EPA makes a deal with animal shit corporations -amnesty

[donsu]

http://www.thenation.com/outrage/index.mhtml?pid=973

The Environmental Protection Agency has struck a deal with monster animal farms that lets them leak stinking animal crap and other pollutants all over, to their heart's content. In exchange for promising not to sue -- ever -- EPA demands a mere $500 fine (yes, just five hundred dollars) and also a contribution of $2,500 toward a fund to, yes, study the problem of rivers of stinking animal crap.

Perhaps they could save money by combining the animal crap "study" with the Administration's latest global warming "study". Or, since this Administration rewrites every scientific or intelligence report it gets anyway, perhaps we could skip the formality and expense of "study" and cut to the chase of word-processing up a report calling for further study.

I digress. Back to the hog crap. It's all laid out in an amnesty deal between EPA and "CAFOs" -- "concentrated animal feeding operations," or big farms -- to paper over Clean Air Act and Superfund law violations.

"The open-ended amnesty agreement lacks an expiration date and would allow CAFOs to pollute indefinitely without fear of prosecution," observes a statement by the groups that outed the deal today: the Environmental Integrity Project, the Sierra Club, the NRDC and the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. "CAFOs will pay a mere $500 in penalties, a trifling amount when compared to the penalties of $27,500 per day available to EPA under the Clean Air Act and . "For $3,000 ($500 penalty plus $2,500 for the fund), companies can buy immunity with no requirement to control their pollution."
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the EPA that isn't

[baby_bear]

1. The environmental groups are suing over this

They filed suit yesterday, charging that EPA illegally withheld information requested under FOIA regarding this "deal."

Should be interesting.

s_m