EPA

[conarb]

Yet the demands for reparations and the media outrage are notably muted. President Obama hasn’t budged from his vacation golf rounds. Imagine how the EPA and the green lobby would be reacting if this spill had been committed by a private company. BP could have used this political forbearance after it failed to cork a busted oil well a mile below the sea after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Naturally, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, known as the Superfund law, gives EPA clean-up crews immunity from the trial bar when they are negligent. Yet the Durango blowout was entirely avoidable.

In an Aug. 8 “incident report,” the EPA notes that “the intent of the investigation was to create access to the mine, assess on-going water releases from the mine to treat mine water, and assess the feasibility of further mine remediation.” In other words, the mine was plugged, and the EPA was excavating in search of some notional make-work problem to solve. Where were Bill Murray and Harold Ramis when we needed them?

Low levels of mining waste seep from thousands of used-up 19th-century projects beneath the Western states, but the counties around Durango have resisted declaration as Superfund sites. Perhaps they recall the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) saga in New York, where the EPA forced General Electric to dredge the Hudson River. The operation increased PCB pollution that was long deposited in sediment and had been harmless.

The world is a resilient place—the Gulf Coast has rebounded well—and Colorado will recover from the EPA’s blunders. The lesson is to leave well enough alone, and that government lives by a double standard.¹

Time to get rid of all EPA regulations, also time to get rid of sovereign immunity, time to make the government liable for their actions just like the rest of us are responsible for our actions.

¹ http://www.wsj.com/articles/mine-busters-at-the-epa-1439336495

 

[conarb]

A week before The EPA disastrously leaked millions of gallons of toxic waste into The Animas River in Colorado, this letter to the editor was published in The Silverton Standard & The Miner local newspaper, authored by a retired geologist detailing verbatim, how EPA would foul the Animas River on purpose in order to secure superfund money...

"But

make no mistake, within seven days, all of the 500gpm flow will return to Cememnt Creek. Contamination may actually increase... The "grand experiment" in my opinion will fail.

And guess what [EPA's] Mr. Hestmark will say then?



Gee, "Plan A" didn't work so I guess we will have to build a treatment plant at a cost to taxpayers of $100 million to $500 million (who knows).



Reading between the lines, I believe that has been the EPA's plan all along"¹



Sovereign immunity or not the government employees responsible should go to jail for this.





¹

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-...ly-poison-animas-river-secure-superfund-moneyhttp://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-12/did-epa-intentionally-poison-animas-river-secure-superfund-money

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-12/did-epa-intentionally-poison-animas-river-secure-superfund-money' rel="external nofollow">

 

[MASSDRIVER]

Let the canings begin.

Followed by the hangings.

We reap the rewards of risk protected personnel. It's not a small matter.

Brent.

 

[conarb]

From what I've heard the EPA has been trying for 25 years to get these 19th century gold mines declared a superfund site to bring millions in government money into their jurisdiction, all the residents have fought it because anything near a superfund site declines in value, quite a recreational industry had developed there too bringing money in and they feared this would be driven away. They are speculating that the EPA deliberately caused the release so they could unquestionably have the entire area declared a superfund site.

 

[tmurray]

While I don't believe in removing the regulation, no one should be immune from prosecution when they are negligent.

 

[mtlogcabin]

EPA

Environmental Pollution Agency

They issue permits to pollute

 

[cda]

From what I've heard the EPA has been trying for 25 years to get these 19th century gold mines declared a superfund site to bring millions in government money into their jurisdiction, all the residents have fought it because anything near a superfund site declines in value, quite a recreational industry had developed there too bringing money in and they feared this would be driven away. They are speculating that the EPA deliberately caused the release so they could unquestionably have the entire area declared a superfund site.

Well they found a cheaper way to get rid of the liquid in the mine!

 

[conarb]

The EPA is the topic of a congressional hearing today, the scientist who exposed the Flint lead pipe situation testified:

The scientist who helped expose the Flint water scandal told a congressional hearing Wednesday the city’s “residents have been living a surreal experience” resembling George Orwell’s dystopia “1984.” Marc Edwards, a professor of civil engineering at Virginia Tech, made the comments during a congressional hearing on the debacle, adding also that government regulators with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) “turned a blind eye” to Flint’s tainted water and corroded water pipes.

Edward’s turned the bulk of his ire in the interview against scientists who attempt to work with government regulators to protect citizens from harm. He suggested his fellow scientists are getting hoodwinked into believing government agents can fix problems.

“If an environmental injustice is occurring, someone in a government agency is not doing their job. Everyone we wanted to partner said, ‘well, this sounds really cool, but we want to work with the government. We want to work with the city.’ And I’m like, ‘You’re living in a fantasy land, because these people are the problem,'” Edwards noted.

When asked if there were incentives causing scientists to turn a blind eye to the problems plaguing Flint’s citizens, Edwards replied:

“Yes, I do. In Flint, the agencies paid to protect these people weren’t solving the problem. They were the problem. What faculty person out there is going to take on their state, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency?”

Ultimately, scientists rely on government funding for their work, so they are willing to give officials the benefit of the doubt, Edwards said, adding that the idea of science is getting lost.

“The pressures (on scientists) to get funding are just extraordinary,” he said, adding, “we’re all on this hedonistic treadmill — pursuing funding, pursuing fame, pursuing (credit from peers) — and the idea of science as a public good is being lost.”¹

And here the EPA is prosecuting small contractors for exposing minute amounts of lead dust when sanding pint while turning a blind eye towards cities supplying vast amounts of lead in their drinking water.

As to his comments about corruption in science Eisenhower warned us in his Farewell Address:

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. ²

Maybe they can get that infamous 97% of scientists who claim the earth is being destroyed by anthropogenic global warming to say drinking lead-laced water isn't dangerous but lead in paint dust is?

¹ http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/03/scientist-life-in-flint-is-surreal-like-orwells-1984/

² http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm

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