EPA Shakedown : It's all about the Green : July 2015

Shakedown stories from July 2015

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Big Sky Energy : $0

If you are wondering why a $0 fine is on this list it is because this is a court ruling that was overturned that originally was a $492,800 fine. This make the list because of the outrageous nature of the original fine.

Big Sky Energy was found guilty in court of destroying wetlands but the problem is they were not informed of the trial. That's correct. Put on trial without a chance to defend themselves. Thank goodness this was overturned. Some government officials need to be put on trial for the original trial.

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Ronald Foster : $400,000

Filled in a ditch. EPA claims it was a creek because two hills come together and collect water.

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Stacey's Brook : $65,000

The fine is for contamination from the sewer system mingling with the storm drainage system. Bacteria has been found in the drainage water which empties on King's Beach.

This system, though, has been estimated to be 80 to 130 years old. So this system was created long before the EPA or regulations were created. There was no active violation of the regulations.

In addition no one knows where the contamination is happening and finding it has been likened to finding a needle in a haystack. So basically the bacteria has been blamed on the sewer system even though there is no direct proof. Could there be another source?

It has been suggested to use chlorine to treat the water to kill the bacteria but the EPA has struck down this proposal claiming that was every bit as bad as the original contamination.

Stacey's Brook and eventually the town of Swampscott have to upgrade their drainage and sewer systems.

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Foster Poultry Farms : $112,500

Failed to meet the federal deadline for reporting significant quantities of chemicals stored at its facility in 2013. Carbon dioxide was one of the chemicals necessary to report.

Yup. Fined for slow paper work. Proper paper work was received.

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Shining Ocean, Inc. : $16,575

Failed to meet the federal deadline for reporting significant quantities of chemicals stored at its facility from 2009 - 2013.

Yup. Another fine for slow paper work.

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Wilcox Farms, Inc. : $15,625

Failed to meet the federal deadline for reporting significant quantities of chemicals stored at its facility in 2013.

Yup. Another fine for slow paper work. Proper paper work was received.

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Navistar : $300,000,000

This is a currently unsettled case.

EPA claims Navistar used engines made in 2010 that did not conform to 2010 EPA emissions standards. Navistar claims it produced the engines if 2009 and put them in 2010 vehicles.

Even crazier is that the EPA claims Navistar did not follow procedures to get "transitory" exemptions to use the engines.

If the engine is made 2009 it is fine, but it is a crime if made in 2010. And I am unclear on the "transitory" exemption, but it sounds like if the engines were made in 2010 they would be legal if they filled out the correct paperwork, and probably payed for the exemption.

EPA Shakedown : It's all about the Green : March 2014

Shakedown stories from March 2014

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Titan Tire Corp. and Dico Inc. : $3,100,000

EPA fined the company for demolishing buildings that contained PCPs. Part of the defense was that only a teaspoon amount was ever found. Meanwhile, nearby, there are others polluting and meth labs.

EPA said that the demolishing of the building would require them to oversee it. A free country does not have the government on site watching you work.

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The Village Watkins Glen : unknown

Potential fines for violations due to high chlorine levels. Really. Sounds like things are extra clean.

The problem is that is the fines go through then plans for a new treatment facility will have to be scraped and the old treatment plant will instead need to be retro-fitted to comply with regulations. If the EPA is serious it would work with the village to get a new treatment plant instead of keeping the plant that made the violations going.

But where are the fines in that?

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Andy Johnson : $75,000/day

Mr. Johnson acquired proper permits and legally built a pond on his land. EPA charges him with “building a dam on a creek without a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers.” Mr. Johnson claims he is exempt and followed state rules.

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JCI Jones Chemicals Inc. : $41,000

EPA is fining the company because they didn't evaluate risks of having one chemical next to another in storage containers. $41,000 for not saying how dangerous it might be? BS!

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Five Washington state companies : $254,075

This insanity is straight from the EPA website. Five companies have been fined for not reporting in a timely manner the storage of chemicals. Almost sounds bad till you read the story. Each company didn't report storing of chemicals that they would always have on site. A vinegar company was fined for not reporting in a timely manner the chemicals used in making vinegar.

Company uses up chemical X then get a shipment of chemical X. Didn't report fast enough and now you have to pay the EPA money.

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It's all about the Green

CO2 Day

It is CO₂ Day!

Second Warning! Environmentalists are coming for your Internet!

I alerted you last week about this with Green Peace. Now the New York times has done a story on how environmentally unfriendly the Internet is and the story is being repeated.

They are coming for your Internet! They are coming for your Capitalism!

The NYT article attacks the Internet based on data centers' power usage. They use a lot of energy and right now energy usage is framed as bad for the environment. To try to add punch to the story a straw man is set up:

A yearlong examination by The New York Times has revealed that this foundation of the information industry is sharply at odds with its image of sleek efficiency and environmental friendliness.

Environmental friendliness? I have never heard that about computers! I have read stories of how toxic it is to make computers. How low wages are paid to workers in China to build them and the factories spew out pollution. Throwing away a computer is awful for the environment because of the materials that comprise it, not to mention the Lithium batteries they house.

Environmental friendliness? Don't make me laugh!

Do a search for "internet environment friendly" and see what you get. Articles and posts about the effect of the Internet on the environment. Scads of companies claiming to have green hosting by being more responsible or being solar powered. Articles about how to make your use of the Internet more environmentally friendly. Years before this article people have been working on solving the environmentally unfriendliness of the web.

The article claims that 90% of the energy consumed by data centers is wasted. That is hard to believe that a company that wants to make money would throw it away. However, this is potentially possible if the energy bill is relatively low in comparison to other operating costs. That is something that the article does not cover. What are the energy costs compared to other operating costs?

The article just laments how much energy is wasted. How idle data in old emails or business archives is still powered but not accessed or used. How the energy is wasted. The companies are more concerned with having up time on the servers than energy efficiency. It is so easy to make energy consumption look bad when its cost is not compared or given any relevance to any other operating costs.

The article is puffed up with paragraph after paragraph restating the same problem over and over in different ways. However, the most amusing part of the article is when talking about the diesel generators that the data centers will have as power backup.

To guard against a power failure, they further rely on banks of generators that emit diesel exhaust. The pollution from data centers has increasingly been cited by the authorities for violating clean air regulations, documents show. In Silicon Valley, many data centers appear on the state government’s Toxic Air Contaminant Inventory, a roster of the area’s top stationary diesel polluters.

An example used to illustrate the evil of the energy usage was Amazon. In 2010 they were to be fined $554,476 for the use of diesel generators without a permit. It was bargained down to $261,638. Since then Amazon now has the proper permits.

Did you catch that? Running polluting diesel generators without a permit is awful. Pay the government to get a permit to run diesel generators then everything is honky dory. Did the generators magically become clean because of the permit?

The story tells of research that has been done to make energy usage more efficient but it has not been adopted in general. Some companies are working on the problem though.

No one knows what innovations will be next. This problem, if it is a problem, could be resolved a year from now with a brilliant invention.

What is really needed is a sane energy policy. This story is just a ploy to get people to stop using energy. We instead need a policy to make energy more abundant. Stop shutting down coal plants. Let the KeyStone pipeline go through. We can try wind and solar but only as a supplement, not the solution. We need everything, not the shutting down of sources because they are not culturally popular. Other countries aren't which puts us at a disadvantage.

Heed my warning. This attack on the Internet through energy usage is just another prong in the attack of capitalism! Push back!

EPA Loses at Roshambo

Over a year ago, January 13th, 2011, the New York Times reported on the EPA revoking a permit for a coal mining project in West Virginia. It was a project over 10 years in the making. The Times does a fair job of expressing the views of both sides. The EPA claims that the project would pollute too much and that Arch Coal, the mining company, owner Mingo Logan, did not work with the EPA to design a mining plan that would meet federal law. Arch Coal claims the EPA is overextending its authority by revoking a permit that was approved by the government.

The Times also cannot resist stating that the project was given the permit in 2007, under the Bush administration. Blame Bush.

On Friday, March 23rd, 2012, the New York Times reported that the EPA's decision to revoke the permit was overturned. The story should have been about how the EPA construed the Clean Water Act to give themselves authority it did not have. This was stated, but the Times could not resist restating all of the bad environmental effects that the EPA claimed would happen. Does this mean that would justify the EPA breaking the law?

Also, once again, the Times could not resist stating that the project was given the permit in 2007, under the Bush administration. Blame Bush, again.

The real issue is that the EPA took what seems to be an ambiguously worded statement in the Clean Water Act, section 404(c), and used it as justification to revoke a permit that is the responsibility of the Army Corps of Engineers. You can read this section on the EPA's website.

The court told the EPA that the ambiguous wording of a sentence can be cleared up if read in context of the whole section of 404. The court goes on to explain how the EPA's interpretation would be at odds with 404(p) and 404(q). 404(c) allows the EPA to work with the Corps and reject sites during the approval process, not after.

Upon reading the decision of the U.S. District Court to overturn the EPA, you will find some fun little facts. Remember how Arch Coal did not work with the EPA? Here are a few tidbits from the section "A. Factual Background" :

In the letter commenting on the draft EIS, EPA concluded that it “remains committed to working with the Corps, the state, and the applicant to identify and develop an environmentally acceptable project” and “would encourage additional discussions in an effort to clarify and resolve the issues raised in this letter.”

In December 2005, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection granted state certification for the individual permit based on its determination that the project would not violate state water quality standards or anti-degradation regulations.3 AR 20924–28.

However, the letter also noted in several places that the agency was encouraged by the progress that Mingo Logan had made to date, and it voiced optimism that EPA could work with the Corps, federal and state agencies, and Mingo Logan to address its concerns and develop appropriate mitigation plans, as well as a Little Coal River cumulative impact assessment and restoration plan.

The Corps released the final EIS in September 2006, and EPA again submitted comments by letter. AR 8330–34, 34962–35342. The comment letter again included concerns about potential adverse impacts to the Little Coal watershed and gaps in the mitigation plan, but also acknowledged Mingo Logan’s progress in reducing impacts and EPA’s willingness to work with the responsible agencies to resolve its concerns prior to a section 404 permit decision. AR 8331– 32.

That sounds a bit different from the idea that Arch Coal was not working with the EPA.

There is also some amusing courtroom banter in the document:

COUNSEL FOR EPA: EPA 404(c) authority authorizes it to withdraw specifications whenever it makes its determination. . . . I grant you that the effect of that, the practical effect of that, would be that the company would no longer be able to operate under the permit. . . .

THE COURT: They have a permit that says this permit is final until it’s suspended or revoked. There’s a missing step here. Why can’t they walk out tomorrow and dump fill in those sites? You say, we’ve withdrawn the specification, but the permit exists.

Is the Corps required now to revoke or modify the permit in light of your determination?

COUNSEL FOR EPA: I don’t think they need to take that extra step. EPA’s withdrawal of that specified site has been final. It has been made. . . .

THE COURT: So everybody with a permit has to on a daily basis compare their permit to your list of specified sites? They can’t do what they’ve been permitted to do by the United States? . . . Where does it say in the statute that they can’t dump tomorrow?

COUNSEL FOR EPA: I don’t see any ambiguity in the statute with respect to the authority of the EPA to withdraw the specification after the permit is issued. . . .

THE COURT: . . . But . . . what are they supposed to do tomorrow? And if your exercise of that power essentially undermined the finality of the Corps’ exercise of their power in 404(a), wouldn’t it have been essential for Congress to say that?

***

There’s this huge gap. I mean, you looked at me very blankly when I said what is Mingo Logan supposed to do tomorrow.

Sometimes it is best not to just read a newspaper or a blogger to truly understand a decision. There is probably a slanted view. The decision is available online and you should read page 31.

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EPA Shakedown : It's all about the Green

Shakedown stories from Feb 1 - Feb 10, 2012

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Monson Cos. : $68,000 + $33,000 in training & equipment to local emergency response teams

Fined for a poorly organized warehouse

As usual the story is too brief. It seems that the aisles were too narrow and incompatible chemicals were not separated. There was no pollution, just a disorganized warehouse.

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Dover Chemical Corp. : $1,400,000

Fined for paperwork not being descriptive enough

Dover Chemical Corp. has been creating chlorinated paraffins for over 40 years. The problem is with their short-chain chlorinated paraffins. The story describes how this product is linked to cancer and other problems, but it does not state if it is illegal to make it. However, the company has agreed to stop making the product.

Quote from the story:

Dover Chemical maintains it filed all appropriate paperwork in 1978, but that in the December 2009 notice of violation the EPA claimed that the description of CPs wasn’t “in sufficient detail.”

Dover Chemical also said that the settlement “resolves all of the USEPA’s allegations, without any finding of admission of liability ...”

No pollution and no liability just cost $1,400,000. Imagine if they actually did something wrong.

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Fairbanks' residents : $100 ( potential )

Fine for heating their home

Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly will propose a law on Feb 23rd limiting emissions on solid-fuel heating devices. In November a measure that would have banned some devices was defeated.

Better the citizens freeze to death than having them burn coal and wood.

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N.H. Motorcycle Riders : Unknown fine

Fine for a motorcycle being too noisy

If your motorcycle is over 92 decibles then, um, something bad will happen? Having a bike that goes "Vrooom VROOOOOOMMM!!!" will be illegal.

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Southwest Iowa Renewable Energy LLC : $10,000 + at least $38,000 of emergency equipment for local township

Fined for missing paperwork

Once again a story that is too brief. An ethanol plant, that fuel the government pushes, stores anhydrous ammonia and need to have an emergency plan on file. The EPA says there is no plan on file. Story fails to mention if any warnings were given and there are no comments from the company. Once again, there is a fine when there was no pollution; the fine is for missing paperwork.

So far the story has garnered only one comment and it is the scary mentality that too many people have: It is okay to fine them because they have lots of money.

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National Energy Technology Laboratory : $1,500

Surprise Inspection!

2 violations: improper sealing of containers of universal waste lamps and failure to properly mark a hazardous waste container. Violations were fixed within 24 hours. These sound like simple human errors and not a flaunting of the law if it was so quickly fixed. EPA is grabbing money for people being human!

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ROLE REVERSAL : EPA SUED

Yes. 10 states are sueing the EPA to force soot standards. Clever states. Here is what happens if they succeed.

• Energy plants comply
  • Costs of complying are passed on to the consumer ( suer )
• Energy plants fail to comply
  • Energy plants are fined for violations
  • Energy plants pass fines to consumers [ suer ]

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It's all about the Green.

Honda Fined for Obeying the Law

If you buy a car that can get up to 50 miles per gallon, do you think you will actually get 50 mpgs? Have you ever driven in Los Angeles rush hour traffic? No you haven't. No one drives in LA rush hour traffic. You just sit there on the highway idling and burning fuel. Would you expect to get 50 mpgs then?

In LA you can. An LA judge has awarded a woman $10,000 in her suit against Honda because her Civic Hybrid did not get 50 mpgs.

So why would Honda put such an outrageous claim on their car? Because the EPA told them to. According to the judge, that was an insufficient reason.

EPA Shakedown : It's all about the Green

Shakedown stories from Jan 13 - Jan 31, 2012

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Southern Wood Piedmont : $317,000

Fined for not having enough money.

Really. The story mentions twice that the company is fined for not having enough money to close and cleanup hazardous waste sites. It is not for polluting or violations at the sites.

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US Navy : $161,000

Fined for failure to look for leaks.

Well, a little more than that but basically that is it. This is in relation to 53 underground fuel storage tanks. There was a total of 37 violations. There was some missing equipment. However, the story stresses that the fine is about failure to monitor. There was no leak or pollution.

The insane thing is this is the government fining the government. Is there no honor among thieves?

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Navistar : $1900 per Engine (WARNING)

Warning of a fine if the company's heavy-duty engines do not meet 2010 regulations.

Why is this listed? Ties into next fine citing; theme is inconsistency. Basics of the story is that the company's medium-duty engine emissions are better than the EPA regulations. This earned the company credits that it could apply to its heavy-duty engines. These credits run out soon.

Story does not say what the performance of the heavy-duty engines is. It basically says it has not yet certified if the company's heavy-duty engines will meet EPA standards. The Navistar website does lead one to believe that the engines will meet the EPA standards.

EPA has given a warning and is speculating on future fines.

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Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority : $0 or $37,500

Violating air pollution laws.

This article is really back and forth and unclear. There is no clear detail of what is wrong. The Authority was told to stop work of a demolition, and yet after working with the EPA, are required to do the demolition. It seems the resolution of the problem is to continue what they were told to stop. Somehow asbestos is involved.

They face potential fines, but yet there are no fines. Read the article. Maybe something is wrong with my reading skills. Leave a comment if you can distill the violation, the resolution, and fines, if any.

So why is this story mentioned? It dovetails the Navistar story where the EPA warns or speculates fines for Navistar. Here is a direct quote of the last two paragraphs of the Buffalo story:

Sanders said she does not expect the authority to face any fines and stressed that it will comply with federal and state standards.

When asked whether fines are still possible, EPA spokesman Elias Rodriguez said the agency "does not speculate about potential enforcement matters."

Sanders is the Executive Director of the BMHA.

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Custom Apple Packers : $69,480

Fined because the EPA lost paperwork.

This is a "he said she said" story. Officially the fine is because CAP does not have a plan for dealing with an anhydrous ammonia leak in its cooling units. The fine is not for an anhydrous ammonia leak. PAC claims that a plan was filed.

The fine is for the years 2002-2009 when no leaks happened. The fine is for the EPA not having PAC's plan of action on file. Story does not state if any warning were issued. PAC assumed everything was okay because they claim they have heard nothing, so no warnings issued?

However, PAC paid the fine. Why? Direct quote from story:

Brown said it was less costly to settle with the federal agency rather than fight the issue in court, so it agreed Wednesday to pay the fine.

Brown is the attorney that represents PAC.

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Oregon Potato Co. : $66,235

Fined for not reporting an accident.

There was a release of 300 pounds of anhydrous ammonia. No one was injured.

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Snowmobiles : $100

Fined for being noisy.

In Colorado, if your snowmobile is louder than 88 decibels you can be fined $100. Yellowstone is setting up 50 sound meters to catch violators.

I did a quick search on snowmobile pollution regulations and the only regulations are on the manufacturers. Owners do not get fined if their snowmobile pollutes, only if it is noisy. Please comment if I am wrong and missed a regulation/law.

It's all about the Green

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Oil Companies : Case Dropped

Prosecuted for the deaths of some mallard ducks.

EPA went to prosecute oil companies because some mallard ducks landed in a pool of ground oil and died. Numbers are lacking.

Case was dropped. Point in article is house cats kill many birds a year. By extension, many cat owners would face fines too.

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City of Lebanon[1] [2] : $21,600

Fined for pollutants into stormwater sewers, or a poor environmental bribe?

Originally fined for $81,600, the city of Lebanon was threatened an $177,500 fine is they did not immediately fix their stormwater sewers. Lebanon did and the fine was reduced to $21,600. What is up with the odd dangling hundreds? Why no rounded thousands?

The city proposed a "green infrastructure" project instead of paying the fine. The EPA encouraged the proposal, but denied the final concept. The project was an aeration fountain in a feeder pond. It was a $25,000 dollar project in which the city would pay $5,000 and $20,000 from a private contributor.

It is surely better that the city loses more money as the EPA spends a total lesser sum on what it deems better.

Great quotes:

"I think it is in our DNA now as United States citizens to just accept whatever it is that the federal government comes down and says we have to do," (Councilman) Dissinger said.

Dissinger speculated on what would happen if the city stood up to the EPA and said no. It was a suggestion Royer supported.

"I think we need to start somewhere," she said. "I think we need to be pioneers and say to the federal government we are not putting up with this crap anymore."

Councilman Richard Wertz said he didn't like the outcome but was ready to put it behind the city.

"To me, we were being bullied around," he said. "But ... we need to move on."

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Mendocino County [1] [2]: $123,000

Not an EPA fine. Fine from Mendocino County Air Quality Management District.

The county is screwing itself. This is financial political masturbation. The county fines itself the money. WTF? This is weirder than the EPA fining the Navy.

I have now hit a limit of drinking that I do not care to distill the facts of this case. As you can probably tell, it has become quite stupid.

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It's all about the Green

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EPA Fines for not using Rainbows, Hugs, & Pixie Dust and Other Tom Foolery

Oil companies will have to pay $6.8 million in fines for the year of 2011 for not blending cellulosic biofuel into gasoline and diesel fuel; this blend is required by law. Why did the companies fail to do this? Cellulosic biofuel is NOT available.

The Renewable Fuels Association comments about this story as distorted; the story misses telling that the EPA diminished the requirements by 90% to account for the lack of the fuel. However, in their next breath they say that the fines are such a small percentage of the company profits it is not a big deal. Really!? It is okay to fine someone for not using something that does not exist because they make a lot of money? That is called theft!

How about a company getting fined $18,000 because they filed their paperwork incorrectly? Not environmental violation but PAPERWORK!

It sounds like the EPA is all about the money.

Went to the search engines and looked up "EPA fine" and got more from just this week only. Is this coincidence, or could I do this once a week and create an absurd EPA blog post once a week?

A housing provider is facing potential fines of $150,000 dollars for improperly alerting residents of lead paint. That is improperly alerting, not failing to alert. Residents were alerted to lead paint, they just were not given building history documents.

Another story complains about fines that have not been collected. These are a few cases that leave questions:

• Calise Bakery in Lincoln installed and operated three natural gas ovens without applying for or receiving a minor source. What is a "minor source?" Why is a bakery being fined for installing ovens?
• Richard J. DiSano of Cranston is the owner of a property that was storing hazardous waste without a permit for over 90 days. This sounds bad but leaves a lot of questions. Was this an appropriate function of the property and this was an administrative snafu? What was the hazardous waste? Considering what has been labeled as hazardous lately, I must remain skeptical.
• American Plating Company in Cranston was found to have committed several violations, ranging from a failure to label hazardous waste materials to a variety of administrative infractions. Sounds like getting fined for paperwork mistakes.

There is more, but I will stop here for now. The other stories are real time suckers and require some more work to figure out what is going on.

Stay tuned.