Gutting of EPA Funding Will Have Catastrophic Consequences For Most Americans

Most citizens have already heard or read that Trump said he’ll call for $54 billion in reductions to offset new spending for the Pentagon. Never mind the defense budget has doubled its share of GDP since September, 2001, moat of it on wasteful toys (like the F-35, and "Gerald Ford" aircraft carrier - a $13b monstrosity the Chinese could take out with just one Dongfeng -11 missile) so of little use in an asymmetric warfare scenario.

Now we know how disastrous the carnage will be as the first reports have emerged of the coming cuts to the EPA, as well as other positive national programs like Americorps. (Whose 80,000 education volunteers serve in hundreds of poor urban and rural communities) News reports from The Denver Post two days ago cite deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency that could slash the agency’s career staff to 12,000 from 15,000, largely through buyout offers and layoffs. The State Department also could be in line for a big reduction, which some estimates peg at 37 percent..  This magnitude of cutbacks is not merely disastrous, they're catastrophic. For example, the climate change protection allocation for the EPA has now been sliced by 70 percent. Incredibly, the Heartland Institute - behind many denier websites - asserted even that wasn't enough!

All this because mentally challenged Trump insists we need $54b  to "start winning wars", evidently forgetting that we brought the largest war machine ever assembled to confront peasant farmers (Viet Cong) in Vietnam and still lost!  We did so at a cost of over $260 b and 58,000 lives lost over what was really a civil war. We tried to flex our technological advantage in aircraft carriers, tanks, heavy weapons and still lost to peasants. We barged in, refusing to learn the lessons of Dien Bien Phu, where the French also were brought down and shown that military might is little use against a highly determined foe. Of course Trump, a five time draft dodger, likely never even read or processed any of that. He was too busy figuring out ways to screw people out of their money.

Meanwhile, as the Post has observed, the expectation of cuts is nerve-racking to civil servants already shaken by the arrival of several (swamp creature) Cabinet secretaries hostile to their missions, a hiring freeze and pledges by Republicans to upend job protections.  These faithful, hard working civil servants - including EPA scientists - deserve all credit for doing all they can before possibly being shown the door.

One human resources manager in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pacific Northwest region who spoke on the condition of anonymity (because he was not authorized to speak publicly) said:

"The mission is important, but now it’s just maintaining our jobs. We’re in a holding pattern, and all we get is dribs and drabs and no specifics.  The uncertainty is starting to get mentally draining for people.”

Most federal employees affected are waiting to see whether the news really is as bad as they fear and if so, whether Congress will come to the rescue. Don't hold your breath! For now, they're reading the tea leaves on cable television as they pore over the recommendations of the conservative Heritage Foundation. This is the extremist think tank which the Bannon-led Trumpites are leaning on for guidance. Heritage’s list contains several agencies targeted not just for downsizing but elimination, including one that provides financial assistance to rural businesses, the International Trade Administration, and the Legal Services Corporation.

EPA scientists' biggest concern now is the impact of Trump's executive order targeting the EPA’s “Waters of the United States” rule, finalized in 2015, that revised  the Clean Water Act to extend federal protection to small and seasonal waterways. These are critical for water supplies in water-scarce regions of the West..  In particular, implementation of Trump's E.O. will not only drain water resources for fracking, but also pollute our remaining water stores with fracked chemicals  - most of them carcinogens, including benzene, xylene, toluene etc.

Trump, demented asshole that he is said the rule has “run amok” and called it “a disaster.” His order is titled “Restoring the Rule of Law, Federalism and Economic Growth”  which could be translated to read: "Reversing water quality for all citizens so they get more diseases and can't afford to pay for treatment 'cause we're taking away their ACA".

His E.O. directs EPA administrator Scott Pruitt to review the rule for consistency with goals of economic growth and regulatory certainty and to rescind or revise the rule. EPA officials have said the rule will have the greatest impact in states such as Colorado where protection for small and seasonal water previously was uncertain. In Colorado, 68 percent of streams are seasonal.

Trump's E.O. that enables dumping of coal waster into rivers, will also have terrible health consequences. One need only be reminded of the 2014 Elk River (West Virginia)  chemical spill -  of  the coal cleaner  methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM).)  which caused enormous problems and a massive cleanup effort.

This time there will be no cleanup efforts because Trump doesn't give a crap. So all the millions who stand to be affected ought to brace for the many cancers now ready to be unleashed upon them, including of the pancreas, liver, kidneys, stomach, testes, breast and prostate. According to one of the West Virginia families affected in 2014, they were  informed their water was "so contaminated it was only fit for flushing toilets." 

Alas, when all those cancers, skin diseases, gastro intestinal reactions and others break out, people will no longer have the ACA to help carry the costs of their infirmities. As people will learn to their heartbreak when the GOP presents its "repeal and replace" for the ACA based on tax credits and health savings accounts - soon to be announced.

The Trump bunch, like the Bushies before them, do not grasp the extent to which the quality of the environment - including our water, air and soil, impacts our health.

Grab some consolation as you behold our newly Trump-revamped military. And when you do get that cryptosporidium or cancer of the pancreas, remember the real price you yours have paid for that "advance".

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/george-lakoff/71462/the-public-s-viewpoint-regulations-are-protections

Flint Water Debacle - Yet Another Result Of Our Crumbling Infrastructure

The water calamity unfolding in Flint, MI has many causes - including the neglect and crass cost-saving efforts of the Repuke Snyder administration (decision to use water from the Flint River instead of tapping Detroit's). But the primary oversight was in not attending to the city's deplorable water pipes - already corroded even before the Flint River change caused lead to leach from the pipes into the water. Effectively poisoning thousands of kids in the city, with devastating consequences to I.Q. as well as probably leading to higher crime rates.  See e.g.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

This is part and parcel of the ongoing national debacle of allowing a rotting infrastructure to proliferate. We act like essential idiots, paying more attention to the Business News crawl of the DOW's daily gyrations, than to our REAL wealth - tied up in water mains, pipes. highways, bridges and sewer systems. Yet the cost of that unattended and lackadaisically maintained infrastructure is growing by the day. The American Society of Civil Engineers already estimates a cost of over $2 trillion to attain a stage of basic repair.

The water pipe issues, in fact, are not new. Many may recall barely two years ago the incident near Charleston, WVA,  At that time a solvent known as MCHM ( methylcyclohexane methanol ) leaked from a chemical storage plant and invaded the entire water supply system from the treatment plant to the pipes in people's homes. Even after the water itself had been restored to its original drinkable-washable form, it remained subject to re-contamination as it passed through the now MCHM -laden pipes.  Hence, the complaints of people (as reported on the news shows then) that they still smelled the licorice odor of the chemical. Of course they did, because the water collected it as it's transferred into and out of the pipes. To be clear-  as in Flint -  all the pipes needed to be replaced, though the authorities were reluctant to admit it.

Too much expense. But they're perfectly ok with thousands being poisoned and health expenses.

As long ago as 2011, The Economist   ('Life in the Slow Lane', Apil 30, p. 29) delivered a blistering assessment of the nation's infrastructure that was enough to make any red-blooded American sit up and take note. Then puke.

In examining the state of U.S. infrastructure, especially in comparison to other industrialized western nations, we brought up the rear in just about every category. It was enough of an Rx to cure once and for all the misplaced and delusional belief in American exceptionalism.

It is really eerie, creepy and more than a little sickening, to behold how so many in this country have been eerily fixated on the rise and fall of the stupid DOW while their national infrastructure has essentially regressed to the status of a third world nation's. It is more than a little frightening also, that people can become so transfixed by an artificial set of numbers based on phantom money  (e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-few-will-make-money-with-stocks.html ) while the very concrete developments that support it lay crumbling across the land: from burst sewer mains in Atlanta, to burst water mains in Colorado Springs and Denver (most over 100 years old), to collapsing bridges such as the one shown in Minneapolis from some years back. All symptoms of a country with misplaced priorities. A nation that would rather piss trillions away on military occupations  and tax cuts (like the $660b one in December) than spend for true domestic security.

The Economist piece noted that while the American highway system (mainly constructed in the 1950s when infrastructure spending was a healthy 4.8% of GDP) was a shining beacon, it is now a near travesty. The degenerating quality of the roads sees Americans spending more time commuting than nearly all Europeans with the exception of the Hungarians and Romanians, still trying to dig out from the communist-depleted pasts. The longer commute time means more time wasted as well as more potential for deadly accidents.

Rail is not much better. What most of us who have traveled overseas behold here is not a patch on the rail systems of the Germans, Austrians  or Swiss. In fact, the rail systems here are downright retro by comparison. While the fastest U.S. rail transit is the northeastern corridor's Acela (between D.C. and Boston) which moves at 70 mph, the French TGV from Paris to Lyon travels at an average speed of twice that, or 140 mph. Japanese trains go even faster, up to 220 mph. Not only are American trains slow, the Economist observed, they are usually late, with a 77% punctuality rating compared to 99.9% for the Swiss and 98% for the Germans. But then the Swiss and Germans don't squander their capital and resources on useless "wars".

The Economist noted that "between 1956 and 1992 America constructed the interstate highway system, among the largest public works projects in history which criss-crossed the contry with nearly 50,000 miles of motorways." So what happened? Well, according to the report, "modern America is stingier". The total public spending on works is now barely 2.4% of GDP compared to the average 5% of GDP in European nations. I would also add that this diminished contribution parallels the nation's ever diminishing vision, which has almost correlated with its increasing finacialization, e.g. enhancing growth in "financial services" - stock managers, bond traders, investment bankers...at the expense of supporting engineering works.

And don't even get me started on antiquated water and sewer systems now affecting over 22,000 mid to large size communities with pipes over 75 years and corroding just like Flint's.  Rather than replace the damned pipes with new ones, the cheapskates have taken to using a chemical proclaimed to inhibit corrosive effects and prevent lead from leaching out. But this is a temporary fix at best and eventually those pipes will have to be replace or we will all be facing a water crisis just like Flint's.

What is the solution? WHERE do we get that $2 trillion to begin maintaining our infrastructure - which admittedly is not as sexy as stocks? The Economist for its part (p. 31) proposed introducing a "fuel tax rate increase"(currently at 18.4 c a gallon) but they also noted that "these are even more unpopular than deficits". Well, tough luck! Do Americans want to be able to keep driving without breaking an axle on a pothole or not? DO they want to retain other benefits, like drinkable water, or not? It's time to make up their minds! And it's time for politicians to stop game-playing and coddling people with the myth they can have endless tax cuts and also have a prosperous nation.

Flint is the 'canary in the coal mine' warning us of the dystopic future that we all face if we don't wake the fuck up for once and get our national priorities in order!

The Neoliberal Business Model - To Blame for West Virginia's Water Poisoning

“I don’t believe anyone. I don’t believe anything they talk about on the news. I don’t believe our governors, our high officials, I don’t believe any of them are telling us the truth. I believe they are just telling us what they want to tell us. I just feel like we are lab rats. I feel like they are just hanging around to see, and then maybe five years from now they will be able to tell us what happened, because I just don’t think they know, nor do I think they care.”  - Twylla Bays, quoted in The Guardian (Sept. 14) after learning how her daughter's illness was traced to Freedom Industries' delay in notifying citizens about the MCHM coal cleaner spill into the Elk River.


The above quote of  West Virginia mom Twylla Bays,  from The Guardian (UK),  embodies the basis of Neoliberalism and its business model in respect to citizens'  health and welfare. That is, the Elk River chemical spill (of  the coal cleaner  methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM).)  discloses yet another example of the government and industry -business displaying staggering indifference to the lives and welfare of state citizens. The purpose, as for all Neoliberalism, is to preserve profits while rendering citizens expendable and their lives subordinate to amassing those profits. Hence, Mrs. Bays description of being merely "lab rats." The reason, as we know, is that Neoliberal market values deny any security for the citizen in order to promote higher profits and market share. The Neoliberal government factors in as an accomplice because it passes legislation that enables perpetrators - such as Freedom Industries - to escape.  Thus, Freedom Industries could declare bankruptcy, dissolve its charter and become instantly unaccountable.

 Twylla Bays' case is particularly appalling and galling. As reported in The Guardian piece, her 29-year old daughter Cassy suffers from muscular dystrophy and had to have water pumped by syringe into her gastric feeding tube. Because the West Virginia authorities (and Freedom Industries)  dillied and dallied about notifying the public of the toxic spill, Twyla injected tap water into Cassy's feeding tube.  As The Guardian notes (ibid.):

"In the space of 30 minutes, Cassy who  has muscular dystrophy and is on a ventilator, had seven bouts of diarrhea."

The Guardian goes on:

At about that time, 15 miles away in Charleston, West Virginia, executives of West Virginia American Water and state officials were deciding when and how to tell 300,000 people their water was not safe to drink.

The problem is that by 5 p.m. when authorities finally got off their asses, Twylla had given Cassy two more 150 cubic centimeter injections of the fouled water, increasing her misery. She hadn't yet been informed by the Neoliberal bastards that this water she was injecting into her daughter's feeding tube was "so contaminated it was only fit for flushing toilets."  (Twylla believed that her daughter had a virus, and only realized after the notification finally came out, that she'd effectively been poisoning her daughter with the tap water.)

Such is the Neoliberal Business model and how it cares for people. The idea that the company and authorities didn't know what to do is also nonsense. The information on  MCHM was already well known, see e.g.
http://www.chemicalbook.com/RiskAndSafety.htm#Risk

Neoliberal Businesses simply  don't care, however, about the unsavory facts that might negatively impinge on their profit over people model. Unlike righteous business (and gov't), which would act on the precautionary principle, i.e. instantly notifying every citizen the moment the spill occurred, based on the likelihood that even 1 part per billion in water might be deleterious to health.

Meanwhile, since the spill and according to The  Guardian (ibid.):

Now, more than a month later, the tell-tale liquorice scent of MCHM still hangs over the storage tank farm on the Elk River that was the source of the contamination. The hot water carries a faint chemical smell in small communities to the north-west and north-east of Charleston. There are still traces in some homes of the white residue that settled on dishes in the early days, after officials told the public it was safe to use the water

Which means citizens are having to spend their meager,  precious income to purchase bottled water, money they can't afford. But the alternative is too horrendous to contemplate - and as Twylla observes in her quote - they can't trust the government (state or federal) to tell them the truth. The reason is that both serve the Neoliberal model and that model doesn't give two craps about anyone who isn't a 'player' or huge money contributor.

Want to clean up the country's water, including the pollution from a recent coal ash spill into a river in North Carolina?  Then clean out the Neoliberals. Better yet, as one commenter on The Guardian forum put it:

"Grab all of them, then tar and feather them before running them out!"

West Virginia Water Catastrophe Could Happen Anywhere

As 300,000 water-deprived citizens of the Charleston area of West Virginia continue to grapple with the six day old contamination of their water supply, it behooves Americans to understand this could happen to any of us - as the fracking insanity expands to many communities. Yes, those scenes of West Virginians in long lines to get a couple gallons of fresh water could in the future arrive at any place in which fracking wells and waste pits exist.

In the W Va case businesses in downtown Charleston are all shuttered as one beholds  'DO NOT USE WATER” signs taped over sinks at the airport.    What went wrong?  A chemical used in coal processing leaked from a storage tank upstream of the affected communities. The chemical, dubbed  “crude MCHM" and the technical name is 4- methylcyclohexane methanol.  In the water supply, the chemical betrays a licorice odor, and if the water is ingested it can wreak havoc on organs, from immediate nausea and vomiting to cancer of the pancreas, colon, liver and kidneys in the long term - as well as likely skin afflictions if bathed in.

Indeed scores of people in the affected area have reported to hospitals, complaining of rashes, upset stomachs and other ailments.  The problem is that despite the authorities telling citizens the water has been cleared (in progressive stages) the MCHM solvent has invaded the entire system from the treatment plant to the pipes in people's homes. Thus, even if the water itself may have been restored to its original drinkable-washable form, it is still subject to re-contamination as it passes through the now MCHM -laden pipes.  Thus, the complaints of people (as reported on the news shows last night) that they still smell the chemical. Of course they do, because the water is collecting it as it's transferred into and out of the pipes. To be truly clear, all the pipes will have to be replaced, though the authorities are unlikely to admit it. Meanwhile, one mother - a food stamps recipient with an infant -  said last night she will have to use a significant portion of food stamps on fresh   bottled water. (At the Dollar General in Charleston, a 20 oz Dasani bottle sells for $1.60, and a flat of 24 bottles can be had for $39. 

Seeing, reading of this brings to mind Jeremiah Gee, featured in Josh Fox's 'Gasland II'.  Viewers may recall the interior scenes of Gee's barn and the loads of bottled water which he needed to ship in monthly by the truckload, because ingesting the fracked water would be a death sentence. At a cost of over $1,000 a month he had no other choice, and as he noted, he even had to provide it to his chickens and pet dogs. The alternative was obviously too horrific to contemplate, the creatures would've died in agony from drinking the methane-laden crap.  This after the frack company, Shell Appalachia, despoiled the area reservoirs with its frack operations. When Gee inquired  about his tap water and why it was no longer clean, he was told that  "fresh" now meant "fresh to THIS site" - where the Co. was now fracking.  It didn't mean pure or free of contaminants, just free of contaminants from previous frack sites.   

In West Virginia, meanwhile, we learn two state employees tracked the MCHM leak to Freedom Industries which owns a row of vintage storage tanks along the banks of the Elk River. The chemical had leaked from a hole in the bottom of one tank. It had been pooling in a containment area and then seeped out through a porous, cinderblock retaining wall., down the bank and into the river. 

The water system itself was primed for a catastrophe. The intake for the West Virginia American Water Company's is just downriver by about a mile - and on the same side of the river -  as the leaking tanks with the MCHM.   Ironically, Freedom Industries had set aside $1 million in escrow to upgrade the containment area around the tanks, but the work had not yet begun.

Not so ironically, a state regulatory report in 2002 noted no fewer than 53 major sites of potential water contamination located upstream of the currently effected Elk River communities. The total number of potential contaminating sites was estimated "in the thousands".  West Virginia regulations, undoubtedly written by the corporatists and their political bedfellow, omitted any oversight on storage or containment facilities. Now, the citizens must pay.

But none of the rest of us ought to feel smug or secure, because if we have fracking nearby then we also can fell victim to a water contamination catastrophe. Any fracking pipe near or around a water supply can undergo failure. In one segment of Gasland II, Tony Ingraffea, a Cornell Professor of geological engineering sketched the interior cement annulus of 1 -inch frack pipe,  the sole barrier between the fracking contaminants and the proximate water supply. As he said, "What you don't want is for that cement to fail".

"Failure" included: corrosion, crumbling, or disappearing entirely as a barrier over time. If that happened, then "what's down there" (i.e. the contaminants) would get into the annulus

Prof. Ingraffea then rubbed out the chalk barrier representing the cement in the annulus, using his fingers and indicates an arrow moving into it from outside. To quote Prof. Ingraffea:

"So now shallow gas goes into the open annulus, pressurizes the annulus, and the gas migrates into an underground source of drinking water."

Once this occurred, other frack contaminants could also migrate into the water, such benzene, toluene and dozens of cancer causing chemicals.


Gasland II also showed how the frack well failure rates are progressive. As more years go by a greater and greater percentage of wells fail meaning leakage of pollutants.  Graphics presented showed a failure fraction of 40 percent after only 12 years, and a failure fraction of 50 percent after 30 years.  That means if 1.5 million new wells are added in the US of A, as projected, 750,000 will leak after thirty years. If 180,000 are added to PA, that means 90,000 will leak after 30 years. (Recall from Gasland II the citizens of Dimock were deprived of fresh water and had to get bottled shipped in, especially after being denied a water pipeline connection to the public supply in Montrose, PA after Repuke Guv John Corbett came to power (with the help of $1.6m in donations from frackers).

Rest easy as those in West Virginia are left without clean water? No way because we are all at risk. How else explain the writing and passing of a law that actually exempts the frackers from the Safe Drinking Water Act?  Read more at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/06/gasland-part-ii-sequel_n_3554756.html

and: https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/06/04

Also, see this Youtube presentation on the gas industry's misinformation campaign and why you, as a citizen, need to see this documentary however you can. What befalls and affects your fellow citizens also affects you. The corporate gangster state laying waste to your fellow citizens' lives will also one day come to destroy yours, if you are passive, blasé  and non-engaged.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNhpxIkhgBc

As Josh Fox observes, quoting the mayor of Dish, TX, "Now you know. Once you know, you can't  not know".

See also:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/20/erin-brockovich-chemical-spill_n_4629472.html

and:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-rivers-pitt/54061/diary-of-a-dying-country