Justice tells Pentagon to obey EPA

[Robbien]

Source: Washington Post

The Justice Department dealt a blow to the Pentagon this week, saying it has no legal authority to resist orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up Fort Meade in Maryland and two other military sites that have been contaminated by chemicals.

In a Dec. 1 letter obtained by The Washington Post, Steven Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general at Justice, said that the Pentagon had no legal grounds to resist the cleanup orders from the EPA.

. . .

"Even the Bush Department of Justice is now telling the Department of Defense that it is not above the law and it cannot flaunt EPA's final orders," said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in a statement this week. "If this were a private polluter, they probably would have been hauled into court by now. "

The EPA issued "final orders" to the Pentagon more than a year ago to clean up Fort Meade, McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey and Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. Final orders are the agency's most potent enforcement tool. If a polluter does not comply, the agency usually can go to court to force action and can impose fines up to $28,000 a day.

But the Pentagon questioned whether the EPA had legal authority to require and oversee the mitigation.


Read more: http://www.sltrib.com/News/ci_11147071

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If the current Justice Dept full of Bushie loyalists have made this determination, the Pentagon must not have had a leg to stand on in their defiance of the EPA.

[WillParkinson]

1. Not above the law....

Who do they think they are? The Bush administration?

[The Stranger]

2. This kind of insolence is acceptable now -- sure glad the Nancy Pelosi Traitor decided to take

impeachment off the table, refusing even to use it as leverage to keep the criminal junta from further raping the nation, the environment and the world.

Thanks, Pelosi Traitor!

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

3. Soo, now the EPA's gonna wake up?

they've been a sleep for past seven years.