EPA Tag Archives — Page 3 of 5 — Illinois Personal Injury Lawyer Blog

Do You Live Near One of the Most Contaminated Sites in the Country?

May 26, 2017 | Shawn Collins

The most dangerously contaminated sites in the US are “Superfund” sites. There are, currently, 1,317 of them. New Jersey has the most-114-while California and Pennsylvania follow right behind. The map in this article identifies all of the Superfund sites and allows you to search for where such sites may be in your state. http://time.com/4695109/superfund-sites-toxic-waste-locations/

A plant or factory or waste dump, etc., is designated a “Superfund” site according to a federal formula that is specifically concerned with the ways in which toxic chemicals at the site might come into contact with, and hurt, human beings. So, for example, if an industrial plant years ago dumped chemicals which have migrated into area groundwater that local residents use for drinking and bathing, and/or if that contaminated groundwater produces a toxic vapor that might intrude into the breathing spaces of their homes, these threats weigh heavily in favor of determining that the plant should be a Superfund site.

The original idea of Superfund site designation in the 1980s was that the federal government would dedicate significant resources to cleaning up these sites, and protecting nearby residents from their threats. However, as time went by, our commitment to this important protection has flagged badly; today, many of these sites receive little or no government attention, even though nearby residents may remain in serious danger. Politically, both Democrats and Republicans have been complicit in this abandonment, largely because Superfund sites are typically found in poor and minority neighborhoods, and many politicians of both parties believe that there is little price to pay for ignoring their needs.

The Lie at the Center of Massive EPA Budget Cuts: Federal Cuts Justified Because States Will Supposedly “Do the Job”……but States’ Budgets Are Cut, Too

May 25, 2017 | Shawn Collins

Hot off the presses is the Trump/Pruitt proposed 31% cut to the EPA’s budget, including slashing more than $300 million from the fund used to clean up the most toxic and dangerous sites in America, i.e., “Superfund” sites. If this cut passes Congress, thousands will get sick and others still will die because the contamination that the EPA would have cleaned up or mitigated will now be left in the environment to wreak havoc on our citizens, mostly children.

For the last 3 months, EPA Chief Pruitt has promised that such massive cuts made sense because the states were in a better position than the federal government to provide the necessary environmental protection.

Well, the new budget proposal reveals Pruitt’s promise to be a lie, as it proposes to slash the environmental grants to states by 45%, from $1.1 billion to $600 million. In other words, Pruitt wants to take away half of the states’ resources for fighting pollution, at the same time that he promises that they will fight more pollution.

Lawsuit: Pruitt’s EPA Creates New “Exception” to Anti-Pollution Rule; “Vastly” More Air Pollution Will Result

May 24, 2017 | Shawn Collins

Get ready for a lot more of this.

Last September, the Obama EPA issued a new rule limiting the levels of air pollution that would be allowed in the states. The idea was to save lives and health, because industrial air pollution is well-documented to threaten both. Wisely, the rule created an exception for events outside the state’s control–such as wildfires or volcanic eruptions–that could dramatically increase air pollution on a short-term basis, and which the state had little or no ability to control.

But leave it to history’s most polluter-friendly EPA, run by the petroleum industry’s best spokesperson, Scott Pruitt, to take a good idea and exploit it as an excuse to create more life-endangering pollution. According to a lawsuit filed by two giants in the environmental protection field– the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and The Sierra Club–Pruitt has created another exception to the rule. This exception goes far beyond creating short-term allowances for natural, unforeseeable, uncontrollable events. As alleged, this new exception now allows more “emissions from coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, chemical plants, hazardous waste incinerators and a wide variety of industrial activity”, so long as the emissions are the result of “reasonable controlled human activity”.

Pruitt is a Coward: He’ll Only Talk to Friendly Media

May 19, 2017 | Shawn Collins

After having been rightly scorched for his stupidly false recent public statement that humankind’s behavior may not be a major contributor to global warming, EPA chief and oil industry hack Scott Pruitt has taken to discussing his views almost exclusively with media he trusts to lob him only friendly, softball questions. Mostly, that means Fox News.

This is no knock on Fox News or the people who watch it. Fox News has the First Amendment right to broadcast as it sees fit, and its viewers similarly have the First Amendment right to watch whatever they wish.

But it is most definitely a knock on Pruitt. As the head of a federal agency established to protect public health (EPA), Pruitt has intentionally devoted his tenure to gutting the agency altogether, abolishing its sacred mission in favor of letting corporate polluters savage the environment and human health. For example, besides embracing the idiot “science” of climate change “hoaxers”, Pruitt has also recommended a huge (30+%) whacking of the EPA’s budget–greater than for any other federal agency; cut programs intended to clean up dangerously contaminated sites and waterways; reversed without explanation EPA’s finding that a herbicide was dangerous to young children and should be taken off the market; stripped the EPA’s website of important scientific notifications to American citizens; and fired many of the scientists on the agency’s Advisory Board–just to punctuate the message that the Trump/Pruitt EPA is hostile to legitimate science.

From Gutting the EPA to His War on Science to Trying to Kill Health Care for Millions to Handing Our Classified Secrets to the Russians: Trump is Not Fit to Be President

May 16, 2017 | Shawn Collins

This blog is dedicated primarily to environmental issues, and so over the last four months, I have blogged with alarm and sadness and sometimes even anger as our new President has done everything within his power to dismantle the EPA–which is the primary federal agency for the protection of public health in this country. Families that I have represented, as well as countless hundreds of thousands of others, are alive and in good health today because the EPA takes seriously its job to warn us as to how dangerous certain industrial chemicals really are; notifies neighborhoods when those chemicals have invaded their air or drinking water, and forces polluters to clean them up.

Trump has also claimed global warming to be a “hoax”, abandoning our role as natural leaders on this important issue, and suddenly consigning the US to the status of a third world back-bencher on the issue perhaps most threatening to the future of mankind. He has appointed to head the EPA a dedicated stooge for the world’s most aggressive polluters (Scott Pruitt), who has joined Trump in discrediting and even firing scientists working for the federal government who have devoted their professional lives to making us all safer.

There has been an almost casual cruelty to Trump’s having done all of this, and so quickly, without even a glancing consideration afforded the millions of Americans–children, first among them–whose health and futures are now endangered because of these blindingly ill-advised actions.

EPA Fires Scientists; Will Replace Them With Lobbyists for Polluters

May 9, 2017 | Shawn Collins

The other shoe is dropping. We learned last week that EPA chief Scott Pruitt was firing his agency’s scientists—the ones who review scientific evidence and determine whether, for example, humans can tolerate less contamination in their drinking water than previously thought, or certain pesticides do damage to children’s developing brains, and therefore should be off the market. We just learned this week that he will likely replace these scientists not with other scientists who are looking out for the people whom the agency is charged with protecting, but instead with so-called “representatives” of the industries the agency is supposed to be watching and regulating and punishing, where necessary, for polluting.

In other words, Pruitt will be trading scientists for corporate lobbyists. He will be transforming the EPA from the protector of the health of the American people to the protector of the profit of the American polluter. It’s a grotesque disfigurement of one of the most valuable and necessary champions of clean air and water that we have had in our society. It’s startling: the EPA will lose key scientists who believe their job is to protect our health.

So it’s not just that Pruitt disagrees with the scientists who know what it takes to keep people safe; it’s that he has decided that their voices aren’t important enough to listen to. It is no exaggeration to say that this decision will cost people their lives.

Trump/Pruitt Fire Top EPA Scientists

May 7, 2017 | Shawn Collins

The oil industry hack (Scott Pruitt) who was appointed by President Trump to head the EPA has just quietly fired half the members of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board. This is the group of highly-regarded and dedicated scientists who determine, for example, the dangers to human health threatened by the chemicals that the oil industry and others force into our environment. It is not clear at this moment whether Pruitt plans to not replace the members of the Science Advisory Board at all-which would be logical, since Trump and Pruitt are openly hostile to science-or to replace the scientists with frauds who, for example, deny that pesticides harm children and that petroleum industrial pollution has anything to do with global warming. It’s (yet another) sad day for human health and the environment in America.

Firing scientists who make decisions based on scientific evidence smacks of Galileo being convicted of suspected heresy for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun. The scary thing is that, while Galileo was condemned for telling scientific truths in 1633, Pruitt did the same thing this past weekend. Almost 400 years later. Maybe Pruitt has found some nut in a lab coat who will say that Galileo was wrong, after all, and deserved to be convicted.

Don’t laugh.

Environmental Group Sues EPA for Refusing to Disclose Pruitt’s Communications with Polluters

May 4, 2017 | Shawn Collins

An environmental group known as the Center for Biological Diversity just sued the EPA under the Freedom of Information Act. The Center requested that the EPA make public EPA chief Pruitt’s email communications with polluters like oil companies and pesticide manufacturers. The Center wants to know if, while he has been the EPA chief, Pruitt is behaving like he always has when he holds public office, i.e., doing the bidding of polluters, unremorseful about the damage he is doing to the citizens whose health he is charged to protect.

Naturally, the EPA-now under Pruitt’s control-refused to turn over a single piece of paper. But Pruitt’s communications with these polluters are not secret; under the law, the public has the right to see them. Let’s hope the Center is successful in its suit and gets these documents that Pruitt wants to keep secret. And let’s hope it’s the next step in Pruitt leaving the EPA in disgrace, as he deserves.

https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/stories/1060053991/feed

Pruitt’s Reason for EPA Budget Cuts is a Lie

April 7, 2017 | Shawn Collins

Scott Pruitt has repeatedly stated that he’s cutting the EPA’s budget for Clean Air programs because those programs are not the EPA’s job and that he expects the states to do more to ensure clean air.

This is a lie. Here’s what Scott Pruitt knows:

(1) The states don’t have the money for more environmental protection. They don’t even have the money for what they’re supposed to be doing right now. The State of Illinois where I live, for example, cannot even afford to pay to keep all of its schools and government offices open, or for the medical care, it is contractually obligated to provide its employees. Many other states are in similarly pathetic financial shape. In short, anyone who proposes extensive new state programs for anything-protecting the environment, or otherwise-should have their sanity questioned.

EPA Budget Cuts Take the Environmental Cop “Off the Beat”

March 21, 2017 | Shawn Collins

What do you suppose happens when a town cuts its police force and no longer tries to catch people speeding on the most dangerous roads in the town? More speeding, more danger, right?

In fact, if the town didn’t want to catch speeders any more on those roads, what is the surest way to accomplish that result? Cut the police force, right?

Now, what if the speeders themselves were in charge of the town’s decisions about how many police to have, and whether to dedicate them to catching speeders?