EPA says Tucson’s drinking water is contaminated but air force claims agency lacks authority to order cleanup
The US air force is refusing to comply with an order to clean drinking water it polluted in Tucson, Arizona, claiming federal regulators lack authority after the conservative-dominated US supreme court overturned the “Chevron doctrine”. Air force bases contaminated the water with toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” and other dangerous compounds.
Though former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials and legal experts who reviewed the air force’s claim say the Chevron doctrine ruling probably would not apply to the order, the military’s claim that it would represents an early indication of how polluters will wield the controversial court decision to evade responsibility.
It appears the air force is essentially attempting to expand the scope of the court’s ruling to thwart regulatory orders not covered by the decision, said Deborah Ann Sivas, director of the Stanford University Environmental Law Clinic.
“It’s very odd,” she added. “It feels almost like an intimidation tactic, but it will be interesting to see if others take this approach and it bleeds over.”
We have an irresponsible and illegitimate Supreme Court and this is what we get.
there are also humans at the top of the ‘air force’ that made this decision not to clean up. its two sets of irresponsible…no… negligent humans at play.
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exactly, lets purposefully poison lots of people so we can force those regulations written in blood!
Well… Just poison the right watering holes that the people who have the power to act care about, and suddenly they’ll care about the EPA and water quality regulations.
You think the drinking water of Supreme Court justices is going to be contaminated as a result of this? They’re not being punished for making a mistake, a bunch of innocent powerless plebs will be.
So you’re saying contaminate their water. I like the idea.
I can’t tell if this is a genuine attempt to dodge cleanup or an attempt to test a Supreme Court ruling before companies can get out of hand during the next administration.
But maybe I’m reading too much into the context.
They also made the decision to pollute in the first place. Let’s not divert the attention off the cause of the pollution.
To be fair, much of this pollution was done decades ago. The people responsible for the bulk of it are retired by now.
We have a *criminal, irresponsible, and illegitimate Supreme Court.
We have a nation of people who voted for the people who selected the extreme far right conservatives into the court.
Voters deserve much of the blame too.
id argue non-voters are equally to blame, and a larger block
…and who vote for a Congress that refuses to pass laws to address these problems.
What are you talking about? Congress did pass a law to address this: it’s called the Clean Water Act. The issue is that an illegitimate SCOTUS packed by traitors basically invalidated it.
The article spells out what I’m talking about pretty clearly. I work with the CWA literally on a daily basis. Congress hasn’t made the CWA more clear or specific since the Water Quality Act of 1987. Congress could literally fix this dispute between federal agencies tomorrow, but we elected Republicans to control the House, which means it has a snowball’s chance in hell of ever happening.
The CWA as of 1987 is plenty clear under any reasonable standard. The relevant problem here is that SCOTUS has ordained an unreasonable standard. Yes, Democratic control of both houses of Congress could “fix” that issue, but the point is it shouldn’t need to because the EPA should be allowed to do its job (which, contrary to the illegitimate tyrannical stooges’ diseased opinions, does include interpreting the law!).
Glad we agree.
Erm, all Americans who could vote share the blame but Mitch McConnel gets a big heaping serving of it.
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The consequences of people staying home and/or general apathy in regards to voting.
Gorsuch was an eternity ago, but thats where it started