Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it ~ Edmund Burke

Seems like there is a politician out there wanting to pass - delete laws without understanding why we did & didn't make them already.
People want to license cats because we license dogs. But cats don't pack & rip your kids to pieces.
People want to license bicyclists because motorists require licensing. But bicyclists don't crash into other motorists, buildings and largee groups of people causing death, destruction and financial ruination.
Now this punk, Congressman Matt Gaetz (R) in Florida, wants to eliminate the EPA. he was born 12 years after President Richard Nixon (R) signed the agency into existence. He apparently doesn't know what went on before and why the agency was created.
A major job they had was to figure out what stored waste was toxic, what wasn't, where it was and if it was safely stored. People weren't worried about this stuff and a lot was in flood plains that couldn't be developed. OTOH, poorly stored toxic waste was getting into the waterways.
But Gaetz doesn't get this because he's just the sort of country lawyer Edmund Burke warned against after the French Revolution.
He's mainly grandstanding as I doubt this will get anywhere but with Dangerous Don & his denizens in power, who the fuck knows? I'm sure Putin would love a sickly American society & military.

Congress.gov

Burning Pooh

Anerobic Digester?
Cool, but how many wrenches can Hamilton County throw into the works?
Notably, at about the 7 minute mark in This 3/22/2016 meeting of the Education & Entrepreneurship Committee it's pointed out that the county had been working with the city of Cincinnati & the EPA had all been working in concert, but, at the last minute Hamilton County reversed course & created havoc & disputes with the EPA.
sigh
More Hamilton County kick it down the road BS.
More Hamilton County MSD power grab BS.

The Devolution of the GOP

The Democratic party has hemorrhaged right wingers & the GOP has been sucking them in like vampires for decades. Strom Thurmond lead the first group shortly after WWII & Ronald Reagan opened the doors to them in the 80s. Lyndon Johnson pissed off the racist southern Democrats with the Civil Rights act in 64 and with the failure of George Wallace, the south has just gotten redder ever since.
The GOP is essentially a party of right wing nationalist corporatists nowadays AKA fascists. The old GOP, heck even Nixon's GOP is dead.
If anybody doubts the party snatcher idea, check out their latest move, H.R. 1459 which essentially guts the Antiquities Act of 1906.
The 1906 legislation authorized the president to act independently to protect our natural lands. The latest legislation seeks to politicize the decisions & mire them in debate & bureaucracy.
Both bills were submitted by Republicans & the act in 1906 was signed by Republican environmentalist President Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt was no friend to the corporatists but now the GOP is stacked with corporatists & eschatologists.
Conservative used to have something to do with conservation. Roosevelt got that and it showed in his vision for the future. The people claiming that designation today might as well call themselves woombas or something for their philosophies have nothing to do with the definition of the word.
There is an evil force amongst us in the USA today and it is the Democratic Party's right wing - the GOP.

Roxanne Qualls - Sound Stewardship & Vision

The EPA has given Cincinnati (& Mercer Island,WA) aGreen Power Leadership Award for substantially cutting down our use of non-renewable energy sources.

Cincinnati uses 408 million kilowatt-hours of green power per year, enough to offset the carbon dioxide emissions of 60,000 cars a year.

That's 14% of our power consumption.
The main person behind this transition is Cincinnati Mayoral candidate Roxanne Qualls. Her leadership & vision in promoting sustainable policy in both energy consumption and waste management has saved Cincinnati residents money in the near term & promise to save Cincinnatians money in the long term. It's hard to put an exact dollar value on long term health benefits, extending the life of our landfills & prudently using our finite natural resources.

More at the Cincinnati Business Courier

Exhuming Rosia Montana

In a recent post I brought up the rape of the Carpathian Mountains & the Rosia Montana gold mining scheme. It appears they are quite happy disturbing the dead in their quest for treasure. One of the issues here is that the Romanian Orthodox Church doesn't really allow graves to be moved around like they are in Ohio. They can be exhumed for ritual cleansing but only after 7 years.
When you find out about the dubious past of this plan to destroy forests, mountains, beasts & cultures, nothing is too surprising.
This history of the Rosia Montana scheme that actually goes back to Romania's communist days is rife with people with lel in their eyes.
It looks like the mining operation will be blocked by the current parliament but these ghouls seem patient.

Rosia Montana

The densely wooded Carpathian Mountains are rich in history and myth. They are also one of the last ancient forests of Europe. Besides being the home of many tiny remote villages, the forests are also home to lynx, wolves and brown bear.
But there's gold in them thar hills & the timber has $$$ in some people's eyes. The Roman Empire coveted the gold back in the mid second century but the worst thing they did was enslave people & work them to death. ok, and rape, pillage & make their captives engages in deadly sports...
But the good old days are over. With modern technology, businesses are stripping the woods, leveling the mountains & creating vast pools of cyanide contaminated water.In an open letter to The Prince of Wales, Rupert Wolfe Murray wrote:"

The proposed gold mining project at Rosia Montana will erase three pristine villages and four mountains from the face of the planet, creating a sterile zone the size of a small city that will be contaminated for millennia.
The investors plan to build a 185 metre high dam (higher than the Three Gorges Dam in China) that will contain 214 million tons of cyanide waste.

What could go wrong?
Besides destroying the habitat of countless plants & animals and besides destroying the culture & communities of people, a dam failure would be devastating. The Canyon Lake dam in South Dakota was nowhere near as large as this dam being proposed in Romania & the lake wasn't polluted with poisonous chemicals when it failed and flooded Rapid City. They won't be building any parks if this dam fails.

More on Wild Carpathia

Wild Carpathia
Sorry, no sweet transvestites from a probably not transsexual Transylvania, but it does have Prince Charles' rapier wit.
Anyway, I bring this up because Romania & other countries in Europe are facing a problem of massive land grabs by a small number of private entities subsidized by governments that have cut spending in many other areas.
See more at arc2020

A fracking company in Grapevine, TX wants to ship it's dirty water, brine, over 1,100 miles to New Matamoras, Ohio for, well, dumping.

"GreenHunter wants to use a tanker barge that can hold 10,000 barrels"

What could possibly go wrong? Pennsylvania has been doing it for awhile but, hell, at least they're right next door.

"State records show that 12.2 million barrels of fracking waste and brine were injected in the first half of 2012, 56 percent of which came from Pennsylvania and West Virginia."

There's no place closer to Grapevine, TX?
Glad we scuttled solar in favor of becoming a toxic waste dump.

Columbus Dispatch story here.

Traditional v. Natural Burial
Caitlin Doughty of Order of the Good Death discusses the differences between natural & traditional (which has only been 'traditional' for less than 200 years) burial.
Seriously, the burial vault ($$$$) was designed to thwart grave robbing but since the average criminal is too lazy to dig up a grave nowadays, that ain't a problem. Now the vault is indeed used to keep the lawns looking nice.
Well, that & so you don't hit soft spots while strolling through the boneyard. That's always a little disconcerting - especially when your foot gets stuck in a hole.

Preservation / Conservation

Count Kálnoky & The Prince of Wales discuss preservation & conservation in sunny Transylvania. Charles also discusses the over harvesting of Scotland's timber, something Haiti has become the poster child for. This is from an English Travel Charnel show, Wild Carpathia, which discusses the size, history & significance of the forested mountain range - home to 40% of Europe's bear population & lotsa wolf & lynx. You can snag a DVD of the episode (in PAL format) here.

Cincinnati's Mill Creek

1 quibble. I read that the Mill Creek never flooded til settlers came along & deforested the surrounding area. oh well, seems like the junk artists would want to be all over this resource.

$60 Million for Tremont City ?

Seems a little high but if you are looking to buy a city, Tremont City ain't for sale. The $60M is to clean up 3 million gallons of industrial sludge that could do to Springfield's aquifer what BP did to the Gulf of Mexico.
Springfield's water supply, of course, comes from the sparkly depths of Lake Erie & seeps through the sands & rocks 130 miles to the Champion City.
Of course the Great Lakes could become another Gulf of Mexico, too if the oil drilling ban gets overturned.
More on that good news here.

Whoulda thunk it? Tremont City has it's own EPA page.

Noose Son story here.

Environmental Justice
Cincinnati councliman, Dave Crowley has been working on an Environmental Justice Ordinance for the city for a few years now. It addresses the fact that poor people and frequently minorities are frequently adversely affected by industrial pollution more so than wealthy people. While Christian Moerlein used to live across the street from his plant (yuck !), the trend in later years was to move residential property away from manufacturing facilities. It was more pleasant and healthier. Eventually we fairly legally mandated the separations between residential, retail and manufacturing through zoning laws. Some stuff was grandfathered, wealth brings choices - the fact is poorer people and frequently minorities are still frequently adversely affected by industrial pollution.
So I get it. I agree with the idea in principle but the implementation puts an added burden on the business that wants to move to the community or expand within the community that will likely lead businesses to throw up their hands and just not bother with investing in the city regardless of wether their facility might have a negative impact on residents or not. This will result in the un-alleviation of poverty and the impoverished frequently engage in lifestyles that negatively affect their health anyway.
My problem is not with the intent of this ordinance but in it's implementation that requires the prospective business to invest in supplementary documentation and then wait for an additional review by some shadowy board that is estimated to take another 2-3 months & result in a thumbs up or down.
The process needs to be as upfront and business friendly as possible so decisions can be made quickly, efficiently and economically. The prospective business needs to know the rules up front. Adding a layer to the approval process internally is fine but adding another process for the business is a bad idea.
Government is understandably slow by nature but time is money for businesses and we need economic growth and jobs in this town.

Speaking of Bio-Fuel

Speaking of bio-fuel, soil conservancy and American progressivism.....
Do we really want to further deplete our natural resources, so vitally important to us - the resources that give us our food - so we can maintain our sprawling car-centric lifestyle ? Is that part of a progressive agenda ?

Streetcar Arguments That Make Me Wonder
Streetcars use electric power generated by burning coal.
But the governor is dedicated to getting Ohio utility companies to reduce their coal dependency and replacing coal with wind, solar and "high technology" sources. And while it's not coal, a community with "circulator" transportation uses less gasoline as cars are used less frequently. As cars are in less demand, fewer resources are dedicated to their manufacture.
Ecological sustainability is important.

Tooleedoo Blade story here.

Urbana Group Sponsors Renewable Energy Exhibition
January 20th, at Urbana University's student center, Champaign Advocates for Renewable Energy (CARE) will present an exhibit to the public featuring businesses and organizations with renewable energy solutions at 7PM.
The 20 exhibitors include the Ohio Farm Bureau, Invenergy, Dovetail Wind and Solar, Ohio Interfaith Power and Light and Pioneer Rural Electric Cooperative.
The exhibit is open to the public and allows folks to learn more about renewable energy options.

Noose Son story here.

In this article it is stated that David Crowley wants to save energy by replacing the light bulbs in the city council chandelier with fluorescent bulbs. This is, of course, problematic as the bulbs are expensive and their disposal creates a hazard.
A better idea would be to just turn off the room lights altogether and use the desk lamps at people's desks.
You would save energy, cut costs and have a real dramatic visual effect to boot.
Keeping council members awake could be a problem, however.