Watching the Democrats - it's Fun and Macabre!

[BigV]

OF COURSE the answer should be the Environmental Protection Agency, or the Department of Energy, or some combination of both. To rely on "self regulation" will never work, and would indeed be illegal.

[SamIam]

Originally Posted by BigV

OF COURSE the answer should be the Environmental Protection Agency, or the Department of Energy, or some combination of both. To rely on "self regulation" will never work, and would indeed be illegal.

.



*wipes tears out of eyes*

Oh, my! I don't mean to make fun, but your response just struck me as so INNOCENT! Maybe you were being sarcastic?

I've been fortunate enough to visit the Pacific Northwest more than once, and I even lived in northern Idaho right on its border with Washington State for a year. Oh, how I'd love to see the ocean again!

Anyhow, the people who reside in the PNW have always struck me as far more liberal and far more envionmentally aware then the ranchers and farmers and the rest of the the population of Colorado's Western Slope.

I bet YOU guys demand that the EPA carry out its designated functions in your states. Well, good luck with that. Out here, we shoot first and ask questions later.

That leaves the nice fellow from the DOE. He shakes everyone's hand and winks a couple of times and helps throw parades for Halliburten or Shell in every small town on the Colorado Plateau.

The people of Naturita and Nucla are dying (literally) to get their uranium mining back. While they're waiting, the DOE goes out and puts warning signs with a big radiation symbol on them around the oddly deep blue old uranium settling and tailings containment ponds.

I used to have a priceless picture of a couple of cows drinking water from one of those ponds - radiation warning sign in full view - in the background was a dead, bloated cow - four legs in the air.

BEEF! It's what makes America glow in the dark!

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.

Alas, nothing to actually laugh about.

[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.