On December 9-10, ten members of the AGC Environmental Network Steering Committee and national AGC environmental staff met with senior staff from several U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) program offices, including Solid Waste and Emergency Response, Policy, Economics and Innovation, Water, Air and Radiation, and the EPA Green Building Workgroup.
Among the many topics of discussion were:
- Agency efforts to quantify the amount of construction and demolition (C&D) debris that is generated and to encourage the reduction, reuse and recycling of such materials;
- Progress towards completing the joint AGC-EPA draft white paper and online toolkit on recycling and reuse of C&D materials and further opportunities for AGC and EPA to partner to facilitate the recycling of C&D materials;
- AGC and EPA's joint partnership work under the EPA "Sector Strategies" Program to reduce the construction industry's environmental burden and the new 2008 Sector Performance Report [http://www.epa.gov/sectors/pdf/performace-rpt-2008.pdf];
- EPA's newly proposed Effluent Limitation Guidelines for the construction and development industries [http://newsletters.agc.org/environment/2008/11/25/first-national-effluent-limit-for-construction-runoff-proposed-by-us-epa/];
- EPA clean air rules and initiatives that impact construction, including an update on off-road retrofit technologies, federal funding for diesel engine retrofit, requirements being placed on contractors to retrofit/replace their existing in-use equipment, and a status of California's off-road retrofit/replacement rule and the implications for other states [http://newsletters.agc.org/environment/2008/11/13/agc-tackles-california-rule-on-off-road-diesel-emissions/];
- EPA's newly released Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [http:///www.agc.org/galleries/advy/ANPR%20Overview.pdf] EPA received over 200,000 comments in response to the ANPR. AGC, its chapters and more than 300 members submitted comments stating that the Clean Air Act is not the right tool to regulate GHG. [http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/agcleg/downloads/FinalANPRCommentsAGCofAmerica.pdf]
- EPA's GHG Registry Reporting Rule that is currently under development and voluntary initiatives such as EPA Climate Leaders [http://www.epa.gov/climateleaders/] and EPA SmartWay [http://www.epa.gov/smartway/] programs; and
- General update on federal agencies' green building goals and performance measurements for green buildings, high-performing and green building initiatives that may impact private construction, opportunities presented by the interest of the incoming Administration on developing Green Jobs, the EPA's guiding principles for green building outlined in its federal building minimum requirements for construction.