ArchiveArchive

Navajo Nation sues U.S. government for $160 million over toxic waste damage to their community

December 9, 2016 by Vicki Batts Leave a Comment

The Navajo Nation recently filed suit against the United States government – to the tune of nearly $160 million – for damages and ongoing injuries resulting from a mine spill and the toxic waste that was released into the environment near the tribe’s territory.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken responsibility for the devastating spill, and the agency is also the lawsuit’s primary target. The lawsuit is seeking a cool $159 million in damages, as well as an additional $3.2 million to cover expenses that have already been submitted to the EPA but have not yet been reimbursed.

The catastrophic spill took place in August 2015. An EPA clean-up crew was tasked with pumping out and decontaminating sludge from the mine, but things took a turn for the worse when the team destabilized a dam of loose rocks. Consequently, this led to 3 million gallons of mine waste water and tailings – containing heavy metals like cadmium and lead, and other toxic elements like arsenic and beryllium – into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River.

Naturally, the EPA has maintained that this incident was just an accident. However, some have proposed that this was no accident. It was predicted that perhaps the agency would intentionally sabotage the mine as a means to secure Superfund money. And sure enough, just over a year after the accident, the Gold King Mine was declared a Superfund site. On September 7, 2016, the EPA declared that the area would be on its list of contaminated areas due for federally funded clean-up.

Why weren’t they more careful the first time around? Who knows. NBC News even reported that the federal agency was well aware of the risks involved with the Gold King Mine. Their own internal documents have shown that they knew there was a serious potential for a disastrous “blowout” at an abandoned mine that could release “large volumes” of wastewater laced with heavy metals.

NBC News quotes the report as stating, “In addition, other collapses within the workings may have occurred creating additional water impounding conditions. Conditions may exist that could result in a blowout of the blockages and cause a release of large volumes of contaminated mine waters and sediment from inside the mine, which contain concentrated heavy metals.” A subsequent report from May of 2015 referenced similar concerns.

The catastrophe at the mine contaminated rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. Just days after the spill, NBC News reported that the EPA was claiming that the contaminant levels in the water had already returned to pre-spill levels, but experts warned that the toxic heavy metals had likely just sunk down into the sediment – just waiting to be stirred back up some day. You would think that the expert folks who work at the EPA would have reached the same conclusion, but then again, it is a federal agency.

The Navajo Nation’s lawsuit claims that the Gold King Mine spill has negatively impacted communities along the San Juan River in the tribe’s territory. In a press release, the Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch stated that the spill converted the river from a “life-giver and protector,” into a “threat” to the Navajo people, crops and animals.

The request for additional damages will cover long-term ecological and groundwater monitoring, assessments for livestock and agriculture, an on-site laboratory, additional water treatments, alternative water supply reservoirs, cultural preservation and the development of a plan to assess the damages to natural resources.

A letter signed by both the attorney general and attorney John C. Hueston, makes note of all the additional expenditures the Navajo Nation will have to make in order to keep their people safe – and it also accuses the EPA of failing to notify the tribe of the spill for “nearly two days.” The letter also accuses the agency of ignoring the potential dangers, stating that the agency had “insufficient emergency protocols in place,” and was “entirely unprepared to deal with the colossal damage it had unleashed.”

One can only imagine the hurt and anger the people of the Navajo Nation must feel. After all, the EPA has admitted that they knew there were serious risks involved with the Gold King Mine, and yet, the agency proved to be unable to deal with said consequences, or even take the proper precautions to prevent such a tragedy.

Sources:

New EPA rules will cost Americans $3,080 each

December 8, 2016 by Don Wrightman Leave a Comment

New EPA rules are being implemented on heavy trucks which has boosted the 10-year regulatory burden on America past the $1 trillion mark. 75 percent of that cost was imposed by the Obama administration. New analysis from American Action Forum shows that the cost amounts to an annual cost of $540 per person, or a one-time charge of $3,080.

“In other words, each year every person, regardless of age, in the nation is responsible for paying roughly $540 in regulatory costs. These burdens might take the form of higher prices, fewer jobs, or reduced wages,” said AAF’s Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the watchdog group.

President Obama is scrambling to lock in several new environmental regulations prior to leaving office. Obama has shattered the record for the amount of regulations and added red tape this year, and he still has time to impose many more before leaving office. The staggering amount of money he is costing America is likely to surge even higher. The implementation of new fuel standards for trucks resulted in the new high regulatory costs.

Batkins’ study dates back to 2005, when George W Bush held the oval office. He said that the Obama administration is responsible for about three-quarters of the added regulatory costs. “The Obama Administration surpassed 500 major regulations last summer, imposing $625 billion in cumulative costs. Earlier this year, regulators published the administration’s 600th major rule, increasing burdens to $743 billion. Now, thanks to data from the last term of the Bush Administration and another billion-dollar rule from EPA, the regulatory tally has surpassed $1 trillion. These figures are direct estimates from federal regulators, but it will take more than an effort from these regulators to amend hundreds of major regulations. Congress, the next president, and even the courts must participate in the next generation of regulatory modernization.”

The EPA wants to make it very difficult for the Trump administration to align fuel economy standards with the needs and expectations of Americans. EPA administrator Gina McCarthy has urged the agency’s employees to quickly finish as many rules as possible before Obama leaves the White House. The EPA reported last month that automakers exceeded fuel efficiency standards in new cars, but were unhappy with the agency’s early release of its fuel efficiency study.

Donald Trump has promised to kill more regulations then he will add while he is in office. Hopefully his administration will kill many of the regulatory burdens created by Obama.

Sources:

WashingtonExaminer.com

DailyCaller.com

EPA just approved another toxic herbicide linked to infertility, birth defects and lung cancer in both humans and animals

December 6, 2016 by Daniel Barker Leave a Comment

The EPA has just approved the widespread use of a highly toxic herbicide called dicamba, a chemical which poses serious health risks to both animals and people. In doing so, the agency has turned its back on its legal obligation to assess any threat to endangered species, as well as its responsibility to protect human health.

Dicamba has been in use for years, and is an ingredient in more than 1,000 farming and gardening products. Under the EPA’s new guidelines, however, its use is expected to increase on a massive scale.

Dicamba use will increase current levels more than 20 times

The EPA approval covers the use of dicamba for spraying dicamba-resistant GMO cotton and soybean crops that were developed by (you probably already guessed it) Monsanto as an alternative to its glyphosate-resistant GM crops.

From The Daily Sheeple:

“Dicamba is part of Monsanto’s two-point plan: replace glyphosate (the main ingredient in the company’s best-selling RoundUp weed killer), as it increasingly comes under fire, and create public acceptance of the GM crops engineered to withstand dicamba.

“Monsanto’s own conservative estimates predict that dicamba use on soybeans will likely rise from around 233,000 pounds per year to 20.5 million pounds per year — and dicamba use on cotton could go from 364,000 pounds per year to 5.2 million pounds per year.”

Dicamba health risks

Like many other toxic herbicides, Dicamba can cause a range of serious negative health effects in both humans and animals. Dicamba exposure has been linked to lung cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, reproductive damage, birth defects and hormonal disruption.

Monsanto would like for people to believe that dicamba represents a safer alternative to glyphosate, but it is also a highly toxic herbicide that will have an as-yet unknown impact on the environment and human health when its use is so dramatically increased.

The danger posed to other crops by dicamba

Dicamba has recently been making headlines due to crop damage caused by drift. At least 10 states have reported widespread damage to thousands of acres of “non-target” crops, and in one case, a farmer was allegedly killed over a dicamba drift incident:

“Allegedly, a farmer on the Missouri-Arkansas border applied dicamba without a permit and caused significant damage to a neighboring farmer’s soy crop. An argument bubbled over, which led the shooting death of one farmer, and the arrest of the other.”

Much of the recent drift problem was caused by illegal spraying of dicamba, and Monsanto has been highly criticized for selling its dicamba-resistant seed before the EPA approved the herbicide for use.

This resulted in widespread illegal spraying and incidents of herbicide drift – one peach farmer in Missouri lost 30,000 trees. Drift damage from dicamba also affected watermelon, tomato, rice and many other crops as well as non-dicamba-resistant strains of soybean and cotton.

Monsanto’s new dicamba-based herbicide product – designed to work with its dicamba-resistant GM soybean and cotton seeds – is theoretically formulated to minimize drift contamination, but some are highly skeptical about its true effectiveness, while others worry that many farmers will continue illegally using the old drift-prone dicamba products.

At any rate, the EPA’s approval means that tens of millions more pounds of carcinogenic poison will be dumped yearly into our soil, water and air as the result of a money-making scheme propagated by an evil monopoly bent on owning and genetically manipulating the world’s seed supply, while destroying biodiversity and marginalizing those who would rather rely on organic farming techniques.

Monsanto wins a major victory with the help of the EPA

It sounds like the plot of an improbable Hollywood disaster film, but it’s all too real. Monsanto – after losing much of its company’s stock value and being forced to lay off a sizable portion of its workforce in recent years – seems to be rebounding with new strategies to maintain its stranglehold on global agriculture and food production.

Of course, having the EPA in its pocket hasn’t hurt Monsanto’s cause, either. In the war against food freedom and biodiversity, it appears Monsanto has just won a decisive battle.

Sources:

TheDailySheeple.com

BiologicalDiversity.org

EcoWatch.com

Donald Trump will attempt to dismantle the EPA …is it possible?

December 6, 2016 by JD Heyes Leave a Comment

President-elect Donald J. Trump, when speaking to employees at a Carrier air conditioner factory in Indiana whose jobs he saved last week, said that there is a need for “some regulations” so that U.S. factories and plants don’t irreparably damage the environment.

But as a businessman himself who has had to deal often with the nightmarish processes of navigating a plethora of government agencies before the first shovelful of dirt breaks ground on his latest real estate development, he knows more about red tape than just about anyone.

That means he also knows how much of that red tape can be permanently cut so that business development can take place faster and more cheaply, while still caring for the environment.

Trump, like most other rational people, doesn’t want to breathe dirty air, drink polluted water or eat food that comes from contaminated soil. But he also pledged to jump-start economic and job growth, and to do that, he’ll have to take on Washington’s Left-wing “climate change” hoaxers, and they will fight him tooth and nail. Already, the climate hoaxers are girding up for a Trump presidency.

On the campaign trail, Inside Climate News reported, Trump promised that he would seek to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency altogether, claiming (correctly) that for the most part, the bureaucracy had been turned into a political hammer to be used by a Leftist president to kill jobs and opportunities. Now that he is headed to the Oval Office, the environmentalist community is trying to figure out whether he’ll keep his promises or whether he’ll be thwarted in his attempts to downsize the EPA and government bureaucracy in general.

“Trump sounds like he’s serious about scaling back much environmental regulation,” Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change at Columbia Law School, told Inside Climate News. And while he may not be able to dismantle the EPA entirely, there is much he and a Republican-controlled Congress could do to downsize the agency and starve it of funds.

The EPA, like all other government agencies, was established by law, so it would take legislation (and Trump’s signature – or a veto override) to abolish it altogether. That said, Trump, as president, can simply issue executive orders to the EPA and reverse much of the environmental activism implemented by the man he is set to replace, President Obama.

In addition, say legal experts, the president-elect, once in office, could scale back the agency’s reach and mission, while the GOP-controlled Congress reduces the agency’s budget even further, thereby limiting its ability to act.

Gerrard doesn’t believe Congress will eliminate the EPA, but rather “starve and cripple it.” He may be underestimating Trump like just about everyone else who has come up against him this election cycle has.

For one thing, president Trump will inherit enormous authority – more than any president ever has. He has Obama to thank for much of that, since the 44^th president pushed his constitutionally limited powers to their boundaries and beyond.

For another, there is an appetite in Congress to downsize the EPA and reign it in. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in commenting on the passage of the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act in 2014, said that while the board is supposed to offer neutral guidance on the environmental issues the EPA seeks to address, its singularly-minded members have “silenced voices of dissent, limited public participation in its decisions, and shown a potential conflict of interest with over half of the SAB members having taken grant money from the EPA, an agency they are supposed to provide impartial analysis to.”

Trump is also being advised by some sound political minds – including Newt Gingrich and Vice President-elect Mike Pence – who have been in the D.C. cesspool and know their way around.

Will a President Trump actually be able to eliminate the EPA in his quest to Make America Great Again? In the end, given his power as head of the Executive Branch (which the EPA falls under) and Congress’ willingness to help, it might not really matter. Neutering the agency may be all that is necessary.

Sources:

NaturalNews.com

InsideClimateNews.org

EPA protected Monsanto’s corporate profits by hiding the truth about glyphosate and cancer for decades

August 4, 2016 by Vicki Batts Leave a Comment

Is it really possible that the EPA – which is supposed to stand for Environmental Protection Agency, by the way – actually hid the truth about the toxicity of one of Monsanto’s top-selling herbicides?

According to researcher and consultant, Dr. Anthony Samsel, the answer would be an unequivocal yes. Dr. Samsel claims to have gained possession of EPA documents that reveal the cancer-causing effects of glyphosate. In fact, Samsel states that these documents contain information tying glyphosate to cancer beginning in the 1970s.

Glyphosate is the primary ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide known as Roundup, which is an extremely popular product that is used across the world in the cultivation of GM crops. Dr. Samsel has been researching the effects of glyphosate for many years, though he notes that much of his work has not been taken seriously and often dismissed.

Along with fellow researcher, Dr. Stephanie Seneff, Dr. Samsel has authored several studies on the potentially negative effects of glyphosate use. Though their work was previously unrecognized, many who initially dismissed their research are now beginning to pay more attention.

The World Health Organization has recently declared glyphosate a “probable carcinogen,” but Samsel maintains that there is no doubt about the product’s ability to cause cancer. Dr. Samsel states that studies conducted by Biodynamics, located in New Jersey, between the years of 1978 and 1980, clearly showed that even low doses of glyphosate could induce tumor growth in internal organs. These same studies were submitted to the EPA in 1981.

Despite the fact that these studies provided substantial evidence of glyphosate’s toxicity, the agency merely labeled the studies as “not significant.”

The evidence suggesting that the EPA has known about the dangers of glyphosate has only continued to grow. Just last year, it was reported that the agency knew about the product’s carcinogenic capacity a whopping 35 years ago. According to Sustainable Pulse, several archived and accessible memos from the EPA during the early 1980s indicate that glyphosate causes harm, especially to the kidneys. Though these studies on rats were conducted before the adoption of international test guidelines and GLP standards, the results are still quite disturbing. Every test group in a three-generation study that was treated with glyphosate had a higher incidence of tubular dilation than control subjects. Interstitial fibrosis was present in all of the treated groups of rats, as well. In 1981, the EPA refused to issue a NOEL (No observable adverse effect level) for glyphosate, and asked for more research. Naturally, Monsanto obliged their request and presented new evidence that minimized the harms associated with glyphosate in 1982 – at which point the EPA accepted the product as being unlikely to cause harm.

It is obvious that the EPA has known for a very long time that glyphosate is a cancer-causing toxin, and the mountain of evidence indicating the EPA’s corruption and lies will just continue to grow.

Sources:

NaturalNews.com

SustainablePulse.com