Guest post by David Middleton
Just when you think that the EPA cannot possibly get any more idiotic…
U.S. EPA sues OG&E over work at Oklahoma coal power plants
Tue Jul 9, 2013
(Reuters) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has sued Oklahoma Gas and Electric for failure to follow procedures required by the Clean Air Act while upgrading two coal plants in the state.
The EPA said in the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma on Monday that OG&E, a unit of OGE Energy Corp, failed to estimate emissions resulting from construction projects between 2003 and 2006 at its facilities.
The Clean Air Act requires regulated facilities to anticipate emissions increases that would result from physical changes, so that, if required, a utility can take steps to prevent them, according to the complaint.
OG&E spokesman Brian Alford said the company believed it had been and still was in compliance with all state and federal requirements.
“We intend to vigorously defend our position, which is that we followed procedures,” he said, “and actual monitored data indicates that emissions did not increase as a result of the work that was done.”
[…]
Shares of OGE were up 1.5 percent at $35.07 in morning trading.
The EPA claims that OG&E failed to estimate emissions that did not occur. They are suing OG&E in an effort to force the company “to assess whether its projects were likely to result in a significant [GHG] emissions increase.”
The EPA had no authority to regulate GHG emissions when the work was done (2003 & 2006). The work (on boilers and turbine blade replacements) caused no emissions increase.
Bob: “Just wait until you sit in the EPSA office of regulator who is costing your company an extra million bucks a year and smile while you wait for her to finish up conducting her real estate business.”
Sounds like personal use of Government resources, and for a Whistle Blower.
When you open a thread asking for search help, then must close same thread within an hour, due to a flood of the correct answers, you just might be on to something.
Eric Worrall says:
July 10, 2013 at 6:05 pm
This is how politics occurs in totalitarian states – companies abused and bullied at the whim of politicians.
….except that these are not politicians. These are faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats flexing their whims, with a powerful mandate CREATED by politicians.
David Middleton says:
July 10, 2013 at 6:54 pm
“Note that I made an assumption that this dealt with GHG emissions. The article doesn’t state this.”
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It’s safe to say that the lawsuit is not about greenhouse gas emissions. The link below includes a copy of the complaint, and it references NOx, SO2, and PM (nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter), all typical pollution considerations for coal-fired plants.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/oklahoma/2013/07/08/the-epa-is-suing-oklahoma-gas-electric-over-its-power-plant-emission-estimates/
This is about the dumbest post I’ve ever seen on this blog. And that’s saying a lot.
Why does Mr. Middleton assume this has to do with GHG emissions? Mr. Middleton himself states that EPA had no authority to regulate them when the work was done. It took me about five seconds on Google to find out that the lawsuit is related to sulfur dioxide emissions: http://www.tulsaworld.com/article.aspx/Oklahoma_Gas_Electric_sued_by_EPA_over_projects_at/20130709_49_E1_Thefed212001
Is Mr. Middleton, or anyone on this blog, aware that coal-fired power plants are well-documented sources of all kinds of pollutants, including NOx, SOx and Hg?
Are the readers of this blog so disconnected from reality that they honestly believe the EPA files a lawsuit in Federal court simply to make a point?
The confused, rambling ideas blurted out on this blog are downright staggering sometimes.
Phil M. says:
July 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm
This is about the dumbest post I’ve ever seen on this blog.
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too true. you’ve managed to surpass yourself.
This sort of thing can generally be describes as sucking royally.
However, look on the bright side. Physics tells us that gravity permeates the universe, and that if too much mass occupies too small a space, the force of gravity overcomes electron degeneracy pressure, forcing total collapse into a black hole.
After 200 odd years of growth, the federal government is rapidly reaching the point where it’s sheer mass overcomes it’s strength. Witness the IRS having no idea what underlings were doing, the NSA letting Snowden walk out, etc. It’s become so big that it can’t manage itself.
Eventually sheer mass will force it to collapse into a black hole. Now, as we know, anything within the vicinity of a black hole will get pulled inside as well, and while interesting from a scientific viewpoint, that sounds quite inconvenient.
Therefore, the only solution is to distance oneself as much as possible from the feds and let them collapse all on their own.
@Janice Moore –
No, absotively posilutely NOT a coincidence, but retaliation to “punish your enemies,” as der Fuehrer is so fond of saying as he orders these atrocities upon the Constitution. And unfortunately, the courts cannot be trusted to protect people against them, as Supreme Court Chief Injustice John Roberts has so namby-pambily demonstrated in rulings regarding CO2 as a pollutant and the Unaffordable Care Act’s status as tax legislation. It’s gonna take state governments standing up to der Fuehrer and his satraps and saying, No you won’t, and being prepared to back that up with armed force. It may even take arming coal miners and workers at coal-fired plants to defend their workplaces when the EPA hatemongers come calling. After all, the Second Amendment gives them that right – and was adopted with the express purpose of enabling the people to resist oppressive government with all necessary force.
The EPA is a certifiable HATE GROUP, and it would be an appropriate action for the Oklahoma legislature and governor to enact a law so designating it. Who does the EPA hate and act out its hatred against? Businesspeople, citizens who use fossil fuel-generated electricity and drive motor vehicles, and people in general who believe in liberty and restraints on government behavior. If unrestrained, the EPA has the ability to wreak enormous destruction on the US economy and persecute any number of people,
In the Democratic Peoples Republic of Kalifornia (whose title shares its initials with those of the official name of North Korea, as well as indicating its general character nowadays) we have a similar, local HATE GROUP called the California Air Resources Board whose specialty is to attack anyone using diesel engines in their businesses and on their farms, based on a “study” that was proven to be without basis in fact and was “researched” by an impostor with fake credentials – CARB used the study KNOWING it was false and its author a charlatan.
Both of these agencies are hugely guilty of zillions of counts of conspiring to violate, and of violating, civil rights, and of extortion and racketeering, and most if not all of their functionaries rightfully ought to go to prison for long terms at hard labor. Even that’s too good for ’em.
@A.D. Everard – Wish it were so, but unfortunately, not enough people seem to recognize the threat from the EPA, and the CRL news media will cover up for and defend the hatemongers to their last breath
Seems to me there is a scene from Ghost Busters that is appropriate here. “Yes he has no…”
Also this scene is appropriate:
Luther Wu says:
July 10, 2013 at 7:15 pm
There have been some number of recent opinion pieces in local OKC papers by enviro- types telling us that we need to switch to “affordable” wind power, etc.
After the state’s recent thrashing by tornadoes, there were quite a few opinions
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YOU MUST BE KIDDING! 300 foot tall cantilevered towers with propellors in tornado alley? What is the design air speed? Would they be insurable?
EPA is too detached from the real world. I suggest their headquarters and personnel be moved out into the heartland to give them a better perspective. Lenexa, Kansas would be a good choice.
Phil M. says:
July 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm
“Are the readers of this blog so disconnected from reality that they honestly believe the EPA files a lawsuit in Federal court simply to make a point?”
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Are you talking about the EPA that declared CO2 a toxin, like Mercury or Arsenic?
Wayne Delbeke says:
July 10, 2013 at 8:50 pm
YOU MUST BE KIDDING!
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Nope. There are large wind farms all over the place out here. Several years ago, the statae Corporation Commission (regulates the utilities) more or less forced OG&E to build wind farms for future development.
@Luther Wu –
How many whooping cranes have been killed by those turbines? Some of them must be astraddle their migration route.
Phil M, listen up:
The EPA has morphed into a self-perpetuating bureaucracy that bases its decisions on politics and pseudo-science. It does nothing that the several States couldn’t do better, cheaper, and more efficiently.
The EPA was recently sued by a homeowner whose land was declared a “wetland” by a single EPA bureaucrat, for having a seasonal mud puddle on it. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where the EPA lost.
When a government agency becomes as powerful and as out of control as the EPA, it needs to be completely abolished. The environment would do just fine without the EPA, which does not really care about snail darters and spotted owls, but instead loves the political power that comes from stomping on the little guy, and from extorting $millions from law-abiding businesses.
The EPA must go, and the sooner the better.
@Latitude –
The Constitution prohibits ex post facto laws, i.e., outlawing past actions previously legal, and even more important, it also prohibits legislation by the executive branch, which is exactly what the EPA has done.
All of which is essentially irrelevant, however, so long as der Fuehrer and the EPA hate team consider themselves above any low.
EPA are only acting out of concern for our future….LOL:
10 July: Guardian: Nafeez Ahmed: James Hansen: Fossil fuel addiction could trigger runaway global warming
Without full decarbonisation by 2030, our global emissions pathway guarantees new era of catastrophic climate change
The world is currently on course to exploit all its remaining fossil fuel resources, a prospect that would produce a “different, practically uninhabitable planet” by triggering a “low-end runaway greenhouse effect.” This is the conclusion of a new scientific paper by Prof James Hansen, the former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the world’s best known climate scientist.
The paper due to be published later this month by Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A) focuses less on modelling than on empirical data about correlations between temperature, sea level and CO2 going back up to 66 million years…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/jul/10/james-hansen-fossil-fuels-runaway-global-warming
The USA would be much improved by the abolition of the EPA and the IRS.
Phil M. says:
July 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm
This is about the dumbest post I’ve ever seen on this blog. And that’s saying a lot.
The confused, rambling ideas blurted out on this blog are downright staggering sometimes.
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You are so correct as others have noted. Off to look at the locations of wind farms in OK. I am staggered. Well maybe not, we have a few in Southern Alberta that seem to be able to handle 100 mph winds – but they don’t produce anything and so far as I am aware none have fallen down but I can’t imagine them withstanding a full blown tornado. Guess we’ll see. Empirical evidence is always the best.
Phil M. says:
July 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm
“The confused, rambling ideas blurted out on this blog are downright staggering sometimes.”
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Glad someone took notice, or it might be for naught.
From the Tulsa World article:
I know OG&E well, they are a class act. However, they are also the target of some real radicals, including Sierra Club, numerous tribes & lefties in the Rockies. They don’t deserve this, they are good folks who do just what they are paid to do = produce electricity reliably and cost-effectively.
@ur momisugly Mike Bromley — glad you made it back safely from the Middle East, via Vienna!
@ur momisugly Outrageous Ampersand — welcome (again) — good for you to keep on posting!) — small comfort, but, I kinda of think somebody in the D’oh!bama administration knew about what was going on at IRS and NSA….
@ur momisuglyChad Wozniak — except for the armed resistance (at this point, anyway — not enough of the general U.S. population is galvanized to back them up against superior military force at this time) — I agree completely.
Eric Worrall: Time for Congress to withdraw funding from the EPA.
D. B. Stealey (a.k.a. Smokey): … it needs to be completely abolished… .”
JM: You can say that again!
EW: Time for Congress to withdraw funding from the EPA.
DB: it needs to be completely abolished
Pat: EPA are only acting out of concern for our future….LOL
@ur momisuglyLuther Wu — That is so SICK. I hope you can just turn off the TV, not read any news for awhile, take a nice long walk along a country lane, listen to the robins and the meadowlarks, and just plain enjoy Oooooh-k-lah-homa. A person can only take so much exposure to that kind of evil. Hang in there, buddy.
@ur momisuglyFerdburple — NICE —- SLAM —- DUNK!
(Hm. Now there are TWO “Phils” who say stupid stuff — Phil dot and Philm — AND there was a mean teen-ager called Phil who kicked my hoppity-hop out from under me when I was a little kid! Ooooo, I don’t like those Phils…. wait a minute… I had a super-wonderful professor whose name was Phil….. meh, that’s only 1 out of 4 Phils — …. don’t like Phils (JUST KIDDING, all you kind, wise, decent Phils out there!). LOL, now that you’ve seen “Phil” written over and over, it doesn’t look like any name I’ve ever heard of — it’s turning into the abbreviation for “Philosophy.” OKAY, I AM STOPPING, NOW!
@Patrick Guinness –
A paper by Hansen “scientific”? I’d like to know what sort of viper oil-hash oil blend those people at the Royal Society are smoking, and where they got it so I can find some and use it to kill some cockroaches. /sarc
Phil M. says:
July 10, 2013 at 8:32 pm
“Are the readers of this blog so disconnected from reality……
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Disconnected is the wrong word, think out of the box.
Your EPA sounds like a Division of Greenpeace. Frankly there should be a criminal action brought if this case is dismissed as ‘frivilous”. In the UK we have an offence of “wasting police time” for those who bring frivilous charges. Great deterent.
You may be interested – especially as your Green loons are wanting to invest in more wind turbines (in tornado alley? That should be interesting!). The latest row in Germany is because a proposal to erect fifteen of the obscene things near Frankfurt Airport has been blocked. Because those big whirly blades interfere with the Air Traffic Radar. Of course, Greenpeace feels the airport should be shut down, but I think they need to check the Climate Report for Hell. There’s no Ice Age developing there …