New EPA White Paper on Probabilistic Risk Assessment
Earlier this month, EPA released for public comment a new white paper on probabilistic risk assessment, marking the Obama Administration’s first major foray into the contentious debate about EPA's evolving risk assessment methods. Back in May, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced changes to the way the Office of Research and Development (ORD) will update risk assessments for the IRIS database, but that announcement was made without any real public input and it only implicated the inner workings of one program office (albeit an important one). The public comment period on the new white paper presents the first opportunity for the various stakeholders who usually weigh in on EPA’s risk assessment policies to have some say in the new administration’s policies.
The new white paper, Using Probabilistic Methods to Enhance the Role of Risk Analysis in Decision Making, focuses on one of the fundamental problems in regulatory risk assessment – how should risk assessors and risk managers address the uncertainty and variability intrinsic to the risk assessment process?
The most straightforward way to answer that question, and EPA’s approach in many situations, is to use default assumptions. When the pesticides program staff is working on setting a …
This item cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet.
In April, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asked a federal court to vacate a last-minute Bush administration rule relaxing stream buffer zone requirements for dumping waste from mountaintop removal mining. Salazar said that the rule didn’t pass the smell test, and that it had been improperly issued without ESA consultation. Environmental groups which had challenged the rule welcomed Salazar’s announcement, but the National Mining Association, which had intervened in support of the rule, vigorously opposed it. Wednesday, Judge Henry Kennedy of the federal district court in Washington, D.C., denied Salazar’s motion. Where no court has ruled on the merits, he said, an agency cannot unilaterally repeal a rule without going through the normal notice and comment procedure required by the Administrative Procedure Act.
The ruling is frustrating for opponents of mountaintop removal mining, who are convinced …
At Netroots Nation, the annual liberal blogger conference, organizations, candidates, and of course bloggers get together to talk. It's informal. North Carolina's Rep. Brad Miller, among several electeds at the conference, was sporting jeans by Friday.
The focus among the environmental folks, not surprisingly, is climate change. The enviros here have qualms with the Waxman-Markey bill, but most are in the mindset of trying to get a Senate bill passed.
Speaking on a panel Friday, Rep. Jay Inslee, of Washington, expressed some optimism. He said that he, along with fellow Energy and Commerce Committee members Markey and Boucher, had met with a group of 14 "moderate" Senators, and: "I've never seen this happen before ... There were members of the U.S. Senate actually listening to members of the U.S. House." He said these Senators were, as the saying goes, looking for ways to …
By now, followers of the controversy over the appointment of Cass Sunstein to serve as Obama Administration “regulatory czar” can do little but shake their heads in astonishment. The controversy over the Harvard professor’s nomination to OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has taken on a picaresque quality, as one bizarre delay follows another. The latest development in the Sunstein saga is reportedly the placement of another, as-yet unidentified senatorial hold on the nomination, perhaps at the behest of cattle rancher and National Rifle Association interests, with Majority Leader Harry Reid promising to take steps in September to release the nominee from limbo.
Meanwhile, as I have noted before in this space, like other nominees with delayed confirmations, Sunstein appears to be in firm control of his 50-odd person staff at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) where he has worked in …
This is one of two posts today by CPR member scholars evaluating NY Gov. David Paterson's recent executive order on regulations; see also Rebecca Bratspies' post, "Paterson's Executive Order: Win for Industry, Loss for Public Health and Safety."
Who knew? With his newly announced plan to require New York departments and agencies to look back at proposed and existing regulations, Governor Paterson placed himself squarely in the anti-regulatory tradition of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Like Governor Paterson, these presidents created a look-back process to identify regulations that they said needed to be reformed. The history of White House look-backs suggest the New York is at a minimum misguided and could well be harmful to New York residents.
Shortly after being elected, President Reagan created the Task Force for Regulatory Relief, headed by then Vice-President George Bush, to create a …
This is one of two posts today by CPR member scholars evaluating NY Gov. David Paterson's recent executive order on regulations; see also Sid Shapiro's post, "New York Governor Channels Ronald Reagan: Governor Paterson’s Flawed Plan to Review Regulations."
It is open season on environmental, health, and safety regulations in New York. Last Friday, August 7, Governor Paterson issued an Executive Order directing his public safety agencies to review all of their regulations with an eye toward eliminating any that are “unnecessary, unbalanced, unwise, duplicative or unduly burdensome.”
This language could have been lifted directly from anti-regulation lobbying groups. The Governor's press release actually touts: "Streamlined Regulations Will Better Protect the Health, Safety and Welfare of all New Yorkers." Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Order requires each agency to conduct a 60 day comment period and then select at …
CPR's Sid Shapiro is interviewed in this week's edition of Living On Earth, the environment-focused public radio show heard in 300 markets around the nation. The subject is David Michaels's nomination to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Says Shapiro: "David Michaels has his job cut out for him. I think it's fair to say that OSHA is one of the most dysfunctional agencies in Washington. For example, Congress had a plan how to regulate toxic chemicals in the workplace. And OSHA has been almost unable in the last ten years or so to fulfill that plan. In fact, it's only issued three health regulations in roughly the last 10 to 15 years." Text of the interview is here. It's downloadable, here. And streamed, here.
Like Alice's adventure, the development of regulatory oversight in the Obama administration is becoming "curiouser and curiouser." President Obama selected Cass Sunstein to be the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), a curious choice since Sunstein, although one of the country’s most distinguished academics, is in favor of extending the use of cost-benefit analysis, a position so popular with the business community that the Wall Street Journal endorsed his nomination. Sunstein's confirmation hearing was uneventful, probably because he avoided answering any difficult questions, but Sunstein's nomination is now being held by Senator John Cornyn, who objects to Sunstein's previous statements on animal rights -- an issue that the head of OIRA is highly unlikely to encounter.
In the meantime, the development of a new Executive Order on regulatory impact analysis has had its own curious journey. The new administration invited public comment …
Michael Livermore is right to suggest that environmentalists should be focused on Cass Sunstein’s first official day as regulatory czar for the Obama Administration. After months of delay over the Harvard professor’s eclectic and provocative writings, he will eventually take office if he can placate cattle ranchers concerned about his views on animal rights. Whatever their level of paranoia about Sunstein’s ability to grant animals standing to bring lawsuits, the likely character of his reign was more accurately predicted by the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, which applauded Sunstein’s devotion to cost-benefit analysis, the major weapon of Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II to smother health, safety, and environmental protections.
Livermore, an advocate of kinder, gentler cost-benefit analysis that he hopes will lead to regulatory controls more palatable to conservatives, offers a depressing list of priorities for Sunstein on his …
Bowing to right-wing political pressure, Cass Sunstein, nominee for “regulatory czar” in the Obama Administration, broke months of official silence to plead his case with the cattle ranchers and agribusiness lobby who have engineered a hold on the nomination by Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). Sunstein’s move was all the more troubling because his absence from the public eye has included an across-the-board refusal to meet with or respond to any inquiries from a wide range of progressive groups and mainstream news reporters. Everyone who has tried to approach Sunstein has been shunned—from reporters at several top news outlets to representatives of labor unions and advocacy groups. The strict wall of “no comment until I am confirmed” has persisted despite the fact that Sunstein has been working at OMB for months, actively participating in a series of decisions by the Obama Administration on regulatory matters.
Don …
