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Who is fighting all of these regulations?
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DanWeiss



Joined: 24 Jun 2008
Posts: 2296
Location: Connecticut, USA

PostPosted: Sun Dec 22, 2013 1:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

isobars wrote:
My objective was to show that Dan's accusation that I lied was false...


Mike it was not my intention to accuse you of lying, but rather to state that you misrepresented (whether or not intentionally) the study that I thought was your source. I understand that what I wrote could be read as an accusation of lying, however. Since you then claimed that you looked at a different study (though with freakishly coincidental results and questionable survey methodology) I'll take you at your word that your research led you not to the survey I found but to the one you say you used.

Therefore, I apologize for accusing you of lying or misrepresentation or even inadequate interpretation. I jumped to that conclusion based on years of efforts to correct your interpretation of potential law which you continue to claim is correct despite no language in the bill supporting your point (spec.: Hillary-Care would've criminalized a person for paying a doctor in cash.) Your record precedes you.

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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sat Jan 18, 2014 12:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Back to topic. We now know the identity of at least one company who wanted deregulation, and has declared bankruptcy in the wake of their spill in West Virginia. Freedom Industries Inc, with more than 30 lawsuits so far, is running for the cover of bankruptcy. Of course, the corporation was supporting the coal industry, and benefiting from lax regulation in coal friendly West Virginia. You'll remember that George Bush and Cheney, doing their best to pave the way to destroy the earth for coal and oil companies, named coal executives to the regulatory boards. Including the safety boards. The executive from the coal company that subsequently had the most deadly accident in recent history.

Gotta love the name. Faux patriotism is indeed the disguise of the unscrupulous. Gotta be dazzled by the ignorance of the right that keep not reading about the results of de-regulation. From ENRON to coal to sub-prime mortgages. Next stop--the rest of your food?
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 8:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In this mornings newspaper we saw the future with Republican politicians. Token fine from North Carolina for spill of coal ash. Buddies of mrgybe and bard, or only soulmates?

Quote:
CHAPEL HILL, NC, Feb. 18, 2014 - As national attention remains focused on North Carolina in wake of Duke Energy's massive coal ash spill into the Dan River, North Carolina's Governor has now called on Duke Energy and North Carolina officials to address the long-term problem of coal ash storage throughout the state in the only way that will stop ongoing pollution and remove the risk of more spills: move the ash.

Governor Pat McCrory for the first time called on Duke to remove its coal ash ponds from NC waterways. The Greensboro News & Record has reported that McCrory, who worked for Duke for 28 years, said to business leaders yesterday: "First of all, they've got to fix what's broken, and then they've got to have a long-term solution of moving the ash ponds so they don't cause long-term issues with our water anywhere in North Carolina and, frankly, with our neighboring states." Gov. McCrory's administration has been the subject of intense criticism and a federal grand jury criminal investigation related to Duke Energy's coal ash storage at Dan River and DENR's activities.

"We're pleased to see that Governor McCrory has recognized that removing toxic coal ash from the banks of our rivers and drinking reservoirs – the long-term solution that is working today in South Carolina – is the also right solution for North Carolina and our region," said Frank Holleman, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, which has represented several conservation groups in legal actions regarding Duke Energy's coal ash pollution across the Carolinas. "We call on Duke Energy and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to heed the Governor's words and take immediate action to remove this dangerous and illegal coal ash pollution from our waterways."

Conservation groups have long argued that Duke Energy needs to move its toxic coal ash to lined landfills away from rivers and lakes and have filed legal action to try to remove this threat. Yet over the past year, the state blocked lawsuits from these groups and proposed settlements seen as highly favorable to Duke Energy that would not have required coal ash clean-up, instead imposing only token fines.

Following lawsuits by the Southern Environmental Law Center, two of the three utilities in the Carolinas – South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper – are removing coal ash from unlined pits near rivers in South Carolina to safer dry, lined storage facilities away from rivers and lakes. Neither utility has raised its rates as a result.

The Dan River site is one of fourteen coal ash sites managed by Duke Energy that are the subject of similar lawsuits ongoing in North Carolina state court. Public concern remains high in wake of the Dan River coal ash spill, the nation's third largest ever, particularly as McCrory also commented yesterday that an initial study has shown a second pipe at Duke's plant could result in new coal ash leakage.
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techno900



Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4161

PostPosted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 9:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

McCrory is the first Republican governor in NC in the last 20 years and has just been in office for one year. What exactly did the Democratic governors do to fix this issue when they had total control during the last 20 years?

From mac's post:
Quote:
Conservation groups have long argued that Duke Energy needs to move its toxic coal ash to lined landfills away from rivers and lakes and have filed legal action to try to remove this threat. Yet over the past year, the state blocked lawsuits from these groups and proposed settlements seen as highly favorable to Duke Energy that would not have required coal ash clean-up, instead imposing only token fines.


I don't know enough about the issues over the last year regarding the lawsuits, but when the liberals had control of the state government and the conservatives argued that Duke Energy needed to move its toxic coal ash, WHY didn't something happen???? This is a problem that should not exist today, but the liberals chose not to address the issue.
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uwindsurf



Joined: 18 Aug 2012
Posts: 968
Location: Classified

PostPosted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 10:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

techno900 wrote:
McCrory is the first Republican governor in NC in the last 20 years and has just been in office for one year. What exactly did the Democratic governors do to fix this issue when they had total control during the last 20 years?

From mac's post:
Quote:
Conservation groups have long argued that Duke Energy needs to move its toxic coal ash to lined landfills away from rivers and lakes and have filed legal action to try to remove this threat. Yet over the past year, the state blocked lawsuits from these groups and proposed settlements seen as highly favorable to Duke Energy that would not have required coal ash clean-up, instead imposing only token fines.


I don't know enough about the issues over the last year regarding the lawsuits, but when the liberals had control of the state government and the conservatives argued that Duke Energy needed to move its toxic coal ash, WHY didn't something happen???? This is a problem that should not exist today, but the liberals chose not to address the issue.


"Total control" over the last 20 years?

The North Carolina General Assembly 2011–2012 session was the state legislature that first convened in January 2011 and concluded in December 2012. Members of the North Carolina Senate and the North Carolina House of Representatives were elected in November 2010. This was the first North Carolina General Assembly with a Republican majority in both chambers since 1870.

The North Carolina General Assembly 2013–2014 session is the state legislature that first convened in January 2013 and will conclude in December 2014. Members of the North Carolina Senate and the North Carolina House of Representatives were elected in November 2012, when the Republican Party increased the size of its majorities in both the North Carolina Senate and House of Representative to exceed the three-fifths number of elected members required for a super-majority.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 11:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Techno--it is hard to put one's head as deeply in the sand as you have. Ignoring the connections between the polluters and the Republican Party, and big money for Tea Party, takes a real effort. Perhaps this will make it a little clearer:

Quote:
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina's top environmental official said Monday that he briefed Gov. Pat McCrory before intervening in lawsuits against Duke Energy, resulting in a negotiated settlement that fined the $50 billion corporation $99,111 to resolve violations over groundwater contamination leaching from two huge coal ash dumps.

Environmentalists criticized the modest fines as a sweetheart deal that included no requirement to force the nation's largest electricity provider to actually clean up its pollution.


So the top Rep's arrange a little less than a slap on the wrist for Big Coal. A couple weeks after the spill in Virginia. How does this happen? Well, most of these things are regulated under the Clean Water Act. But you probably don't remember George Bush appointed coal guys to the Mine Safety Board, or Dick Cheney doing his regulatory streamlining thing to help his energy buddies. Well, under the Clean Water Act, the state's are supposed to administer the Clean Water Act. And here's how they do it in North Carolina. Remember, this governor appoints the head of the environmental agency--who let them get away with this stuff.

Quote:
The following editorial appeared in the New York Times:

North Carolina residents have good reason to wonder just whom their environmental regulators are trying to protect. The state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources has engaged in a series of maneuvers that seem designed to protect the state’s largest utility, Duke Energy, from paying big fines for water pollution from coal ash ponds and meeting reasonable requirements that it move toxic coal ash to lined landfills away from rivers and lakes used for drinking water and recreation.

Meanwhile, the rest of the country – having heard of the damaging North Carolina coal ash spill this month – must be wondering why the federal government has yet to move against a serious pollution problem it has known about for years.

One answer is the political power of the utilities. In North Carolina, a coalition of environmental groups, led by the Southern Environmental Law Center, tried three times over the past year to sue Duke Energy in federal court for violating the Clean Water Act, only to be pre-empted by the state regulatory agency, which asserted its authority to protect the public through enforcement actions in state courts. Once in control of the litigation, the state regulators quickly proposed a sweetheart settlement of suits against two Duke Energy plants. It would have imposed total fines and costs of about $99,000, a pittance for a company with operating revenues of $19.6 billion in 2012, plus a cleanup plan riddled with loopholes.

Critics blamed the new Republican governor, Pat McCrory, who had worked at Duke Energy for 29 years, and the businessman he appointed to head the environmental department, John Skvarla. Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the Dan River spill and issued subpoenas for the records of Duke Energy and the environmental department.

The third suit was still pending when coal ash spilled Feb. 2 into the Dan River, near the Virginia border, through a ruptured pipe at another Duke Energy plant that is no longer in use. The state’s Department of Health and Human Services has warned people not to have contact with the water or sediment downstream and not to eat fish or shellfish from that area.

On Feb. 9, The Associated Press revealed that lenient state regulators had maneuvered to block the environmental groups. The environment agency, embarrassed by the spill and the revelations, immediately asked the state judge to hold its proposed settlement in abeyance while it conducted a comprehensive review of all coal ash facilities in the state. We can only hope that this is a genuine attempt to solve the problem and not a stalling tactic. Meanwhile, Duke Energy has apologized for the big leak and pledged to make things right, but it has not committed to moving the waste to safer locations.

This tawdry tale illustrates the urgent need for strong national standards for coal ash disposal, dramatized by a huge spill at a Tennessee Valley Authority facility in 2008. The federal Environmental Protection Agency proposed alternative rules in 2010. One would declare coal ash a special type of hazardous waste and give the agency authority to regulate it. The other would declare it nonhazardous and leave enforcement up to the states. The weaker option does not address “legacy” ponds that are no longer accepting new waste, like the Dan River site.

The recent events in North Carolina provide ample evidence that the EPA, which has belatedly agreed to issue a final rule by Dec. 19, should declare coal ash a form of hazardous waste and regulate it stringently.

The New York Times

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/02/17/3631008/nyt-editorial-regulatory-favoritism.html#storylink=cpy


But you can always blame it on Obama.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 11:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just a little more about the cozy relationship between North Carolina GOP and rape and pillage. Of course, McCrory, a former Duke employee with massive campaign contributions from Duke to pay off, appointed an investment banker to head the environmental agency. Having wrecked the economy, bankers are now going after drinking water. Here are the ties:

Quote:
Adding to environmentalists' concern is the fact that Gov. Pat McCrory worked for Duke Energy for 28 years and received over $300,000 in direct campaign contributions from the company's political action committee and its employees, former employees, and their spouses. In all, McCrory's 2008 and 2012 gubernatorial campaigns benefited from a total of $1.1 million in political spending by Duke Energy, according to an analysis by Democracy North Carolina. It remains unknown whether the Renew North Carolina Foundation, a pro-McCrory shadow campaign committee, received money from Duke Energy because the 501(c)(4) tax-exempt group does not disclose its donors.

In addition, McCrory still holds a substantial amount of stock in Duke Energy, though he has refused to say exactly how much. That has led some watchdog groups to call on McCrory to recuse himself from appointing members of the N.C. Utilities Commission -- a call he has rejected.

But McCrory is not the only member of his administration with close ties to Duke Energy and its Progress Energy subsidiary. Other former Duke/Progress employees who hold high-level positions in North Carolina state government include:

* Joseph Harwood, DENR ombudsman. During McCrory's campaign for governor, he singled out DENR as a state agency that he considered to be unfriendly to business. To address that concern, John Skvarla, a businessman who McCrory named DENR secretary, created the position of DENR ombudsman -- and appointed to the post Joseph Harwood, a former Duke Energy employee.

Harwood, who served on McCrory's DENR transition team*, worked at Duke Energy for 38 years in various roles, including vice president for state government affairs. He went on to found Harwood and Associates, an energy consulting and government relations firm based in Cornelius, N.C. Incorporated in 2012, the privately-held firm specializes in project development in North Carolina and other southeastern states.

In addition to serving as DENR's ombudsman, Harwood also chairs the advisory board for the agency's Environmental Stewardship Initiative, a voluntary program launched in 2002 to engage companies in efforts to reduce their environmental impact.

* DENR Communication Director Drew Elliott. Harwood is not the only high-ranking member of Skvarla's team who comes from the utility industry: His communications chief previously worked for Raleigh, N.C.-based Progress Energy, which in 2012 became a subsidiary of Duke Energy.

Elliott was named DENR's communication director after serving as assistant chancellor for communications at for-profit South University in Savannah, Ga. Before that, he spent four years coordinating communications for Progress Energy.

In announcing their appointments, Skvarla said Harwood and Elliott were "well-suited to bring together the concepts of communications, business acumen and customer relations necessary in an environment friendly to the people we serve."

* Tony Almeida, former economic adviser. Almeida served as McCrory's senior adviser for jobs and the economy until stepping down earlier this month to spend more time with his family. In the position, he helped McCrory develop a jobs plan and reorganize the commerce department.

Before joining the administration, Almeida spent 32 years working for Duke Energy, where he served for a time as the company's vice president of economic development and supervised McCrory. In his role with the McCrory administration, Almeida pushed to ease regulations and to promote fracking and offshore drilling.

Almeida's ties to Duke Energy were cited in a complaint that the environmental group Food & Water Watch filed last year with N.C. Attorney Roy Cooper (D) asking him to probe possible fracking conflicts of interest in North Carolina government. Duke Energy is moving away from coal-fired power generation toward natural gas, including at the Dan River Steam Station where the coal ash spill occurred this month.

Almeida said he wanted to make DENR more "about helping businesses navigate the permitting process" and "more customer-focused."

* Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker. As head of the North Carolina Commerce Department, Decker is involved in overseeing the state's move of its job recruiting and marketing functions to a new public-private partnership -- an effort that has sparked controversy because of its speed and reach.

Before joining the administration, Decker had extensive private-sector experience, including more than 17 years with what was then known as Duke Power Co., now Duke Energy.

"She began working with the company in consumer services and moved rapidly through the ranks to become the youngest and first female vice president in Duke Power’s history," McCrory said in announcing her appointment. "Her work at Duke Power led to the creation of its 24-hour customer service center, an organization that still serves as a model for the industry."

* Office of State Human Resources Director Neal Alexander. Before being named to lead human resources for state government, Alexander spent 40 years working in human resources at Duke Energy. There he most recently served as vice president for human resources for Duke Energy's U.S. Franchised Electric and Gas Service.

In announcing his appointment of Alexander, McCrory praised his "valuable merger and divestiture experience having worked through numerous organizational restructures and realignments." That includes Duke Energy's 2005 acquisition of Cinergy, a Cincinnati-based energy company.

(* One the three-co-chairs of the DENR transition team was Lyons Gray, a Winston-Salem businessman and former state legislator who now serves as McCrory's revenue secretary. According his economic interest statement filed last year, Gray and his wife own at least $10,000 in Duke Energy stock.)



Gotta love how the Roberts court allows this stuff, and allows so much of it all to be secret too.
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techno900



Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4161

PostPosted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 12:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Looks like I opened up the flood gate again.

I never claimed that there wasn't any funny business going on, only that the problem existed for a long time and was a concern for the conservatives, but the liberal controlled state government didn't do anything to address the issue. I stand corrected, liberal control was only 18 years, not the 20 as stated, but 2 of the years was under a Democrat Governor.

Maybe the issue was the EPA as was stated in Mac's post:
Quote:
The recent events in North Carolina provide ample evidence that the EPA, which has belatedly agreed to issue a final rule by Dec. 19, should declare coal ash a form of hazardous waste and regulate it stringently.


I think big fines are appropriate, but only when negligence or ignoring regulations is proven. A broken pipe caused the problem. If and when negligence is identified, then kick Duke Energy in the pocket book. In the mean time, the Governor is addressing the problem. Since there has been concern for a long time, but no spills/leaks, things like this tend to get ignored. I suspect that this behavior isn't partisan, just a fingers crossed mentality.
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uwindsurf



Joined: 18 Aug 2012
Posts: 968
Location: Classified

PostPosted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 12:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

techno900 wrote:
Looks like I opened up the flood gate again.

I never claimed that there wasn't any funny business going on, only that the problem existed for a long time and was a concern for the conservatives, but the liberal controlled state government didn't do anything to address the issue. I stand corrected, liberal control was only 18 years, not the 20 as stated, but 2 of the years was under a Democrat Governor.

Maybe the issue was the EPA as was stated in Mac's post:
Quote:
The recent events in North Carolina provide ample evidence that the EPA, which has belatedly agreed to issue a final rule by Dec. 19, should declare coal ash a form of hazardous waste and regulate it stringently.


I think big fines are appropriate, but only when negligence or ignoring regulations is proven. A broken pipe caused the problem. If and when negligence is identified, then kick Duke Energy in the pocket book. In the mean time, the Governor is addressing the problem. Since there has been concern for a long time, but no spills/leaks, things like this tend to get ignored. I suspect that this behavior isn't partisan, just a fingers crossed mentality.


When did the issue really come to light? Perhaps in 2009 when the EPA began investigating?

http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/industrial/special/fossil/surveys/duke-riverbend.pdf
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keycocker



Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598

PostPosted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 1:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Techno did you say it was ok because Bobby did it too?
Did you accept such excuses from your kids? We don't.
This is a current crime being committed and pst negligence by others is absolutely of no consequence.
If a murder is being debated would you find it compelling for someone to note that other murders were committed by libs in the past? So this guy should get a break?
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