* Last October, President Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum titled “Promoting the Reliable Supply and Delivery of Water in the West.” It set streamlining demands for major western water projects, including work underway within the Columbia River Basin – more specifically, an Environmental Impact Statement and Biological Opinion originally due in 2021. The President said: too slow, git-‘r-done faster. Last week the co-lead agencies – U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, and Bonneville Power Administration – announced that their plan to speed things up was approved by the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Work will be finished next year – 2020. “The agencies now are revising project details in order to reach the new completion date.” It looks like the work pace quickens for tasks related to “Public Comment Review and Synthesis” and “Prepare Final EIS and Identify Preferred Alternative.” The final EIS should be out in June 2020 rather than the previous, much more exact deadline of March 26, 2021.
* Next week, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) will release the findings of its Annual Energy Outlook 2019 (AEO), including long-term projections of U.S. energy supply, demand, and prices, including cases that address alternative assumptions regarding U.S. economic growth rates, domestic energy resources and technology, and world oil prices. Additionally, EIA will present its January 2019 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO). This news release will really be an event, a presentation, and discussion by top EIA officials followed by an expert panel discussion on the issues within the new Outlooks. Panelists are from the Bipartisan Policy Center, EPRI and FERC.
* PFAS* monitoring continues in Michigan. State and County officials retested 21 private residential wells in Otsego, MI. Fortunately, there was no presence of fearsome ![]()
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dioxins in most of the wells that had previously tested positive. Only one well showed trace amounts – the highest level was 0.13 parts per quadrillion (ppq), far below drinking water standards. Wells were tested for PFAS around the former Menasha Corporation Landfill in Otsego. Good news: All residential well samples came back negative for PFAS. This investigation continues. Next phase: testing soil samples for dioxins and PFAS.
*”PFAS,” or PFAs,” is an acronym for perfluoroalkyls, which are a group of man-made chemicals that are not found naturally in the environment, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). These are industrial chemicals used in manufacturing.