Maggie's Farm

Re EPA's attack on 'fracking', here's

http://fumento.com/agent/lovecanal.html

a quote from just one report on the birth of the template:

Footnotes in the Love Canal
By Michael Fumento
The Washington Times, January 3, 1996

(snip, but do read it all)

The media descended upon the town and relayed to the outside world every sneeze, every cough, and every ache and pain experienced by Love Canal residents, making it clear that they could only be caused by toxic waste, which included the dreaded dioxin.

The EPA and the governor of New York swaggered around, condemning the chemical company and promising to make everything better, no matter the cost. Ultimately tens of millions of dollars were spent evacuating the residents.

Only later did the truth begin to seep out. Study after study conducted by the federal government and the State of New York Department of Health found that Love Canal residents had no more illness than would be expected in any other area of similar size. Believe it or not, dogs who don’t live on top of toxic waste dumps also vomit.

A New York Times editorial predicted correctly in 1981 when it said, "it may well turn out that the public suffered less from the chemicals there than from the hysteria generated by flimsy research irresponsibly handled."

Somehow, none of this was mentioned at the aforementioned press conference. Instead, EPA Administrator Carol Browner used the myths of Love Canal to blast congressional Republican efforts to cut back on enforcement of environmental laws. Love Canal led to the creation of the Superfund for the cleanup of environmental hazards.


In seeking to reduce environmental spending by $25 million, she said, "Congress is attempting to roll back the environmental health protections that Superfund brought to Love Canal." Since there was never any health threat at the Love Canal, obviously Superfund brought no protections there.
In any case, it’s too bad Browner didn’t go farther to point out that Superfund, according to the Office of Technology Assessment, could soak up an amazing $500 billion over the next few decades. While a few of these toxic waste sites may pose a real hazard to persons living nearby, most have posed no demonstrated threat as large even as making dogs upchuck.

Sometimes people fight back. The citizens of Leadville, Colorado successfully fought the EPA’s needless effort to scrape the lead out of Leadville’s soil. (Anyone for "Ville" Colorado?). Like so much of what the EPA does, it was nothing but makework for a bloated and arrogant agency.

(close snip)

===

That $500 billion is the sum the spend, unadjusted for inflation. Adjusted, who knows --double? triple?

No, i'm not in favor of filth. But also not in favor of a hundred crony-capitalist Superfund-birthed companies such as Clean Harbors, founded in 1980 upon the congressional creation of the EPA's patronage pipeline.

Why pick on Clean Harbors? Because it is lobbying hard for a federal mandate that all drilling sites must hire Clean Harbors (or whomever else is for appearances sake licensed) to monitor the well.

As it stands, state laws cover the same, and since fracking as a 'tight sand' completion procedure option is 50 years old with tens of thousands of frack jobs done with almost zero cases of contact between ground water and frack fluid (there's the odd equipment failure, which no $5K/day federally-mandated private [wink politically-connected wink] Superfund piglet's labs & engineers living in housetrailers on each and every well site from spud-in to completion, can prevent any more than the designated operations people do now and have always done).

It's the racket again, folks, capitalizing as usual on the citizen's natural technical ignorance of all but his or her own area of expertise, and made possible at the highest levels by pols, bureaucrats and media mavens who are secretly paid and/or ideology-driven agents of foreign petroleum exporting interests --some of whom are this nation's most dangerous deep enemies.

Don't bite the weenie!

Thanks, BD --as i always say, you're a prints among men!

PS, yes, it's the same Carol Browner who abruptly resigned her energy czarina west-wing perch (to join a Soros think tank) upon the unanticipated 2010 election handing the new GOP house the congressional subpoena power.

In between her Democratic presidents, she served among other things on the boards of several rank out-and-out socialist revolution organizations. Look it up, see for yo self.

But naw, that itty-bitty political perversion of her'n would not have colored her public policy work, nosirree, she will have always looked out for the country's interests, you betcha!

http://www.bing.com/search?q=elk+hills+scandal+al+gore+occidental+kremlin&go=&qs=n&sk=&first=11&FORM=PORE

Take a look at USN's Elk Hills reservoir and how it was basically stolen and given to Kremlin-connected Occidental Petroleum --The Gore family as middlemen.

--hearing someone's pride in their locale always lifts a spirit in a certain inimitable way --