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.
That would be the Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall.
Also, he is appointed by, and reports directly to, the president. Biden could easily call this guy up and tell him to unfuck himself.
exactly, lets purposefully poison lots of people so we can force those regulations written in blood!
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.
They also made the decision to pollute in the first place. Let’s not divert the attention off the cause of the pollution.
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.
…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.
WTF?
“Yeah, we polluted it, but you can’t make us do anything about it.”
Wow. Fuck this supreme Court.
Cool, the thing we were assured wouldn’t happen because free market or something.
Even if it’s decided that the EPA has the proper authority, the damage will be done by the time it makes its way through the courts.
The EPA order requires the development of a system specifically designed for PFAS. A similar system is estimated to cost about $25m to develop, or about 0.1% of the air force’s annual budgeting.
Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool…
So “federal regulators lack the authority” to order a cleanup, even though feds made the orders that led to environmental damage in the first place. Riiiiight.
This is nothing. Wait until you see what the corporations will do when they’re told to stop polluting say the water source of a major city and they say fuck you to the EPA
It’s gonna get so so so much worse
"Millions leave Chicago because Dow Chemical poisons the water table. When asked for comment a DOW chemical PR representative said: ‘Yeah, suck a dick losers’ "
The EPA can still take them to court with a jury over things like this, but they won’t have the resources to take everyone to court.
So you still gotta be smart about it and not do something like completely wreck the water source for Chicago, because they’ll use their limited resources to go after them.
But some small town no one cares about? Probably much easier.
You’re talking about the same companies that own entire local governments. That get to choose the rules they play under in normal situations.
This is like nothing any human currently alive in America has experienced. It’s worse than 1800s robber Baron America. It’s the same attitude and people with (and I means this literally) million of times greater resources than the government.
The 44 years of dismantling and disrupting any power the government had is starting to pay off in spades.
The reality is, we’ll look at my original comment and laugh at how naive and quaint it was. Like people saying “Trump will never win” then "How bad could he fuck it up really?.. and then…
