Watching the Democrats - it's Fun and Macabre!

[Lamplighter]

All humor aside, much the same arguments as those made by Adak
helped the gas drilling industry in Colorado win rare exemptions from the Safe Drinking Water Act
and the Clean Water Act when Congress enacted the 2005 Energy Policy Act.

The Energy Policy Act is to the EPA as the Patriot Act is to the Constitution.

I agree. This situation is just now being taken up by the US Supreme Court.

The article below is primarily the lawyers wrangling over judicial procedures,
but one paragraph describes up the real-world situation....


NY Times
ADAM LIPTAK
12/3/12

E.P.A. Rule Complicates Runoff Case for Justices

<snip>Much of the argument on Monday was devoted to the consequences
of the new environmental regulation for the two consolidated cases before the justices,
Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, No. 11-338,
and Georgia-Pacific West v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, No. 11-347.
They arose from suits against logging companies and Oregon forestry officials under the Clean Water Act,
saying the defendants were required to obtain permits for runoff from logging roads that ran through ditches and culverts.

The E.P.A. has long taken the opposite view, and the ultimate answer to whether
the Clean Water Act applies to hundreds of thousands of miles of logging roads
is quite consequential, as it could provide a tool for conservationists to block logging
where silty runoff would choke forest streams.

But it seemed on Monday that even a partial answer would have to wait.