line, 10,000 feet above sea level. Instead of the three to five feet of snow that should have been on the ground, there wasn’t enough of a dusting to even cover the grass.

The men marveled at the sight, and Kehmeier snapped a photo of his dad, “standing on the bare pavement, next to bare ground.”

Here, on Colorado’s Western Slope, no snow means no snowpack. And no snowpack means no water in an area that’s so dry it’s lucky to get 10 inches of rain a year. A few months after taking the photo, Kehmeier stared across the land his family had tilled for four generations and made a harsh calculation: He could make more money selling his ranch’s water than working his land.

Water from Colorado’s snowpack is distributed across the region through a complex network of dams, pipelines and irrigation canals.

A 20-year drought is stealing the water that sustains this region, and climate change is making it worse.

“In all my years of farming in the area, going back to about 1950, 2018 was the toughest, driest year I can remember,” said Paul’s father, Norman, who still does a fair share of the farm’s tractor work at 94.

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Murphy threatens to completely close N.J. bars despite falling COVID-19 transmission rate

TRENTON, N.J. – We learned that New Jersey’s rate of coronavirus transmission has fallen to .98 on Monday, crossing a key threshold which the Murphy Administration repeatedly cites as key to reopening shuttered businesses.

So it’s “good” news.  Or so we were led to believe? – Also on Monday, Governor Murphy took to Twitter to […]

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