The first of several promised clashes over U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulatory powers came this week at a hearing over a Republican bill that would block the agency from regulating greenhouse gases in an effort to slow climate change.

At a heated Wednesday hearing by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, EPA Director Lisa Jackson was questioned for hours about the impact of new Clean Air Act regulations on business.

Since the beginning of the year, EPA has required industry to report their CO2 emissions, and those responsible for major new sources of pollution are required to conduct an analysis of the “Best Available Control Technology” for reducing CO2 emissions. EPA has also announced that it will propose greenhouse gas standards for utilities and refineries this year and finalize them next year.

“Let’s face it,” said House Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), “these regulations and others from EPA amount to a war on domestic coal. Coal is the energy source America possesses in the greatest abundance. It provides half the nation’s electricity and 92 percent in my home state of Kentucky, and it does so because it is affordable.”

Whitfield, together with House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) ranking member of the Senate Committee On Environment and Public Works, are the sponsors of the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011.

The bill states:

The Administrator may not, under [the Clean Air Act], promulgate any regulation concerning, take action relating to, or take into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas due to concerns regarding possible climate change.

In her testimony, Jackson called the Clean Air Act a public health measure that has prevented 205,000 deaths since 1990, and she said that the agency move to regulate greenhouse gas emissions was a necessary science-based decision aimed at protecting the country from the public health threat that is climate change.

Jackson also pointed out that EPA’s responsibility to regulate carbon emissions was acknowledged (PDF) by her predecessor in the Bush administration.

“Chairman Upton’s bill would, in its own words, ‘repeal’ the scientific finding regarding greenhouse gas emissions, she said. “Politicians overruling scientists on a scientific question — that would become part of this committee’s legacy.”

Many lawmakers and witnesses at the hearing seemed comfortable with such a legacy.

Any EPA regulation of greenhouse gases will be “all pain and no gain” said Rep. Inhofe. “[I]t is unfair and unacceptable to ask the steel worker in Ohio, the chemical plant worker in Michigan, and the coal miner in West Virginia to sacrifice their jobs so we can reduce temperature by a barely detectable amount in 100 years.”

Nucor Steel environmental manager Steve Rowlan told the committee that uncertainly about greenhouse gas rules caused his company to scale down a new iron facility in Louisiana.

The impact of these new regulations on capital projects is real. We recently received a permit, under the new GHG rules, for a direct reduced iron facility in Louisiana. This is a $750 million project that will create 500 construction jobs and 150 permanent ones. It is a great job-creating investment, particularly in this economy. But this project is not as large as the $2 billion investment we initially intended. Due to the uncertainty created by these regulations, we made the difficult decision to delay the $2 billion investment, also delaying the creation of 2,000 construction jobs and 500 permanent ones.

Rowlan said that his biggest concern is that future EPA carbon regulations could increase the cost of electricity.

“Cheap energy is the lifeblood of industry,” he said in an interview with The American Independent. “You always hear people say, ‘We need clean green power’ well we need ‘Clean, green, affordable and reliable power.’”

Steve Cousins, vice president of Lion Oil of El Dorado, Ark., told the committee that he is troubled by the EPA requirement that any expansion of refinery operations involve implementation of best available control technology for greenhouse gas emissions.

“It is unclear what technology constitutes BACT,“ he said. “EPA’s federal guidance on what defines BACT is far too broad and confusing regarding what measures our refinery would be able to employ to control emissions, and whether permits would actually be approved and issued in certain circumstances.”

U.S. Steel Corporation environmental manager Fred Harnack said that EPA carbon rules will not reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Since greenhouse gas emissions are a complex global issue, a simplistic regulatory approach may reduce greenhouse gas emissions locally (in United States) while increasing emissions outside the United States by encouraging companies to move or expand operations to another country. As demonstrated by the United Kingdom’s example, energy-intensive manufacturing activity will decline, but consumer demand for energy-intensive goods will still grow. The net environmental effect of such is actually worse for the environment as goods are sourced from less efficient producers and additional long-distance transportation is required.

In a memo (PDF) to Democratic members of the Energy and Power Subcommittee, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), ranking member of the Energy and Power Subcommittee, said that the Upton bill would threaten implementation of renewable fuel standards and create legal uncertainty about the status of the recent motor vehicle standards adopted by EPA.

An ORC International poll conducted earlier this month found that 63 percent of people — including most Republicans — believe the EPA needs to do more to hold polluters accountable and protect air and water.

That survey found that only 18 percent of Americans believe that Congress should block the EPA from updating pollution safeguards.

The Sierra Club is determined to reduce U.S. oil dependence. (Flickr, The Sierra Club)

The Sierra Club is in the process of trying to answer that question. For the past six months, it has worked on a massive study on how to reduce the United States’ oil dependence in an economically and environmentally beneficial way. The group is also building a coalition of environmental advocates and lawmakers to support the project, which will quantify potential oil-use reductions across every industrial sector.

“Over the next 20 years, how steep can we make cuts in oil consumption while allowing the economy to flourish and while creating more jobs rather than penalizing individual workers or communities?” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune asked. “So, this will be a major priority of the club over the next several years — to build a broad based coalition of organizations and elected officials who will want to stand up for a very thoughtful and pragmatic, but visionary and aggressive plan to get off oil.”

Brune, who took over his post just one month before the oil spill started, recently sat down for an interview with me. He outlined the organization’s oil study, talked about the prospects for energy legislation and previewed the upcoming mid-term elections.

Here is an edited-down version of our talk:

What is the major issue going forward for the Sierra Club right now?
Our top issue remains fighting climate change in a way that increases the availability of clean energy like solar and wind, while also improving the public health benefits associated with decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels.

Is the focus now on Environmental Protection Agency regulations, Congress or both?
I would say both for sure. We see great opportunity in EPA rulemakings to increase public health benefits by forcing utilities in particular to account for the cost of their pollution. A top priority right now is organizing around EPA’s hearings on coal ash, to make sure that coal ash is treated as a hazardous waste. But, over the next couple of years, we’ll be looking at a whole series of rulemakings, many of which are focused on stationary sources like coal plants, but we’re also looking at EPA rulemakings to cut our dependence on oil.

Is there a serious concern about challenges to EPA’s regulatory authority under the Clean Air Act going forward?
Yeah, certainly many threats have been made to EPA’s authority to act under the Clean Air Act, attempts either to gut the Clean Air Act or eliminate EPA’s authority. So, we’re taking those threats very seriously. We also think that should there be a public debate about these issues that the public overwhelmingly supports strong, effective and cost-effective regulations that have come out of the EPA for the last 40 years under the Clean Air Act. We think there’s broad public support for retaining its authority.

In terms of Congress, it doesn’t seem that anything is going to happen on cap-and-trade any time soon. Is that your thinking as well?
Well, you know, I think it is difficult to predict too far into the future. We think Congress should act. We know that members were put into office with the expectation that there would be a meaningful, substantive response to climate change and that Congress would enact laws that would put a down payment on scaling up clean energy. So, we know that the demand is there. But whether or not senators in particular will respond remains to be seen.

Putting aside cap-and-trade, there’s been talk of a narrower energy bill. It looks like Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Sen. Brownback (R-Kans.) are introducing a renewable energy standard that they are hoping to get passed. Is there a specific RES target that you would like to see or is it that the policy needs to move forward as soon as possible?
Well, let me make a general point. There was far too much of a focus earlier this spring on a single bill to address climate change economy-wide. And, in reality, there are dozens of things that Congress can do to fight climate change and to increase energy security in the country. In regards to this particular RES bill, our focus is primarily on keeping it clean. We want to see a renewable energy standard that is focused on truly clean energy and doesn’t have absurd giveways to nuclear power or so-called clean coal or any one of the other handful of options. And then of course to increase those investments as quickly as possible.

Is there a number that’s being thrown around among your members now?
Yeah, but it’s not something I really want to discuss in the public right now.

What other things are you focusing on in Congress?

I’d say the top thing is a plan to get off oil. We just experienced the largest environmental disaster in our country’s history and in response, Congress has done nothing. There’s not even a plan to fully reform what used to be called MMS and there’s not yet a plan to hold oil companies fully accountable and to lift the liability cap. And most importantly, there’s no effective plan right now to significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil. So, if there’s one thing that Congress can do in the next couple of months, it would be to challenge the oil industry and deliver us a plan to get off oil.

It’s been sort of an uphill battle trying to get an oil spill response bill to pass, something that is incredibly popular with the American people. And you’re right, it seems like the bill is getting held up on this idea of liability, whether or not an oil company should be held 100 percent liable for spilling thousands of gallons of oil into the ocean. What are your thoughts on that?
We shouldn’t be privatizing the gain and sharing the risk with the public. If oil companies are going to be benefiting from oil drilling, they also have to be able to absorb any of the risks associated with drilling.

Do you expect that Congress will pass an oil spill bill this year?
We do.

I wanted to also touch on the mid-term elections. It’s on everybody’s mind right now. What is the Sierra Club doing in terms of working with individual candidates?
So, there’s lots that we’re doing. The Sierra Club has 1.4 million members and supporters, so over the next several weeks, a big job of ours will be to educate our supporters about what’s at stake Nov. 2., trying to get people out to the polls and to engage our members to become volunteers. So, the Sierra Club endorses specific candidates.

We get very heavily involved in local and state propositions. Arguably our biggest priority this year is to defeat Prop 23, which would undermine the Global Warming Solutions Act, AB32, that was passed in California a few years ago. With that, we’re doing a massive voter mobilization drive. Individual members will be calling voters to encourage them to get out. We are also part of a coalition of groups that is doing advertising, thought we’re not doing any ourselves.

Are there any other races that are of particular concern for you?
We’re looking at the Senate races in Nevada and Missouri. Obviously, Harry Reid has been excellent in fighting the coal industry as well as supporting big investments in clean energy. We are also looking at the Florida race. Democratic Senate candidate Meek has a 100 percent League of Conservation Voting score. He’s been strongly in favor of Florida’s solar bills as well as the ban on offshore oil drilling. There’s obviously dozens or even hundreds of races in which the environmental voice is an important one.

There has been a lot said by the oil industry and Gulf coast lawmakers about the Obama administration’s offshore drilling moratorium’s impact on jobs, though there was a report that came out last week that said job losses might not be quite what people estimated. What’s the Sierra Club’s position on all of this? Should the moratorium be lifted?
No, I think that a full moratorium should be put in place. We’re mindful of the fact that we need to make stronger investments in clean energy jobs so that those who work in the oil industry who want to put food on the table for their families have viable alternatives in growing industries that they can work in.

To be clear, we’re not advocating turning off the spigot in the Gulf. There are more than 4,0000 rigs operating in the Gulf right now and we are not saying there should be no oil drilling in the Gulf, not until we have a clear plan to get off oil. But what we’re saying is that since it’s been proven now that oil drilling offshore is dirty and it’s dangerous and it’s deadly, we need to tighten up the safety regulations to make sure that disasters like this don’t happen in the future. And we need to stop investing in exploring for new oil and instead explore much more carefully and aggressively investments in solar and wind so that we’re not poisoning our coastlines as we’re trying to keep our lights on.

On pipeline safety. There have been a couple major disasters this year. Of course, the natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, Calif. And before that there was an oil spill in Michigan from an oil sands pipeline. Looming over this you have a massive proposed pipeline project, the Keystone XL project, that is going to go from Canada to Texas. Has the Sierra Club been looking at the issue of pipeline safety through a new set of eyes now that we’ve had these disasters?
Yes, we have. There’s two things that we’re doing. Clearly, the cost of our reliance on oil — when you talk abut the Michigan spill, the Gulf oil spill and the Keystone pipeline — is so much higher than what we pay at the pump when you consider the foreign policy implications, the fact that our entire economy is held hostage to wild fluctuations in oil prices.

So, what we’ve done over the last six months since I started at the Sierra Club is to build out a much more aggressive, comprehensive plan for how our country can get off oil. Over the next 20 years, how steep can we make cuts in oil consumption while allowing the economy to flourish and while creating more jobs rather than penalizing individual workers or communities. So, this will be a major priority of the club over the next several years — to build a broad based coalition of organizations and elected officials who will want to stand up for a very thoughtful and pragmatic, but visionary and aggressive plan to get off oil.

And then, regarding natural gas, we don’t think we can simultaneously phase out coal, oil and gas at the same time. Gas will need to stick around for a while. But there the challenge is to have much higher and much tighter safety standards so we’re not in this disastrous position again and again and again where people are losing their lives due to an industry is ineffectively regulated.

On oil sands or, as some call them, tar sands. There were senators in Canada last week reviewing oil sands production in there. Is there a message you would like to send to them in terms of how oil sands should be treated? Because there’s an argument out there that it’s better to get oil from Canada, despite the high greenhouse gas emissions of oil sands production, because we’re no longer reliant on the Middle East.
I think that’s just misguided thinking. The Pentagon says that climate change is one of the top national security threats in the 21st century. We have to deal effectively with climate change. Importing oil from the tar sands is 2-3 times more greenhouse gas intensive than conventional oil. You don’t solve a problem by making it worse. So, I understand that the notion that we have oil that is under the sands of our neighbors to the north is attractive to people who think we can have a simply pipeline solve a lot of problems. But the reality is that if we rely too much on a different source of oil that is dirtier, that will accelerate climate change rather than reduce it’s impacts, we’re only going to be replacing one set of problems with an entirely different set of problems. The only effective way to address this problem systemically is to adopt a plan to get America off oil.

Can you be more specific about this plan?
We’ll have a plan that we can introduce probably in the next 3-6 months. It looks at every major industrial source of oil consumption, from the oil that’s used in medium- and heavy-duty trucks, light trucks, cars and SUVs, the oil used for pesticides and paints. Whatever the major source of consumption is, we’re looking at a major, comprehensive plan to phase it out where and whenever possible.

What’s the time frame of this phase-out?
The big challenge is political will. For example, clearly it is technically possible, one would presume, to produce nothing but plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles in the next couple years. Whether that’s politically possible, of course remains to be seen. If the United States were to mobilize as we did in World War II and completely transition the entire automobile fleet to produce a new technology, clearly that could be done.

What we need to do is measure the distance between what we can do and what we’re willing to do as a country and develop what we feel as responsible and pragmatic, but also aggressive tactics to achieve energy independence. To help inform that decision we would look at the cost of different decisions under different time scenarios, the benefits economically, environmentally or socially depending on our foreign policy and what would the oil savings be in real-world terms. Then we’d highlight a few different options. We’ll have the data shortly. Then we’ll figure out how to use it. We’ve commissioned this first study just as the Sierra Club, but we anticipate doing more with a broad coalition.

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Containing a million gallons of oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River. (Jim West/ZUMApress.com)

A review of PHMSA records shows familiar ties between industry and regulators. A former legal counsel for the company responsible for the spill currently heads the oversight agency. In the last year, PHMSA has granted more than a dozen safety waivers to the companies it regulates. These waivers, industry observers say, have saved companies millions of dollars, but might have put people and property at risk.

Already, activists are drawing parallels between PHMSA and the Minerals Management Service, which had regulatory oversight over the Deepwater Horizon rig that spilled millions of barrels into the Gulf of Mexico. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has disbanded MMS, arguing the agency had too cozy a relationship with the industry it regulated. And Congress is debating broad oil spill response legislation that, in part, restructures MMS and puts restrictions on the agency’s so-called revolving door.

Questions About Quarterman’s Work History

Cynthia Quarterman, PHMSA administrator, worked as legal counsel for Enbridge Energy, the owner of the pipeline that burst in Michigan, during her time as a partner at the major law firm Steptoe and Johnson. Quarterman also headed MMS from 1995 to 1999. President Obama nominated Quarterman, who served on the president’s transition team at the Department of Energy, to serve as head of PHMSA last year. On his first day in the White House, Obama signed an executive order with a “revolving door ban,” barring appointees from regulating companies where they worked. The White House did not return calls for comment.

“We raised concerns about Quarterman when she was nominated. She was high up in MMS and we’ve heard a lot about them in the last few months,” says Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a non-profit group that advocates for fuel transportation safety.

Despite the criticism from some activists, Quarterman has called for reform at PHMSA. In April testimony to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Quarterman said, “We inherited a program that suffered from almost a decade of neglect and was seriously adrift. We have set a new course.” She said she was implementing new standards at the safety waiver program, following a March 2010 Department of Transportation inspector general report that raised questions about it.

Activists have also raised questions about Jeffrey Wiese, PHMSA’s associate administrator for pipeline safety. Before taking on his current role at PHMSA, Wiese worked at MMS, where, among a number of other positions, he directed the offshore safety management program. Years later, that program’s lax oversight failed to prevent the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Calls to PHMSA for comment were not returned.

Reviewing PHMSA ‘Special Permits’

A review of the 16 “special permits,” or safety waivers, granted since Jan. 2009 finds 12 waivers issued for natural gas pipelines, three for liquefied natural gas pipelines and one for an oil pipeline. Only one safety waiver has been granted since Quarterman took over as head of PHMSA in Nov. 2009.

PHMSA documents show that it was common practice at the agency to waive a requirement for companies to reevaluate the pressure levels in a pipeline if building has occurred on the land around it. In nine instances in the past year, PHMSA has waived companies’ obligation to “confirm or revise” the pressure in pipes where new construction, such as home building, has occurred nearby. The requirement is meant to protect people from potential gas leaks.

Weimer explains: “The original pipe they put in was a type of pipe for rural areas. Now that there’s houses around there, they’re supposed to be either using stronger or thinner pipe, or put less pressure in the thinner walled pipe.”

The waivers for the three liquefied natural gas pipelines appear to be minor, allowing the use of new technologies to test welding strength and vaporize gas.

The only oil pipeline waiver issued in the last year frees ConocoPhillips Alaska from its requirement to “fully inspect” insulated pipes if the company determines that the pipelines are not “susceptible to the influx of moisture and; therefore, atmospheric corrosion,” a May 9, 2009, PHMSA document says. According to PHMSA, material and equipment failure and corrosion are the most common causes of pipeline accidents.

Lacking Inspectors, Little Industry Accountability

Weimer says PHMSA generally holds companies to a high standard in granting special permit waivers. Companies have to provide the agency with detailed engineering analyses that show that granting a waiver would not lead to safety violations. But Weiner also says that PHMSA does not have enough inspectors to ensure that companies are actually implementing the safety requirements that go along with the waiver.

“If all is done as stated in a company’s plans, engineering-wise it makes sense. The problem is I don’t think PHMSA has the inspectors to keep track of whether those companies are really doing exactly as they say,” Weimer says. PHMSA requires that inspectors do site visits “every few years,” according to Weimer, but the purpose of those visits is to review the paper records the company keeps, rather than to inspect the work the company is doing in the field.

Quarterman has called for more staff, including inspectors, at the agency. As of June, PHMSA had 88 full-time inspectors to oversee the 2.3 million miles of pipelines in the United States. PHMSA’s web site says that state agencies perform “the majority” of inspections. While states inspect pipelines that begin and end within its borders, PHMSA inspectors review interstate pipelines, unless there is a special agreement in place.

Alex Moore, who focuses on oil pipeline issues for the environmental group Friends of the Earth, said he believes the Michigan spill will cause lawmakers to reexamine oil pipeline safety. “Just like the Deepwater Horizon spill, this will make everybody reevaluate the dirty ways we get energy. There have been a lot of spills from pipelines recently. I think that should be showing us that pipelines are not safe either,” he said.

The Obama administration should take a close look at PHMSA, Moore said. “I think the Obama administration and all federal agencies need to be putting more focus on the dangers of oil pipelines,” he said. “It’s another reason why we need to be transitioning to truly clean forms of energy, clean cars that are much more efficient and that are running on renewable power sources like wind and solar and not used with dirty forms of energy like oil.”

Lawmakers are taking notice as well. Rep. Mark Schauer (D-Mich.) is drafting legislation that would shorten the amount of time a company has to report a pipeline spill. The legislation would also increase the penalty for a failure to report a spill in a timely fashion.

According to PHMSA records, there were 265 “significant incidents” in the U.S. pipeline system last year, resulting in 14 deaths, 63 injuries and more than $152 million in property damage. A total of 53,000 barrels of liquid were spilled during these incidents. About 100 of those significant incidents involved “hazardous liquids” like oil. PHMSA defines significant incident as any accident involving a fatality, more than $5,000 of damage or a spill of liquid.

Implications for Other Oil Pipeline Projects

Moore has spent much of his time campaigning against a proposed oil pipeline that will stretch from Alberta, Canada, to Texas: the Keystone XL project. TransCanada has filed a request to PHMSA to receive a special permit that would allow the company to use thinner steel to build the Keystone XL pipeline. TransCanada was granted a similar special permit in 1997 that allowed the company to build a prior Keystone pipeline, which stretches from Canada to Ill., using steel with a stress level below the minimum safety requirement, according to a PHMSA document.

“Everybody expects the Keystone XL pipeline to get a waiver, but it hasn’t got it yet,” Moore said.

The Keystone XL project has come under criticism from many in the environmental community, who note that extracting Canadian oil sands, which the pipeline would transport across the United States, emits high levels of greenhouse gases.

The Environmental Protection Agency, in a July 16 letter to the State Department, raised a wide variety of concerns about the impact of Keystone XL. Chief among those concerns is that TransCanada does not have an adequate plan in the event of an oil spill. “We believe that additional efforts to evaluate potential adverse impacts to surface and ground waters from pipeline leaks or spills, including adverse impacts to public water supplies and source water protection/wellhead protection areas, are necessary,” EPA said in the letter.

In light of these concerns, the State Department this week delayed its decision on the Keystone XL permit to allow federal agencies 90 days to comment on TransCanada’s final environmental impact statement. A State Department spokesperson said the decision had nothing to do with the Michigan oil spill.

Terry Cunha, a TransCanada spokesperson, said “it would be hard to speculate right now” whether the Michigan spill will have an effect on its pending permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. Cunha said the company is working with the State Department to finish its environmental impact statement and will work with federal agencies going forward. Cunha confirmed that the company had submitted a special permit request to use thinner steel in its proposed pipeline. Enbridge Energy did not return calls for comment.

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Udall and Bennet, both Democrats, were part of a 53-47 rejection of Murkowski’s resolution, which environmental groups in Colorado claimed would have cost state residents $18 million at the gas pumps in 2016 by upping oil dependence to the tune of 7 million gallons a year.

Specifically, the resolution would have blocked new EPA clean car standards requiring 2012-16 cars and light trucks use less oil.

“The Gulf disaster is a painful reminder that we must move our country off of oil,” Environment Colorado field director Gavin Clark said in a release. “We’re thankful that today Sens. Udall and Benner voted against this Washington bailout to big oil and other polluters. We urge [Udall and Bennet] to now help pass a comprehensive clean energy and climate bill through the Senate this year.”

The resolution had the backing of Republicans and some coal-country Democrats like Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. Colorado Republicans predictably slammed the EPA and praised Murkowski’s efforts.

“We’re not talking about a knee jerk reaction to an oil spill in the Gulf,” state Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, said in a release. “We’re talking about the EPA taking authority they don’t have and declaring carbon dioxide a pollutant, which is absurd.”

A majority of scientists have concluded carbon dioxide is one of the key greenhouse gases contributing to global climate change. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide as a form of air pollution.

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Martin formerly headed up the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment before being picked by Ritter to replace Harris Sherman at the DNR. Sherman was selected by the Obama administration as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary for natural resources and environment, in charge of the U.S. Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service.

“Over the past three years, Jim has served the people of Colorado with great distinction as a key member of my administration,” Ritter said in a release. “He is widely respected and trusted by people with diverse and often opposing viewpoints because he is able to work through complex issues and find areas of common ground.”

Some of those issues include the long, winding and often arduous road to a Colorado roadless rule – a controversial petition to the USDA outlining how the state wants to manage 4.2 million acres of roadless public lands in Colorado. Some scientists and environmentalists have blasted the rule for allowing too many road-building exemptions or logging, coal mining and ski-area expansion.

Martin was also instrumental in crafting the recently passed Clean Air Clean Jobs Act, which requires Xcel Energy to close down or retrofit coal-fired power plants in favor of natural gas, and the state’s increased renewable energy standard, which requires 30 percent of the electricity produced by investor-owned utilities to come from renewable sources by the year 2025.

The EPA’s Region VIII office oversees Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. Martin is expected to continue with the state for several more weeks before transitioning to the EPA.

Martin, the former executive director of Western Resource Advocates, director of the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado School of Law and director of energy programs for Environmental Defense, also worked for former Colorado U.S. Rep. and Sen. Tim Wirth.

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Richard Liroff, executive director of the Investor Environmental Health Network (IEHN), presented comments to the EPA’s Science Advisory Board panel evaluating EPA’s plans to study the process, which involves the high-pressure injection of water, sand and undisclosed chemicals into natural gas wells to fracture, or “frack,” tight geological formations and free up more gas.

Environmental groups and concerned residents of heavily drilled parts of the country, including Colorado, have been pushing hard for the passage of federal legislation introduced by Colorado Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis that would compel the industry to disclose the chemicals being used in order to determine their impact on groundwater and public health.

Industry officials maintain the chemicals are proprietary and that the process should remain exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act – a move made under the Bush administration in 2005.

“Investors depend on good science to help make sound investment decisions. But we’re finding enormous information gaps that need to be addressed,” Liroff said in his comments to the EPA. “EPA’s research can help fill these gaps.”

IEHN and Green Century Capital Management represent numerous investor groups concerned that contamination of groundwater by fracking could impact public health and expose natural gas investors to legal liability.

“Companies and regulators must ensure natural gas drilling is done in a way that protects the environment, especially our drinking water, and therefore mitigates potential regulatory, legal and other risks to company bottom lines,” Liroff said. “We commend the EPA for taking this important step that will help investors and companies make well informed decisions.”

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According to the Associated Press, the latest announcement comes in response to a January complaint filed by WildEarth Guardians and the San Juan Citizens Alliance arguing the EPA hasn’t updated oil and gas drilling air quality standards for years despite increased a recent drilling boom in Colorado.

The groups also contend the feds should set standards for greenhouse gas emissions caused by the industry. An industry trade group based in Denver, the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, countered that oil and gas operators have made major strides in reducing emissions associated with production.

Jackson, meanwhile, continued to answer questions about the timing of the EPA greenhouse gas emissions announcement, made just ahead of the ongoing United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen.
Speaking there today, Jackson said the timing was coincidental and that any EPA regulation of greenhouses gases would compliment badly needed legislation currently being debated in the U.S. Senate. The House has already passed a climate change bill.

Some European nations are viewing the EPA announcement as a sign by the Obama administration that it will regulate emissions regardless of whether Congress produces a tough climate bill, complete with cap and trade.

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A natural gas drilling operation in northwest Colorado. (Creative Commons photo by Energy Tomorrow via Flickr)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last spring, in its first real testing of water wells near gas wells that are being “fracked” — a process of injecting water, sand and undisclosed chemicals into gas wells at high pressure to force open tight geological formations and free up more gas — found the presence of the toxic chemical 2-Butoxyethanol (or 2-BE) in Meeks’ water wells.

Such potential for contamination is one of the main reasons U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, (D-Denver) in June introduced the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act to force oil and gas companies to more readily disclose the types of chemicals being injected into wells. The industry has spent millions to oppose the removal of a 2005 exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act because officials maintain secrecy is necessary for competitive reasons.

Asked to respond to EPA statements that the 2-BE, which is also contained in products such as degreasers, might be surface contamination from the ranch itself, Meeks said EnCana did a poor job of encasing the gas wells in cement to keep fracking fluids out of the water aquifer, something the company was heavily fined for in Garfield County in Colorado.

“If you do not get that cement job right and you go in there and perforate and frack, you are certainly asking for it, because that frack is going to go wherever it wants to go because the cement is not holding it right there where the perforations are,” Meeks said. “Also, I have some chemical records and drilling records right here in my house, and these guys are putting chemicals in from the top to the bottom [of wells].”

EnCana, says it’s concerned and working with the EPA in the Pavillion case, but the company was fined a record $370,000 by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) for a faulty concrete job on a well in the Divide Creek area near Silt in Garfield County.

The company denied fracking was the cause of methane and benzene seeping into the creek on Lisa Bracken’s property, and the COGCC agreed, disputing the findings of a county consultant, geologist Geoffrey Thyne, who concluded the contamination could be connected and required more study.

While COGCC director David Neslin said his agency might be open to more study of fracking in Garfield County, similar to a smaller-scale program it’s conducting in La Plata County, he does not feel the FRAC Act is necessary. In fact, he said it may spread his agency too thin and take away from its ability to police other environmental concerns.

He also contends the new, more environmentally stringent state drilling regulations that went into effect April 1 cover any concerns about fracking and the disclosure of chemicals because they force oil and gas companies to keep chemical inventories on hand and make them available to state regulators and emergency responders.

That, said Bruce Baizel, senior staff attorney with Durango-based Earthworks’ Oil & Gas Accountability Project, is not adequate. He said the new rule merely requires a company to keep a quarterly record of more than 500 pounds of any particular chemical on a well site and make it available within 72 hours if there’s an accident or contamination question.

“What that doesn’t provide for is it doesn’t allow the public or a surface owner to gain access to what is being stored or used onsite,” Baizel said, “and with that 72-hour window, it doesn’t require that emergency responders get access to that or have a publicly available database that they can go to.”

Baizel said recent state hearings revealed more than 300 instances of contaminated water in Colorado since 2003 and more than 700 instances in New Mexico, requiring immediate federal oversight and additional study of the increasingly popular fracking process perfected by the oil-field service company Halliburton.

Industry officials counter there have never been any cases of contamination directly linked to fracking, and that nondisclosure of chemicals is as critical for competitive reasons as it is to food and beverage companies protecting proprietary formulas.

“[Fracking’s] got an exemplary safety record and it’s vital to ensuring an American energy source,” Kathleen Sgamma, director of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States (IPAMS), said in a previous interview. “Keep in mind that it has been regulated by the states for the last 60 years.”

But conservationists argue states are not getting the job done and that secrecy in the arena of injecting potentially hazardous chemicals puts the public at far too much risk.

“Coke and Pepsi is a perfect example,” said Amy Mall of the Natural Resources Defense Council in Boulder. “If you buy a can of Coke, you get to see what the ingredients are. You don’t know what the secret formula is that Coke actually keeps locked up and no one person actually knows, but you get to know the ingredients. The FRAC Act would disclose the ingredients but not the formulas, which are what remain proprietary.”

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Instead, here’s what Ann Hause of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reportedly told the Times when asked to provide information or verify the Times’s reporting on Colorado’s enforcement, or lack thereof, of the Clean Water Act:

“We cannot verify the accuracy of this data because we cannot duplicate the ECHO query or survey used to generate this data. Also, the time period in question and the criteria used for specifying compliance are not stated. With respect to the remaining questions, as they are fairly resource-intensive, the Department is not able to provide answers within any predictable time frame.”

Colorado Ethics Watch, a nonprofit political watchdog group, found that response woefully inadequate and now plans to file its own Colorado Open Records Act request.

“This is an unacceptable response. How can the Department not know whether or not it is enforcing the Clean Water Act? And more importantly, how are Coloradoans supposed to know whether the Department is adequately protecting them from environmental harms?” said Ethics Watch director Chantell Taylor. “Taxpayers deserve prompt, accurate information on such important matters of public safety and we intend to follow up with the Department to see if we can get just that.”

EPA oversight of the Clean Water Act and state responsiveness in enforcing federal guidelines is a hot topic in Colorado these days, with U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette’s (D-Denver) FRAC Act seeking to remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for the natural-gas process called hydraulic fracturing.

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The study did not examine why the aquatic hermaphrodites were so prevalent in the nation’s waterways, though lead author Jo Ellen Hinck suggested it was unlikely any one human activity or contaminant was responsible. She added that far more research would have to be conducted before any reliable assertions could be made on the matter.

The United States Geological Survey study, published in Acquatic Toxicology, follows on the heels of a blockbuster New York Times series about the Environmental Protection Agency’s failure to enforce the Clean Water Act. The Times series noted that there has been little public outcry about today’s pollutants, largely because many are invisible to the naked eye or nostrils—undetectable until they cause problems.

From 1995 to 2004, USGS scientists involved in this study looked for intersex fish among 16 species in nine river basins throughout the United States.

Intersex fish were found everywhere except the Yukon basin, and the most common occurrences were among smallmouth and largemouth bass: a third of all male smallmouth bass were intersex, and a fifth of all male largemouth bass.

The Yampa River at Lay, Colo., had some of the highest numbers:  70 percent of smallmouth bass tested were intersex.

Those involved say that while scientists have long been aware of the existence of intersex fish, this study demonstrated just how prevalent they are in the nation’s waterways.

An interesting note about the Yampa River finding:  scientists didn’t find an obvious sources of endocrine-active compounds in that waterway. Such compounds include pesticides, pharmaceuticals, PCBs, heavy metals, or household products such as laundry detergent or shampoo—and they are usually thought to be a cause of hermaphrodite fish.

Nonetheless, reports the Denver Post, federal wildlife officials in the area plan to look into the matter further:

Federal wildlife officials along the Yampa will consider possible sources of pollutants, said Tom Chart, director of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“If we’re having these endocrine disrupters showing up in bass, it’s very likely they’re affecting native and endangered fish as well,” Chart said. “This is out of the natural balance.”

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