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EPA Decree Shrinks Size of Wyoming by a Million Acres

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Photo Credit: dantekgeek

Photo Credit: dantekgeek

Why is the EPA altering state boundaries in Wyoming – and reversing over 100 years of established law? Well, apparently the city of Riverton now falls under the jurisdiction of the Wind River Indian Reservation. This, obviously, isn’t sitting well with the governor’s office – which is urging the EPA to reconsider its ruling and respect the rule of law.

Reacting to the decision to reduce the size of Wyoming by about a million acres, Wyoming Governor Matt Mead warned of the dangers to all Americans of this type of unilateral land redistribution by the EPA:

“I understand that the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone Tribes have a different opinion about the Wind River Reservation Boundary. My deep concern is about an administrative agency of the federal government altering a state’s boundary and going against over 100 years of history and law.

“This should be a concern to all citizens because, if the EPA can unilaterally take land away from a state, where will it stop?” Governor Matt Mead said in a press release on January 6.


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‘MUZZLED’: EPA Silenced Scientists that Challenged their Agenda

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

The Environmental Protection Agency silenced scientific advisers who expressed concerns over the agency’s proposed carbon dioxide emissions limits for coal-fired power plants, House Republicans claim.

Republicans on the House’s science committee wrote a letter to EPA administrator Gina McCarthy expressing concern that the agency ignored scientists charged with reviewing carbon emissions limits for new power plants. Scientists said that the agency rushed through the regulatory process and that the underlying science of the rule lacked adequate peer review.

“We are concerned about the agency’s apparent disregard for the concerns of its science advisors,” the Republican lawmakers wrote. “Science is a valuable tool to help policymakers navigate complex issues.”

“However, when inconvenient facts are disregarded or when dissenting voices are muzzled, a frank discussion becomes impossible,” the lawmakers continued. “The EPA cannot continue to rush ahead with costly regulations without allowing time for a real-world look at the science.”

Republicans previously asked the EPA about how it responded to the scientific reviewers’ concerns, but agency officials distanced themselves from their own advisers, according to the letter. Specifically, lawmakers questioned the agency’s requirement that coal plants must install carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology in order to be built. The agency, however, said that their new power plant rule does not need to address such concerns about CCS.

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The U.S. May be Hitting its Ethanol Limit. So EPA Wants to Relax its Biofuels Goals.

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Photo Credit: Chuck Olson / FlickrWhen it comes to ethanol, the United States may have reached its limit — at least for now.

Back in 2007, Congress passed a law that would require the nation to use more and more ethanol and other biofuels each year. But for reasons of chemistry and economics, those targets are becoming increasingly difficult to fulfill.

That helps explain why, on Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency took the unusual step of proposing to cut its biofuels targets for next year. The agency will require gasoline refiners to use just 15.2 billion gallons of biofuels in 2014 — down from 16.55 billion gallons this year. The new target is 14 percent lower than the original goal envisioned by Congress.

The EPA’s move is a victory for gasoline refineries, which have long argued that the original targets were unworkable. And it’s a fairly big setback for the biofuels industry, at least for the time being.

Here’s the back story: In 2007, Congress updated its Renewable Fuel Standard, which set rough targets for the amount of ethanol and other biofuels that had to be blended into the nation’s gasoline supply each year. By 2013, that target rose to 16.55 billion gallons — and it was supposed to keep rising until it hit 36 billion gallons in 2022.

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TINY TOWN A THREAT? Chicken, Alaska Focus of Armed Task Force Raid

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Photo Credit: Dave Bezaire & Susi Havens-Bezaire

Photo Credit: Dave Bezaire & Susi Havens-Bezaire

Some miners in Alaska want the feds to start digging for answers.

A task force including members of 10 state and federal law enforcement agencies descended on a gold mine in the tiny town of Chicken (pop. 17) last month, in what locals described as a raid.

“Imagine coming up to your diggings, only to see agents swarming over it like ants, wearing full body armor, with jackets that say “POLICE” emblazoned on them, and all packing side arms,” gold miner C.R. Hammond told the Alaska Dispatch. “How would you have felt? You would be wondering, ‘My God, what have I done now?”

A spokesman for the federal Environmental Protection Agency did not deny that agents wore body armor and carried guns, but said it was not a “raid.”

“The ongoing investigation conducted by the AK Environmental Crimes Task Force — consisting of EPA, ADEC, USFWS, ADFG, BLM, Coast Guard, FBI, Alaska State Troopers, NOAA, & US Park Service — did not result in a raid,” the statement read. “The Task Force members involved in the investigation during the week of August 19, 2013, were EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division & Bureau of Land Management’s Office of Law Enforcement & Security, in cooperation with ADEC’s Environmental Crimes Unit.”

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Obama’s Anti-Stimulus: His Energy Policies Take Money Out Of Economy

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Photo Credit: Win McNamee“I have to tell you that there are some Democrats, for example, who represent states or districts that are heavily reliant on old power plants and are more heavily manufacturing based,” President Obama said during a Google online chat session with the public on Friday. “And the truth is that if you produce power using old power plants, you’re going to be emitting more carbon, but, to upgrade those plants means energy is going to be a little more expensive, at least on the front end.”

Naturally, Obama understated the costs involved in upgrading power plants and switching to new sources of energy. But his remark is true in its essentials: In exchange for very modest reductions in carbon emissions, his policies require consumers to pay higher upfront prices for electricity.

Now compare Obama’s statement to the theory behind his stimulus package — both the $800 billion package he championed and signed in 2009 and the additional stimulus he has since asked Congress to enact. The assumption underlying his proposed and enacted deficit spending, expansion of entitlements (such as food stamps) and demand-side tax breaks as stimulus is that Americans have a temporary cash-flow problem. The idea is that because people don’t have enough money in their pockets, commerce is suffering, causing hiring to lag. So by providing a small pay increase to workers and extra business for contractors, the Recovery Administration was supposedly alleviating this temporary cash crunch so as to ease the economy back onto the road to recovery.

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Competitive Enterprise Institute: EPA Email Release “Gravely Compounded Unlawful Activity We Have Exposed”

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photo credit: us dept. of labor

Washington, D.C., January 14, 2013 – At about 4:55 p.m. on Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency finally complied with a court order to deliver the first of four sets of emails in response to a lawsuit filed by Christopher Horner, a senior fellow in the Center for Energy and the Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Here is Horner’s statement on the emails:

Where in the World is Richard Windsor?

EPA’s Court-Ordered Email Production Proves Agency Has “Gone Bunker”

Just before 5 pm on this deadline date for producing records, I received a hand-delivered CD and cover letter from the EPA in response to CEI v. EPA, now best known as the “Richard Windsor” suit. The delivery came under order of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In short, this response is deeply troubling and seems to have gravely compounded the unlawful activity we have exposed involving a false identity assumed for federal recordkeeping purposes.

Problems begin with the cover letter, which states not the promised (to the court) first delivery of “approximately 3,000” but “more than 2,100 emails received or sent” by Jackson, on what EPA insists is her one non-public account.

“Waiter, the food was terrible, and the portions too small!”

First, 2,100 is two-thirds of the way to the agency’s commitment (possibly the agency also will determine two-thirds of 12,000 is sufficient, although we have our doubts). Perhaps seeking to take the air out of a growing scandal, EPA’s defective compilation boasts an impressively anemic content-to-volume ratio. It starts with Washington Post daily news briefs, then follows with Google alerts for “Lisa Jackson EPA” (none for “Richard Windsor”). Then EPA HQ national news clips. And so on. Rope a dope. Clever. Maybe too much so.

It seems EPA simply decided it had to produce a lot of something. Desperate to produce nothing at the same time, it came up with this. But in the details, the desperation shows through.

A big red flag in the cover letter is the claim that, “As you are aware” — with no support for how we know this, which we do not — “the Administrator uses one secondary official account to conduct EPA business,” then states these emails come from that one account.

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Rep. Issa Threatens Congressional Subpoena Over EPA Pebble Mine Review

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photo credit: donkeyhotey

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has threatened subpoenaing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for documents regarding a potential Alaska mine.

Issa, along with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), said he wants to know more about the intentions behind a water impact test EPA is conducting near a discussed mine site in Bristol Bay, Alaska.

The lawmakers said in a Thursday letter that EPA’s actions have “bordered on the absurd” by since the committee’s initial May 10 inquiry about the matter.

“It strains credibility that EPA has been unable to provide a full response to the Committee more than seven months after the initial request,” Issa and Jordan wrote to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

“If EPA fails to provide the documents as requested, the Committee will consider use of the compulsory process.”

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Video: Federal Judge Rules EPA Overstepped Authority Trying to Regulate Water as Pollutant

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RICHMOND, Va. – Virginia officials scored a key victory Thursday in their battle with the Environmental Protection Agency over what EPA critics describe as a land takeover.

U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady in Alexandria ruled late Thursday that the EPA exceeded its authority by attempting to regulate stormwater runoff into a Fairfax County creek as a pollutant. O’Grady sided with the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, which challenged EPA’s stormwater restrictions.

“Stormwater runoff is not a pollutant, so EPA is not authorized to regulate it,” O’Grady said.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli says the ruling could ultimately save Virginia taxpayers more than $300 million.

An EPA spokesman could not be reached for comment after business hours.

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EPA Chief Jackson Resigns Amid Transparency Investigations

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A Washington attorney says that Environmental Protection Agency Chief Administrator Lisa Jackson’s resignation and investigations into the EPA’s use of secret email accounts are not coincidental.

“Life’s full of coincidences, but this is too many,” Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Chris Horner told FoxNews.com. “She had no choice.”

The Justice Department also plans to release emails Jan. 14 in which EPA Chief Jackson’s alias account discusses coal regulation. According to Horner, this clearly is a factor behind Jackson’s decision to leave the agency.

“Two full committees and one investigative subcommittee of the House of Representatives have asked several federal agencies, including EPA and the White House,” Horner said in a press release, adding that the Department of Justice acknowledged “12,000 emails from Lisa Jackson’s ‘secondary’ email account that discuss the Obama administration’s war on coal, in response to litigation we have filed over this practice.”

Jackson announced she would be leaving after the president gives the State of the Union address, but made no mention of the investigations .

Read more from this story HERE.

Energy Industry Concerned Obama Could Pursue End-Run on Climate Change Rules

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photo credit: donkeyhotey

The United States has joined nearly 200 countries at a United Nations climate summit in Doha, Qatar, this week with the primary goal of coming together on a treaty aimed at preventing what activists are calling dangerous climate change.

Some point to superstorm Sandy as a primary example of the need to curb emissions that they believe are fundamentally disrupting the way Earth’s ecosystem works. They would like to have a treaty signed by 2015.

But many in the energy industry are concerned the Obama administration, fresh off a re-election win, will go too far with a radical environmental strategy that will have a negative impact on U.S. businesses and consumers – not just through the U.N., but executive edict.

“They brought hundreds of millions of dollars into his re-election campaign,” said Michael Whatley, vice president of the Consumer Energy Alliance. He believes the president delayed consideration of the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL Pipeline because he couldn’t afford to lose allies in the environmental sector, and may now feel pressure to deliver to those groups. Indeed, on the night of his re-election, Obama vowed the U.S. would be a leader in combating a “warming planet.”

For years, both Democrats and Republicans have blocked cap-and-trade legislation on Capitol Hill which would set emissions limits and fees for those who exceed them. Now, a growing number of lawmakers are sounding an alarm about what they believe will be the Executive Branch’s “end run” around Congress.

Read more from this story HERE.