No one's enforcing the new EPA rules. So what does that mean for climate change and our future?

[Celerity]

https://www.reckon.news/news/2023/06/no-ones-enforcing-the-new-epa-rules-so-what-does-that-mean-for-climate-change-and-our-future.html

This Dec. 22, 2008, photo shows the aftermath of a retention pond wall collapse at the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant in Harriman, Tenn. Workers who cleaned up the 2008 Kingston, Tenn., coal ash spill spent years working in conditions that they believe made them sick. The first worker lawsuits were filed against cleanup contractor Jacobs Engineering in 2013. But nearly a decade later, not a single case has made it through the court system. The Tennessee Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on Wednesday, June 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Wade Payne, File) (Wade Payne/AP)

At a little after midnight on Dec. 22, 2008, over a billion gallons of coal ash slurry burst through a retaining wall next to a power plant in a small Tennessee city during what remains the largest industrial spill in United States history. The coal ash crossed the Emory and Clinch Rivers, both tributaries of the Tennessee River, and spread out over 300 acres on the edge of the city of Kingston. It destroyed and damaged dozens of homes and critical infrastructure and killed wildlife. The slurry, in this case enough to fill 22 million bathtubs, is the remnants from burning coal to produce electricity. It contains highly toxic and cancer-causing chemicals like mercury, cadmium, and arsenic.

The cleanup cost the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the largest public power company in the country, over $1 billion and took seven years to complete. However, the toxic spill was decades in the making. The Environmental Protection Agency had warned the TVA about the safety of its coal ash pond for more than twenty years, even after a smaller blowout of the pond occurred in 2004. A 2009 Congressional Investigation noted that the bigger spill was “caused by regulatory neglect, a lack of government oversight, and irresponsible coal ash practices.”

In short, the TVA didn’t act, and the EPA didn’t enforce its warnings, a familiar pairing of regulatory and corporate inaction that has dogged communities throughout the country for decades, allowing for a dangerous increase in the pollution of the nation’s air, water and the rapid deterioration of its biodiversity. From the hundreds of coal ash ponds and landfills that exist all over the country to the numerous examples of environmental racism in Louisiana’s pollution-filled Cancer Alley to the lead water crisis that continues to harm communities in Flint, Mich and every other state in the country.

Just this week, the Supreme Court made it even worse. It narrowed the scope of the 51-year-old Clean Water Act, which governs water pollution in streams, oceans, rivers, lakes, and wetlands. The ruling means about half of the nation’s wetlands in the contiguous United States are no longer protected, threatening safe drinking water for millions of citizens. Judicial and political decisions have joined in undermining the country’s strict environmental goals and are likely to harm the two things that the EPA is supposed to protect: people and the environment.

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[jaxexpat]

1. responsibility, thy name is enforcement

It's the coupling of these 2 simple concepts that has eluded us since the onset of our experience with the industrial revolution.

[sprinkleeninow]

2. This sucks big-time. Nice stewardship, crap heads. nt