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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Occupy Moore

Speaking of Lesbians ...

If you are a political junkie, you can answer this Jeopardy question.

Maybe "lesbian" should have been a clue.

Speaking of lesbians...

Cynthia Nixon has upset the GLBT community because she revealed in an interview that she chooses to be gay. Unfortunately the gay dogma is that sexuality is not a choice; you are born that way.

It is hard to believe the gay community is upset. It seems like the swishifying propaganda is constantly being shoved down our throats. They're here, they're queer, we have to get used to it. In fact, it seems to be working so well they now have an official convert.

Are we supposed to believe they are not recruiting?

Really?

Abortion safer than giving birth: study

If you are like me and many others your mind screamed "safer for whom?"

Go to the article then read the comments. The comments will make you feel better. The two major points people picked up on are:

• Is it safer for the baby?
• What about psychological effects?

The article also notes the study is on "legal abortions." The story does not clarify what sort of births were in the study. Were all births considered or only supervised births, which would be comparing apples to apples?

Reuters, I smell an agenda.

Amusing

Stumbled upon this at a muslim site. Deep in the bowels of the website : "Where to buy bacon vodka - Very Low Price! Duty Free!"

Muslim Bacon Vodka !!!

UPDATE: Jan 24, It's a real ( sans Muslim ) product!

SOPADARITY

Elvis Hitler

What!? You offended? Wimp!

You did click on Elvis ( Hitler ) right? That's what this post is about. Amazing Detroit Psychobilly!

Lux Interior

Why isn't #LuxInterior trending?

Butt Slasher Arrested

Yes. There is an initial snicker at this, but imagine if your butt was slashed. Sitting will be a problem. Depending on the slashing location, imagine using the toilet; a slash in the right location can make wiping painful. Would you want to leave the toilet without a proper wiping?

Click for story.

Not Gonna Say a Thing

You're all big boys and girls. Watch and come to your own conclusions.

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Why Have Acid Rain When You Can Rain Acid?

I went pale and cold when I read the "good news" of how global warming could be combated. A Reuters story reports that in the journal Science new molecules in the atmosphere have been discovered that might be able to help battle global warming. The molecules are called Criegee biradicals and can help promote the creation of clouds. This is done by the biradicals oxidizing and converting sulfur dioxide into sulfuric acid.

Carl Percival, one of the study's authors, says that the biradicals occur naturally; they are released by plants. He also states they work best in polluted areas. And finally, the biradicals are not a candidate for geo-engineering.

I think my head is going to explode.

First, the government is not above geo-engineering. It has already started with CO₂.

Second, the data flow I see in this train wreck called environmentalism is astounding.

• Criegee biradicals can potentially promote global cooling
• Criegee biradicals work on sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide : pollutants
• Plants create Criegee biradicals
• Plants need CO₂ for food
• Governments ( some ) have forced the reduction of pollution
• Governments ( some ) are forcing the reduction of CO₂ emissions

Who would have thought that nature was so complex that there would be interdependency in it?

For the sake of argument though, let us imagine that the government decides Criegee biradicals are a good thing and artificial production is achieved. Then imagine they decide to pump it into the air for a cooling effect. That is not far fetched since they are determined to trap and store CO₂, plant food, even though they are concerned about the rain forests and old growth forests; last I checked, forests were made of plants.

Let us now compare the actors involved.

Acid Rain

• Made of rain mixed with carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides
  
• Changes pH of soil which can damage some plants, but not food crops due to adding necessary fertilizers
• No direct effect on humans, but components that make it can lead to heart problems, asthma, and bronchitis
• Can deteriorate stone, which means buildings can be vulnerable

Detrimental effects require many applications and the passage of time.

Sulfur Dioxide

• If inhaled, associated with increased respiratory symptoms and disease, difficulty in breathing, and premature death
• deemed safe for human consumption
• used as a preservative
• used in wine making

Sulfuric Acid

• Reactive with many metals
• Oxidizes nonmetal materials
• Decomposes flesh with a chemical burn and causes secondary thermal burns

If for some reason the government is ever stupid enough to design a Criegee biradical project, hopefully the resulting sulfuric acid product is an extremely diluted product. I imagine since acid rain itself is quite a diluted product that this acid in water would be too.

So when I read this "good news" you can see why I went pale and cold. Thank goodness though that I am just a blogger talking out of his butt.

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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.

The Doomsday Clock is Still Broken

Have you heard of the "Doomsday Clock" or have you heard that it is "Seven Minutes to Midnight" in the middle of the day? If so, you should know that we are talking about nuclear annihilation, or at least we used to be talking about that.

It is now "Five Minutes to Midnight."

Anyone who grew up during the Cold War felt that nuclear war could be around the corner. Starting on June 1947, nearly two years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Doomsday Clock appears on "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" with the time of "Seven Minutes to Midnight," but I think it looks like "Eight Minutes to Midnight." This clock through the years was meant to depict the tensions among countries and how close we were to nuclear war. Young ones may not appreciate the sense of doom we used to feel.

In 2007 the Doomsday Clock broke. "Climate Change" became a factor in figuring how close we are to Midnight. The Doomsday Clock now concerns itself with nuclear threat, climate change, and biosecurity.

You can roll your eyes and complain that the Doomsday Clock has been politicized, but it has always represented politics. It has represented the politics of nations that could obliterate the world, or at least start the onslaught. Now it contains BS politics.

On the overview page under "climate change" for how the Doomsday Clock time is determined, we find :

The most authoritative scientific group on the issue, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggests that warming on the order of 2-10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years is a distinct possibility if the industrialized world doesn't curb its carbon dioxide emissions habit. Effects could include wide-ranging, dramatic changes. One drastic result: a 3- to 34-inch rise in sea level, leading to more coastal erosion, increased flooding during storms, and, in some regions such as the Indus River Delta in Bangladesh and the Mississippi River Delta in the United States, permanent inundation.

The new banner of "Climate Change" is being used, but they are still talking about "Global Warming." Also note that the predicted rise in sea level is 3 to 34 inches. Really? A few inches or a yard? In other words, they do not know. If the estimates vary that wildly, might the sea level go down instead?

The overview also mentions these conclusions are based on readings taken since the 1950's. Really? Because in the 1970's when I was a kid growing up in Michigan I had the BeJezus scared out of me over the fear that the next ice age was coming. Cold means death, not warmth.

It is now "Five Minutes to Midnight." Why? Read it here or listen to it here. Carbon emissions are part of the reason. However, Alexandra Petri might have some better reasons for the clock turning.

If you want to relive what you thought what was around the corner during the Cold War, or you are to young to understand, see "Miracle Mile." That is what the Doomsday Clock used to represent.

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