Focus
THE HILL - Jul 10 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday sent a proposed rule to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. The OMB review is the final step before the rule can be made available for public comment. The proposed rule would replace the Clean Power Plan, the main pillar of former President Obama’s climate change agenda that sought a 32 percent cut in carbon emissions from the country’s power sector by 2030. Sources familiar with the EPA’s deliberations say the agency wants to write a regulation that focuses almost exclusively on making coal-fired power plants more efficient but would result in minimal reductions in carbon emissions. Environmentalists say the regulation could increase emissions since coal plants would become cheaper to operate.
THE NEW YORK TIMES - Jul 6 In the final hours of Scott Pruitt’s tenure as administrator, the EPA moved last Friday to effectively grant a loophole that will allow a major increase in the manufacturing of glider trucks, which produce as much as 55 times the air pollution as diesel freight trucks with modern emissions controls. The move came after lobbying by a small set of manufacturers that sell glider trucks, and it was opposed by an alliance of public health organizations, environmental groups, and major industry players including United Parcel Service, the largest truck fleet owner, and Volvo Group, one of the largest truck manufacturers. A glider truck is a new truck body that is equipped with an older engine built before new technologies significantly reduced emissions of particulates and nitrogen oxide. EPA officials confirmed to The New York Times that, through the end of 2019, the agency will not enforce an annual cap of 300 gliders per manufacturer that was imposed in January. The EPA is also considering formally delaying the 300-unit cap until December 2019 — by which point it hopes to have permanently repealed the cap. An estimated 10,000 glider trucks were sold nationally in 2015 — about 4 percent of new heavy-duty truck sales — and production could soon return to that level.
THE SACRAMENTO BEE - Jul 6 The State Water Resources Control Board (Board) proposed sweeping changes in the allocation of water in California's San Joaquin River system last Friday, leaving more water in the system to help ailing fish populations and less for farming and human consumption. State officials say as little as 20 percent of the river currently reaches the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The proposal released Friday would increase the river’s so-called "unimpeded flows" to a range of 30 percent to 50 percent, which could reduce water deliveries to users who rely on the San Joaquin and its tributaries, including the cities of San Francisco, Modesto, and Merced and hundreds of farms in the San Joaquin Valley. The Board plans to vote on the proposal in August. Separately, the Board released a preliminary plan increasing the unimpeded flows in the Sacramento River watershed to up to 65 percent, with more details to come later this year.
THE MERCURY NEWS - Jul 10 A California appeals court has rejected a long-running attempt by environmentalists to drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park, a linchpin of the water supply for 2.6 million Bay Area residents. In a 3-0 ruling filed on Monday, the Fifth District Court of Appeal in Fresno upheld a lower court decision by a Tuolumne County Superior Court judge two years ago, rejecting arguments that the reservoir, built in 1923, violates California’s constitution. The environmental group, Restore Hetch Hetchy, argued that the reservoir and its 312-foot-high dam violate a state constitutional provision that requires water to be diverted in a “reasonable” way, because there are other places to store Hetch Hetchy’s water that are not in a national park.
LOS ANGELES TIMES - Jul 10 The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) Tuesday reaffirmed its approval of an $11-billion investment in the massive California WaterFix project that will build twin tunnels beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The re-vote followed a complaint that some board members had violated California’s open meetings law (known as the Brown Act) when they engaged in a series of phone calls and text messages prior to the board’s April 10 vote to finance two-thirds of the project. While denying that the communications amounted to a Brown Act violation, MWD scheduled another vote for July. MWD’s decision to pay much of the $17-billion bill for the twin tunnels kept the project alive after big agricultural districts in the San Joaquin Valley declined to pay their expected share of the long-planned project.
