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EPA: Mission Creep on Steroids

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  April 10th, 2010 at 07:15 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Iron Eyes Cody, the faux-Indian of the Keep America Beautiful ad campaign, had a point.

In the 1960s, our environment was a mess.

I can remember streams full of suds from non-biodegradable detergents. Litter was a big problem everywhere. The air in major cities ranged from blue to grey to brown. There were two high-profile oil spills, one in California and one in Louisiana. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire.

As the hippie-driven Whole Earth movement crested, the first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970. The Environmental Protection Agency was formed in July, 1970.

Over the last 40 years, things have improved. The air and the water are cleaner. And the EPA deserves some of the credit. But even more credit must also go to the thousands of companies and millions of individuals whose environmental attitudes have changed.

EPA’s attitude has changed, too. No longer content to live within the confines of the legislation which defines its mission, EPA has embarked on an unprecedented bureaucratic power grab by reinterpreting the rules, redefining its mission and its authority.

In forty short years, EPA has morphed from an agency with a well-defined, popular and worthy mission to one whose bureaucratic ambitions are not limited to controlling and cleaning up the environment. The goal of this regulatory octopus is the control of the entire industrialized economy of our country.

As Iain Murray writes in a Washington Times opinion piece titled EPA’s Ginormous Power Grab, EPA has built upon its greenhouse gas ‘finding’ (that GHGs contribute to global warming and thus constitute a hazard to public health) using an interlocked, four-pronged strategy:

  • Encourage California and other states to adopt nonstandard fuel-economy requirements.
  • Expropriate the authority of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in setting fuel-economy standards for the auto industry.
  • Take the lead on setting U.S. climate and energy policy.
  • Administratively amending the Clean Air Act (“tailoring” is the term of art) to make the Act workable for CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases it was never meant to regulate.

By granting California the power to ignore federal fuel-economy standards, the EPA created a regulatory patchwork that imposes significant burdens on the auto industry.

This led to the White House brokering a deal whereby the EPA muscles in on the NHTSA’s statutory authority to regulate fuel-economy standards, something for which the EPA has no statutory authority.

The EPA claims this then compels it to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources, thereby making it the effective arbiter of national climate policy – even as Congress debates what to do about the issue.

Even the EPA seems to recognize the absurdity of the resulting regulations under the language of the Clean Air Act – which would lead to the EPA having to issue permits for fast-food franchises and large apartment buildings to emit greenhouse gases – so the agency took upon itself the power to tailor statutory language, thereby playing lawmaker, to avoid the regulatory debacle which it itself had put in motion.

And that, dear reader, is why conservatives don’t trust bureaucracies.

Cross-posted at VladEnBlog.

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COMMENTS

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  • mrbigw

    expropriate
    protection
    angency

    Don’t worry we’ll only take action against certain people / products / non – payers….

    W

  • http://thesandsinstitute.org Vassar Bushmills

    I was in state government (enviro regulation) when EPA was passed in 1970. It just shows what the left hand can do when the right hand is fending off anti-war radicals. The Clean Water Act, Clean Air also were passed in the same period.

    And you are correct, the transformation was fantastic. Over the next 30 years air and water quality improved, so much so that the Clinton administration had to come up with new reasons (asthma) to justify tax expenditures that would improve air quality 1%-2% when a lesser amount had improved it 90+%.

    I’ve always believed that global temperatures (warming) were a lagging response to this turnaround that began in 1969. The smog shield dissipating, they began to reverse in 1998.

    Finally, EPA proves one of the fundamental laws of bureaucratism. There are two functions of EPA, one scientific, the other regulatory. The first is infinite in nature. We will always need scientists sticking litmus paper in the water ad sending back to the lab for analysis.

    The finite mission, the one that was supposed to end (but we know can never end) is what we do with that information, i.e, write new regulations, which means forever and and a day changing moving the goal posts as to what is and is not acceptable air and water quality, etc.

    When I left my strip mining agency in 1971 there was one lawyer, I was the legal clerk, four engineers and scientists and app 80 field agencies. When I revisited that office in 1975, it had moved and then had 62 attorneys and took up an entire floor in a new high rise office complex. I think there were still four engineers.

    • http://vladenblog.tumblr.com Vladimir

      Just one program, Superfund: I can’t recall the proportion of that money that has gone to lawyers, but it’s staggering.

      EPA’s bureaucracy has a voracious demand for data. They impose a heavy burden on business, documenting things like CO2 emissions that don’t make the air one whit cleaner.

      The most ridiculous example I can cite from personal experience is that they require us to estimate, document & report the amount of rainwater runoff into the Gulf of Mexico from our platforms and drilling rigs. As those are required to be pollution-free anyway, I’ve never been able to understand the point.

      • http://thesandsinstitute.org Vassar Bushmills

        Bureaucracies make absolutely no pretense about the mindlessness of what they do. In government, “What is, is” is as fatalistic as “Insh’allah.”

        The good news, if there is any, if we can ever summon the political will to do it, we can go through with a weed whacker. And in EPA we know exactly where to go first. The finite side.

  • banzaibob

    Maybe they will tell you how many children you can have as they do in China. Sorry folks, children emit greenhouse gasses and you will be limited to two or maybe one child per family.

    Limit you on what you can eat. Animals emit greenhouse gasses as well so they will regulate how many cows, chickens, and pigs a person can raise.

    If you don’t think so, just wait.

  • ntrepid

    With only three letters I can make a pretty good case for (more than) off-setting ?some of the credit? for the observed improvements over 40 years: DDT.

    Excellent post Vladimir?almost a direct hit on one of my biggest pet peeves.

    Ntrepid
    Proud Redstate ?Old Timer?

  • smagar

    Committee chairmanships. Investigatory authority. Subpoena power.

  • donnybrooke

    Beginning with the EPA, industry in this country began to die.
    The steel industry is all but dead. I remember huge steel mills,
    belching out tons of reddish smoke day and night. They’re gone
    now, choking the lungs out of Chinese workers instead of Americans.
    So yes, we have cleaner air.

    You may be out of work, but at least you can breath.

    PS> I believe that global warming was caused by strip malls.
    The more asphalt and concrete you have, the greater the radiant
    energy soaked up and retained. No one’s ever done a study on that! :D

    • rbdwiggins

      They’re called “heat islands.” They have little effect on the climate, but they produce corrupt temperature measurements when the recording station is placed within one.

      • donnybrooke

        I would think that structures that retain heat would certainly affect climate, specifically in the instance of rising temperatures. The more heat you retain, the greater the rise in temperature for the Earth.

        And the increase in urbanization (not to mention the building of mile upon mile of Interstate Highway) corresponds with the supposed “hockey stick”.

        Simple, eh? I only need a grant of perhaps 5 million dollars to prove this theory. ;)

        • rbdwiggins

          That’s why there’s been no discernible increase in the planet’s temperature over the last century. If the data manipulation is removed, the planet’s temperature has changed approximately 0.3 C°ree;. The manipulation of temperature data accounts for nearly all of the “warming” during that period.

          • rbdwiggins

            My html has grown weak…

            An approximate change of 0.3 C° during the 20th Century, and that gain appears to have been erased during the first-decade of the new Millennium.

            Let’s not forget: The EPA acquired its current authority to regulate “greenhouse” gases based on false evidence presented before the Court.

            Coincidentally:

            STEVENS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which KENNEDY, SOUTER, GINSBURG, and BREYER, JJ., joined. ROBERTS, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SCALIA, THOMAS, and ALITO, JJ., joined. SCALIA, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and THOMAS and ALITO, JJ., joined.

            (emphasis mine)

      • Achance

        at airports, the place where most weather measurements are taken. There are three places here in the Juneau area where “official” temperature measurements are made; at the NWS office in the Mendenhall Valley about a mile from the face of the Mendenhall Glacier, at the airport about four miles from the NWS office and on tidewater but because of wide tide variances there is a wildly varying water influence, and downtown at the federal building right on Gastineau Channel. There are always significant variances between the three and in clear, cold weather the difference may be as much as eight or ten degrees between the NWS Office and the airport and as much as twenty degrees between the NWS and Downtown. So, fundamentally, the only thing the temperature report for “Juneau” tells you is the temperature at that particular spot. I have tracking thermometers both at home and on my boat. My house is near the NWS Office and my boat is three or four miles away but in the water in Auke Bay. In winter it is consistently ten to twenty degrees warmer at the boat than at home – good thing too because it costs as small fortune to keep that boat above freezing in winter.

  • rbdwiggins

    It’s time to eliminate the entire agency.

    While we’re at it, nine or ten Cabinet positions should be eliminated and the authority returned to the States, or if applicable, folded into the remaining departments.

  • http://charlemagne-the-hammer.blogspot.com/ DerKrieger

    the failure of the Congress to act in regulating CO2 and leaving it to the EPA means that the next GOP administration can undo it. And GOP majorities in Congress next year can gut this agency and should since it’s been taken over by Leftists. As have most of the bureaucracies.

  • romeg

    that they do not possess. These bureaucracies are extensions of Congress. While Congress has the power to “regulate interstate commerce” I, not being a Washington Lawyer, fail to grasp how any of these constitute “interstate commerce”. I do recognize that the Congress attempted to re-define what constitutes interstate commerce during the ’60′s and ’70′s I think most of that has been overturned by various decisions since then.

    Read Erick’s “16 things that Congress is permitted to do” piece from a couple of weeks ago.

    These agencies are able to do this because Governors have abdicated their State’s Constitutional authority and waived their rights under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

    When Governors start living up the oath of office they took when they were inaugurated then and ONLY THEN will we begin to see a reversal of this trend.

    This is how the hated 55 mph speed limit was defeated. The Governor of New Mexico (memory fails me. I cannot remember his name) filed suit against the Feds and had had the legislature of NM pass new speed limit laws. When the case was about to be heard, the Feds blinked and Nixon’s Folly was repealed.

    Let’s stop electing governors who are so beholden to Washington and dependent on grant money and fearful of reprisal’s from the Feds and restore this country to the path on which the Founders set it 224 years ago. Let’s repeal the 16th amendment and neuter the power grabbers in DC.

    • hickorystick

      the Governors know very well that they have a racket going on with DC. They get additional money without having to say they raised taxes, DC (not comics) gets more power within the state. The DC needs the states to acqueisce before receiving additional power. Think contract law as opposed to statutory law. It involves money in exchange, with the unwritten stipulation the Governor keep quite. A few Governors popped-off during the Stimulus, saying it was going to raise the cost of business, or Medicare, or interfere with building codes (Alaska). but the legislators knee-capped them.. We are not all Socialists now, but we are all caught up in a criminal racket. And the Fed had the gall to call Italians mafia.
      When Rod McKenna called foul, you should have heard the Democrats shriek. Rod is becoming a cult hero in Washington (State). He stood up for the people and the state. I just wish we still had roving bards in our culture; they would be singing his praises. Now, no one sticks up for the people

      • http://www.scragged.com petrarch

        Every governor may dream of being President, but they have to know they can’t all be. Why then would they be so willing to give up almost all of their power to the Feds, even for the reward of not having to be the tax-raising bad guys? Once upon a time Governors were almost little Presidents in their own right, except for foreign policy; now they are more like mid-level appartchiks in the administrative state, which can’t be anything like as much fun.

  • Common_Cents

    They may have started w/ noble intentions but after awhile they exist to exist. The organization depends on the problems(or new made up problems) themselves to remain to justify their very own existence. Kind of like entitlements. Nobody wants their gig to end no matter what.

    There are many, many examples everywhere, such as NGO’s in developing countries getting handouts to give handouts rather than creating solutions for sustainable living.

    In reality, their goal should be to make progress to the point they are no longer needed. This would be the same for the EPA to a large extent. The same for unions with so much governmental regulation in place for workers already.

  • renny

    all staffs and bureaucracies 10% and institute a hiring freeze.

    Each year it should cut another 10%.for five years. Big places to cut more could be the State Department, which is full of Yalies and Hahvahd commies and has been since the FBI found 246 in 1947, after WW II, the same that McCarthy looked for–because no one had moved on them.

    These are the same people that sabotage Rep. administrations regularly–because administrations change, but the bureaucrats are there for life.

    Many of the regulatory agencies can be trimmed because they have all suffered mission creep, a la, the FDA that now wants to regulate vitamins and holistic/alternative products and may require restaurants and food services to post ingredients and caloric content on all menus and presumably down the road tax you for eating too much ice cream or using too much salt.

    • Xasteius

      And require that the people who head the agencies have appropriate experience.

  • http://www.libertytreehugger.com reverelth

    all such gubmint agencies morph thusly.

  • juumanistra

    The goal of the EPA has always been the destruction of economic activity. That hammer its enabling legislation has given it: By either prohibiting outright the usage of “dirty” practices or erecting regulatory hurdles so as to make them cost-ineffective, the EPA gets rid of “dirty” ways of doing things and replaces them with solutions that are “clean”. (Quotes are not intended to be derogatory, merely delineating. For, as you said Vladimir, there’s some really noxious stuff covered by environmental legislation: The above nomenclature just tries to avoid generalizing across FSWDA, CERCLA, SDWA, CAA, and the like.) Of course, at the time, the powers that be felt that the foregone economic activity lost to environmentalism was worth the benefits gained from the policies, and I doubt folks would much want to return to the great smog plumes of the Sixties.

    All of that said, though, no real mission creep has occurred at EPA. They still have their hammer and are using it as they always have. Merely that, after having exhausted the low- and medium-hanging fruits, EPA’s having to genuinely stretch to keep doing its job. Not exactly a kind view of EPA, but it really is the only analytical lens by which there is any kind of internal consistency to the raft of American environmental law.

    • http://vladenblog.tumblr.com Vladimir

      Yes, EPA’s regulatory powers have always been to impose a cost on the regulated utilities, manufacturers, or whatever.

      Up to some point, that was a popular trade-off, because people could see that there was progress being made. Whether or not the regs & EPA’s enforcement is due the credit for things getting better, I’m skeptical. At some point the marketplace demanded better environmental performance.

      But regulating CO2 and greenhouse gases as pollutants, I would call mission creep. Same with NO2. Same with Lisa Jackson’s insistence on finding an “environmental racism” angle to pursue. All these are internal bureaucratic initiatives* designed to expand their role in government.

      *Yes, I know the courts ordered EPA to treat CO2 as a pollutant, but it was rather cooperative in being dragged to that position.

      • juumanistra

        I wholeheartedly agree that what EPA’s trying to do with its current CAA shenanigans is definitely new and definitely objectionable. I suppose my quibble was just over the term “mission creep”, but ultimately it’s semantic and petty. Which, really, is neither here nor there.

        Though for as much crap as EPA gets, and as much crap as it needlessly stirs up whenever the Left heads the agency, it’s not all their fault. Plenty of blame to be passed around for the insanity of American environmental jurisprudence: Let’s have a big hand for the Congressional Class of 1980 that us the original, unamended CERCLA and the ensuing decade-long nightmare of litigation it caused. As well as the Supremes for such wonderfully clear insights into the statutory language of the Clean Water Act whereby water is a pollutant thereunder.

  • http://beaglescout.wordpress.com Beaglescout

    Jolly old Vladimir Lenin’s birthday, that’s who.

  • http://truthupfront.blogspot.com jsanzone

    and it’s been functioning in commerce clause-esque capacity for a few decades, with the recent global warming hype exacerbating it to the max. Like you said, mission creep on steroids.

    We have to remember, though, in the late 19th and early 20th century, most roads and yards were void of trees and even grass. Rivers were considered nothing more than drains, and the ocean was seen as a source of endless, abundant plunder. We have to give most of the credit in reversing these attitudes to, simply, the advance in science and education. People now understand that when they throw something away, it has to go somewhere. If you dump something in the river, it affects those downstream and litters the ocean. If you clear all the trees, the water and soil will run off and flood, and turn to sterile desert. In just the past several decades, the advance in microbe research has painted a much more complete picture of life on earth.

    If you had to analyze the ‘cost-benefit’ analysis that many like to apply to environmental regulation, I’d say that the benefits have slightly outdone the costs as far as the EPA is concerned, at least from its inception to the present. With its direction today, there’s no way that will be totally reversed.

  • i8bugs

    Try this: Call the EPA and tell them you are moving and have toxic chemicals you need disposed. “Oh, you missed our annual drive, you will have to wait till next September”.

    “So where can I take these chemicals?”

    EPA: “I really have no idea.”

    Guess where they went? In the EPA’s dumpster.

  • ihateliberals

    all carbonated soft drinks will soon be in the cross hairs of the EPA. what a huge source of CO2 soft drinks are. I’m surprised that the EPA hasn’t shout them down yet. Of curse they are working on ways to tax us humans for breathing.