Hon. Dianne Feinstein
Chair, Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development
184 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Hon. Lisa Murkowski
Ranking Member, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
304 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Hon. Ron Wyden
Chair, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
304 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510 

Dear Senators, Alexander, Feinstein, Murkowski, and Wyden, 

As you work to develop legislation addressing longstanding challenges of storage and disposal of our country’s current 70,000 metric tons of commercial spent nuclear fuel, a radioactive waste inventory projected to more than double by 2035, we strongly urge you to consider the potential benefits of increased public safety, domestic manufacturing and domestic job creation that can come from improving current spent fuel management policy; specifically legislating the thinning out of over-crowded cooling pools and the ramping-up of more dry cask storage.  Failure to incorporate this important issue into national nuclear waste legislation would be a missed opportunity to increase public confidence in the safety of domestic nuclear power operations as well as create new markets around US-manufactured technology, putting more Americans back to work.    

The challenges of crafting a workable framework for long-term management of the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle are formidable, especially when one considers the substantial amount of time it will take to implement and actualize a process for permanently disposing of this waste or initially consolidating and storing it at specific interim sites prior to permanent geologic disposal.  The fact is that large quantities of spent fuel will remain at reactor sites for many years to come.  While the radiation levels in recently-discharged nuclear fuel must be allowed to decrease to a level where the fuel can be stored in dry casks, the industry standard practice of using cooling pools for long-term storage—and filling pools to capacity using high-density storage racks—increases risks to safety and security in nuclear operations.

We believe that addressing this problem creates a unique opportunity to ramp up domestic manufacturing of safer, less vulnerable dry storage casks, potentially creating thousands of quality jobs.  Furthermore, accelerating the transfer of fuel from over-crowded pools to dry casks is a necessary step in the process of any plan to ship spent fuel to an interim centralized storage site or geologic repository. 

Americans deserve real safety improvements in spent fuel management, and these improvements are good for the long-term security of the industry, their workers, and the public.  Congress cannot adequately provide real solutions to our waste storage problem without improving current spent fuel management practices, and there is little to no public safety benefit from legislating a process to move spent fuel off site without a linkage to thinning out over-crowded cooling pools.         

We recognize your leadership on this very important and challenging issue, and hope that you will seize this opportunity to improve public safety and security while putting Americans to work by acknowledging the need to use more dry cask storage, and helping to facilitate increased domestic manufacturing of this important technology. On behalf of our millions of members and supporters, we ask that you include language or provisions that would accelerate the transfer of spent fuel from cooling pools to dry storage casks in the national nuclear waste legislation you are developing. 

Sincerely, 

David A. Foster
Executive Director, BlueGreen Alliance

The implementation costs of the Tier 3 program will be greatly offset by savings in health costs alone, in addition to improving quality of life for all Americans. Also, since pollution reduction is strongly tied to fuel efficiency, in addition to direct benefits to public health, these efforts will assist in the mitigation of greenhouse gases that are causing climate change.

Senator Frank Lautenberg
141 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510             

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
478 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510 

Dear Senators: 

As a coalition of ten labor unions and four environmental groups, the BlueGreen Alliance (BGA) writes today to thank and commend you for your ongoing leadership in the effort to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).  We support your newly introduced legislation, the Safe Chemicals Act of 2013, and recognize the many years of work which have gone into its creation. 

Unchanged since its creation in 1976, TSCA now lags far behind progressive policies found in other regions, such as the European Union, and fails to address the significant costs associated with hazardous chemicals that are being imposed on downstream users.  Consumers and workers too often have inadequate information regarding chemical products, limiting their ability to make informed decisions.  The current regulatory regime hamstrings innovation in favor of using existing chemicals rather than seeking safer alternatives. 

As our organization participated in the extensive stakeholder dialogue process which you spearheaded to work toward consensus around TSCA reform, we also appreciate the considerable effort at alliance building which underlies the form and content of this bill.  Representing the interests of millions of workers and environmentalists, we particularly applaud the most important provisions of this legislation: 

• Use of a health-based standard to assess chemical safety and explicitly require protection of the most vulnerable populations, including children, workers, minority communities and low-income groups;
• Prohibition against the introduction of new chemicals without a finding that the substance meets the applicable safety standard and is not a known or suspected reproductive, developmental, neurological, or immunological toxicant, carcinogen, mutagen, or endocrine disruptor;
• Directing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to prioritize those chemicals of particular hazard to the public for immediate risk management;
• Requiring chemical manufacturers to bear the burden of proving that chemical substances meet applicable safety standards;
• Ensuring that workers, communities, and the public have a right to know information regarding their chemical exposure;
• Requiring federal agency coordination to avoid overlapping responsibilities for protecting Americans’ occupational and environmental health;
• Providing federal support for basic and applied research, and incentives for the production of safer alternatives to hazardous substances currently in use. 

The chemical industry is a crucial segment of our national economy, directly or indirectly employing over four millions Americans.  Building on this foundation, your effort to modernize our national chemical regulation policy will revitalize the sector by incentivizing the development and manufacture of new, safer chemicals.  

By placing the burden of demonstrating chemical safety on industry, rather than the EPA, your legislation will jump-start innovation, igniting a new ‘race to the top’ as chemical manufacturers compete freely to develop consumer, worker, and environment friendly new substances.  Far from endangering American jobs, this policy shift will spur the creation of the type of new, middle-class supporting jobs so vital to our nation’s economic well-being. 

In seeking to protect human health through effective government policy, your leadership has created a roadmap to a greener, healthier future for all Americans.  We support your work on this critical endeavor and will continue doing our part to help ensure success moving forward.

Sincerely, 

David A. Foster
Executive Director
BlueGreen Alliance

cc: Senator Barbara Boxer, Chair, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
Senator David Vitter, Ranking Member, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
Senator Tom Udall, Chair, Senate Superfund, Toxics and Environmental Health Subcommittee
Senator Mike Crapo, Ranking Member, Senate Superfund, Toxics and Environmental Health Subcommittee

Click the link below to read her full written testimony.

Although policymakers face difficult decisions, our nation must continue to invest in those skills to maintain our competitiveness in the global economy.

If federal investment in clean technology returned to its 2009 levels in 2013, the job gains would almost equal the job gains from canceling the $54 billion cut to defense spending scheduled for 2013 under the Budget Control Act, a new EPI paper finds.

In Green ‘sequester’ is already costing U.S. jobs: Job losses from ongoing clean-tech cuts will rival those from defense cuts, EPI Research and Policy Director Josh Bivens explains that federal support for clean technology has already been cut back steadily and is scheduled to fall from $47.3 billion in 2009 to $12.9 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars by 2013, a drop of almost $35 billion. Because each $1 of green investments supports 1.5 times as many jobs as each $1 in defense spending, the drop in clean technology investment in 2013 relative to peak levels would translate into about 436,000 fewer jobs, relative to the roughly 448,000 fewer jobs resulting from the proposed cut in defense spending.

The California Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP) offers policy recommendations that will help to grow clean energy manufacturing jobs in California. 

Making this transformation to cleaner sources of energy will ensure that we maintain our global leadership in clean energy innovation; create much-needed jobs in construction, manufacturing, maintenance, research and other industries; develop a clean, safe and secure energy supply right here in the U.S.; and protect the health of our communities and environment.

We have made substantial gains in building a robust clean energy economy across the country in the past few years, but more work must be done to ensure we lead the global clean energy race. From the dedicated and rapid ramp-up of renewable energy use to the rebuilding and retrofitting our nation’s infrastructure to capture maximum efficiency gains, we need a concerted effort to continue to improve America’s energy system for all types of energy throughout the extraction, production, and use process.

Many U.S. cities rely on pipes that are, on average, a century old.1 Leaking pipes lose an estimated 7 billion gallons of clean drinking water a day and are known to leach contaminants and breed bacteria in drinking water, jeopardizing the health of our nation’s communities.

Needed investment in water infrastructure programs will create thousands of jobs through the replacement and upgrade of pipelines, treatment plants, storage tanks, and the installation of green infrastructure projects. A key part of job creation is the use of gray water systems, water reuse-recycling, hot water circulating systems, and rain water catchment systems. These water saving components can be retrofit in existing facilities and thus add work opportunities in existing and new facilities. In addition to the work created by these piping systems, there is a supply side of industries that will benefit from manufacturing the various pieces of equipment required. These investments will put people back to work and ensure that our communities have access to safe, clean water. 

Listen to the press event unveiling the policy.

The job losses in America's wind industry are stacking up. Currently more than 1,500 jobs have been lost or in danger in states like Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Oregon, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Vermont. Learn more about the Production Tax Credit for wind energy here. 

10 Ways to Rebuild the Middle Class for Hard Working Americans: Making Work Pay in the 21st Century lays out a road map for this u-turn. We describe common sense policies towards making today’s jobs better and tomorrow’s jobs good. The core value guiding this road map is that work lies at the center of a robust and sustainable economy; that all work has dignity; and that through work, all ofus should be able to support our families, educate our children and enjoy our retirements.

Findings in the report, Gearing Up: Smart Standards Create Good Jobs Building Cleaner Cars, reveal 570,000 jobs would be created nationally from fuel savings and developing clean car technology. This proposal for light-duty vehicles built between 2017- 2025 means fuel economy will reach an all-time high 54.5 miles per gallon (mpg) and low for emissions of 163 grams of carbon dioxide per mile (g/mi).

Findings in the report, Gearing Up: Smart Standards Create Good Jobs Building Cleaner Cars, reveal 570,000 jobs would be created nationally from fuel savings and developing clean car technology, and 50,000 of these jobs would be created in light-duty vehicle manufacturing and assembly by 2030. This proposal for light-duty vehicles built between 2017- 2025 means fuel economy will reach an all-time high 54.5 miles per gallon (mpg) and low for emissions of 163 grams of carbon dioxide per mile (g/mi).

This is a necessary step to move our country towards a secure 21st century, clean energy economy - strengthened by a vibrant offshore wind industry - that stands with the American worker.