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.
This would be analogous…
Mom & Dad “you can go outside and play as long as you let us know and we tell you it is ok”
You: Two days later decide to go out and play, since it is a nice day, but you forget to let mom or dad know what you are doing and just go ahead and go outside and play and return safely home for dinner.
Ten years later, Mom & Dad are under new management, and they decide that you failed to file a “going outside report” ten years earlier. Mom & Dad then sue you in an effort to force you to write a report about what could have, but didn’t, happen to you ten years earlier.
Worse, yet… Mom & Dad’s new management team are fighting a holy war to end all going outside.
Why would anyone be anti-government? 🙂
Justthinkin says: @ur momisugly July 10, 2013 at 6:23 pm
… When some clown shows up on my door step,and tells me I can’t grow my carrots because they are not “properly” spaced,well. I’ll leave it at that.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You may not have too long to wait.
That particular phrase did not make it into the final law. However a similar phrase did not make it into the original Animal Welfare law either but was quietly slipped back in a few years later as an amendment to another bill.
Just in case you doubt that is what the plans are:
USDA: People’s Garden
USDA and EPA Make People’s Garden Blossom
These are community gardens BTW, at least so far although we find this Utah Garden Challenge Actually Government Registration In Disguise (Extreme right-wing) The Utah website does link to the USDA and signs you up for the USDA ag Census.
Some of the skuttlebutt floating around the internet (Extreme left-wing) was:
“…..Republican Paul Ryan has been privately circulating proposed legislation limiting the size and type private garden to “protect the fresh produce industry” from people growing their much of their own food. The Legislation includes a possible monetary Fine on people’s property if their garden is larger than a certain size as it would reclassify the property as a “farm” illegally located in a residential (non-agricultural) zoned area…..” True? Who knows I can find nothing else on the net about it but we do see this: Lawn and Order: The Silly War on Home Gardening Escalates
I do know that before the idea for Animal ID (NAIS) was floated and became generally known, the USDA sent an Ag Census to anyone who subscribed to a horse magazine or a seed catalog. (You can do a search for the form if you wish to see one) They are VERY intrusive and want a complete inventory of just about everything you own and if you did not fill it out you got badgered by the USDA and threatened with a fine.
David Middleton,
You have to realize the way that the EPA has always “worked”… It takes them 7-10 years to realize that a company like OG&E failed to have a timely permit review done…. Not necessarily malicious, just par-for-the-course bureaucracy.
I agree with your general thrust that the EPA is waging a “war on coal”, and more generally a “war on affordable energy”, but in this PARTICULAR case, I highly suspect that there was an actual permit violation on the part of OG&E, and the EPA finally got around to calling them on it.
In this case, it doesn’t actually matter whether OG&E’s emissions went up, went down, or stayed the same. If they made “significant changes” via construction without a proper permit review, then they violated their permit… it really is that simple. Permit rules have been like that for many, many years, and the EPA generally has a TON of bureaucratic inertia when it comes to dealing with cases like this, so regardless of who the President is at the time, it might well take EPA 7 years to get around to this sort of permit violation.
Is this “fair”?? Well, it depends on your definition. If you have an Air Permit from the EPA, you should know the contents of the permit well enough to know when it triggers an automatic review due to some large project you might be planning. Most large energy companies have “experts” on staff to find and deal with just such issues.
So, on your overall point that the EPA is being WAY over-zealous trying to do away with cheap, abundant energy… complete agreement, totally with you, absolutely. However, I just think that this OG&E kerfuffle is not necessarily the best example to use. It is pretty clear to me that the 60 million dollar project probably triggered an automatic permit review which OG&E apparently did not get done prior to starting (much less completing) said project, and, as such, their permit was indeed violated.
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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You are missing one very very important point. OG&E DOES NOT GET A JURY TRIAL. As some one else said it goes before ‘an Administrative Law Judge’ another words someone else IN THE EPA on their side and not a neutral party from the public at large.
Folks this is THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT. It is where we lost our country and became ruled by a bunch of faceless bureaucrats.
Direct from the EPA website: http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/epas-administrative-law-judges
the Administrative Law Judges are:
Honorable Susan L. Biro
Honorable Barbara A. Gunning
Honorable M. Lisa Buschmann
Again from the EPA website
If you are like me the first time I ran into this I was going BUT BUT BUT…
Here is how the politicians have gotten around the US Constitution to make sure citizens are denied their right to a trial:
The alphabet agencies should at the least be held accountable to the same standards as private citizens: penalties for perjury, liable to civil suits for harassment and acts that deprive citiens of their civl rights. Additionally, none of them should be permitted to be militarized with SWAT teams, etc. They shouldhave to make a case before a judge to request assistance from a legitimately armed part of government if they believe police/paramilitary force may be required. Our civil service is over armed, over powered, and too ready to blame citizens for their frustrations and failures. This is a dangerous and likely to be deadly path. we must force our public workers back to the role of servants soon. Or else we will find ourselves their servants.
I mentioned the Administrative Law Judges. Let’s see what we can find out about them as individuals:
The first one Honorable Susan L. Biro. Not very much available except this:
Given the maxim that you can tell what a person is like by the company they keep, here is Professor Blake Hudson’s paper: Federal Constitutions, Global Governance, and the Role of Forests in Regulating Climate Change
Another Professor Blake Hudson paper Uncommon Approaches to Commons Problems: Nested Governance Commons and Climate Change
This does not give me the warm fuzzies about an environment lawyer turned EPA Judge.
wayne Job says:
July 11, 2013 at 4:17 am
Call me radical but your main coal fired companies supplying power in America should talk to one another…..
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And Obummer would immediately nationalize them….
@PeterB in Indianapolis says: July 11, 2013 at 10:13 am
I believe the EPA can act on something pretty quickly if it matches their anti-industrial, anti-business, anti-capitalist far-left environmental agenda.
However, even if you are right about the EPA always working this way, you’re not going to convince many people this is the way it should work.
The EPA need to be told to sit and swivel on this one – and many others for that matter.
Izen,
EPA fabricates fatalities. EPA extrapolates dose-mortality response, routinely, ignoring the concept of Threshold Limit Value. This is how we got the famous “no safe amount of exposure” about Asbestos, where ship-builders exposed to 10,000 mg/m3 of air, who got sick, “proved” that schoolchildren exposed to no measurable amount at all were dropping like flies.
It is just bad science, and many at EPA know this, but remain silent for the sake of their pensions. Small doses of lots of toxins do NOTHING!!! Mercury, for instance….
Izen says:
“There is absolutely NO dispute, doubt or controversy about the role of toxic emissions from coal fired plants in killing people.”
Of course there is. What izen means is: there is no doubt in Izen’s mind. Izen then goes off on a long emotional rant, bereft of any verifiable scientific facts.
No one argues that airborne particulates are desirable. But since cave dweller days, our ancestors have been breathing soot-laced air. Thus, our bodies have evolved to clean themselves. That is exactly what cilia in the lungs do. They sweep out particulates.
True, this natural cleansing can be overcome by smoking 20 – 100 cigarettes a day. But current outdoor air quality has so few manmade particulates that our bodies cannot distinguish it from air with natural particulates coming from vegetation, volcanoes, dust storms, wildfires, etc.
There is empirical proof that current air quality in the U.S. and the West is not a problem: people on average are now living much longer, healthier lives. Lung disease is not endemic. And I note that izen has not been able to identify one single person with the cause of death listed as “coal emissions”.
The EPA is now the major problem. It diverts resources from beneficial uses such as medicine, to lining the pockets of EPA bureaucrats. A more serious argument could be made that the EPA causes more death and disease than all the coal plants in the U.S.
But as economist Frederic Bastiat points out, it is a perception problem; a problem of ‘things seen and things not seen’. We do not see the lives saved due to the clean air emitted by power plants, or the lives saved by the health-producing effects of cheap coal-produced energy, cooling us in summer and warming us in winter. Instead, the EPA deliberately causes the price of energy to skyrocket, with all its concomitant ill effects on human health.
The EPA complaint took a while to find.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/oklahoma/2013/07/08/the-epa-is-suing-oklahoma-gas-electric-over-its-power-plant-emission-estimates/
EPA is charging that OGE performed a series of maintenance operations and did not estimate the emissions assuming more coal consumptions from the repairs. They indicated that OGE calculated emissions but told OKDEQ that they would limit operations so that they didn’t exceed PSD increments. EPA believes that the repairs would eliminate outages from failures and increase the efficiency thereby allowing the plants to run more hours and burn more coal, resulting in more emissions. EPA issued a Notice of Violation in April 2011 so this has been going on for a while. The resolution is that EPA wants the calculations from 2003 redone and resubmitted. I assume there are some civil penalties, not mentioned, involved.
Interesting squabble. If OGE’s calculations from the repairs had resulted in exceeding PSD increments from actual baseline, then they would have to repermit the plants with newer, more expensive emissions controls. These calculations use actual emissions as baselines and full operation calculations for future, whether they are practical or not. EPA says that operating limitations to avoid PSD increment triggers can’t be done. Permits with conditions that avoid Title V or PSD thresholds are routinely issued.
You might ask why OGE didn’t resolve this at NOV stage or why EPA didn’t want a settlement. Sounds like EPA is screwing with OGE.
I agree, as David has also agreed, this is about the “classical” pollutants, not GHGs.
What it is about is that a coal plant deteriorates over time from its original design condition. Boiler tubes start wearing out, failing and causing more outages. The turbine blades and nozzles wear out, reducing power output. The result is fewer emissions because the unit produces less power. So the utility comes along, and finally spends the money, signficant sums I grant you, to replace boiler and turbine parts bringing the unit back up to its original design. Now it is more reliable and can now generate as much power as it was originally permitted for. But to EPA, the emissions are now “increased” because the unit can produce more overall emissions as compared to its deteriorated condition. The hourly rate of emissions did not increase over the original permitted limits, but the overall emissions can increase when compared to the emissions before the modifcations. So EPA sues just because you repaired the boiler. This is a tactic that originated with Clinton’s EPA and it has been used successfully many times to get a utility to agree to a consent order to add emissions controls, pay millions to community environmental projects and pay all the lawyers. It’s a scam using the bully pulpit of the EPA and a compliant judiciary. I think it sucks.
oeman50,
What is even worse is that the EPA’s fines, attorney payments [done with a wink and a nod], and the payola to enviro groups comes straight out of the pockets of ratepayers. The public — no matter how poor — is forced to pay the skyrocketing energy costs that result.
The EPA is nothing but a thief, in collusion with other theives. The public is their mark. They do not give a damn about pollution, or they would never have designated CO2 as a “pollutant”; CO2 is no more a “pollutant” than H2O. Both are necessary to life on Earth.
They are crooks and scamsters, and they need to be shut down.
On the matter of: “REPLY:Oh please. Please point to six people, any six people who have on their death certificates “killed by coal plant”.”
Death certificates of people who died from cancer tend to not say what caused the cancer. Death certificates for people who died from lung problems worsened by air pollution tend to not name the polluter.
Death from coal is very difficult to establish. EPA verifies many causes of death with little or no evidence. Cancer from coal? Really? Site the data which establishes this. Lung Problems from Coal? Once again, what do you have? Is it from the EPA? Or is it from a source we could trust has no bias?
Coal power stations tend to have stacks several hundred feet high, which tends to dilute the stack gas pretty well. Tell us how the products of combustion of Coal produce Cancer and/or Lung Problems, if you are able, without citing the EPA itself, who for some reason might have an urge to state some untruth’s….
Cite, so sorry…
This all stems from the EPA’s perpetual abuse of the New Source Review rule…
The EPA has a long history of abusing this rule and then losing in court when challenged. They lost when the Clinton administration attempted to retroactively enforce it.
And the Obama maladministration messed with Texas…
Apropos of being sued for following the law, here is a famous poem:
The Incredible Bread Machine…
This is a legend of success and plunder
And a man, Tom Smith, who squelched world
hunger.
Now, Smith, an inventor, had specialized
In toys. So, people were surprised
When they found that Smith, instead
Of making toys, was BAKING BREAD!
The way to make bread he’d conceived
Cost less than people could believe.
And not just make it! This device
Could, in addition, wrap and slice!
The price per loaf, one loaf or many:
The minuscule sum of under a penny.
Can you imagine what this meant?
Can you comprehend the consequent?
The first time yet the world well fed!
And all because of Tom Smith’s bread.
A citation from the President
For Smith’s amazing bread.
This and other honors too
Were heaped upon his head.
But isn’t it a wondrous thing
How quickly fame is flown?
Smith, the hero of today
Tomorrow, scarcely known.
Yes, the fickle years passed by;
Smith was a millionaire,
But Smith himself was now forgot
Though bread was everywhere.
People, asked from where it came,
Would very seldom know.
They would simply eat and ask,
“Was not it always so?”
However, Smith cared not a bit,
For millions ate his bread,
And “Everything is fine,” thought he,
“I am rich and they are fed!”
Everything was fine, he thought?
He reckoned not with fate.
Note the sequence of events
Starting on the date
On which the business tax went up.
Then, to a slight extent,
The price on every loaf rose too:
Up to one full cent!
“What’s going on?” the public cried,
“He’s guilty of pure plunder.
He has no right to get so rich
On other people’s hunger!”
(A prize cartoon depicted Smith
With fat and drooping jowls
Snatching bread from hungry babes
Indifferent to their howls!)
Well, since the Public does come first,
It could not be denied
That in matters such as this,
The Public must decide.
So, antitrust now took a hand.
Of course, it was appalled
At what it found was going on.
The “bread trust,” it was called.
Now this was getting serious.
So Smith felt that he must
Have a friendly interview
With the men in antitrust.
So, hat in hand, he went to them.
They’d surely been misled;
No rule of law had he defied.
But then their lawyer said:
The rule of law, in complex times,
Has proved itself deficient.
We much prefer the rule of men!
It’s vastly more efficient.
Now, let me state the present rules.
The lawyer then went on,
These very simpIe guidelines
You can rely upon:
You’re gouging on your prices if
You charge more than the rest.
But it’s unfair competition
If you think you can charge less.
A second point that we would make
To help avoid confusion:
Don’t try to charge the same amount:
That would be collusion!
You must compete. But not too much,
For if you do, you see,
Then the market would be yours
And that’s monopoly!”
Price too high? Or price too low?
Now, which charge did they make?
Well, they weren’t loath to charging both
With Public Good at stake!
In fact, they went one better
They charged “monopoly!”
No muss, no fuss, oh woe is us,
Egad, they charged all three!
“Five years in jail,” the judge then said.
“You’re lucky it’s not worse.
Robber Barons must be taught
Society Comes First!”
Now, bread is baked by government.
And as might be expected,
Everything is well controlled;
The public well protected.
True, loaves cost a dollar each.
But our leaders do their best.
The selling price is half a cent.
(Taxes pay the rest!)
Thanks for sharing the fine research [7:10AM, today], Mr. Middleton, and thank you for shining a light on the EPA rats, hopefully, your efforts will make them scuttle back into the sewer they came from.
Economic Parasites Association
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GREAT “poem,” D. B. (a.k.a. “Smokey”) Stealey.
Socialism in a nutshell.
“Capitalism — the unequal sharing of blessings;
Socialism — the equal sharing of misery.”
[paraphrasing Winston Churchill]
Nice refutation of The Izen, Michael Moon.
Janice,
Thanks. EPA served a very useful function in the 1970’s-80’s, eliminating many excesses of industry. Now, not so much, an Agency searching for a raison d’etre. Obamination uses all his Agencies to push his agenda forward, although how harassing coal producers and users helps with “redistribution” is beyond me. Possibly he actually believes the CAGW meme, more likely he sees supporting it contributing cash to the DNC.
“Agency searching for a raison d’etre… .” [Moon at 3:06PM]
Well put. Like most labor unions (their usefulness largely ended a looooong time ago).
Yes, indeed, the EPA’s blood-sucking lawsuits = contrived self-justification in the course of the extortion of its lifeblood (cash). In a word, parasites.
LOL, the Puppet-in-Chief barely knows what country he’s in. Others do his thinking for him. He believes in only ONE thing: himself.
I think his handlers simply see CAGW as a means to: 1) wreck the U.S. economy to enhance the position of their socialist friends such as China; and 2) to CONTROL what is left. They could not care less about “the planet.” They do not agree with, but only use those who eco-religious beliefs enslave them to such teachings.
Getting kind of OT, but, the thread appears to be coming………to…………..an………………………………….end.