Newsletter

Throughout the Biden administration, federal agencies have maintained a sustained focus on the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure.   Led by the White House, federal agencies have released updated cybersecurity guidelines and requirements, with previous announcements of public-private initiatives to advance the resilience of the electric, pipeline, and water sectors to threats in the cyber realm. 

ILTA continues to work to educate policymakers that terminal companies must have the flexibility and autonomy to innovate and respond with individualize approaches that best serve their facilities and employees. Overly prescriptive regulations will only hamper efforts by cybersecurity professionals to respond to a constantly evolving threat landscape. Restrictive policies could have adverse impacts not only for terminal companies, but for the industries and consumers that depend upon the products they handle and store. 

The North Carolina Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board is scheduled to meet Dec. 5 to provide state officials with feedback on two PFAS science issues. The first involves a recommendation regarding the use of existing literature to derive reference doses for perfluoro-2-methoxyaacetic acid (PFMOAA), which was recently detected as the most prevalent PFAS in the Cape Fear River.

The board is also scheduled to provide feedback to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality on bioaccumulation factors contained in EPA’s draft aquatic life criteria for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanoic sulfonate (PFOS), and the potential for using the factors in North Carolina.

The not-for-profit Blue Sky Maritime Coalition (BSMC) released a new report on November 11 focused on further supporting the North American shipping industry’s journey toward achieving net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. The report, a second in a series identifying the pathways and approaches to accelerate the transition to net-zero emissions, looks at the roles of vessel types, inventories and GHG accounting approaches.

The Blue-Sky Maritime Coalition (the Coalition) a non-profit corporation, describes itself as a strategic alliance formed to accelerate the transition of waterborne transportation in Canada and the United States toward net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The Coalition brings together industry, community, government, academic leadership, and other stakeholders across the waterborne transportation value chain to action projects that remove barriers to accelerating development, encourage innovation, and promote policies in support of zero emissions.

ILTA is excited to be moving forward with a newly improved safety survey and awards program. Set to launch in mid-December, the new safety survey will bring added depth and better benchmarking to our safety program.   

A working group made up of a subset of our Health and Safety Committee has been reviewing and remodeling the program since March 2022.  The working group has delivered a product focused on leading indicators to complement the reliance on lagging indicators such as the total recordable incident rate (TRIR).  Led by Chair Shannon Caldwell of Zenith Energy, the group created twenty questions that identify key components of an effective safety program.   

The Defense Department’s (DOD) Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) and Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) held its annual conference a Nov. 29-Dec. 2 annual conference including sessions on the development and use of PFAS-free firefighting foam. The program included panel discussions on DOD efforts to phase out the use of aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) containing PFAS by fiscal year 2025, as required by the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.

According to the conference program, the presentation provided details on the mechanism of PFAS-free alternatives for firefighting, including research on recently developed novel surfactants at the laboratory scale. Those PFAS-free substitutes could also help DOD against longstanding complaints by state environmental regulators and communities near military bases about PFAS drinking water contamination from decades of AFFF use. Those complaints include landmark litigation being overseen by the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina in which chemical industry defendants have accused DOD of continuing to use PFAS-containing AFFF even after it knew about potential health risks.