The EPA Is One Of The World’s Worst Polluter.

The EPA Created A Disaster In Colorado:
Who Will Hold The Agency To Account?

by Phil Kerpen, Contributing Author: This week, the head of the EPA, Gina McCarthy faces several congressional committees in an effort to finally get some answers on the EPA’s outrageous dumping of over 3 million gallons of toxic sludge in the Animas River. It’s already been quite the year for the EPA and as the spotlight continues to shine on this agency, they are looking more and more like a criminal syndicate rather than a group protecting our environment.

We have a chance to rein in the EPA with the REINS act, but we need Congress to show strong support for it.

If you don’t believe the EPA is out control, here are just some of things the EPA has done this year:

• The Supreme Court found that the EPA’s mercury rule, which the EPA admits imposed costs of $9.6 billion a year and claimed benefit of just $4 million was ILLEGAL. But here’s the sick part - the EPA immediately bragged that its illegal rule had already served its purpose, saying: "this rule was issued more than three years ago, investments have been made and most plants are already well on their way to compliance."
  
• Fifteen states have filed a lawsuit against the EPA for their Clean Power Grab, which attempts to force states to adopt cap-and-trade even though Congress rejected it. President Obama once explained “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” The head of the EPA admitted "We know that low-income minority communities would be hardest hit." And Obama’s own liberal law professor has referred to this egregious tactic as “burning the Constitution.
• The EPA’s outrageous “Waters of the United States” or WOTUS rule asserts EPA and Army Corps of Engineers jurisdiction over creeks and ditches, even though the Clean Water Act specifically limits federal jurisdiction to “navigable waterways.” That flies in the face of two Supreme Court decisions and puts the organization that polluted the Animas River in charge of all the country’s water.

The stunning abuses of power at the EPA are all happening despite the fact the agency is now one of the worst environmental polluters on the planet. By now you’ve heard about the EPA’s Animas River disaster, but it’s much worse than most of the media is reporting. The key facts are:

• Property-owner Todd Hennis told the EPA to stay off his land because last time they came on one of his properties they increased pollution. They responded by fining him $35,000 per day. He fought them for a while but as the fines stacked up he gave up and granted the EPA access to his Gold King mine. Of course they then promptly caused a massive breech that contaminated the Animas River with over 3 million gallons of toxic sludge, and didn’t even admit to it for 24 hours. We still don’t know what the worst part of that sentence is.
• The EPA then tried to provide relief to the Navajo Nation for contaminating their drinking water, only to send them relief water in tankers containing OIL. The EPA actually filled old oil tanks with water and gave it to people to drink. You can’t make up this level of incompetence.
• After the Animas River spill, it was revealed that the EPA also contaminated another water source in Georgia by striking a water main on a nearby property they were monitoring. This disaster has forced mercury, lead, arsenic and chromium to flow downstream in Lake Oconee and the Oconee River.

Can we really afford to let a criminal syndicate like the EPA operate like this any longer? Writing their own rules for themselves and increasingly for the entire U.S. economy? The REINS Act would end the party for the EPA by ending their power to pass any major regulation without sending it to Congress first for prior approval. The REINS Act passed the House earlier this year, but we need your help to move it forward in the Senate. Please take a moment to support the REINS Act by clicking here.
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Phil Kerpen is president of American Commitment. Follow him at (@kerpen) and on Facebook. He is a contributing author at the ARRA News Service.

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