More mercury and arsenic in the water please
The second top story under “trump administration epa” – Rule to limit mercury and arsenic in waterways is delayed by the EPA.
Naturally. Let’s not be hasty about keeping mercury and arsenic out of waterways…in fact let’s not do it at all. People can always drink bottled water.
The Environmental Protection Agency would like to delay an Obama-era rule that limits the amount of toxins power plant operators can dump into waterways, the agency announced late last week.
In a new rule, expected to be published this week in the Federal Register, the agency has proposed delaying the compliance dates of the 2015 Steam Electric Power Generating Effluent Guidelines until the EPA reviews them.
Environmental groups characterized the EPA’s decision to delay implementation of the rule as in line with the Trump administration’s attempt to conduct a broad rollback of regulations designed to protect public health. The Obama administration estimated that the 2015 rule would keep 1.4 billion pounds of toxic metals and other pollutants out of waterways each year.
Who is most likely to be poisoned by this move? The people Trump claims to love and want to help, that’s who. The people who don’t live in leafy suburbs with good water treatment systems.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said the proposed delay, if finalized, will give the administration time to “carefully consider the next steps for this regulation.” He also touted the decision as one of nearly two dozen “regulatory reform” actions that he has taken during his brief tenure as EPA administrator. The decision is designed “to protect the environment, jobs and affordable, reliable energy,” he said in a May 25 statement.
Then he lied, since the decision is obviously designed not to protect the environment.
These people are like evil villains out of fairy tales.
In an earlier press release announcing his decision to reconsider the final rule, Pruitt said “some of our nation’s largest job producers have objected to this rule, saying the requirements set by the Obama administration are not economically or technologically feasible within the proscribed [sic] timeframe.”
“Job producers” is of course Republican code for corporations and shareholders. They produce as few jobs as they possibly can, because jobs cost them money.
The protections targeted steam electric power plants — which often run on coal— that dump large amounts of toxic pollutants into streams every year.
Electric plants dump 64,400 pounds of lead, 2,820 pounds of mercury, 79,200 pounds of arsenic, and 1,970,000 pounds of aluminum into the country’s waterways every year. Some of these pollutants, including arsenic, are known carcinogens, while others, such as lead, have been linked to developmental and reproductive problems. This pollution has also been linked to fish die-offs, the EPA explained in 2015.
Nobody wants to eat fish anyway. Just get a Big Mac.
“But, but, but those metals were always there in the coal we dug out, we’re just putting them back where they came from, right. Right?”*
*summing up the environmental understanding of Trump and the Trumplettes.
The arsenic and mercury regulations have been opposed by my state for some time, because, like many states in the west, we have naturally occurring high levels of arsenic in some of our waters (in the western part of our state, of course). So the people in this state who voted for Trump are getting what they wanted, even though they are the ones who will be harmed. The problem is, a lot of other living things will also be harmed by their foolishness.
So, the solution to natural endemic sub-clinical arsenic and mercury poisoning is to ensure that our industry ups the dosage? Maybe people who think that way have already been exposed far too much…
Don’t forget lead (Pb). Some historians, iirc, propose that one cause of Rome’s decline and fall was that lead in the form of Rome’s famous plumbing for drinking water lead to a gradually increased stupidity among the elite.
I am inclined to think that there is a current example in American leadership, except the toxic source was probably a gasoline additive that from circa 1940 poisoned the breathing air in, for one example, Queens NY.
Rrr, the Romans had a really sweet tooth. The richer they got, the more they indulged it. One of their favourites was grape juice boiled in lead lined pots. To reduce it to a syrup. Fruit juice is of course rather acidic. When boiling it nicely dissolves some of the lead producing lead tartrate which is, apparently, very sweet indeed. I say apparently, because I haven’t been inclined to test it myself.
You may not remember when Bush 43 demonstrated that arsenic was not a problem by drinking a glass of water laced with the amount of arsenic in western waters (in some places, it’s many times the recommended dosage). He didn’t die, so, yeah, it’s all okay.
But he only drank one glass. At that dosage, it won’t kill you immediately, or from one glass, it’s the combined effects of years and decades of drinking the water. Chronic arsenic poisoning, instead of Arsenic and Old Lace where someone croaks almost immediately. If you poison someone slowly, you can possibly keep them from noticing.
Also reminiscent of the mayor of Flint who drank a glass of city water on camera by way of saying it was safe. It needless to say was not safe. PBS did a show on it last night.
And Obama swimming with his daughters in the Gulf of Mexico to show that there was no problem from the BP oil spill (although it turned out they actually swam in the Florida Keys). Why, oh why, oh why do politicians feel they have to do these stupid stunts to help corporations protect their profits? (That was rhetorical; I actually know the answer)
There was a British M.P (I forget which and can’t be bothered to look it uo; it’s enough to say he was a Tory) had his son eat a beefburger for the cameras during the BSE scare to ‘prove’ that beef was safe. Not quite confident enough in its safety to eat it himself, mind, so obviously the kid was expendable.
Oh yes, I remember that.
I had to check (I don’t want iknklast’s red ink or Rob’s pink on my work) and it was John Gummer M.P. and he fed the burger to his daughter, not his son. He was a Tory, though, so I was half-right.
Spoilsport. Still, high marks for persistence and research. I’ll grade that as achieved with merit.
1. That would have potentiated the effect on the ruling caste.
2. Come on, there must be some politico guineapig whose sweet tooth can be trusted? Hmm, let me think …
Thanks, Rob. Where were you forty years ago when it felt that even simple ticks were grudgingly given by my teachers; most would have sooner sold their souls to Satan than give actual encouraging remarks.
Weird, really, how my generation seemed to have been taught by people who genuinely hated children.
Not at all weird. Most of the male teachers I had at school had gone into teaching after fighting in WWII, no doubt directed there by the boards overseeing the demobilisation of millions who didn’t know what else to do with men who were well-educated, but suffering from shell-shock. They hadn’t a collective clue how to relate to children, most didn’t like them (or, as you say, actively hated them) but there was a baby-boom happening (encouraged by Her Majesty herself, to re-populate), women were being encouraged to stay at home and give jobs to the men (because housewives are less likely to revolt than unemployed, well-trained ex-soldiers), and teachers were needed. The only women left in teaching after all the maternal ones had been sent home to procreate were the child-hating harridans. I’m amazed we came through school with any self-esteem left whatsoever.