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BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — As the Trump administration rolls back environmental and safety rules for the energy sector, government projections show billions of dollars in savings reaped by companies will come at a steep cost: more premature deaths and illnesses from air pollution, a jump in climate-warming emissions and more severe derailments of trains carrying explosive fuels.
The Associated Press analyzed 11 major rules targeted for repeal or relaxation under Trump, using the administration’s own estimates to tally how its actions would boost businesses and harm society.
The AP identified up to $11.6 billion in potential future savings for companies that extract, burn and transport fossil fuels. Industry windfalls of billions of dollars more could come from a freeze in vehicle efficiency standards that will yield an estimated 79 billion-gallon (300 million-liter) increase in fuel consumption.
On the opposite side of the government’s ledger, buried in thousands of pages of analyses, are the “social costs” of rolling back the regulations. Among them:
— Up to 1,400 additional premature deaths annually due to the pending repeal of a rule to cut coal plant pollution.
— An increase in greenhouse gas emissions by about 1 billion tons (907 million metric tons) from vehicles produced over the next decade — a figure equivalent to annual emissions of almost 200 million vehicles.
— Increased risk of water contamination from a drilling technique known as “fracking.”
— Fewer safety checks to prevent offshore oil spills.
For the Trump administration and its supporters, the rule changes examined by AP mark a much-needed pivot away from heavy regulations that threatened to hold back the Republican president’s goal of increasing U.S. energy production. But the AP’s findings also underscore the administration’s willingness to put company profits ahead of safety considerations and pollution effects.
The AP found the administration has sought to bolster the changes by emphasizing, and sometimes exaggerating, economic gains while minimizing negative impacts.
For example, when calculating future damages from greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants, the Trump administration looked only at U.S. effects, instead of globally. That drastically reduced the benefits of emission restrictions and allowed the administration to conclude the Obama-era rule was no longer justified, given costs to the coal industry.
In another instance, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to stop considering secondary benefits of controlling mercury emissions — namely reductions in other pollutants projected to prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths.
Last month, the AP revealed that the administration understated the advantages of installing better brakes on trains carrying crude oil and ethanol. Transportation Department officials acknowledged they miscalculated potential benefits by up to $117 million because they failed to include some projected future derailments.
In explaining its actions, the Trump administration said in some cases that the previous administration understated the price tag on new industry restrictions. In others, it said President Barack Obama’s administration had been overly expansive in how it defined benefits to society.
Michael Greenstone, a University of Chicago professor who served as chief economist for Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, said the Trump administration was downplaying the health and environmental impacts of its actions.
“When you start fudging the numbers, it’s not that the costs just evaporate into thin air. We will pay,” Greenstone said. “They are reducing the costs for industries where pollution is a byproduct.”
The rules being targeted were largely crafted under Obama in response to climate change, the disastrous 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, massive releases from coal ash dumps and fuel train explosions.
Trump’s administration has stressed that savings for companies were greater than any increased perils to safety or the environment.
“We fully recognize every significant policy decision has a consequence and that those consequences can differ,” acting U.S. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told the AP. “I think when you look at the track record, holistically, what you see is our deregulatory efforts are still pretty protective.”
The AP’s tally of savings was derived from government projections required under a 1993 executive order. Five of the rule changes are still pending.
On rules for toxic coal ash, offshore safety and refinery pollution, the administration said companies would save hundreds of millions of dollars with little or no added risk — an assertion former federal officials and environmental groups have disputed.
The potential industry savings were projected largely over the next decade.
Sectors of the coal industry see lifting costly rules as a matter of survival because demand has plummeted as utilities switch to cleaner-burning fuels.
For the oil and gas industry, with hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue, the economic impact of the Obama-era rules was comparatively small. But they were vigorously opposed as restrictions on business.
“We need to make sure we’re putting together rules that are flexible enough to apply the latest, greatest technologies,” said Erik Milito, vice president for the American Petroleum institute. He said the group focused on whether rules make sense, rather than cost savings.
Critics say the impact on public health and the environment will be even worse than projected.
“I don’t think it’s well understood what the death toll of these policies will be for the American people,” said Paul Billings, of the American Lung Association.
OBAMA CLIMATE AGENDA ASSAILED
Two sweeping changes under Trump — the rollback of the Clean Power Plan that threatened to close many coal power plants and a reversal of plans to increase vehicle fuel efficiency standards — were centerpieces of Obama’s climate change actions.
Killing the power plan would save companies up to $6.4 billion, the EPA concluded.
The trade-off is almost 61 million tons (55 million metric tons) annually of additional carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. The administration calculated that those emissions carry a maximum of $3.2 billion in “social costs,” such as flood damage and higher air conditioning costs.
Since company savings outweighed pollution costs, the administration said scrapping the power plan was justified. That conclusion was possible largely because the EPA limited social costs to effects in the U.S., instead of globally as under Obama.
EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones said the analysis complied with a 2003 directive under President George W. Bush that said such reviews should focus on costs and benefits to people in the U.S.
Joe Goffman, a former EPA official who helped create the clean power plan and now at Harvard Law School, said the omission of international impacts “doesn’t track with reality” given that climate change is a worldwide problem.
The Trump administration also limited pollution cost considerations in its proposal last month on mercury emitted by coal plants.
When the mercury rule was finalized in 2012, the EPA projected up to $90 billion in benefits, including avoidance of up to 11,000 premature deaths from other power plant pollutants.
Now, the EPA says those benefits could not be considered because they are not directly tied to mercury reductions. The only benefits that should be counted, the agency said, were improvements to IQ scores as a result of less mercury exposure, valued at up to $6 million annually.
The National Mining Association had urged the change. Spokesman Conor Bernstein said Obama’s EPA misused the concept of secondary pollution benefits to justify its actions.
The rollback’s impact is unclear since utilities already have spent an estimated $18 billion on new pollution controls.

FUEL STANDARDS AND DRILLING SAFETY
Some experts outside government take issue with the rationale for relaxing the fuel economy rule.
The Trump administration says reducing standards would save as many as 1,000 lives annually and spare consumers and car companies hundreds of billions of dollars on vehicles with higher gas mileage. To reach that conclusion, officials lowered estimates of how many vehicles people would buy.
But economists including from the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research say that assumption was fundamentally flawed, since looser standards would make cars cheaper and therefore increase demand. The economists said the government used misleading findings to wipe out at least $112 billion in potential societal benefits while falsely claiming its change would save numerous lives.
“Every change they made was made in the direction to make the standards look more expensive and the rollback to look cheaper and better,” said Jeff Alson, who worked 40 years at an EPA lab in Michigan.
Several rules reworked under Trump tie directly to worker and public safety.
The administration rescinded requirements for improved fuel train brakes after determining the costs to industry would be higher than previously calculated. It acknowledged more spills from derailments would likely occur.
After AP’s story about the agency’s $117 million benefits understatement, spokesman Bobby Fraser said the decision to rescind the Obama rule would stand because the costs were still greater.
Two safety rules for offshore oil and gas drilling were adopted following the Deepwater Horizon accident, which killed 11 people and spilled 134 million gallons (507 million liters) of oil.
The Interior Department now says less rigid inspection and equipment requirements would save drilling companies hundreds of millions of dollars with “negligible” safety and environmental risks.
Lynn Scarlett, acting Interior Secretary under George W. Bush, said the changes ignore a government commission’s findings on the Gulf spill.
“You’re removing a tool that was developed intentionally to help reduce the risks,” Scarlett said. “The failure to have those protections raises the risk, such that actions can result in accidents like Deepwater Horizon.”

Follow Matthew Brown at https://twitter.com/matthewbrownap

I recently had a very good experience with Teche Regional Medical Center and specifically the Emergency Department.
My father-in-law woke up on Dec. 22, 2018, with a serious breathing problem. He is 97 years old.
He was taken by Acadian Ambulance to the emergency room at Teche Regional Medical Center. He received excellent treatment by the staff there and from his personal physician, Dr. Carla Thurston.
He was admitted to the hospital and spent one night. While he was in the hospital, he received excellent care and was able to be released to go home Sunday (Dec. 23).
I hope the community realizes that Teche Regional Medical Center is an excellent facility. We could not have been more pleased with the medical treatment provided to my father-in-law.
Thomas L. Mahfouz
Berwick

A key question is starting to become harder to ignore in Louisiana, and it has everything to do with the latest in what is becoming a long list of tax controversies created in the last few years.
The current question that needs an answer is what exactly is the governor’s endgame on the Industrial Tax Exemption Program and what impact will that answer have on our economy. While this question of economic impact doesn’t seem interesting to most in the media covering this issue, it sure is the top question heavily pondered by those trying their best to provide jobs in Louisiana.
Last time I checked, a job is considered a good thing. That is still true, right? I sure hope so. Especially manufacturing jobs. They have been the backbone of Louisiana’s economy for generations.
Manufacturing jobs are some of the best jobs we have. More than 130,000 Louisianans work in manufacturing, earning an average salary of $87,212 - which is more than double the state average. Even better, these jobs depend on a multitude of other jobs to be successful thanks to manufacturing’s need for raw products and services from other industries to work. For example, looking just at the petrochemical manufacturing industry, the multiplier effect is considered to be 6.10 per job. That level of ripple effect far exceeds the multiplier of other industries.
Besides the obvious impact on those employed in manufacturing, the parishes that house these facilities see greater benefits also. Parishes with the largest manufacturing presence and the highest utilization of the ITEP are among the most prosperous in Louisiana. The top dozen parishes with ITEP contracts are all above the average annual wage for the entire parish. All but one of them have higher property and sales tax collections per capita. Teacher pay in these parishes is generally higher than other parts of the state thanks to all these increased tax collections that usually come with high-paying, private sector jobs.
Of course, these numbers mean very little to the unions, blogs and leftist groups that have made it a mission to eliminate the ITEP, disparage the companies that have used it and falsely sell togetherness while peddling heavy doses of divisive tactics in communities across our state.
This problem resulted from an executive order issued by Gov. Edwards in 2016 and amended in 2018 to eliminate the ITEP (that was first enacted in 1936 and enshrined in the state Constitution back in 1974) and replace this historic economic development tool with chaos and confusion. Today’s ITEP still has a state exemption formula and approval process (albeit reduced and more cumbersome) but also now adds uncertain, sporadic and often undefinable local approval processes without clear direction. Companies now have trouble understanding these ever-changing rules and procedures and local governmental entities are left to scramble and figure out how best to bring order to a complicated political powder keg that just happens to sit atop the most critical tool for the state’s economic future.
Confused? Welcome to the club.
This confusion and chaos are beginning to erode our business climate and we really need the governor to step in and lead on this issue. Just this past week, three different manufacturers in the Greater Baton Rouge area shut down operations, impacting 1,000 direct jobs and many other indirect jobs. Over the last two years, applications for ITEP manufacturing projects have dropped considerably, meaning our job pipeline is drying up. We need these jobs today just as much as we always have and the clarity and consistency in the ITEP he can provide with specific leadership is needed now to make this happen.
This day has been coming for quite some time now. When the governor drafted the executive order to do away with ITEP as we have always known it, he also inherited the burden of replacing it with a workable solution. If you didn’t like the old one then, as governor, you have the best bully pulpit to clearly articulate a vision for the new one. This long-sought workable solution is still to this day nowhere to be found and that must change. We can’t afford to lose any more of these manufacturing jobs and we can’t wait much longer to start refilling the pipeline with new manufacturing investments.
Why the big deal? These manufacturing jobs pay very well, don’t usually require a four-year degree, have tremendous ripple effects in our economy and lead to higher tax collections and teacher pay in the parishes where they are located. These are all good things that serve as the foundation for economic opportunity for our people. We should want to celebrate and encourage these types of jobs rather than denigrate and discourage them. It should be a no-brainer.
We need some peace and stability on this ITEP issue. The anti-business crowd has had their fun the last few years, but it is long past time for them to cool their jets. If we truly want Louisiana to be together, the divisive and toxic anti-business culture that is growing in our great state must stop. We desperately need the governor to finally let us all know what his endgame is on this issue. For all those earning a great salary in manufacturing, I sure hope his endgame is a good one.
Stephen Waguespack is president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.

Working hard has paid off for Jimmy Manuel.

He celebrated his 100th birthday Tuesday at Morgan’s Restaurant inside Clarion Inn in Morgan City.

Manuel, a longtime Morgan City resident, said his secret to longevity is “hard work,” and he still enjoys life.

“I worked hard all my life, and I enjoyed working,” Manuel said.

He still likes “to dance around a little bit.” He used to sing, but stopped after his wife told him he had the worst singing voice she ever heard.

“I don’t feel any different now than when I was 18,” he said.

His advice to young people is to enjoy life, word hard and “never give up.”

“Always find work that you like to do and do it as best you can,” he said.

Manuel grew up one of 11 children on a farm in Evangeline Parish, where he milked cows as a child and continued to do so to pay for college. Life is definitely different now compared to growing up at a time “before the automobile was very well known,” he said.

Manuel, a World War II veteran, worked for decades as an insurance agent in Morgan City and was married to wife, Muriel, for nearly 72 years. She died in December 2017. Manuel began his career working for his father-in-law.

The couple met in 1944 while Manuel was on leave from serving in World War II, their daughter, Alida Lorio said. Muriel Bibbins was a student teacher at the time in Evangeline Parish at the same time she was attending Southwestern Louisiana, now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Their younger daughter, Melanie Manuel Vidrine, said she and her sister had a happy childhood. Manuel also has two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Manuel is fortunate to have sitters who “love him like we do,” Vidrine said. He now resides at Maison Jardin Senior Living Community.

For years, Manuel has gone to Morgan’s Restaurant at Clarion Inn for coffee in the morning and then come back to eat lunch there, Vidrine said.

“The people here kind of adopted him,” she said of the staff.

Manuel graduated from high school in 1936 and then got degrees from Southwestern Louisiana Institute in 1939 and LSU in 1941. After graduating from LSU, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps shortly before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

He was stationed in Trinidad during World War II as part of a ground crew tasked with hunting German submarines. Manuel was later stationed in the United States and Pacific before the end of the war. He was on Iwo Jima shortly after U.S. Marines took over the island.

He married Muriel at the end of 1945, and within a couple of years they moved to her hometown of Morgan City where he’s lived ever since that time.