By GottaLaff
Hey kids! Time for your daily dose of sewage! Here's the latest from our Excrement in Chief:
The Environmental Protection Agency issued a new regulation yesterday exempting an estimated 118,500 tons of hazardous waste annually from strict federal incineration controls, and it separately exempted factory farms from a requirement to report hazardous air pollution to the federal government.
Gee, this isn't stressful at all. Deeeeep breath. ::cough! hack! wheeze!:: Never mind.
It allows companies that create hazardous chemical wastes in industrial processes to burn them as fuel in their own incinerators, instead of paying highly regulated incineration firms to destroy them.
Well now, that's forward-thinking. I hope Jenna and Not-Jenna's future kids appreciate the gifts from Grandpa George.
But Ben Dunham, associate legislative counsel for the nonprofit advocacy group Earthjustice, said that "everything about this rulemaking was flawed," including "the logic that says, 'If you can burn it, it's not a hazardous waste.' " He said it would allow firms with poor environmental records "to simply throw their hazardous waste in the company boiler" and burn it without strict monitoring, sometimes in populated areas.
Mmmm, there's nothing like the smell of smoldering toxic waste in the morning.
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