ENVIRONMENTAL LEGAL BLOGS

230,000 Employees | Green House Gas | Clean Air Act | The Daily Caller

The EPA is asking taxpayers to fund up to 230,000 new government workers to process all the extra paperwork, at an estimated cost of $21 billion. That cost does not include the economic impact of the regulations themselves.

“Hiring the 230,000 full-time employees necessary to produce the 1.4 billion work hours required to address the actual increase in permitting functions would result in an increase in Title V administration costs of $21 billion per year,” the EPA wrote in the court brief.

via dailycaller.com

Owners of land taken over by feds getting day in court

The U.S. Supreme Court

has agreed to reconsider a determination by the federal Environmental Protection Agency that it controls what happens on a privately owned parcel of residential land in Idaho and the landowners must do its bidding.

The EPA had warned the owners, Mike and Chantell Sackett, they could be fined millions of dollars if they disobeyed the federal officials' instructions to undo the preliminary construction work

they had begun on what was supposed to be their dream house. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled they would have to go through a $200,000 government application process even to get a judicial review of the decision.

But that changed when the high court notified the Pacific Legal Foundation, an organization working on behalf of the Sackett family, that it had accepted the dispute fo

via www.wnd.com

CAA dropping weatherization program (via Business Courier)

The Cincinnati-Hamilton County Community Action Agency is temporarily withdrawing from the weatherization business, less than three months after an FBI raid of the program’s Bond Hill offices.

The announcement follows a Sept. 20 letter in which the Ohio Department of Development identified $795,526 in “questioned costs” in CAA’s federally funded program. Weatherization is one of several anti-poverty programs operated by CAA. It installs new furnaces, insulation and energy-efficient windows in low-income households.

“The magnitude of program compliance issues questions CHCCAA’s ability to manage the Home Weatherization Assistance Program now and going forward,” wrote Nick Sunday, deputy chief of ODOD’s office of community assistance, which administers federal spending of weatherization funds. “The agency has communicated its willingness to give up the program and to allow OCA to begin the process of selecting a new provider. OCA supports this decision."

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2011/09/21/caa-to-shut-down-weatherization-program.html

Not Solyndra ($800,000, not 1/2 billion dollars, at issue); nonetheless, this is yet another example of how government should not be entrusted with taxpayer dollars except where absolutely necessary.

Obama Administration to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns

Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly? Well, it seems that the Obama administration is would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer:

Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government's latest attempt to protect the Earth's atmosphere.

via www.freerepublic.com

The prescription-only inhalers will be 100% more expensive that the over-the-counter inhalers.

The EPA announcement of the Adminstrtaion's latest effort to make life better while also making it miserable can be found in the EPA's announcement at http://www.epa.gov/ozone/title6/exemptions/inhalers.html

 

Global warming is hot [New, significant controversies popping up every day]

A new paper by lead author Dr. Nigel Fox of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) of the U.K.�s National Measurement Institution (synopsis available at eurekalert.org) warns all existing space data used in computer models to calculate the future impact of climate change are highly unreliable.

In a paper published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Fox, head of Earth observation and climate at NPL, notes: �Nowhere are we measuring with uncertainties anywhere close to what we need to understand climate change and allow us to constrain and test the models. Our current best measurement capabilities would require more than 30 years before we have any possibility of identifying which model matches observations and is most likely to be correct in its forecast of consequential potentially devastating impacts. The uncertainties needed to reduce this are more challenging than anything else we have to deal with in any other industrial application, by close to an order of magnitude. It is the duty of the scientific community to reduce this unacceptably large uncertainty, by finding and delivering the necessary information, with the highest possible confidence, in the shortest possible time.�

via www.freerepublic.com

You probably won't read about this uncertainty in the New York Times-- and I wouldn't look for an admission in one of Al Gore's speeches, either.

With "green" energy threatening to be a bust (e.g., Solyndra), one hasd to wonder how many people need to be put out of work before we realize we will be depednent on fossil fuels for a long, long time.

We're selected by Lexis/Nexis as one of 50 Top Environmental Blogs

    See http://www.lexisnexis.com/community/environmental-climatechangelaw/blogs/topblogs/archive/2011/04/21/environmental-law-amp-climate-change-community-announces-top-50-blogs-for-2011.aspx  (under "Environmental Law" midway down the page).

    Cool!

Angry federal judge rips 'false testimony' of federal scientists | Ron Arnold | Columnists | Washington Examiner

In a searing opinion, Wanger ripped two Interior Department scientists for giving "false" and "incredible" testimony to support a "bad faith" delta smelt preservation plan.

The two scientists are Frederick V. Feyrer of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and Jennifer M. Norris of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Wanger also threw out huge chunks of the federal government's official "biological opinion" on five different species, calling the opinion, which is a guidance document for environmental regulators, "arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful."

via washingtonexaminer.com

            Wanger is a fairly conservative Judge and some may in the past have wondered why the "delta smelt" lobby has gotten as far as it has before him in imposing water use limitations on the agricultural community in California.  The lobby got this far because the Judge is constrained to follow the law, which he has scrupulously done; where the law allows him to consider something more than the zealotry of the lobby and to protect actual humans, as opposed to the delta smelt, he does so.

WBJ Weekly News Bulletin: Sep. 20-26, 2011 Item: 2

Industry criticism is growing against the Obama administration's proposed revisions to EPA's Bush-era definition of solid waste (DSW) as chemical manufacturing and scrap recycling industries becoming the latest to complain that the revised rule would be too costly. The Obama EPA proposed July 6 to amend the Bush-era DSW rule, which relaxed certain waste management requirements on industry in the interest of promoting recycling. The new proposal, which follows a lawsuit from environmentalists and complaints from state regulators that the Bush-era rule is too lax, would tighten many of the requirements. Industry groups, including the National Mining Association (NMA) and American Petroleum Institute (API), and now the Society of Chemical Manufacturers & Affiliates (SOCMA) and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) expressed shock that EPA would no longer exclude so-called 'tolling" where a reclaimer or processor operates on the site of the waste generator. EPA had previouslyagreed that tolling arrangements ensure that there is no discard since the hazardous secondary materials remain under the control of the generator. If EPA removes the exclusion, contractors conducting reclamation may need to obtain storage permits under Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) rules.

via www.wastebusinessjournal.com

BBC News - Times Atlas 'wrong' on Greenland ice

Leading UK polar scientists say the Times Atlas of the World was wrong to assert that it has had to re-draw its map of Greenland due to climate change.

Publicity for the latest edition of the atlas, launched last week, said warming had turned 15% of Greenland's former ice-covered land "green and ice-free".

But scientists from the Scott Polar Research Institute say the figures are wrong; the ice has not shrunk so much.

via www.bbc.co.uk

A Slow Farewell to Fossil Fuels: Electric Car�Revolution Remains a Distant Prospect - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

"To me, this electric hype is inexplicable," Fritz Indra, a doyen in vehicle development, recently told the trade magazine Automobil Industrie. The honorary professor at Vienna University of Technology and former head engine developer at Opel and General Motors still sees a good deal of "open questions" -- and no satisfying answers.

The first electric cars that aren't DIY projects and offer acceptable crash protection have arrived in the dealerships. Most of them are no-frills mini-vehicles that cost as much as a mid-sized sedans and can only take you a short distance and back on a single battery charge if you're lucky enough to avoid heavy traffic. Of course, that's not the case in the winter, when energy-sapping interior heating significantly diminishes its range. And if it runs out of juice on the road, no jerry can will help. Your only option is to call a tow truck.

With all the drawbacks of this type of car, you have to be a true believer in electric mobility to imagine that there really are one million people out there who want to have one.

via www.spiegel.de