An environmental proposal | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: Jim Bispo's weekly column appears in the Beaufort Observer.

    It was 1962 when Rachel Carson wrote her revealing - if not controversial - book Silent Spring which pretty much ushered in the "modern" environmental movement. Of course John Muir and a number of others preceded her in focusing the public's attention on the Environment, but I believe she was the prime mover who really got the public fired up about doing something to protect it. In any case...

    That was some 50 years ago; a long time by almost any measure. In the intervening years we have taken care of a lot of the nasty situations that had been allowed to develop over the years. We started to pay attention to things like the fires that burned on Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. Although the river had caught fire over a dozen times beginning as early as 1868 (yes, 1868!!) it wasn't until about 1969 that we really got serious about cleaning it up. And we did.

    We cleaned up the Hudson River. The fish came back and people swim in it again. We have done a lot of good things for the environment. We have cleaned up a lot of other rivers. A lot of other good environmental things have happened.

    However... As with most bureaucratic endeavors, maturity seems to foster a tendency to do more and more about less and less. After most of the "big stuff" has been taken care of there are a lot more things that we can think of that we could be "fixing". And so it is with the EPA. They took care of a lot of ugly situations and they made a good job of it. But they continue to think of more and more to be doing about less and less.

    Actually, the work of the EPA can be divided into two closely related, but vastly different categories. That would be the work they do themselves (as in cleaning up toxic waste sites) and the work they lay on others (as in all the things they require others to do).

    In the former they are funded to find the "polluter" and get them to do the cleanup. Failing that they are authorized to accomplish the work themselves using funds appropriated for that purpose. In the latter case, they "require" that environmental "protections" be incorporated into the design of projects. A good case in point would be the things they "require" highway departments to do as they design and build new roads and bridges and the like. Our local environmentalists seem to be in the same mode as the EPA. They continue to think of more and more things (that many would suggest represent less and less). There does not seem to be an end to the numbers of things and the requirements they can lay on others. Likewise there does not seem to be an end to the amount of expense these requirements can (and often do) add to the cost of a project.

    Arguing with EPA or anyone else over the folly of many of the things they propose has not proven to be a very productive idea. It probably isn't a very smart idea either. After all, who can possibly make a cogent argument against clean air or water (which seems to be their default argument when any of their proposals are challenged).

    In fact we went through a similar discussion concerning global warming. The notion of global warming was so inculcated in everyday life, that even when the faux scientists' despicable behavior (misbehavior??) was exposed, a lot of folks still couldn't accept the notion that their "facts" were more wishful thinking than factual - but who cares as long as the grants continued to come; and folks like Al the Goracle are able to feather their own nest by perpetuating the myth.

    The following is taken from Wikipedia:

    There have been at least five major ice ages in the Earth's past (the Huronian, Cryogenian, Andean Saharan, Karoo Ice Age and the Quaternary glaciation). Outside these ages, the Earth seems to have been ice free even in high latitudes.

    Each of the ice ages has come and gone through a natural occurrence of events. The cold was followed with warmth which was followed with more cold and so it went. Many people are still unwilling to believe that there is (or would certainly appear to be) a cyclical pattern to the earth's climate. It warms and it cools. Arguing about that generally results in arriving at the same standoff that we seem to encounter when we argue about other things environmental. In the meantime, we continue to subsidize and produce Ethanol even though it has been shown to use more energy to produce than we get out of the finished product. Rationality has been overtaken by wishful environmentalism (and lucrative subsidies).


    EPA is reportedly considering "testing" a proposal to capture rain water in the District of Columbia (and presumably dispose of it "properly" - whatever that means) so as to greatly reduce the amount of runoff that finds its way into the Chesapeake Bay. When you hear of a proposal that suggests that rain water should be defined as a pollutant, it may be time for another look at what the EPA is responsible for and up to.

    I don't believe it is up to some faceless bureaucrat at the EPA to decide this sort of thing for us all. Trust me. Once that camel has it's nose under the tent, all new construction (both public and private) will soon have to start capturing runoff water. That would not likely be much of a problem here in Eastern North Carolina. Here we can simply route our rainwater into the ubiquitous swamps (aka "wetlands") for "treatment". Even then we are still faced with the problem of how to handle it when we have a "gully washer" that washes the untreated pollution out of the swamps and into our waterways.

    So, what to do?? How about this?? When the EPA (or anyone else for that matter) dictates that something be done by a landowner or another government department such as the highway department or the Department of Agriculture or anybody else, how about the originator of the "requirement" picking up the tab for whatever their "requirement" adds to the cost of the project. Let them go before the appropriations folks and justify the funding for whatever it is that they want done. Let us see how much these requirements are adding to the cost of doing business. If their project can compete with all the other funding requests, they will be funded and can proceed. If they don't measure up in the "war" of priorities, they should not be funded. As long as the bureaucrats can impose their will on others without having to justify the frequently outlandish cost, we will be faced with idiotic things like capturing rainwater for proper disposal.

    D'ya think??
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