The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, better known as CSB, is held a meeting today to discuss several recommendations and a newly created “Most Wanted Program.” CSB has invited public input, so CPR President Rena Steinzor and I submitted comments to CSB yesterday, urging the agency to target the White House in its advocacy efforts related to the Most Wanted Program.
CSB has numerous recommendations that it considers “open” because the target of those recommendations, be it OSHA, another federal agency, a private standards organization like the NFPA, or another target, has yet to implement the recommendation.
The recommendations aimed at federal agencies are an especially tricky group, given the realities of the regulatory system. As we’ve discussed in this space before, OSHA’s regulatory efforts have been running up against significant resistance from the White House. A prime example is the proposal to tighten regulations on silica exposure, which has been stuck in the limbo of White House review for over two years. Until the White House decides that improving occupational safety and health is a priority, OSHA’s regulatory program will struggle to implement much-needed worker protections and CSB’s “Most Wanted” are going to remain at large.
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Matt Shudtz | July 25, 2013
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, better known as CSB, is held a meeting today to discuss several recommendations and a newly created “Most Wanted Program.” CSB has invited public input, so CPR President Rena Steinzor and I submitted comments to CSB yesterday, urging the agency to target the White House in its advocacy […]
Michael Patoka | July 24, 2013
Three years after the EPA proposed a rule to protect communities from coal ash—a byproduct of coal-power generation that’s filled with toxic chemicals like arsenic, lead, and mercury—a final rule is still nowhere in sight. Meanwhile, power plants are dumping an additional 94 million tons of it every year into wet-ash ponds and dry landfills […]
Matt Shudtz | July 23, 2013
Tomorrow, the new OIRA Administrator, Howard Shelanski, will testify before the House Small Business Committee on the results of the government-wide “look-back” at existing regulations. It will be an opportunity for the Committee’s Republicans to continue their assault on government programs that keep our food safe, air and water clean, and highways fit for travel. Shelanski could follow in […]
Rena Steinzor | July 22, 2013
The Senate’s grudging confirmation of Tom Perez as Secretary of Labor was the first piece of good news working people have had out of the federal government for quite some time. I know Perez–as a neighbor, a law school colleague, Maryland’s labor secretary, and a civil rights prosecutor. He’s a fearless, smart, and hard-driving public servant—exactly the […]
Victor Flatt | July 22, 2013
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari, or review of EME Homer City Generation v. EPA, 696 F.3d 7 (D.C. Cir. 2012), reh’g en banc denied, 2013 WL 656247 (D.C. Cir. Jan. 24, 2013). This is a welcome development, as the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals got many things wrong in its tossing out of […]
Daniel Farber | July 19, 2013
When you say “small business,” most people probably imagine a mom-and-pop corner grocery. Actually, the federal Small Business Administration’s concept of small goes well beyond that. For instance, it includes a computer business that does up to $25 million per year in business. A convenience store can do $27 million and still be considered “small,” […]
Robert Verchick | July 18, 2013
The Senate’s confirmation of Gina McCarthy as head of the Environmental Protection Agency is a welcome development and a signal that Congress and the President are willing to get serious about the Agency’s role in protecting the health of all Americans and the affects of climate change on the environment. It won’t be easy. Lawmakers […]
William Funk | July 17, 2013
Environmentalists know about the Environmental Protection Agency’s Water Transfer Rule. See 40 CFR § 122.3(i). It states in essence that discharging polluted water from one body of water to another unpolluted body of water is not a discharge of a pollutant under the Clean Water Act. According to the EPA, this action would not be regulated […]
Frank Ackerman | July 17, 2013
One day in May, climate change got a lot more expensive. The price tag on emissions – the value of the damages done by one more ton of CO2 in the air – used to be a mere $25 or so, in today’s dollars, according to an anonymous government task force that met in secret […]