The world has gone mad. The UN General Assembly just passed a resolution declaring that water and sanitation are human rights. That’s all fine and good, but who is supposed to provide the funding for those rights? At least the US abstained, but still, are we that far behind them?
The EPA has recently issued new rules for social justice. Yep, that’s right.
Achieving environmental justice (EJ) is an Agency priority and should be factored into every decision. Incorporating EJ considerations into the Action Development Process (ADP) represents a commitment to ensuring that all Americans, regardless of age, race, economic status, or ethnicity, have access to clean water, clean air, and healthy communities. It is vital that all Agency staff identify and address disproportionate environmental and public health impacts experienced by minority, low-income, and indigenous populations.
Yid with Lid summed it up.
The guide states that in the process of developing rules, policy statements, risk assessments, and other regulatory actions, EPA managers and staffers must first ask themselves, “Does this action involve a topic that is likely to be of particular interest to or have particular impact upon minority, low-income, or indigenous populations, or tribes?”
If the answer is yes, the rule-writers must reach out to the affected minority and/or low-income communities. One section of the guide explains how EPA rule-writers may have to make “special efforts” to connect with people who may be uneducated or non-English-speaking.
I wonder how many new employees the EPA will need to comply with this new mandate.
Tags: environmental justice, epa, resolution, right, social justice, UN, water
I really cannot believe with what zeal they’ve disassembled the country, almost too quickly to stop by ballot box. Man, people started waking up [outside of us] just at the right time, or we’d be done already.
I know that sounds dramatic, but imagine if they did get all they tried to snag?
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Hey if NASA can reach out Muslims, the the EPA can do something just as idiotic.
When will we declare it’s our right not to be subjected to such BS?
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This is nothing new. The EPA has long been involved in social justice for lack of anything better to do with their size and budget. Forbes wrote an article in ’97 on how Carol Browner politicized and grew the EPA through mission creep during her term as administrator in the 90′s. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/1020/6009170a.html
They really need some serious oversight.
Under Browner the EPA moved into research that crossed into a mission area that is under OSHA’s authority. The 1992 meta-analysis they performed to classify environmental tobacco smoke as a class ‘A’ carcinogen was nothing short of a travesty. In that report, they manipulated science to announce a pre-determined conclusion and even had to reduce their confidence interval from the norm of 95% to 90% to come to that conclusion. Why? Because the anti-smoking crusaders failed to get OSHA to regulate smoke in the workplace because there was no supporting scientific documentation required of OSHA of make such a regulation, so the EPA steps in and performs ‘research’ in order to produce such documentation. The report was gutted by a federal judge, Osteen (http://www.tobacco.org/Documents/osteensummary.html), but that decision was later overturned on a technicality by a higher court which stated that since the report was only advisory in nature and not regulatory, it wasn’t in the jurisdiction of the court to render a decision. Yet that report is the primary basis used today to institute legislated bans on smoking in privately owned businesses which completely bypasses the regulatory authority we have vested in OSHA to objectively determine permissible exposure limits to ensure safety in the workplace. Indeed, it is used to facilitate a taking of private property by the government without due compensation by limiting its use.
The EPA is probably involved in the dispute with the California Air Resources Board over diesel emissions. According to the laws that establish the EPA, states can set up their own regulatory processes that are monitored by and work with the federal EPA, however they may not make state regulations that are less stringent than the national standards. The diesel emission controversy culminated in the firing of Dr James Enstrom from the UCLA School of Public Health after working there for over 35 years after he uncovered and voiced concerns with improprieties with the CARB rule making process to regulate diesel emissions. One of those was the use of a ‘study’ where the lead investigator lied about his academic credentials. That was known to the board, yet they withheld that information which only served to make the scandal even bigger than it was. You can read about Dr Enstrom’s firing on Dr Michael Siegel’s blog at: http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/08/ucla-school-of-public-health-fires.html and here:
http://www.landlinemag.com/todays_news/Daily/2010/Sept10/083010/090110-05.htm
And now, the EPA is trying to further limit lead emissions on little scientific basis. They significantly reduced lead emissions by an excess of some 90% since their creation as a new agency in the 1970′s, primarily by banning lead in gasoline. Now they want to summarily reduce it another 90%. See: http://www.epa.gov/airquality/lead/actions.html As far as I can see they based the majority of their cost benefit analysis on the premise of studies which conclude that lower lead = higher IQ points. What they fail to account for in this new rulemaking is that the levels of lead coursing through the blood of our forefathers was many times higher during colonial times than it was in our citizens during their crusade against leaded fuels in the 1970′s even though they are fully aware of this to be true: http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/perspect/lead.htm
The above is only a little insight into the much deeper problems with the EPA, many of which are also inherent in other federal agencies such as the FDA. I have no doubt that the EPA does much good in regulating many environmental impact issues, but the aftermath of their destruction of lives and American businesses in some of their projects in the name of ‘for the public good’ are too horrendous to ignore. Someone needs to regulate the regulators better and hold them more accountable for their actions. Dr Siegel has helped set up a ‘shadow panel’ (http://www.fdashadowpanel.com/) to follow the FDA’s actions concerning regulating tobacco and give opinions of less conflicted ‘experts’. Perhaps the same should be done for the EPA?
And now Browner is an unelected Czar in the Obama administration. Well, he sure picked someone who knows how to grow government.
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