Focus
The New York Times – March 16
Oil has begun flowing through Sable Offshore’s pipeline off the coast of Santa Barbara for the first time in more than a decade at the direction of the federal government, despite strong objections from California officials. The pipeline had been shut down since 2015, when a rupture caused one of the worst oil spills in state history. Sable Offshore announced on March 14 that it had resumed oil production after President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, as oil prices have spiked during the Iran war.
News
KCRA – March 19
Two dozen states and over a dozen cities and counties sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this Thursday, challenging the agency’s repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding. The finding, which determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, served as the legal basis of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants, and other pollution sources.
C&EN – March 19
EPA is proposing to roll back National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants rules for the use of ethylene oxide (EtO) in commercial sterilization facilities, arguing that the rules threaten the ability of such facilities to sterilize medical equipment. EPA implemented the standards in 2024 after finding that people living near sterilization plants had overall higher lifetime cancer risks. The proposed rule, published in the Federal Register on March 17, is open to public comment until May 1.
San Francisco Chronicle – March 16
The California Department of Insurance last Friday released a long-awaited report on smoke damage claims after Los Angeles fire survivors expressed concerns about their insurers dismissing the risks presented by toxic chemicals left in their homes. Some Los Angeles area homeowners whose homes were badly contaminated but remained standing after the wildfires have struggled to get insurers to pay for testing and have been told that common cleaning methods would be sufficient to remove some toxic contamination. The report suggests the state should develop a tier system of what needs to be done to remediate homes based on how much they were impacted by fire, but stops short of issuing concrete standards regarding what to test for, such as lead or asbestos, or how to remediate these contaminants if they are found.
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