At my last job, we switched solvent systems for our cleaning operation. My boss told me to ask the EPA if we needed permits because we only used 2 or 3 gallons of paint thinner per year. I called them and they sent their team of piranhas to investigate. We had 6 exhaust fume vents in our building to get rid of the smell when we were working with the solvent. Four of the vents hadn’t been used in 4 or 5 years. The EPA asked us for our vent permits. We didn’t have any. Result: New permits for 6 vents at $2500 per vent ($15000). Fine of yearly permit fees for the previous 12 years ($180000). Total $195000.
We wound up having to layoff six workers to pay the fines.
The EPA is nothing more than a group of bandits with authority. My boss told me “Never never never call those people with a question again”.
I was in the Nuclear industry 30 years ago, the amount of needless regulation that we had to follow was probably the most expensive and useless aspect of producing nuclear power.
There was a time when things could be produced efficiently, inexpensively and quickly in our country. Then the bureaucrats found opportunity to explain their existence.
Some regulation is necessary, but the left truly uses it as a weapon against capitalism.
hope you picked the liberal workers to lay off
Your boss learned that lesson the hard way.
I would not have called those aholes at the EPA under ANY circumstances.
They need to be defunded and abolished.
we need a way to get stories like this to Trump - can you imagine if he repeated thison the news tonight? and said he was going to dismantle all these nazi departments?
Rus, does Carl have the ability to contact his people still?
I ran a public water supply for 30 years. We were having a problem with Iron in the water. During an EPA inspection, they told me, “Oh! You should start using AquaMag.” So I did, and being a very small company, 300 connections, the cost of installing equipment etc., was a burden. 2 years later, the same EPA team came out and demanded that I immediately turn off the equipment! I told them that they would have me turn the system back on after I complied with their demands, and they said “Yes. You’re correct, but we have rules.” I had to commission an engineering study, pay a fine,,,,and,,,pay a percentage of the cost to the EPA! They then told me I could turn the AquaMag phosphate system back on! Insanity!
Similar sort of story I have involves a shortline railroad’s locomotive shop. They had a contract with Safety-Kleen to service the shop’s parts washer, monthly.
They had a major overhaul on one of their locomotives underway and requested an extra service call to replace the parts washing fluid.
Safety-Kleen made the service call for the extra 20 gallons of solvent they took back to be filtered and reprocessed into new parts washer solvent... but they simultaneously reported the railroad to the DEP/EPA for exceeding their permitted monthly volume of hazardous waste.
Needless to say even though that was not my shop, the next time Safety Kleen showed up for their ROUTINE servicing at mine, I instructed the Safety-Kleen kid that our contract with them was hereby cancelled, in writing (handed him a copy of the certified letter), and that he is to IMMEDIATELY removed SAFETY-KLEEN’S toxic, carcinogenic, HAZARDOUS WASTE from the railroad’s property.
I then set up the old parts washer that was in storage and just used naptha and diesel fuel as the solvent. Filtered fluid was burned in the UNPERMITTED waste oilburner I installed for shop heat, the sludge was dumped in the coal pile and incinerated in the steam locomotive.
I will never do business with Safety-Kleen, EVER.