EPA classifies milk as oil, forcing costly rules on farmers
Monica Scott The Grand Rapids Press
Update: State Senate calls for EPA to change rule classifying cow’s milk as oil
GRAND RAPIDS — Having watched the oil gushing in the Gulf of Mexico, dairy farmer Frank Konkel has a hard time seeing how spilled milk can be labeled the same kind of environmental hazard.
But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is classifying milk as oil because it contains a percentage of animal fat, which is a non-petroleum oil.
The Hesperia farmer and others would be required to develop and implement spill prevention plans for milk storage tanks. The rules are set to take effect in November, though that date might be pushed back.
“That could get expensive quickly,” Konkel said. “We have a serious problem in the Gulf. Milk is a wholesome product that does not equate to spilling oil.”
But last week environmentalists disagreed at a Senate committee hearing on a resolution from Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, calling for the EPA to rescind its ruling.
“The federal Clean Water Act requirements were meant to protect the environment from petroleum-based oils, not milk,” he said. “I think it is an example of federal government gone amuck.”
But Gayle Miller, legislative director of Sierra Club Michigan Chapter, said agricultural pollution probably is the nation’s most severe chronic problem when it comes to water pollution.
“Milk is wholesome in a child’s body. It is devastating in a waterway,” Miller said. “The fact that it’s biodegradable is irrelevant if people die as a result of cryptosporidium, beaches close for E. coli and fish are killed.”
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Also, the International Dairy Foods Association said it has learned the EPA will exempt the industry from the rule. But state lawmakers say they won’t let up until that is official.
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“This is an example of where we have overreach by the department that defies common sense,” said Matt Smego, legislative counsel for Michigan Farm Bureau.
Smego said its an unnecessary regulatory burden that creates additional costs. He said it could cost $2,500 for a certified engineer to safeguard milk, plus more to construct secondary containment structures.
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“The federal government has gotten out touch what’s going on in rural America,” said Konkel. “This is our livelihood.””
More at http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2010/06/epa_classifies_milk_as_oil_for.html
Don’t we all contain a percentage of animal fat? So if someone jumps in for a swim, covered in suntan oil or not, is that a spill? Don’t fish have fats and oils? Is a dead fish an oil spill? Doesn’t pretty much everything alive, plants and animals, contain the long chain hydrocarbons that we call oils? Does anyone in this administration have any idea what they are talking about? Sorry, that’s a dumb question to ask.
Stalinist ideas. Go after them Kulaks! They are also going after the Amish farmers
in Pennsylvania….
Big Ag is getting bigger. The Amish and the small farmer are the enemy..
It’s time to shut down the EPA.
Someone ought to tell them that it’s no use lying over spilled milk ;^)
Fish killed from spilt milk?
Farmers should just stand outside some regulators offices for a few weeks and let them know why they have a right to bear arms.
Basically EPA can start mass-sterilization of people now. By definition, every man and woman is a pollutant…..
Worse, when milk rots it forms cheese – the white (or yellow) equivalent of tar balls! Still worse, when fungi colonize the cheese you get CAMEMBERT and GORGONZOLA! Europe is full of them.
And Blancmanges.
Seems there are reasons to cry over spilt milk…
Heh, stupidly funny. There’s bacteria that eats a lot of “black” oil, there’s even more that eats animal fat oil, not to mention insects and other animals.
Maybe the dandelion itself don’t like spilt milk but every bacteria and creature around will, and I bet the dandelion wont mind the water that the spilt milk contain and is left by every one else.
NSA should make a visit to the EPA in their search for extremists. :p
I think it’s high time for a Milk Party. Hmm, let’s see – – flights to Boston?? No… wait. EPA is in DC. I can see it now, milk cascading down the steps …… oh darn. They don’t have steps in front of their building. Hmm, what can we do as a peaceful protest???
Ah Ha! Turn the Potomac white with animal fat! I’m thinking July 4th…. Now, how do I get a gallon of that dangerous stuff past the TSA at the airport? Guess I’ll have to drive, or maybe a bus. they’ll never see us coming on a BUS.
Don’t need to be coy, Roy, just listen to me.
Hop on the bus, Gus, don’t need to discuss much.
See you in DC, Lee, and get yourself free!!
Next, they’ll be going after Crazed Poodles. Oh, wait…
One step further will be to remove breasts from all women!, it seems these guys were given to drink kool-aid instead of milk when they were babies.LOL!!!
This is a gag post, right?
Right?
Say it ain’t so, Anthony!
Like birds…you should migrate south, really.
I doubt Nixon would recognize the monster that the EPA he created has become. It is out of control.
Boy wonder what the EPA would have slapped on the deputies in the long gone prohibition days of running booze down the gutters everywhere!!
Holy Cow!
These orders stink of political extremism. Soybeans are processed for bio fuels. At 20% oil content, why are they not blowing a gasket over spilt beans?
Fat content in milk is closer to 5%. Obviously when a bird, coyote, rabit die, their body fat is also on the dirt and can run to the water supply. All the trillions of fish that die in the ocean contaminate the water with their fats and oils.
It appears the EPA wants to selectively create havoc.
Well, this sort of idiocy is not sustainable. The pendulum will swing in the other direction and as usually happens, it will overshoot and move too far in that direction, too.
The older I get, the more cynical I become in my opinion of government.
Before too long it will be illegal to wear suntan lotion at the beach (oil seepage into the sands) or in the water ocean (tidal drift carrying the oil into protected wetlands), and to lay on the ground (body oil (animal fat) leaking from you into the ground) without a plastic sheet between you and the earth. Or likely to walk barefoot for either the same reason or for the possibility of cutting you foot and leaking a biohazard onto the ground.
How do they qualify the other “white stuff” they like so much?
Electric Kool-Aid Madness Test.
The Super Bowl commercial about the Green Police wasn’t kidding.
From hence forth Milky Way will be known only as Galaxy.
Hey Folks!
This is brought to you by people who have never been to “rural America” except to fly over it, Buy all their groceries at (name the niche grocery) and think that tofu is picked from the field in its wrapper and milk is in cartons at the farm. I don’t see anything surprising here.
Mike
Bryan A says:
“June 24, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Before too long it will be illegal to wear suntan lotion at the beach (oil seepage into the sands) […]”
Or wash your teenager.
Vuk etc. says: June 24, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Re: “Warning to all scientists!”
I think that if you look into this a bit you may find that the people under indictments are the established ‘scientists’ that refused to evaluate the findings of a mere ‘laboratory technician’ who had been making real observations of the real data and had indicated that an earthquake was imminent and had publicly declared where and when it would occur.
The authority of the established and published scientists and their models prevailed, people died.
Not much different really from the person who said the o-rings were too cold.
Sometimes a non-scientist looking at real data can actually understand the meaning, regardless of what the establishment prefers to believe.
From Wikipedia (sorry it is in this case a convenient collection of the details)
—
2009 L’Aquila earthquake
Italian laboratory technician Giampaolo Giuliani predicted a major earthquake on Italian television a month before, after measuring increased levels of radon emitted from the ground. He was accused of being alarmist by the Director of the Civil Defence, Guido Bertolaso, and forced to remove his findings from the Internet (old data and descriptions are still on line). He was also reported to police a week before the main quake for “causing fear” among the local population when he predicted an earthquake was imminent in Sulmona, about 50 km (31 mi) from L’Aquila, on 30 March where a 4° quake happened (later Sulmona only suffered minor damages by the 6 April earthquake). Enzo Boschi, the head of the Italian National Geophysics Institute declared: “Every time there is an earthquake there are people who claim to have predicted it. As far as I know nobody predicted this earthquake with precision. It is not possible to predict earthquakes.”
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