Free Republic

The Obama administration has repeatedly said job creation is a top priority, but apparently the memo seems to have missed the bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This became evident when EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus testified Thursday before an Environment and Energy subcommittee hearing that his agency does not take jobs into account when it issues new regulations. “We have not directly taken a look at jobs in the proposal,” Stanislaus said, referring to a regulation that would govern industries that recycle coal ash and other fossil fuel byproducts. Coal ash is commonly used to make concrete stronger...

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon hasn't made the case for exemptions from three environmental laws or provided examples of how military operations have been impeded by them, a congressional report said Friday. The Government Accountability Office report came after the Navy lost in court over training exercises it was conducting under an exemption to the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Environmentalists contended that the Navy's use of sonar could harm whales off the Southern California coast, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled March 2 that the Navy had to limit the sonar use. In a written response included in...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 - The Defense Department, which controls 28 million acres of land across the nation that it uses for combat exercises and weapons testing, has been moving on a variety of fronts to reduce requirements that it safeguard the environment on that land. In Congress, the Pentagon has won exemptions in the last two years from parts of the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. It has sought in recent years to exempt military activities, for three years, from compliance with parts of the Clean Air Act. Also, the Pentagon, which controls about 140 of...