EPA Crying Over Spilt Milk

[Perchoutofwater]

EPA now to regulate spilled milk -- really

 

By: Thomas Sowell 02/01/11 8:05 PM

Despite the old saying, "Don't cry over spilled milk," the Environmental Protection Agency is doing just that.

 

We all understand why the EPA was given the power to issue regulations to guard against oil spills, such as that of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska or the more recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But not everyone understands that any power given to any bureaucracy for any purpose can be stretched far beyond that purpose.

 

In a classic example of this process, the EPA has decided that, since milk contains oil, it has the authority to force farmers to comply with new regulations to file "emergency management" plans to show how they will cope with spilled milk, how farmers will train "first responders" and build "containment facilities" if there is a flood of spilled milk.

 

Since there is no free lunch, all of this is going to cost the farmers both money and time that could be going into farming-- and is likely to end up costing consumers higher prices for farm products.

 

It is going to cost the taxpayers money as well, since the EPA is going to have to hire people to inspect farms, inspect farmers' reports and prosecute farmers who don't jump through all the right hoops in the right order. All of this will be "creating jobs," even if the tax money removed from the private sector correspondingly reduces the jobs that can be created there.

 

Does anyone seriously believe that any farmer is going to spill enough milk to compare with the Exxon Valdez oil spill or the BP oil spill?

 

Do you envision people fleeing their homes, as a flood of milk comes pouring down the mountainside, threatening to wipe out the village below?

 

It doesn't matter. Once the words are in the law, it makes no difference what the realities are. The bureaucracy has every incentive to stretch the meaning of those words, in order to expand its empire.

 

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has expanded its definition of "discrimination" to include things that no one thought was discrimination when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. The Federal Communications Commission is trying to expand its jurisdiction to cover things that were never included in its jurisdiction, and that have no relationship to the reason why the FCC was created in the first place.

 

Yet the ever-expanding bureaucratic state has its defenders in the mainstream media. When President Obama recently mentioned the possibility of reducing burdensome regulations-- as part of his moving of his rhetoric toward the political center, even if his policies don't move-- there was an immediate reaction in a New York Times article defending government regulations.

 

Under a headline that said, "Obama May Find Useless Regulations Are Scarcer Than Thought," the Times writers declared that there were few, if any, "useless" regulations. But is that the relevant criterion?

 

Is there any individual or business willing to spend money on everything that is not absolutely useless? There are thousands of useful things out there that any given individual or business would not spend their money on.

 

When I had young children, I often thought it would be useful to have a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica for them. But I never bought one.

 

Why? Because there were other little things to spend money on, like food, clothing and shelter.

 

By the time I could afford to buy a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the kids were grown and gone. But at no time did I consider the Encyclopedia Britannica "useless."

 

Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions-- and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.

 

No doubt the EPA's costly new regulations may somewhere, somehow, prevent spilled milk from pouring out into some street and looking unsightly. So the regulations are not literally "useless."

 

What is useless is making that the criterion.

 

Link

 

We need more government

[SayItAintSoJoe]

It looks like thousands of gallons of unpasteurized milk spilt into a waterway could have a negative affect on the environment.

 

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."

 

They’re asking that farmers that store more 1,320 gallons above ground or 42,000 gallons below ground have a plan in place in case there is a spill. Having a plan in place doesn’t sound unreasonable to me.

[SeductiveNun]

I look at it this way. This is the EPA taking action against what I would think is a very small percentage of farmers who may have adverse affects on local waterways. If the EPA was at all serious about the effects of ag runoff to waterways, they would come up with much more stringent rules that deal with fertilizer, manure, and feedlot runoff from fields instead of this trifling legislation. But then again, if they were to do that, the farm lobby would scream bloody murder.

 

It's always easier to make policy on an event that would likely be a one-time occurrance that would affect a much smaller percentage of total farms than to address a chronic pollution issue that the entire farm industry would fall under.

[redrumjuice]

The gov't must control everything. We must fundamentally change Amerika.

[rattsass]

My family lives in dairy country, and small farmers are not a huge source of any spilled milk. If this is aimed at large operations that have a history of this kind of thing, small farmers should be exempt.

 

But helping the small farmer in any way except paying him not to produce fell out of fashion long ago. God bless America.

[The Irish Doggy]

Really, we should have known better than to believe such a sensationalistic headline from a politician..

 

What's all this ruckus?

 

Spilled Milk Regulations a Myth, E.P.A. Says

By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF

Green: Politics

 

To Representative Morgan Griffith, a freshman Republican from Virginia, nothing illustrates the Environmental Protection Agency’s overreach more clearly than a new rule applying the same regulations that govern spilled oil to milk spilled on dairy farms.

 

“It appears spilt milk is just as threatening as an oil spill,” Mr. Griffith wrote in a recent newsletter to his constituents.

 

Such rules would force dairy farmers to build containment facilities in case of a spill and develop emergency plans, he continued, “jacking up the cost of milk and butter.”

 

Spilled milk also surfaced at a March 3 hearing, when Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona grilled Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. chief, over the alleged regulation. “How can the E.P.A. promulgate new rules like this?” Mr. Flake demanded. “What’s next — sippy cups in the House cafeteria?”

 

In the midst of a heated debate over the E.P.A.’s authority to regulate heat-trapping emissions like carbon dioxide, the charge makes for great political theater. But according to the agency, it is pure fiction.

 

In testimony before Congress on Thursday, Ms. Jackson declared that the new rule cited by Republicans would, in fact, exempt dairy containers from the regulations that govern oil facilities — rules that have been on the books for nearly 40 years.

 

“It was our work with the dairy industry that prompted E.P.A. to develop an exemption and make sure the standards of the law are met in a common-sense way,” she said. “All of E.P.A.’s actions have been to exempt these containers. And we expect this to become final very shortly.”

 

Ms. Jackson’s account has been echoed by dairy industry representatives.

 

In her testimony, Ms. Jackson called the rumored milk regulations one of several “fictions” being spread by Republicans and special interest groups about proposed federal environmental regulations.

 

“We all have a responsibility to ensure that the American people have facts and the truth in front of them, particularly when fictions are pushed by special interests with an investment in the outcome,” she said.

 

Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking organization run by The St. Petersburg Times, also examined the Republican claims on the spilled milk regulations and rated them false.

 

The furor over the regulations appear to have begun with an unsigned editorial by The Wall Street Journal on Jan. 29.

 

“The E.P.A. thinks the next blowout may happen in rural Vermont or Wisconsin,” the article states. “Other dangerous pollution risks that somehow haven’t made it onto the E.P.A. docket include leaks from maple sugar taps and the vapors at Badger State breweries.”

 

Ms. Jackson said she had written a letter to the editor explaining that the agency had decided to exempt the dairy industry from the oil spill rules several months before, but the newspaper declined to publish it.

 

And from Politifact

 

Morgan Griffith says EPA treats milk spills same way as oil spills

False

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Rep. H. Morgan Griffith is having a cow about EPA milk regulations.

 

U.S. Rep. H. Morgan Griffith is milking his opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency for every last drop.

 

The Republican stressed his contempt for the agency throughout a heated campaign last fall in which Griffith unseated Democrat Rick Boucher, a 14-term congressman from coal-rich Southwest Virginia. In his victory speech, Griffith vowed to go to Washington and "fight to rein in the EPA." Since taking office, he has fired out a barrage of anti-EPA statements.

 

In a February newsletter to constituents, Griffith claimed that new EPA rules treat milk spills the same way they treat oil spills. He titled the newsletter "Crying over spilt milk."

 

"What do spilt milk and oil have in common?" he wrote. "Quite a bit, according to the EPA. In fact, a new ruling by the EPA would force dairy farmers to comply with the Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure Program when dealing with spilt milk -- the same regulations oil and natural gas producers must follow. The EPA’s reasoning is that milk contains ‘a percentage of animal fats, which is a non-petroleum oil.’ It appears spilt milk is just as threatening as an oil spill."

 

With visions of dairy farmers delicately dabbing milk off the wings of ducks, we looked into the claim.

 

Beth Breeding, Griffith’s press secretary, said her boss’s information came from the EPA’s website. So we went there.

 

Right away, we found problems with Griffith’s claim. The website says milk has been regulated under the Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure program since 1973, when the Clean Water Act took effect. The law was passed by Congress the preceding year over the veto of Republican President Richard Nixon. So this is hardly a "new ruling," as Griffith says. It has been in effect for 38 years.

 

The EPA site says "since the SPCC rule became law in 1973, all kinds of oils including petroleum and edible oils (such as animal fats and vegetable oils) have been considered oils. This is because the SPCC rule gets its definition of ‘oil’ from the Clean Water Act, which was authored by Congress."

 

The website also notes the rule only applies to farms storing more than 1,320 gallons of oil or milk.

 

So what’s new? According to the EPA, the only thing that comes close is a rule change it announced on Jan. 15, 2009. It goes in effect at the end of this month.

 

The simple purpose of the change is to exclude milk and dairy farms from the spill rules governing oil products. That’s the exact opposite of what Griffith claims. Here’s what the regulation says:

 

"EPA proposes to exempt milk containers and associated piping and appurtenances from the SPCC requirements provided they are constructed according to the current applicable 3-A Sanitary Standards, and are subject to the current applicable Grade "A" Pasteurized Milk Ordinance," or similar state laws.

 

Translated into plain English, the rule means milk storage will no longer have to meet the EPA’s oil spill rules, provided storage tanks meet pasteurization laws. In Virginia it is illegal to sell "raw," or unpasteurized, milk, so the state’s dairy farmers should already be in compliance with the new standards.

 

Raw milk is now legal for sale in 25 states, although 15 of those states only allow sales directly from a farm. So conceivably raw milk producers -- which are almost exclusively small operations, according to a group that advocates for raw milk -- might still need to comply with the SPCC rules. But this would affect only a very small fraction of total U.S. milk.

 

Baffled by how Griffith could have this claim so mixed up, we went back to his office for additional information. The second time around his press secretary pointed us to a Jan. 27 editorial in The Wall Street Journal that makes virtually the same claim. The editorial wrongly said new EPA rules will apply to dairy farms and cover milk storage. The amended rule only applies to petroleum products -- gasoline, fuel oil and the like -- that are stored in large quantities on dairy farms.

 

Let’s review our findings.

 

Griffith claimed a "new ruling by the EPA would force dairy farmers to comply" with strict regulations for spills and leaks. He said the rules were the same as those enforced on oil and natural gas companies.

 

In fact, these regulations have been in place for 38 years and are not new at all. The "new ruling" from the EPA, announced in 2009 and taking effect in a few weeks, actually excludes milk from the spill standards, giving dairy farmers fewer regulations to meet. That’s the exact opposite of what Griffith claims.

 

Sure, Griffith got some of his information from an inaccurate editorial in The Wall Street Journal. But a congressman who is railing against a federal agency has the means to get his facts right.

 

Griffith is dishing udder cow chips. We rate his statement False.

[The Holy Roller]

Really, we should have known better than to believe such a sensationalistic headline from a politician..

 

What's all this ruckus?

 

 

 

And from Politifact

 

Nice work ID! Politicians.