EPA hits the accelerator

While Washington lawmakers are bogged down with wrecking our healthcare system, an executive agency is churning out regulations at a pace not seen since its inception. The Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970 to clean up our nation's water, land and air. Judging by the way EPA has acted since the new administration took over, one would think that EPA believes our environment is being attacked by land, sea and air.

Most reporters have turned a blind eye to any story that isn't healthcare or climate change related. However, The Washington Times has picked up on EPA's aggressive action with a couple of pieces. In eight months EPA has announced eight major regulatory actions aimed at addressing air and water pollutants. According to one article, "EPA has placed 175 coal mining projects under review and halted 79 of them because of their effects on surface water." This move contradicts 30 years of precedence within the agency.

Soon EPA will confirm that they believe greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, endanger public health. Once that final determination is reached, the agency may begin moving to regulate emissions from automobiles, power plants, refineries, manufacturers and even feed lots. Beltway insiders are using this threat to encourage Congress to pass their own climate change bill that preempts EPA's action.

EPA's feud with greenhouse gases is well known, but most folks don't know that EPA is once again on the attack against the most common herbicide in use--atrazine. Recently EPA convened a Scientific Advisory Panel to review health and ecological risks related to atrazine's use on America's farm land. For a little background, farmers have been using atrazine for a half a century and the product has undergone 6,000 studies reviewed by EPA. As recently as 2006, after another extensive review, the agency found that atrazine was still safe to use.

So what's different now? In August the New York Times ran an article questioning how much atrazine is safe to drink. The "news" paper hired six scientists to act as if they were the EPA themselves and review several studies and a new lawsuit brought forth by a couple of lawyers with deep pockets. The article caught someone's eye at the EPA and voilð--the agency will now spend millions of dollars to study the most studied herbicide yet again.

An interesting twist to this science is that as federal farming policy continues to push producers toward no-till production, without atrazine this practice is economically impossible. EPA has estimated that prohibiting the use of atrazine will cost the farmer $28 an acre. This puts USDA Secretary Vilsack in a tight spot. Vilsack has traveled across the country advocating no-till practices as a way to cash in on a cap-and-trade system in an attempt to drum up support for a global warming bill. But now his colleague, EPA Administrator Jackson, is threatening his best defense.

One must wonder whether EPA is moving a little too quickly for their own good.