NEMWI Weekly Update
July 1st, 2024
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Army Corps, Illinois, Michigan, Sign Brandon Road PPA
The United States Army Corps of Engineers, Rock Island District (USACE), Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer today signed a Project Partnership Agreement that will allow construction to begin on the Brandon Road Interbasin Project (BRIP), the state-of-the-art infrastructure project aimed at keeping invasive carp out of the Great Lakes.
The $1.1 billion project will be split with a 90/10 federal cost share, meaning that the federal government will put $1 billion towards construction, while Illinois and Michigan will contribute the remaining $114 million. The ongoing costs for operations and maintenance are currently split with an 80/20 federal cost share, although the Senate Water Resources and Development Act (WRDA) would increase the federal potion to 90%.
The timing of today's signed agreement means that the project can proceed without delay and take advantage of the lock closure at Lockport, preventing further cost increases. $114 million from Illinois and Michigan and $274 million in federal dollars have now been released to USACE for construction. USACE plans to solicit “contracts for fabrication, continued design, leading edged deterrents, and bedrock removal” in the coming weeks.
“Protecting the Great Lakes has always been and will always be a priority for the State of Illinois... I want to thank our partners at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the State of Michigan as well as our team in the Governor’s office and at DNR for their years of work on this extraordinarily complex endeavor,” Governor Pritzker said in a press release.
“The Great Lakes are the beating heart of Michigan’s economy, and Brandon Road will help us protect local communities and key industries, including fishing and boating, that support tens of thousands of good-paying jobs,” Governor Whitmer added.
Read USACE’s press release here.
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House Committee Holds Hearing on FY 2025 Budget for DOE
The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology held a full committee hearing on June 26 to examine the Budget Proposal for the Department of Energy (DOE) for Fiscal Year 2025. David M. Turk, Deputy Secretary of the DOE, was the witness. The total budget request amounted to $51.42 billion.
Opening statements by the Chair, Congressman Frank Lucas (R-OK), and the ranking member, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), revealed diverging priorities but consensus on some issues. Congressman Lucas argued that the DOE should divert more resources to the Office of Science for fundamental research and, in opposition to the viewpoints of Democratic members, claimed that the DOE was “attempting to lead a forced green energy transition." Congresswoman Lofgren emphasized the importance of the Milestone Program, a private-public partnership awarding funding to companies researching and developing commercial fusion reactors, and expressed disappointment that the DOE’s proposal included a 25% decrease in funding for the Milestone Program, declaring the decrease “a step backward.”
When questioned, Deputy Secretary Turk responded that more needed to be spent on fusion, but that FY 2025 was a “constrained budget environment” and that in FY 2024 the DOE had requested $1 billion for Fusion Energy Sciences (FES), which includes Milestone, and only received $790 million. Of the eight companies supported by Milestone, four are in the northeast and midwest: one based in Massachusetts, one in New Jersey, and two in Wisconsin. Increased federal support for the Milestone Program and nuclear fusion in general was echoed by both Democratic and Republican committee members.
Congressman Jim Baird (R-IN) said that the EPA had “dragged its feet” on approval of applications for geological carbon capture for ethanol producers to limit their emissions, with some applications taking six years to reach a decision. Baird asked Mr. Turk whether the United States needs a more efficient approval process for carbon capture technologies and how the DOE can work with the EPA to achieve this. Mr. Turk responded that the DOE will continue to work with the EPA and that decreasing permitting time is one of the agency’s priorities.
Congresswoman Summer Lee (D-PA) questioned the Deputy Secretary on the DOE’s Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Office, which occupies only 2% of the department’s budget request. She asked how DOE is limited in its effort to standardize methods and technologies for locating and plugging abandoned oil and gas wells. The Deputy Secretary agreed that plugging abandoned wells is an important priority and mentioned current funding streams for completing this, including MERP (Methane Emission Reduction Program), an $850 million competitive grant program, though he acknowledged more must be done.
Congressman Gabe Amo (D-RI) asked the Deputy Secretary about how the DOE’s proposed $62 million increase for the Wind Energies Technology Office would help meet President Biden’s offshore wind goal of 30 gigawatts by 2030, and how Congress can help improve the challenges of integrating interregional connection of offshore wind into transmission infrastructure. Mr. Turk responded that the DOE was working with the IRS on improving tax incentives for offshore wind construction, and is communicating with every U.S. offshore wind developer to determine the utility of a loan program. He mentioned that the DOE has been using a 2005 law, CITAP (Coordinated Interagency Transmission Authorizations and Permits Program) in an effort to reduce transmission permitting times to two years, though the agency could use more support from Congress.
Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (R-NY) expressed worry that the Biden Administration’s pause on reviewing applications for new LNG exports would push Balkan and eastern European countries away from the U.S. and toward Russia and China, and asked why the pause occurred during an election year. She also expressed worry that the DOE was not adequately supporting nuclear power in New York State. Mr. Turk defended the pause, saying he felt “incredibly comfortable” about it, and emphasized that the U.S. had increased its export of LNG over the past several years. He affirmed the agency’s support for nuclear power, although he did not have enough time to elaborate.
The Deputy Secretary also affirmed the importance of clean hydrogen as an energy source, mentioning $7 billion set aside for “hydrogen hubs” across the U.S. to develop production and distribution, though he was not able to give a definitive response on when the plan would be completed.
Reported by NEMWI Intern Evan Kaye, Dartmouth College
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House Appropriations Bills Continue To Progress
Subcommittee hearings were held last week on three House Appropriations Bills of interest to the Great Lakes region: Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS); Energy and Water Development; and Interior and Environment. All three were advanced out of subcommittee and are scheduled to be marked up by the full Committee on Tuesday, July 9. As with previous appropriations legislation coming out of House committees, these bills were advanced on party-line votes and are extremely unlikely to make it past the Senate or be signed into law by the President.
Under these bills, NOAA funding would be cut by 11% from FY24 enacted levels, and the EPA would be cut by 20%. The Clean Water State Revolving Fund would receive $1.2 billion and the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund would receive $883 million, decreases of 25% and 20%, respectively.
Other critical programs would be spared, however. The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative ($368 million) and the Great Lakes Authority ($5 million), would be funded at levels equaling what they received in FY24. And although the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill expressly did not include funding for a Great Lakes Icebreaker (GLIB), as NEMWI reported two weeks ago, Rep. John James (R-MI), a member of the Great Lakes Task Force, authored an amendment that passed the House last Wednesday to move $20 million from the Office of the Secretary to the United States Coast Guard for the GLIB.
Additional details of line-item programs will be available if and when these bills advance out of Committee. NEMWI will continue to monitor the Appropriations process.
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Supreme Court Limits EPA Enforcement in
Critical Decisions
The United States Supreme Court issued three separate rulings last week that would impact the Environmental Protection Agency. The rulings were 6-3 along ideological lines, with the exception of Ohio v. EPA, in which Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the liberals in dissent.
First, in Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) v. Jarkesy, the Court ruled that the SEC’s tribunals, where civil cases are heard before an administrative law judge rather than a jury, are unconstitutional. This enforcement tool is used by many other federal agencies as well, including the EPA. The ruling limits the avenues by which federal agencies can hold bad actors accountable, and because jury trials are more expensive than tribunals, agencies may take fewer enforcement actions. One particular concern is that because Congress has long passed statutes under the assumption that these tribunals would be in place, some of those laws may fall apart in their absence. It remains to be seen, however, what the scope and effects of the ruling will be in practice.
In Ohio v. EPA, the Court suspended the “good neighbor rule,” which EPA set to limit ozone pollution, especially from power plants, in upwind states in order to protect downwind states. Last year, the EPA rejected 23 state implementation plans to reduce ozone emissions, and put the good neighbor rule in place instead. In 12 of those states, Appeals Courts have held up the rule, and SCOTUS’ decision last week suspends the rule in the other 11. This includes Ohio and Indiana, two of the states that brought the suit. The 5-4 majority ruled that EPA did not adequately explain how the rule would remain effective if fewer states than the original 23 were forced to comply with it. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in dissent, said that EPA’s emissions calculations were made independent of how many states were covered, and that the ruling “leaves large swaths of upwind states free to keep contributing significantly to their downwind neighbors' ozone problems for the next several years.”
The rule had produced results. The EPA said that ozone emissions were reduced by 18% in the states where the plan was in effect, preventing pollution that can cause asthma and other health concerns.
In their most impactful decision, SCOTUS reversed their 40-year-old Chevron decision, which required courts to defer to federal agencies’ “reasonable interpretations” of laws passed by Congress when those laws were ambiguous. This allowed agencies, in possession of more expertise than Congress or the judiciary, to fill in the gaps in legislation. Now, the judiciary will get to have the final say instead, making it harder for the executive branch, and especially the EPA, to regulate. While the majority opinion stressed that thousands of rulings decided based on Chevron, including many SCOTUS rulings, would not be "called into question,” the future impact of shifting power from the executive branch to the courts could be enormous.
The rulings from the Court are the latest in a string of cases impacting the EPA. The Sackett v. EPA decision last year limited how the agency can regulate waterways, and a 2022 ruling limited how the agency could address greenhouse gas emissions.
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NOAA, Ohio Sea Grant, Announce HABs Forecast
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Ohio Sea Grant announced a Harmful Algal Bloom forecast for Western Lake Erie of moderate to larger-than-moderate for the 2024 season. This forecast corresponds to a severity index of 5, with a likely range of outcomes between 4.5 and 6. For context, the most severe bloom season on record, 2015, had a severity index of 10.5. Last year’s bloom had a severity index of 5.3, and if nutrient reduction targets are hit, it is estimated that the resulting bloom would have a severity index of 3.
Importantly, severity is measured by algal biomass over the peak 30 days of a bloom, not by toxicity. NOAA is currently researching ways that they might be able to forecast toxicity in the future, but are not able to do so currently. It is also too early to tell where exactly the bloom will be. Bloom location is shaped by wind patterns, which are challenging to forecast more than a month ahead. During bloom season, however, NOAA provides five-day bloom forecasts that show where the bloom is, and where it is likely to go.
There are currently 286 metric tons of bioavailable phosphorus at the Maumee River in Waterville. This is above the target of 240 metric tons, and above the levels for 2022 and 2023, but far below record levels in 2015 that were north of 700. Because phosphorus concentrations have not appreciably changed over the past few years, the main driver of the increased nutrient load this year (and thus of the higher severity index this year than last) is increased flow through the Maumee River, which deposits more phosphorus into the western basin of Lake Erie.
Read Ohio Sea Grant’s recap of the forecast announcement here.
For up-to-date monitoring, forecasting, and alerts, visit NOAA’s hub here.
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on Social Media
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In the House:
The House in on recess this week
In the Senate:
The Senate is on recess this week
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