Free Republic

Gov. Kathy Hochul is moving full-steam-ahead with her predecessor Andrew Cuomo’s insane anti-carbon energy plan, yet the Legislature wants to make it worse. In their one-house budget bills this week, lawmakers took Hochul’s plan to cap greenhouse-gas output and require companies to buy “allowances” (indulgences?) for emissions and added new requirements of their own. That’d make it even harder for companies to meet standards, stay under the caps and/or pay for those allowances — more poison for the state’s business climate. The added costs will also bring higher prices for consumers: added, New York-only “inflation.” And where Hochul would allow...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to drill a test well into an inactive mine tunnel in southwestern Colorado to get information for a Superfund cleanup, the agency said Friday. The EPA said it will drill into the American Tunnel next month to measure water levels and investigate how the passage is connected to other shafts. ... The agency designated the Superfund site after it inadvertently ( LOL ) triggered a spill while doing excavation work at the inactive Gold King Mine in August 2015. The spill released 3 million gallons of wastewater, polluting rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and...

California Gov. Jerry Brown’s decision to veto a 2016 bipartisan bill aimed at mitigating wildfire risks from power lines and utility equipment has become the focus of critics as fires rage across the state. Wildfires have scorched more than 221,000 acres across California since Thursday, and Brown’s critics are pointing to the two-year-old veto as news reports suggest power lines may have sparked the deadliest wildfire in California’s history. “He has done nothing to harden those assets,” state Sen. John Moorlach, a Republican, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Woolsey fire that has engulfed over 90,000 acres in California last weekend may have spread toxic and radioactive substances from a Superfund site. Activists, who believe authorities might be downplaying the risks of the toxins released into the air, say the burning of the nuclear waste site could further complicate health concerns. According to RT, the Woolsey fire ripped right through the Santa Susana Field Lab (SSFL), a federal Superfund site in the Simi Hills that was the site of the worst nuclear meltdown in United States history in 1959. While the SSFL has been the site of multiple...

Cleanups at some U.S. hazardous waste sites have stopped or slowed down because the Environmental Protection Agency does not manage its Superfund staff effectively to match its workload, an internal government watchdog said Tuesday. Such work is at a standstill or moving slowly on at least four Superfund sites where “human exposure is not under control,” according to a report from the EPA’s inspector general. That means contamination at the sites is unsafe for humans and there is a reasonable expectation that people may be exposed to it, the report said. The report comes as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has...

Shortly after the EPA triggered the release, to obscure and limit its own liability, the EPA created the Bonita Peak Mining District—around the Gold King Mine—and made the Superfund designation. Past EPA studies found the area did not merit inclusion on the National Priorities List. ... EPA’s Attempt to Bury its Colorado Gold Mine Disaster is Illegal. ... Mountain States Legal Foundation for its clients ... advised the three-judge panel that the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), pursuant to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund statute), designated what it erroneously called the Bonita Peak...

The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday said it plans to require mining companies to show they have the financial wherewithal to clean up their pollution so taxpayers aren’t stuck footing the bill. The proposal follows a 2016 agreement reached under court order for the government to enforce a long-ignored provision in the 1980 federal Superfund law. The requirement would apply to hardrock mining, which includes mines for precious metals, copper, iron, lead and other ores. It would cover mines and processing facilities in 38 states, requiring their owners to set aside sufficient money to pay for future clean ups. The...

A decades-long battle between federal environmental officials and a small Colorado town is about to end in the government’s favor, thanks to the agency-caused Gold King Mine spill disaster ... Residents surrendered to federal demands only after an EPA work-crew turned the nearby Animas River bright yellow for nearly a week by releasing a three-million-gallon flood of acidic mine waste under extremely questionable circumstances in August 2015. Suspended in the flood was 880,000 pounds of toxic metals, including lead and arsenic, that poured into the river that supplies drinking water for people living in three states and the Navajo Nation....

Todd Hennis claims EPA planned mine spill to usher in Superfund. the Environmental Protection Agency-contracted crew's triggered blowout on his property, effectively turning the Animas River into an orange spectacle. He was speechless and horrified, but not surprised ... I have been trying to make everybody aware of the dangers posed by the Sunnyside Mine pool for 14 years .. when I saw the pictures, I just felt my life was over. I just thought, Oh God, what did they do? ... Hennis, for his part, has long maintained increased flows from the Gold King Mine are a result of...

Leaders in a St. Louis suburb are urgently calling on top Obama administration officials to quickly clean up a landfill with radioactive waste that they believe could catch fire. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been working for 25 years on the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, Mo., which has housed barium sulfate waste from the Manhattan Project since the 1970s. The EPA is still studying the site and considering a wide range of actions to contain the radioactive material under its Superfund program for cleaning severe environmental contamination. But with an underground, smoldering fire in an adjacent landfill, residents...

Last Wednesday, a small EPA-supervised work crew inspecting the Gold King mine accidentally knocked a hole in a waste pit, releasing at least three million gallons of acidic liquid laden with toxic heavy metals. (ABC) This letter to editor, posted below, was published in The Silverton Standard and The Miner local newspaper, authored by a retired geologist, one week before EPA mine spill. The letter detailed verbatim, how EPA officials would foul up the Animas River on purpose in order to secure superfund money. It the Gold King mine was declared a superfund site it would essentially kill future development...

The Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board recently released the “Deed Restrictions” for George Air Force Base that are required by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) §120(h). Because of these CERCLA §120(h) Deed Restrictions, we now know that there were numerous Completed Exposure Pathways (CEPs) to the George AFB personnel, their families, civilian employees, and the surrounding community. The contaminated buildings, soil, air, upper and lower aquifers (these contaminated aquifers were the source for municipal and domestic drinking water supply wells for George AFB, Adelanto, several homes, and the Victor Valley Country Club) provided the Completed...

A wayward dolphin that meandered into a polluted urban canal, riveting onlookers as it splashed around in the filthy water and shook black gunk from its snout, died Friday evening, marine experts said. The deep-freeze weather hadn’t seemed to faze the dolphin as it swam in the Gowanus Canal, which runs 1.5 miles through a narrow industrial zone near some of Brooklyn’s wealthiest neighborhoods. … The filthy canal was named a Superfund site in 2010, meaning the government can force polluters to pay for its restoration. For more than a century before, coal yards, chemical factories and fuel refineries on...

LIBBY, Mont. (AP) — Instead of saying thanks, some residents rebuked Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Max Baucus on Monday for the very law that could help potentially thousands of asbestos victims here. The health care reform law passed last year expands Medicare coverage for the sick residents of Libby, where years of asbestos pollution from a vermiculite mine made this the nation's deadliest Superfund site. About 400 Libby residents have signed up for the new coverage as of this week, Sebelius said. But many of those from this northwestern Montana town of 3,000 who came to listen to...

There are currently two pieces of tax legislation that have been introduced into Congress that will affect virtually every person in the United States. These new bills are very deceptive, since they tax the chemical and petroleum industry; however, what EPA and the sponsors of the bill do not mention is that these taxes will be passed back down to the consumer level. The sponsors of the bill also claim that this tax will create or save jobs and "punish the polluters" (the petroleum and chemical industries) -- especially in light of the BP oil spill. The original Superfund taxes...

Energy Savings: Europe's ban on the incandescent light bulb began phasing in this month, and the U.S. will soon follow. Is Thomas Edison to blame for global warming? And why are we exporting green jobs?When the warm-mongers assemble in Copenhagen this December to hammer out a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, no doubt their work to save the earth from the carbon dioxide that gives it life will take place under the eerie light thrown off by compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) mandated by the European Union to fight climate change. The bulbs are more expensive, costing up to...

For years, the Bush administration was criticized for not cleaning up enough of the nation's most contaminated waste sites. The Obama administration plans to do even less.

For years, the Bush administration was criticized for not cleaning up enough of the nation's most contaminated waste sites. The Obama administration plans to do even less. Environmental groups and some Democratic lawmakers railed against President George W. Bush's cleanup record. But this time, they're shying away from speaking out against a popular president who's considered an ally in the fight to clean up the environment. Associated PressFewer EPA cleanups are planned under the administration of President Barack Obama, above. In Obama's first two years in office, the Environmental Protection Agency expects to begin the final phase of cleanup at...

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency for the first time has declared a public health emergency in a contaminated community, targeting a Montana town Wednesday for immediate federal attention. The declaration by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson involving Libby, Mont., will not result in an evacuation, but will require an extensive cleanup and better health protections for residents with asbestos-related illnesses. -- Asbestos contamination from a now-closed vermiculite mine near Libby has been cited in the deaths of more than 200 people and illnesses of thousands more. Jackson said the public health emergency declaration was the first time the EPA has...

06-12) 04:00 PDT Redding - -- Rick Sugarek knows not to splash through the puddles inside "the mouth of the beast." That is what he calls the gaping wound near Redding known to everybody else as the Iron Mountain Mine, which is widely regarded by scientists as one of the most polluted places in the world. The project manager for the Environmental Protection Agency said he once dropped a pen in some running water inside the mine and when he recovered it, it was coated in copper. The water is so acidic that droplets eat holes in blue jeans and...