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Originally Posted by daswig
Didja hear about the problem with the parks in California? Seems that in a fit of PC-ness, some people decided that the BSA couldn't use the parks. Unintended consequence? She state of the parks are declining, since the BSA did lots of community service preservation stuff.
BSA=non-gay friendly, but good conservationists.
PETA=Bizzare-o nutjobs.
So which group should we support?
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C'mon daswig.....your weak rebuttal to the Bush regime's gutting of a successful, 25 year effort fought by the EPA to improve the biggest source of
toxic and irritant emissions into our atmosphere is incompatible with your
credentials. Treason takes on many guises........
The references below offer a persuasive argument that, just as the operators
of the heaviest polluting coal fired power plants in the U.S. began to capitulate by entering into agreements with the EPA, after 25 years of
non-compliance, litigation, and health damaging, illegal emissions of toxins,
such as excessive levels of mercury, Bush, Cheney and their appointees
pre-empted and gutted power industry compliance enforcement by putting
the Department of Energy in chanrge of Environmental Protection.
An easy to understand example is a comparison of Tampa Electric (TECO),
and Southern Company, both operators of highly polluting coal fired power
plants. In 2000, TECO made the decision to enter into an agreement with
EPA to pay a $3.5 million fine for it's illegal emissions, and to spend $1.4 billion
on coal plant upgrades and pollution controls.
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<a href="http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4759864/">Clearing the air</a>
EPA official talks for first time about retiring after changes in clean air regulations and enforcement
By Stone Phillips
Dateline NBC
Updated: 8:37 a.m. ET April 20, 2004
If you're going to make a stand by walking away from your job, it should be over something pretty important. How about the air we breathe? A new government report found that the air in 31 states, affecting nearly 160 million people, fails to meet new federal health standards for smog. Part of the reason is pollution coming from big coal-burning power plants. For decades, the Clean Air Act helped improve air quality, a man named Bruce Buckheit helped enforce it. But now, this former top government official has given up his job, frustrated because he says the country is taking a giant step backwards -- and that you and your children may soon see the difference in the air you breathe.
There are few things on earth that Bruce Buckheit feels more passionate about than the air, whether he's catching it in his sails or cleaning it up at old coal burning power plants.
Stone Phillips: “Among the major sources of air pollution in this country where do coal fired power plants rank?”
Bruce Buckheit: “They're number one. By an order of magnitude. There is no one that comes close.”
Buckheit says the nearly 400 coal fired plants scattered across this country, generating more than half of the electricity we use, are dirty old dinosaurs overdue for extinction.
Buckheit: “Can anybody imagine a situation where we have plants that were built in 1950 still emitting as if they were located in China or Mexico? I mean, this country's better than that.”
Buckheit spent the last 20 years of his government career working on air quality issues, most recently as director of the Environmental Protection Agency's Air Enforcement Division. But in December, he made a difficult decision to retire from the EPA.
Buckheit: “If we were still enforcing the Clean Air Act the way it should be enforced I would still be there.”...........
......Last year, during a visit to one of the nation's largest coal-burning power plants, President Bush announced that New Source Review had been overhauled. The new rule encourages utilities to make improvements to their old plants to increase their efficiency, while relaxing the requirement to add those expensive pollution controls. the change was made in spite of a 2001 memo from former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman to Vice President Dick Cheney, warning: "we will pay a terrible political price if we undercut or walk away from the enforcement cases. It will be hard to refute the charge that we are deciding not to enforce the Clean Air Act."
While the energy industry applauded the rule change, more than a dozen state attorneys general appealed it, asking the federal courts to reinstate New Source Review as a necessary enforcement tool. Buckheit says it was the hammer that helped him forge that landmark agreement in Tampa. And John Ramil agrees....................
.........Buckheit: “The Bush Administration. An opportunity to reduce pollution just as we saw in Tampa is being foregone.”
<H4>Phillips: “Are you saying this administration just doesn't care about air pollution?”
Buckheit: “Yes. I'm saying this administration has decided to put the economic interests of the coal fired power plants ahead of the public interests in reducing air pollution.”
Phillips: “That's a pretty serious allegation.”
Buckheit: “Well, I was the head of the air enforcement division up until a couple weeks ago and I watched it happen.”
But are lawsuits really the most effective way to solve the nation's air quality problems? The Bush administration says there's a better way, by setting caps on emissions and creating financial incentives for companies to reduce pollution. And by allowing utilities to upgrade old plants, the administration says it's helping keep the lights on across the country.
Phillips: “As demand increases, and heaven knows we all want our microwave ovens and our video games and our computers, shouldn't utilities be given leeway to make these modifications, to make sure supply is there?”
Buckheit: “We all want the supply to be there when it's 90 degrees and you turn on the air conditioner. EPA has never opposed that at all. What we're saying here is if you want to take an old power plant and extend its life in a major capitol improvement, treat it as a new power plant with good pollution control devices.”
Before he retired last December, Buckheit was ordered to shut down further New Source Review investigations at other utilities.
Buckheit: “We had several dozen investigations.”
Phillips: “Ongoing.”
Buckheit: “Ongoing. Strong cases, where I had to tell the regional engineers and lawyers, stop. Put your documents in the box, so that hopefully we can get back to it someday. But otherwise, you know, stop your investigation.”
</H4>
Bruce Buckheit proved with that historic agreement in Tampa that it could be done, that a coal-burning utility could change to running clean without running aground financially. The question is, can history repeat itself?
Phillips: “What would you say to Bruce Buckheit?”
Ramil: “He helped us, I think. Nudging us along. Maybe sometimes it was more of nudge than we might have liked, but that's okay. Things get done when you stretch people.”
A federal court of appeals in Washington has temporarily stayed the Bush administration's change in the New Source Review rule. The fight over its future will play out in court later this year. The EPA says it will vigorously defend the rule change.
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<a href="http://cta.policy.net/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=23860">Georgians Choke Through a Smog-filled Summer</a>
<a href="http://cta.policy.net/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=23500">EPA UNVEILS NEW LOOPHOLES FOR POLLUTING POWER PLANTS</a>
<a href=""></a>
<a href="http://cta.policy.net/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=23220"> Children at Risk: How Air Pollution from Power Plants Threatens the Health</a>
<a href="http://cta.policy.net/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=22420">Latest Toxics Inventory Shows
Power Plants Continue To Be Major Threat</a>
<a href="http://cta.policy.net/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=22320">Bush Administration Pollution Plan Falls Short</a>
Southern Company, parent of Alabama Power, Georgia Power, and of power companies in North Carolina, continued to resist the EPA via litigation, a $23 million ad campaign to portray itself as a "good corporate citizen", launching the largest lobbying effort in the U.S. on the congress, and by generous campaign contributions to effect changes in congress and the executive branch that led to the sell out of the public and the environment that we are seeing today. The immediate results are dirtier air in the southeast.
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<a href="http://www.hlrecord.org/news/2003/09/18/Opinion/Letting.Polluters.Breathe.Easily-470092.shtml">Letting polluters breathe easily?</a>
........This regulatory relief will allow the nation's 17,000 industrial facilities to breathe a little easier. That's an unfortunate phrase in this case, but you get the point. There have also been some fringe benefits. Right after the ruling, two top EPA staffers landed some pretty sweet new jobs based on their hard work and obvious expertise. John Pemberton, just last week the chief of staff in the EPA's air and radiation office, joined Southern Co., the nation's No. 2 power-plant polluter. Ed Krenik, who you may have known as EPA's associate administrator for congressional affairs, just set up shop at Bracewell & Patterson, a Houston law firm that coordinates utility lobbying. Who says the Bush administration isn't doing enough to create jobs? There are two new jobs right there!
Now I know what you're thinking: Hey, wait a minute, isn't there a bit of an ethical problem when two high-ranking EPA officials help devise a major new regulatory give-away, and then immediately leave the government for high-paying jobs with the companies that were just lobbying for those rule changes? Not to worry. According to an EPA spokeswoman, Pemberton "played a minimal role" on the rule change. For his part, Krenik said he had "nothing to do with writing the rule."
I mean, surely the Chief of Staff for the EPA's air division had more important things to do than get involved with a major revision of the Clean Air Act. And what's wrong with employment mobility? It's about time the liberal media stopped exaggerating this administration's corporate connections.
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