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Latkanich is a resident of Washington County, Pennsylvania, one of the state’s most heavily fracked regions. In 2020, an Environmental Health Newsinvestigation found evidence that Latkanich and his son Ryan had been exposed to harmful chemicals like benzene, toluene and styrene.
Now, researchers have uncovered more harmful substances in Latkanich’s tap water —“forever chemicals.”
Last year it was revealed that these chemicals, collectively referred to as PFAS (per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances), have been used in U.S. oil and gas wells for decades. As far as the experts we spoke with know, this is the first time PFAS that may be linked to fracking have been detected in household drinking water.
The chemicals don’t break down naturally, so they linger in the environment and human bodies. Exposure is linked to health problems including kidney and testicular cancer, liver and thyroid problems, reproductive problems, lowered vaccine efficacy in children and increased risk of birth defects, among others.
Latkanich’s water smells strange and tastes bad, and his son Ryan has emerged from the bathtub or shower with sores on his skin. Latkanich and Ryan have both had a host of ongoing health issues over the last decade, including stomach problems, asthma attacks, rashes and eye irritation; and for Bryan, repeated hospitalization for kidney issues.
“I’m wondering what this stuff does to your joints and your heart, and how it affects everything else I’m feeling,” Bryan told EHN. “My kidneys are already shot. I just want these people to stop. They gotta stop poisoning people.”
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh recently tested water samples from multiple taps at the Latkanich home. They detected seven of the 14 PFAS they tested for.
“What’s scary is that they didn’t just find one, they found a bunch of PFAS,” Latkanich said. “They don’t even have guidelines on some of these yet.”
Bryan Latkanich in his kitchen in Washington County, PA.
Credit: Connor Mulvaney/EHN
The chemicals, which are extremely water-repellent, are sometimes used in fracking fluid to make the chemical mixture more stable and to more efficiently flush oil and gas out of the ground at high pressure. There’s also evidence that the chemicals are used during initial drilling and other phases of oil and gas extraction, but companies aren’t required to disclose those chemicals, so there’s no way of knowing how widespread the practice is.
The new findings suggest PFAS contamination may represent yet another problem left in the wake of fracking. But a lack of transparency in the industry makes it impossible to track where the chemicals have been used. And secrecy about ingredients throughout the supply chain for drilling and fracking chemicals make it difficult to hold any one company accountable for PFAS contamination in drinking water, leaving people like Latkanich — and regulators and scientists — in the dark.
“It’s very difficult to conduct scientifically rigorous tests on an industry that operates with so much secrecy,” Dusty Horwitt, a consultant with the environmental health advocacy group Physicians for Social Responsibility, told EHN. Horwitt was a co-author of the report that initially uncovered the use of PFAS in fracking wells.
The PFAS in Latkanich’s water have national implications. Physicians for Social Responsibility’s report found evidence that oil and gas companies, including Chevron and Exxon Mobile, have used PFAS, or substances that could degrade into PFAS, in more than 1,200 fracking wells in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas and Wyoming. They also noted that PFAS could have been used in additional states and in additional types of wells.
A 2021 investigation by the Philadelphia Inquirer found evidence that PFAS had been used in at least eight oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania, but the state’s PFAS action team has not publicly addressed the issue of PFAS in the state’s oil and gas wells, and did not respond to questions about whether it is assessing the potential for widespread PFAS contamination from oil and gas wells.
This is especially troubling for people using private drinking water wells like Latkanich, who tend to live in rural areas where oil and gas extraction takes place. An estimated 43 million Americans use private wells, which are not protected by the federal Safe Water Drinking Act and aren’t regulated in most states, so the water isn’t routinely tested or monitored, and the responsibility for cleaning up dangerous chemicals falls to homeowners.
“Considering how toxic and persistent these chemicals are, and the evidence that they have been used in oil and gas extraction for decades,” Horwitt said, “it’s critical for state regulators to start looking for these contaminants in people’s drinking water near oil and gas sites.”
Exceeding health thresholds
Bryan and Ryan Latkanich in front of their home in Washington County, PA
Credit: Connor Mulvaney/EHN
Carla Ng, a researcher who studies PFAS at the University of Pittsburgh and who supervised Latkanich’s water tests, said it’s possible the contamination came from the fracking wells that were previously drilled and operated 400 feet from Latkanich’s home, but there’s no way to know for sure.
“It’s really frustrating that we don’t know exactly what chemicals were used [in the wells], so we don’t even know exactly what to test for,” she told EHN.
In the absence of that information, Ng tested for 14 common PFAS. They detected seven compounds in one or more of the water samples from Latkanich’s home:
- PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic acid)
- PFOS (Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid)
- PFHpA (Perfluoroheptanoic acid)
- PFNA (Perfluorononanoic acid)
- PFDA (Perfluorodecanoic acid)
- PFDS (Perfluorodecanesulfonic acid)
- PFHxS (Perfluorohexanesulfonic acid)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently set new health advisory limits for a handful of the most well-studied PFAS including PFOA and PFOS. Health advisory limits are not enforceable regulations, but are recommended limits on how much of a chemical people should be exposed to over the course of their lives to avoid health risks.
The levels of PFOA and PFOS detected in Latkanich’s water were 280 times higher and 379 times higher, respectively, than the new federal thresholds.
Ng noted that PFAS contamination is widespread in U.S. drinking water, and though they’re well above the EPA’s new guidelines, the levels in Latkanich’s water aren’t uncommon.
“These health advisory limits are basically saying that these compounds are a health concern even at very low levels,” she said. “But at the same time, you’d be hard pressed to find water in the United States that doesn’t exceed those thresholds.”
A dangerous lack of transparency
A drilling rig in Washington County, PA.
Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2016
In Pennsylvania, fracking companies must publicly disclose what chemicals they use, but they’re permitted to withhold “trade secrets.” This exemption is used frequently. “Secret” ingredients were used in more than half of Pennsylvania fracking wells developed between 2013 and 2017, with the most heavy usage of secret chemicals occurring in southwestern Pennsylvania, where Latkanich lives.
Pennsylvania isn’t alone. Most states with oil and gas development have trade-secret loopholes in their chemical disclosure laws. In Colorado, for example, 414 million pounds of chemicals used in the state’s fracking wells were left unidentified as “trade secrets” between 2011 and 2021, according to a 2022 report from Physicians for Social Responsibility.
In some states, like Pennsylvania, oil and gas companies are required to disclose complete lists of fracking chemicals to regulators, including ingredients that are withheld from the public as trade secrets. However, a new report, published this month by Physicians for Social Responsibility, found that manufacturers of the chemical mixtures used in fracking wells aren’t required to disclose complete lists of ingredients to oil and gas companies in most of those states, including Pennsylvania.
“Chemical manufacturers know best what ingredients are being used, but they often don’t tell companies further down the supply chain because they don’t have to,” said Horwitt, lead author of the new report. “This means regulators might not be getting the information they’re supposed to.”
“They knew this stuff could be in there, but they never looked for it”
Bryan Latkanich in his Washington County, PA home.
Credit: Connor Mulvaney/EHN
Latkanich’s drinking water has been plagued with problems since two fracking wells were drilled in his backyard in 2011 and 2012. The wells were plugged in 2020, but because PFAS are so persistent, Ng said, it’s possible that contamination built up in the plumbing and pipes.
Numerous organizations have tested the Latkanich’s water, including Environmental Health News, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) (DEP), and Chevron, the company that drilled, operated and plugged the fracking wells on Bryan’s property.
Environmental Health News’s testing found chemicals including butyl cyclohexane, tetradecane and naphthalene in Latkanich’s water. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection found methane and radium, but has stated Chevron is not responsible for any contamination because similar contaminants were detected in pre-drill water samples. Chevron also tested his water and maintained that their wells did not cause contamination.
But no one had tested Bryan’s water for PFAS before now.
“The DEP isn’t checking for this stuff because they don’t want to find it,” Latkanich said. “I’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong with my water since 2013. They knew this stuff could be in there, but they never looked for it.”
Despite repeated requests, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection refused to answer questions about whether they’d received complete lists of the chemicals used in the wells on Latkanich’s property from Chevron, and why the agency had never tested his water for PFAS.
Agency spokesperson Neil Shader said the agency is conducting a new investigation into Latkanich’s water. He refused to say whether the investigation will include screening for PFAS. Latkanich said he had not heard from anyone at the state agency regarding a new investigation and that they had not collected any new water samples.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection recently tested drinking water throughout the state for PFAS, but those tests didn’t include any private wells or drinking water sources near oil and gas sites.
Shader refused to answer questions about why the agency didn’t look at oil and gas sites as part of its statewide PFAS investigation and whether it will do so in the future.
Pennsylvania is second in the nation for the number of private wells (behind Michigan). More than three million Pennsylvanians rely on private wells, mostly in rural areas where oil and gas development occurs. Private wells aren’t regulated in the state, so people living near oil and gas sites who are concerned about PFAS currently have no option but to pay for their own testing, which costs around $200 per sample, according to Ng.
“We should be thinking about how to enable more widespread testing of well water throughout Pennsylvania to figure out the potential scale of this problem,” Ng said.
Unsolvable mysteries
When he found out that PFAS were in his water, Latkanich initially thought it might prove that the fracking wells on his property had caused the contamination.
“Then I found out every place seems to have these things,” he said.
Chevron publicly disclosed using “nonionic fluorosurfactants” in 38 records in Texas and New Mexico from 2013-2015, according to public records accessed through OpenFF, a tool for searching public disclosures related to fracking chemicals. Nonionic fluorosurfactants may be PFAS, or may include chemicals that can break down into PFAS, according to Ng.
Chevron refused to answer EHN’s questions about its use of nonionic fluorosurfactants, about whether these compounds or PFAS were ever used in the wells on Latkanich’s property or any of its other Pennsylvania wells, and about whether it had ever disclosed complete lists of the chemicals used in Latkanich’s wells to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
“Mr. Latkanich has raised concerns with Chevron and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection about various issues since 2011,” Chevron spokesperson Deena McMullen said in an emailed statement. “His repeated accusations that Chevron contaminated his water and damaged his home have been disproved.”
Without a complete record of the chemicals used in the fracking wells on his property, there’s no way to solve the mystery of whether Latkanich’s PFAS contamination came from the wells or some other source.
Plumber’s tape or plumber’s grease used in the home could contain enough PFAS to explain the levels of some of the chemicals, Ng said, while others are less easily explained by common household contamination sources.
For example, PFDS, which was detected in several of Latkanich’s samples, was phased out of most consumer products years ago.
Latkanich has been buying bottled water for years, but he and his son still bathe with well water. That’s a less direct exposure than eating or drinking PFAS, Ng said, but is still a source of exposure.
Scientists are still learning about the potential harms of exposure for most PFAS, but PFOS and PFOA have been studied extensively.
Exposure to both PFOS and PFOA have been linked to elevated cholesterol, changes in liver function, changes in thyroid hormone levels and reduced immune response. Exposure to PFOA has additionally been linked to an increased risk of kidney and testicular cancer.
Both of those compounds were found in Latkanich’s water at levels hundreds of times higher than the EPA’s health advisory levels, “but it’s hard to look at one sample of water and say, ‘this is what you can expect in terms of health effects,’” Ng said.
“We know about the health impacts for some of these individual compounds,” she added, “but scientists are just starting to come up with an understanding of how these add up in the body.”
See part 2, How Colorado is preventing PFAS contamination from the oil and gas industry
PITTSBURGH—In June, Colorado became the first state to ban the use of PFAS during oil and gas extraction — and now, in light of recent research finding the potential for widespread contamination, some are calling for a similar ban in Pennsylvania.
Last year it was revealed that PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), a group of more than 9,000 chemicals, have been used in oil and gas wells for decades. The chemicals, which are water- and grease-repellent, are sometimes used in fracking fluid to make the chemical mixture more stable and efficient in flushing oil and gas out of the ground at high pressure. PFAS may also be used during initial drilling and other phases of oil and gas extraction — not just fracking.
That’s about to change in Colorado: A new bill restricts PFAS in products like carpets and furniture, fabric treatments, cosmetics, food packaging and children’s products; and bars the use of PFAS in any type of oil and gas extraction, including fracking. The law will take effect on Jan. 1, 2024.
With a separate, related bill, Colorado also became the first state to require oil and gas companies to publicly disclose the complete list of chemicals used “downhole” for all types of wells, and to certify that no PFAS were used during drilling or extraction.
Downhole chemicals include those used during drilling and other phases of operations. Most public disclosure laws in other states focus mainly on chemicals used in fracking wells, and most only require disclosure of chemicals used during extraction, ignoring the chemicals used during drilling or other operations.
“Prior to this legislation, there was a lot of secrecy involved in the chemicals being used downhole in oil and gas production operations,” Ramesh Bhatt, who advocated for the bill’s passage as chair of the conservation committee of the Colorado Sierra Club, told EHN.
Some scientists and health advocates think other states with a heavy oil and gas industry presence, including Pennsylvania, should do the same.
“When you’re talking about chemicals as toxic and persistent as PFAS, it’s extraordinarily risky to allow them in oil and gas extraction,” Dusty Horwitt, an environmental health consultant who testified before Colorado lawmakers considering the drilling disclosure law, told EHN.
Earlier this year, a group of researchers tested Washington County, Pennsylvania, resident Bryan Latkanich’s water for PFAS and detected seven of the chemicals, including several at levels well above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended thresholds. Latkanich formerly had two fracking wells drilled about 400 feet from his home.
Carla Ng, a researcher who studies PFAS at the University of Pittsburgh and conducted the tests that found PFAS in Latkanich’s water, told EHN, “It’s very difficult to control where those chemicals go when drillers are pushing fluid into the Earth’s subsurface. Because of how harmful and persistent PFAS are, they should not be used in cases where their spread cannot be controlled.”
Critical gaps in state laws
A new Shell ethane cracker in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, which is expected to create additional demand for fracking wells.
Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2021
The use of PFAS in oil and gas wells is likely creating an under-appreciated source of PFAS contamination, adding to Americans’ exposure to these harmful chemicals through food, personal care products and drinking water. But lack of transparency makes it difficult to assess how widespread the problem is.
“It’s impossible to know at this point,” said Horwitt, who also consults for the environmental health advocacy group Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Horwitt was lead author on a report published this month that found that in 16 leading oil- and gas-producing states, manufacturers of the chemical mixtures used in oil and gas extraction are generally not required to disclose complete lists of the substances they use.
The report also found that a number of states, including Pennsylvania, have laws that waive liability for oil and gas companies that don’t disclose complete lists of ingredients to regulators — as they’re required to by law — if they never received complete lists from chemical manufacturers.
Pennsylvania’s law also says chemical manufacturers can’t be held responsible for failing to disclose complete lists of ingredients in these products.
“So they’re all just off the hook,” Horwitt said.
The potential use of PFAS during drilling and other downhole operations is especially troubling, Horwitt said, because operators typically bore straight through groundwater, long before any casing or cement has been added to seal it off.
Further complicating things, some states, including Pennsylvania, have different disclosure requirements for conventional and unconventional wells. Operators of fracking wells have to publicly disclose chemicals used in their wells (minus any “trade secrets”), but for conventional wells, the public can only access that information through requests to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
Colorado closes the gaps
In recent years, Colorado has enacted some of the most health-protective oil and gas regulations in the country. The two new PFAS bills will further advance those protections.
“We have the most advanced timeline for banning these chemicals,” Josh Kuhn, the water policy manager for Conservation Colorado, one of the organizations that advocated for the legislation, told EHN. “This is a national leading policy.”
The bill was initiated after an 11-year-old girl named Madhvi Chittoor met with Colorado state Representative Lisa Cutter in the summer of 2021 to discuss PFAS contamination.
“When all of our aquifers are polluted, where will we get our drinking water from?” Chittoor asked. “When our waterways like ponds, lakes, rivers are polluted, where will the fish live? What water will the animals drink? What water will the farmers use to grow our crops?”
Cutter, a Democrat, was moved by Chittoor’s testimony and started working with groups like Earthjustice, the Sierra Club, and Conservation Colorado to craft the PFAS bill.
Many other states have passed bills restricting the use of PFAS in certain products, but none have addressed the use of PFAS by the oil and gas industry.
Kuhn said the effort to include the oil and gas industry in the state’s PFAS ban started after Physicians for Social Responsibility published a report in January 2022 that found PFAS were used in at least 10 Colorado counties. A subsequent analysis by the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) found that Colorado had the most potentially PFAS-contaminated sites of any state, 86% of which were associated with the oil and gas industry.
Mary Bradford, a Republican member of the Colorado state House who cosponsored Colorado’s main PFAS bill, said she was mainly concerned about the health effects of PFAS on children and in consumer products.
“Now that we believe that PFAS is a potential health risk, we could be very surprised about how many products intentionally contain the PFAS compounds,” she said in a statement. Bradford’s district has experienced PFAS contamination of drinking water and well-documented PFAS exposures in people from a nearby military base.
“Chemicals that can harm people’s health are not just a one party issue,” Kuhn said.
While the bill banning PFAS didn’t have unanimous support, Kuhn said, they got more pushback against the consumer products portions of the bill than the oil and gas portion. The advocates and legislators working to get the bill passed talked directly with representatives from the oil and gas industry, which led to provisions that would allow for the use of PFAS in certain parts of oil and gas operations where they’re essential and good alternatives don’t exist — in gaskets and other pieces of equipment, for example.
Advocates like Kuhn and his colleagues also partnered with water utilities, which helped build bipartisan support.
“Water utilities on the receiving end of polluted water face significant challenges when it comes to removing PFAS,” Kuhn said.
Physicians for Social Responsibility’s reports cited evidence that PFAS may be used during the drilling phase for fracking and other types of oil and gas wells, but because no states currently require public disclosure of the chemicals used during drilling (as opposed to chemicals used during extraction), it’s impossible to know how common the practice is.
Colorado has found a solution to that with the separate bill that requires disclosure of downhole chemicals and requires that both operators and chemical manufacturers certify that no PFAS have been used.
“The first bill bans the use of PFAS by the oil and gas industry, and the second bill creates accountability,” Kuhn said.
There are a number of downhole operations, including drilling, that are different from what’s technically called fracking, Bhatt, with the Sierra Club, explained. Those chemicals are overlooked in most state laws.
Initially, the bill required complete disclosure of the ingredients used and their proportions, but after pushback from the industry related to revealing trade secrets, it was amended to require a complete list of individual chemicals used in oil and gas operations, but not their proportions or the exact mixtures used in specific products.
“You have to weigh the importance of protecting trade secrets against the importance of protecting health and the environment,” Bhatt said, “but we think this was a good compromise.”
Representatives from the American Petroleum Institute and the Colorado Oil and Gas Institute responded to the report by Physicians for Social Responsibility on the use of PFAS in oil and gas extraction last year, saying they agreed that PFAS shouldn’t be intentionally used in fracking fluid, and contesting the idea that trade secrets provisions could be hiding extensive PFAS use.
The American Petroleum Institute has also said that PFAS use in oil and gas wells is limited and that the trade group will continue to review available data to protect health and safety.
Possibilities for Pennsylvania
Several advocacy groups, including PennFuture, the Clean Air Council and the Environmental Health Project, have called for action on the issue of potential PFAS contamination from the oil and gas industry in Pennsylvania.
Kuhn and Bhatt said they haven’t heard much from lawmakers or advocates in Pennsylvania or other states about crafting similar legislation yet, but that they’d be happy to consult about how they’ve successfully regulated PFAS in Colorado. Kuhn suggested reaching out for resources to Safer States, an environmental health advocacy group that tracks legislation related to chemical safety throughout the states..
Kuhn also cautioned that while the bill was being crafted, advocates and lawmakers were pressured by some chemical industry groups to limit the specific PFAS they were restricting, which they did not do, and emphasized that a comprehensive ban on the chemicals is the most protective option.
“In Colorado,” he said, “no longer will any of these ‘forever chemicals’ be inserted into the ground, potentially threatening water supplies needed by both humans and wildlife.”
See part 1, PFAS: The latest toxic concern for those near fracking
Even with Democrats controlling the White House, House, and Senate for the past two years, climate action has been largely stalled. So, when it comes to Congress, who is the most influential Republican helping to block the Biden agenda?
No, it’s not Minority Senate Leader Mitch McConnell of coal state Kentucky. He’s an Olympian-level obstructionist, but not the gold medalist on blocking climate action.
And no, it’s not the Babe Ruth of climate denial, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma. He announced his retirement to take effect in January, shortly after his 88th birthday.
Okay, it’s kind of a trick question. The Senator who’s done more to advance the GOP agenda on climate and energy is lifetime Democrat Joe Manchin (D-WV).
What’s that you say? How can a “D” be the Leader of the “R” Pack on anything?
Because the Senate’s King of Coal is the holder of all the Democrats’ cards as its 50th member. And even that math is complicated. There are actually 48 card-carrying Democrats. New Englanders Bernie Sanders and Angus King are Independents who caucus with the Dems, and Vice President Kamala Harris wields the tie-breaking vote in her role as President of the Senate.
Thus, Democrats have the slimmest possible advantage in the Senate. Their leadership in the House is only slightly more stable.
In the Senate, the loss of a single Democrat’s support can doom a bill. That one lost vote is usually Manchin’s, and last week, after painstaking negotiations with his fellow Democrats, Manchin announced that he’s walked away from a core portion of Biden’s Build Back Better plan, including more than $300 billion for climate projects. There is little hope that the major White House effort on climate change can be salvaged.
So if Manchin behaves like a Republican, why hasn’t he switched parties? Or why haven’t frustrated Democrats helped him out the door? And just exactly what makes Manchin tick?
That may be a moot point if Republicans win big in the midterms on November 8, or if Biden becomes a one-termer on Election Day 2024. That’s also Manchin’s day to stand for re-election, should he choose to do so at age 77.
The Making of Manchin
Joe Manchin was born and raised in a southern West Virginia coal town. Injuries ended a promising football career at West Virginia University. He founded Enersystems, a coal brokerage business now run by his son. But his investment reportedly brought his wealth into the low millions.
He spent much of the 1980’s and 1990’s in the state legislature, mounted an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1996, and a successful one for Secretary of State in 2000.
In 2004, he won the West Virginia governorship. Two years later, he took his turn on the national stage when a high-profile coal mining disaster claimed 12 lives at Sago Creek, West Virginia.
Manchin consistently drew high approval ratings as governor, and when the state’s legendary U.S. Senator Robert Byrd died in 2010, Manchin won a special election to replace him. His campaign featured a TV ad in which Manchin fired rifle bullets through a copy of proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations on climate change.
He easily won re-election to a full term in 2012 and beat back a stiff challenge from the state’s Attorney General, Patrick Morrissey, in 2018. As AG, Morrissey was the lead plaintiff in the case where the Supreme Court stripped the EPA of much of its power to regulate greenhouse gases last month.
The League of Conservation Voters gives Manchin a lifetime score of 56% — about halfway between the scores in the 80% and 90% range that LCV typically awards Democrats, and the 10% to 20% scores typical for Republicans.
He has voted against federal funding for Planned Parenthood, and he’s voted to restore that funding. He’s generally supported Republican issues on immigration. Manchin is part of a bipartisan effort to reform the 1887 Electoral Count Act, a key component in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential results.
During the Trump years, Manchin voted with Trump a bit more than 50% of the time, according to Congressional Quarterly.
The White House is reportedly both furious with Manchin and terrified that a public feud will chase the West Virginian straight into the arms of the Republicans. He has consistently ranked at or near the top of the Congressional lists of recipients of oil, gas, and coal money.
Yes, but how easy would it be for Manchin to switch?
In 2016, coal billionaire and Democrat Jim Justice was elected West Virginia’s Governor. In August of 2017, Justice abruptly switched parties, leaving Manchin as the state’s last statewide Democrat in office. Both Justice and Manchin remain strongly popular.
Justice was re-elected in 2020 as a Republican by a nearly two-to-one margin.
Here are two items I’ve written about Manchin’s unique position before: Here and here.
Peter Dykstra is our weekend editor and columnist and can be reached at pdykstra@ehn.org or @pdykstra.
His views do not necessarily represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate, or publisher Environmental Health Sciences.
The anti-regulation, conservative majority did it with a highly contrived, legally threadbare argument simply because they could. Notably, the dispute was about a regulation — the Clean Power Plan (CPP) — that was no longer in effect.
It’s also worth noting that market forces had already done more to drive a transition away from coal in U.S. electricity generation than the CPP had been predicted to do, had it stayed in force.
The only apparent reasons for the Supreme Court to take the case were (1) to allow the Court’s most radical majority in modern times to reduce the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to address climate change, and (2) to do so in a way that would open the door to future decisions reining in the power of the so-called “administrative state” to regulate industry under broad guidelines granted by the Congress.
Depriving the agency of an important option
What the decision explicitly forbids EPA to do is to use “generation-shifting mechanisms”— that is, forcing electricity generators to shift to cleaner options -- to reduce the reliance of U.S. electricity generation on coal-fired power plants.
The ruling does not deprive EPA of the right to regulate coal-fired power plant emissions in other ways, such as with emission standards or technology requirements applied to specified types of plants. (One could assume the Court only left those options open to EPA because it was only the generation shifting options that had been challenged in the case the Court was reviewing.)
The Court’s majority claims it is simply returning to Congress the opportunity to indicate whether or not it intended to delegate to EPA authority to do the specific thing that the disputed regulation did; but the majority is well aware there’s no chance the current Congress would come down in favor.
While the ruling does, then, deprive EPA of one important option for regulating greenhouse-gas emission, the far larger danger resides in the majority’s having invoked a sweeping “Major Questions Doctrine” to justify its decision in this relatively narrow case.
Dangerous doctrine
That majority declared that this newly labeled doctrine — whose antecedents in previous Court decisions do not fit the current case (see Justice Kagan’s dissent)― holds that rules imposed by EPA or other Executive Branch agencies are subject to judicial review if the rules have major economic or other societal impacts and were not authorized, explicitly and in detail, in the language of Congress’s delegation of authority to the agency in question.
Inasmuch as Congressional delegations of regulatory authority to Executive Branch agencies often do not specify the specific regulatory tools the agencies may use (for the good reason that Congress lacks the relevant expertise and doesn’t wish to constrain those better equipped), the majority’s newly elevated doctrine puts a vast array of environmental and business regulations at risk when this Court finds opportunities to review them.
John Holdren is a research professor in Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and Co-Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program in the School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
From January 2009 to January 2017, Holdren was President Obama’s Science Advisor and Senate-confirmed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
But in addition to his exemplary post-White House life, Carter’s Oval Office stint was an extremely busy one for environmental politics.
- The nation’s first acknowledged toxic waste disaster was discovered on his watch in the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York. Carter responded by visiting, and by championing, the well-intended Superfund cleanup program. Superfund languished for years, however, with legal stonewalling thwarting virtually every one of the program’s 1,000+ sites.
- The Alaska Lands Bill was an instant success, setting aside 222 million pristine acres — the largest chunk of protected land in American history.
- In 1979, a reactor at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island complex nearly melted down. Carter’s Naval Academy training was in nuclear physics,* which served him well in addressing the near-disaster. But Three Mile Island stopped the nuclear power industry in its tracks.
And Carter became a moderately successful evangelist for energy efficiency, preaching basic common sense on gasoline after an OPEC embargo caused long gas lines and outlandish price hikes to $.90 (!!) a gallon. In July 1979, Carter scolded the nation in what became known as the “malaise” speech, even though the word “malaise” was never used in the speech.
So, on energy and environment, let’s give Carter an “A” for effort and a “C+” for accomplishment.
"Passive" solar symbol
In 1979, President Carter unveiled 32 passive solar panels prepared by the new Department of Energy.
Credit: Carter Presidential Library
He was ahead of his time in some ways. In 1979, a year before his rout by Ronald Reagan, he held a news conference on the White House roof.
Carter unveiled 32 passive solar panels prepared by the new Department of Energy. They would circulate sun-heated water into the White House to augment its hot water heaters.
In other words, “passive” meant minimally useful as anything but a symbol. But as a symbol, Carter had a powerful one.
“In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy,” he said. “A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people; harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”
How did that work out?
Well, President Reagan quietly had the panels removed shortly after taking office.
And as for that “move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil”— President Biden in Saudi Arabia this very week making nice over oil prices and supplies.
Where did President Carter's solar panels end up? A warehouse outside Washington, DC.
Credit: Carter Presidential Library
Pardon the lack of humility, but here’s where I come in. In 1990, I was wrapping up my hellraising days at Greenpeace.
As President George H.W. Bush waged a strategic oil war against Iraq following its takeover of oil neighbor Kuwait, I wondered about the mysterious disappearance of those 32 solar panels and filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to locate them. I got the kind of quick response that doesn’t often happen anymore under FOIA. The panels were in storage in a vast General Services Administration warehouse outside Washington, DC.
If you’re thinking of the last scene of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” you’d be right. One of the panels was destroyed by a surplus federal desk that had been tossed on top of – and through – it.
Many of the panels ended up at Unity College, a small environmental studies school in Maine. Unity used a rule that allowed educational institutions to claim unused federal property.
Since Jimmy Carter left the White House in 1981, Ronald Reagan’s been the best horse riding ex-Prez; Bush the First, the best skyjumper; Bill Clinton the best near-First Gentleman; Bush II the best brush-clearer; Obama has the best jump shot. And let’s give credit where credit is due: Trump is the best golfing, anti-democracy blowhard.
But as he nears his 98th birthday on October 1, Jimmy Carter is simply the best in so many ways.
*Nuclear Physics training aside, Carter was a member of that eclectic group, along with President G. W. Bush and Homer Simpson, that can’t pronounce “nucular.”
Peter Dykstra is our weekend editor and columnist and can be reached at pdykstra@ehn.org or @pdykstra.
His views do not necessarily represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate, or publisher Environmental Health Sciences.