Free Republic

I went to our yearly HOA meeting last night. Some consultant with GBM Associates in Bryant, AR said that he is proposing a "Neighborhood mitigation bank" where we buy "credits" for letting the Corps of Engineers (COE) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) get deeded our "wetlands", which are really 2 creeks, and dry tributaries. The consultant was honest. He said, no federal law dictates it, just a 1983 guidance. NO promises of making money, no guarantees that COE/EPA will do anything. Fines are possibe, like if my kid catches crawfish, or throws rocks in the lake/stream. Anyways, my wife and...

Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer is calling on President Obama to permanently ban offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic using his executive authority. From Politico: NextGen and White House officials have discussed the possibility of Obama using his executive powers under a section of the law governing offshore drilling that allows him to “withdraw from disposition” any section of the Outer Continental Shelf that has not already been leased for oil or gas drilling… Steyer’s group says more permanent protections are available using section 12(a) of the OCS Lands Act. Similar to the Antiquities Act, which presidents can use to...

In some of the biggest news which will not come as “news” to anyone who follows the industry, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality concluded a two year study this week into reports of ground water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming. There had been reports of “foul smelling water” in two test wells drilled by the EPA near one of the many drilling sites in the gas field half a decade ago. The initial EPA report which was ready to blame fracking for the contamination immediately came under heavy criticism in the scientific community and was never released. Still the Wyoming...

They may not ride in crammed trains or carry angst over potholes but feuding presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both want to fix America's infrastructure. The focus on improving public transit and highways couldn't come soon enough for local commuters, say two experts. "There is a desperate need to invest more into mass transit in Chicagoland," Regional Transportation Authority Chairman and former state senator Kirk Dillard said. "Most states significantly assist in the mass transit arena, but that is not the case today in Illinois," Dillard added, noting New York City budgets about $196 per capita on mass...

These human-hating apostles of doom have the whole picture precisely upside down; they treat the natural world and its health not as a means to human ends, but as an end in itself and as the object of some new pagan religion, the goal of which is to regress to man’s primitive state. These environmentalists will have to pardon those of us who believe the Great Enrichment, caused by the market-liberal order, is a thing to be fostered and cherished, advanced at every opportunity in word and in deed. When we worry about the natural world—and we should—our worries should...

Shady cash from Vladimir Putin’s Russian energy oligarchs and other rich donors is being laundered through Bermuda-based lawyers and middlemen to “green” pressure groups, lobbyists and spinmeisters – to promote “green energy” schemes that bring billions of dollars from government agencies (and thus from us taxpayers and consumers) to a cabal of billionaires and crony companies. At the epicenter are hedge fund millionaire Nathaniel Simons, his wife Laura and their secretive Sea Change Foundation. “Investors” become even wealthier, as billions of dollars are transferred annually to environmentalists, scientists, politicians, bureaucrats and crony-corporatists in Renewable Energy & Climate Crisis, Inc....

PORTLAND, MAINE - Portland police arrested 30-year-old Asher Woodworth after he walked back-and-forth slowly through downtown traffic dressed as a tree. When he refused to comply orders, police took him to jail on a misdemeanor charge of obstructing a public way. Police say Woodworth's motivation was to "see how people would react to his performance" and how it would "impact people's natural choreography."

Water used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, can be reused to water crops with no adverse effects, according to research published Monday by California government officials. Officials in the state’s Cawelo Water District (Cawelo) concurred with toxicologists that the recycled water was safe for agricultural use. Researchers found no difference in crops which were irrigated with recycled fracking water and those irrigated from other sources. This confirmed previous analyses that recycled water is safe for crops. So far, the program has provided 10 billion gallons of safe water to California farmers, despite a major drought in that state. “Ongoing testing...

With $65 million in new money thanks to the state's BP settlement, the long-beleaguered U.S. 98 project in coastal Alabama has a new life, but officials are proceeding cautiously.It was nearly a decade ago when a previous U.S. 98 project was shut down amid lawsuits and accusations surrounding sediment from the construction site that ran off into the waterways supplying a majority of the Mobile region's drinking water."The job has been redesigned," said Vince Calametti, ALDOT's Southwest Region's chief engineer. "There was an environmental assessment, and it will have to be re-evaluated. It will be one of the first things...

When farmers plow their land, it produces grooves called "furrows," bordered by small ridges of dirt. But in pursuit of new regulatory powers, federal agencies refer to the little dirt mounds by another term: “mini mountain ranges.” That seemingly absurd distinction is being used to impose more federal control over private land use decisions made by U.S. farmers. That was the claim described in a U.S. Senate committee report released Sept. 20. The committee reviewed the powers held by the nation’s two largest environmental regulation agencies, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency, and a proposed...

Climate change activists shut off cross-border oil pipelines in Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and Washington on Tuesday. The activists broke in to unguarded valve stations and shut off the flow of oil before being arrested. Reuters reports: All they had to do was twist shut giant valves on five cross-border pipelines that together can send 2.8 million barrels a day of crude to the United States from Canada – equal to about 15 percent of daily U.S. consumption. The pipelines have valve stations every 20 miles, many of them in remote locations and protected by nothing more than a locked...

Back in 2010, deep green environmentalist Rick Smith, then head of Environmental Defence Canada, hailed Ontario’s Green Energy and Green Economy Act regime as a cost-free operation that would catapult the province into the big leagues of renewable energy. Through fat subsidies and high prices offered to wind, solar and other renewable industry players, jobs and growth would boom and Ontario would be free of its dirty coal plants. It was the End of Coal, the government said. The birth of a renewable miracle. Asked whether the plan might lead to higher prices for consumers, “No,” said Dr. Smith —...

AGENCY LOBBYING HARD FOR MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR BOONDOGGLE South Carolina’s corrupt transportation “leaders” still desperately want to foist Interstate 73 on dirt poor Palmetto State taxpayers … even as government’s embarrassing inability to do basic maintenance continues to be on display all over the state.How desperate are our powerful “roads czars” to get this Interstate built? Let’s recap …First, they’ve spent more than $100 million on an interchange for the highway (even though it’s not clear if it will ever be built).Next they’ve proposed spending millions more on wetlands mitigation related to the road (again, even though it’s not clear if...

A Michigan state senator from the Upper Peninsula says the federal Environmental Protection Agency has done everything in its power to indirectly shut down a mine near Marquette. The issue is back in the news because a limited-government legal foundation announced last month it will represent the Marquette County Road Commission in a federal lawsuit against the EPA. The agency has blocked a plan to build a shortcut road to the Eagle Mine in the western Upper Peninsula. In a phone interview with Michigan Capitol Confidential this week, Sen. Tom Casperson, R-Escanaba, suggested that the EPA’s real target in the...

This past Monday marked the 20th anniversary of President Bill Clinton using the Antiquities Act to create the 1.5 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. For most Utahns, this date is not a cause for celebration. It’s a source of anger toward what many see as an out-of-touch and overbearing federal government Infamously, the Clinton administration failed to notify the people of Utah prior to announcing the monument designation—probably because the administration knew that nearly everyone in the state was opposed to the idea. Utah’s congressional delegation, state and county leaders, and local residents all warned that a...

Donald Trump detailed his energy plan, which he previously mentioned during his speech on the economy at the Detroit Economic Club in August, on Thursday in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. “I am going to lift the restrictions on American energy, and allow this wealth to pour into our communities – including right here in Pennsylvania,” Trump stated while speaking to more than 1,000 gas industry experts. Citing the Institute for Energy Research, Trump suggested that lifting energy restrictions such as shale production would produce more than 500,000 new jobs every year and raise the GDP by more than $100 billion each year.He also says...

SIERRA VISTA — A multi-year study examining over a dozen indicators of groundwater discharge into the San Pedro River and riparian area indicates, that in some areas, streamwater and groundwater levels along the river are in decline. The study, conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, analyzed a series of data sets—including aquifer water levels, streamflow permanence, June wet-dry status of the river and spring discharge—collected over a 10-year span ending in 2012.

Some say that the casualty numbers are overhyped. Other say it is a serious problem. But at the Ivanpah Solar Plant in Nevada, birds are bursting into flames. The bizarre occurrences happen when the bird’s flight paths take them into the ultra-concentrated beams of sunlight produced by the panels at the plant. On spec, the plant seems like the very ideal of energy production for the future: three gleaming towers, forty stories in height capturing the energy from the sunlight reflected by five acres of massive mirrors. All told, the plant generates some 390 megawatts of power from its turbines....

The problem with environmentalists isn't merely that they have destructive ideas about the economy, but that so many of them embrace repulsive ideas about human beings. Take a recent NPR piece that asks, "Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?" If you want to learn about how environmentalism has already affected people in society, read about the couple pondering "the ethics of procreation" and its impact on the climate before starting a family, or the group of women in a prosperous New Hampshire town swapping stories about how the "the climate crisis is a reproductive crisis."...

The deep waters off the coast of California could become home to the country’s largest offshore wind energy project and a test case for a technology that is still in its infancy.