The Scott Pruitt "If the models are all wrong" thread

[camKSU]

Pretty much anyone with a brain acknowledges the epa is out of control. For eff's sake you can't even park at pillsbury anymore.

Pruitt is vehemently 100% against sue and settle, which I would hope everyone in this thread would support.

Huh... Seems pretty hypocritical to be against "sue and settle" but be ok with ALEC, koch/heritage, etc. COLUSION with Pruitt and the republicans. Sounds like Sierra and NRDC are fighting "fire with fire" to achieve their desired goals (minimizing the use and impact of fossil fuels)... Then again that's par for the course with the trumpeters and GOP.

And as to the baseless assertion that the EPA is "out of control", get off infowars, breitbart and dailymail and find any reasonable third-party to back up that claim and I will gladly take a look. Otherwise, your alt-right koch funded agenda has no place in this discussion.

You probably didn't even know about sue and settle until you Googled it. Interesting that this Googling didn't back you up a step or two. I hope you comprehend that there's a difference between a federal agency colluding with environmental groups via sue and settle that brings about illegal change for almost every single American versus discussion between a political party and a guy who happened to become the head of the EPA. Are you familiar with the SSM rule that they're talking about in that article? The new regs stipulate that flares, for example, can't have startup, shutdown, or malfunction events anymore. How realistic.

Also, if you've paid attention to this thread over the years, I've brought up several "out of control" examples of the EPA becoming a lawyer-controlled activist group in the last decade. I can probably provide several hundred examples if asked.

There's something fundamentally wrong about a federal agency backed by the law that can show up at a facility with the presumption that the facility is hiding something and doing something wrong. In a courtroom it's innocent until proven guilty, with the EPA it's "these guys are doing something illegal and killing people and we're gonna find it."

Remember, I am not against the EPA, just the EPA under Obama.

Reread your first paragraph and tell me how COLUSION with a federal agency and private organization is different than federal/government officials and private organizations. I'll wait for your response on that.

In regards to your "hundreds of examples" of activist EPA overreach... I welcome the third-party, non-koch funded, non-infowars/breitbart/dailymail articles. Truly, I am interested in reading them.

And for someone who claims to not be against the EPA, you sure do have a weird way of showing it given your blustery diatribe and again... baseless claims.

To an outsider it seems you are against COLUSION when its environmentalists and the government but ok when it is oil and gas and the government.

[camKSU]

Reg OOOOa is rough ridin' insane. But it goes beyond the epa, the usda requires an environmental survey before it will subrogate a mortgage to develop minerals.

Seems legit 

The BLM has a morotorium on fracking.

Again, seems legit given all the earthquakes, pollution of ground water, methane emissions, etc... 

[star seed 7]

This clean air crap is out of control

[camKSU]

This clean air crap is out of control

Don't forget water, lib. Greedy bastards, expecting clean water! Damn snowflakes!

[EMAWican]

Here's one of my favorite examples of the LPC fiasco. I have clients who had established CRP grass that needed to disturb the CRP grass via underground utility work, so we put in writing that it would be returned to identical conditions after installation. We heard back that since the CRP was a federal contract and it was now LPC critical habitat, that they would have to subtract out the "affected" acreage, back pay payments received on the acreage, and be penalized the rate on how many acres were subtracted. First, it's CRP that was planted and had only been around 5-10 years, and second, only a USFWS biologist can make a critical habitat determination via a site inspection. The clients sent in their checks, the LPC was delisted several months later, but do you think the government ever sent them their money back? YEAH RIGHT

[camKSU]

Here's one of my favorite examples of the LPC fiasco. I have clients who had established CRP grass that needed to disturb the CRP grass via underground utility work, so we put in writing that it would be returned to identical conditions after installation. We heard back that since the CRP was a federal contract and it was now LPC critical habitat, that they would have to subtract out the "affected" acreage, back pay payments received on the acreage, and be penalized the rate on how many acres were subtracted. First, it's CRP that was planted and had only been around 5-10 years, and second, only a USFWS biologist can make a critical habitat determination via a site inspection. The clients sent in their checks, the LPC was delisted several months later, but do you think the government ever sent them their money back? YEAH RIGHT

That sucks, Emawican. Your anecdotal story highlights that current regulations aren't perfect, which I agree with. However until I see more evidence, outside of your anecdote, of an EPA run amok, I will error on this being an isolated circumstance. Again, not saying things are perfect, but I would rather be safe than sorry when it comes to clean air/water, federal lands, and the future of the planet. 

[Rage Against the McKee]

I like that Pruitt wants the EPA to consider economic impacts when creating regs. Cheap power is nice.

[EMAWican]

This clean air crap is out of control

Oh look, lib just did his standard drive-by post.   

[EMAWican]

The EPA used to be required to submit a cost-basis for each regulation and how it would affect the industry. So, basically, this is how many facilities there are that do this, here's the threshold we want, here's how many it would affect, and here's the cost. They would slide that threshold until it was economically feasible, while still cleaning up our environment. Not anymore!

Another fun thing was the advent of "it will save XX number of lives" for regulations that weren't economically feasible.

[sys]

that's not how critical habitat works.


and if i understand your story correctly, your client wanted to bulldoze crp land but keep all the crp payments and keep getting paid for that land as if it was still undisturbed?  yeah, no crap you can't do that.

also the usda and the usfws are not the epa.

[Fake Sugar Dick (WARNING, NOT THE REAL SUGAR DICK!)]

Reg OOOOa is rough ridin' insane. But it goes beyond the epa, the usda requires an environmental survey before it will subrogate a mortgage to develop minerals.

Seems legit 

The BLM has a morotorium on fracking.

Again, seems legit given all the earthquakes, pollution of ground water, methane emissions, etc... 

An environmental survey for undeveloped real estate years after the mortgage has been taken "sounds legit", are you Fake Sugar Dick (WARNING, NOT THE REAL SUGAR DICK!)?

The epa's own assessments have found no evidence that fracking causes earthquakes or pollutes groundwater. It's an unfounded moratorium without substantive basis, just like the pipelines that were blocked for no rough ridin' reason.

Methane emissions for the energy industry are [improperly] governed under OOOOa, which no energy company could possibly afford to comply with. OOOOa functionally condemns mature nature gas fields (what once was considered clean energy) which are immaterial in the methane emmission scheme of things, and do so without compensation. It is gross and doesn't begin to address "climate change". It's nothing but a eff you to industry.

[EMAWican]

that's not how critical habitat works.


and if i understand your story correctly, your client wanted to bulldoze crp land but keep all the crp payments and keep getting paid for that land as if it was still undisturbed?  yeah, no crap you can't do that.

also the usda and the usfws are not the epa.

Not for sure what you mean by how critical habitat works. A USFWS biologist makes the determination based on site specific factors, not just because it's grass. If you're familiar with prairie chickens which I think you are, you'd know that leks aren't going to suddenly appear in "new" grass that was historically cultivated. Ain't no burds

One was trenching in a 4" PVC freshwater line for personal use. The other was trenching in an personal electrical service line. So no massive land use change or disturbance. Other than the initial disturbance, it should've been a non issue.

I never said it was the EPA, I used it as an entertaining story when FSD brought the LPC up.

[Emo EMAW]

Pretty much anyone with a brain acknowledges the epa is out of control. For eff's sake you can't even park at pillsbury anymore.

Pruitt is vehemently 100% against sue and settle, which I would hope everyone in this thread would support.

Huh... Seems pretty hypocritical to be against "sue and settle" but be ok with ALEC, koch/heritage, etc. COLUSION with Pruitt and the republicans. Sounds like Sierra and NRDC are fighting "fire with fire" to achieve their desired goals (minimizing the use and impact of fossil fuels)... Then again that's par for the course with the trumpeters and GOP.

And as to the baseless assertion that the EPA is "out of control", get off infowars, breitbart and dailymail and find any reasonable third-party to back up that claim and I will gladly take a look. Otherwise, your alt-right koch funded agenda has no place in this discussion.

Well, what about when they fined some rancher dude a crap ton of money for building a pond on his own damn land.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[sys]

Not for sure what you mean by how critical habitat works.

critical habitat is designated for a relatively broad geographic area.  whether a parcel of land is in crops or in crp won't effect whether it is within an area to be designated as critical habitat and a biologist doesn't need to visit the site to make the determination.  also, whether it is designated critical habitat or not has no impact of ag use or crp regs.


i have no idea if your client's crp land provided prairie chicken habitat or not.  if it didn't, it probably wasn't because of the age. if seeded in appropriate vegetation, it doesn't take more that a couple of years to provide habitat.

re. the disturbance - your dude signed a contract.  if he didn't like the terms, he shouldn't have participated in the program.

[EMAWican]

Not for sure what you mean by how critical habitat works.

critical habitat is designated for a relatively broad geographic area.  whether a parcel of land is in crops or in crp won't effect whether it is within an area to be designated as critical habitat and a biologist doesn't need to visit the site to make the determination.  also, whether it is designated critical habitat or not has no impact of ag use or crp regs.


i have no idea if your client's crp land provided prairie chicken habitat or not.  if it didn't, it probably wasn't because of the age. if seeded in appropriate vegetation, it doesn't take more that a couple of years to provide habitat.

re. the disturbance - your dude signed a contract.  if he didn't like the terms, he shouldn't have participated in the program.

CRP grass is and never has included the primary constituent elements required for LPC. How can the feds say that CRP in a temporary contract be critical to a species? The contract can be voided by the tenant at any time at a cost or ends after the set time. If he plows it back up and farms it, it's destroying critical habitat now? Good thing the LPC was delisted then so they doesn't have to worry about it.

[sys]

crp doesn't have to be just grass.  if planted in warm season grasses and forbs it can provide prairie chicken habitat and lots of crp land is planted accordingly.  in fact, there is a crp program (i think there still is) that is specifically based on creating lesser prairie chicken habitat.

on the critical habitat, that's exactly what i'm trying to communicate.  it's a landscape/regional designation, not a designation based on the characteristics of a particular parcel of land.  it doesn't matter if the parcel provides any habitat or not if the region is considered to be critical habitat.  so it doesn't matter at all in terms of critical habitat whether it is crp land or actively farmed or virgin prairie.

and a farmer can do whatever the eff he wants with his crp land or cropland or virgin prairie.  critical habitat designation has no impact on that.  your dude had to pay back money because he was not going to comply with the terms of the crp, it had nothing to do with critical habitat.

[EMAWican]

crp doesn't have to be just grass.  if planted in warm season grasses and forbs it can provide prairie chicken habitat and lots of crp land is planted accordingly.  in fact, there is a crp program (i think there still is) that is specifically based on creating lesser prairie chicken habitat.

on the critical habitat, that's exactly what i'm trying to communicate.  it's a landscape/regional designation, not a designation based on the characteristics of a particular parcel of land.  it doesn't matter if the parcel provides any habitat or not if the region is considered to be critical habitat.  so it doesn't matter at all in terms of critical habitat whether it is crp land or actively farmed or virgin prairie.

and a farmer can do whatever the eff he wants with his crp land or cropland or virgin prairie.  critical habitat designation has no impact on that.  your dude had to pay back money because he was not going to comply with the terms of the crp, it had nothing to do with critical habitat.

You need to review critical habitat as defined by the Endangered Species Act. CRP is still farmland. It had to previously be farmland to be allowed to be CRP. It will eventually revert back to cultivated land. Existing ag ground is exempt from being defined as critical habitat. The NRCS and the USFWS said in writing that these two locations were going to be included in the proposed critical habitat, hence the checks were sent it because it wasn't worth fighting.

The designation of a temporary CRP contract as critical habitat sets the precedent you can never touch it without penalty. That's unbelievable.

[sys]

yeah, you're wrong.  look it up.

[Fake Sugar Dick (WARNING, NOT THE REAL SUGAR DICK!)]

There is an interactive application on the rough ridin' kgs website that demonstrates how granulated the lpc habitat is, jfc.

[Emo EMAW]

The LPC should have never been listed.  The drought contributed most to the recent sharp decline.  Now that it's raining again the numbers are up. 

[EMAWican]

yeah, you're wrong.  look it up.

Not for sure why, but I do this for a living so   It's a fun discussion

[sys]

i do it for a living too.

[EMAWican]

There is an interactive application on the rough ridin' kgs website that demonstrates how granulated the lpc habitat is, jfc.

Glad you brought that up. That "crucial habitat" was the final proposed critical habitat that never happened. The USFWS and NRCS flew drones over private property without permission to conduct lek surveys to help generate that map. If they found a lek on your property you got a certified letter telling you all about it and that they were protected so watch yourself.

[EMAWican]

i do it for a living too.

Nice. Explain critical habitat to me strictly for a fish or mussel species, please.

[Emo EMAW]

Well, the animals belong to the people, not the landowners.  And flying a drone over private property isn't necessarily trespassing.