EPA Targeting Chesapeake Bay Farmers

Bay cleanup could cost farmers


Act would step up protections for bay, cause stricter regulations

By AMY TRENT

Published: October 04, 2010

Cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay could cost local farmers more than just money.

“If you’re a farmer now, and you’re barely making it, and this regulation comes along, you’ll have to get out,” said Bill Nance, a farmer in Bedford. “There’s a good number of (local) farmers who may have to get out of farming because of this legislation.”

U.S Senate Bill 1816, The Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2010, steps up the protections for the bay by applying new, stricter regulations and extending the regulatory power of the Environmental Protection Agency. The bill will go to the full Senate in the coming days.

The entire Chesapeake Bay watershed is overburdened

by nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment. The nitrogen and phosphorous kill the grasses below the surface and suck oxygen from the water, creating dead zones. Oysters and other wildlife that used to thrive now struggle to survive.

This pollution comes from agriculture as well as air pollution, storm-water runoff, sewage and other factors.

Last week, the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation delivered 18,000 letters from farmers protesting the bill to Sens. Mark Warner and Jim Webb.

“Even without the letters, your Farm Bureau leadership has been crystal clear on how you feel about the bill,” Warner told farmers in a Senate conference room Thursday, according to a news release about the event.

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I’ve recently been highlighting some of the things that the EPA is doing that will severely impact the ability of family farmers and ranchers to grow food.  Their only goal seems to be increased regulations regardless of what it does to the people in this country.  In order for our country to remain great, an abundant, reliable food supply must be grown right here.  Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be a concern of this federal agency. 

Give Up Coal? No, Let's Not

Give up coal? No, let’s not

By Hasso Hering, Commentary
Posted: Sunday, September 20, 2009 3:00 am

The Sierra Club is trying to get students at universities including Oregon State to agitate against the use of coal as an energy source. The campaign is misguided. Let's hope it fails.

The organization has launched what it calls a coal-free campus campaign. There's no coal at Oregon State, so the campaign has won before it started. But if they mean they don't want colleges to buy electricity generated from coal, OSU would have to give up buying from Pacific Power.

Pacific has sources of alternative energy, but by far most of its supply, some 70 percent according to one recent brochure, comes from burning coal, mostly in Wyoming.

Coal has environmental drawbacks, but so do other forms of generating vast amounts of electricity. Writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee notes that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has announced plans to cover 1,000 square miles in the desert Southwest with solar collectors. Other federal energy goals call for 186,000 50-story windmills, covering an area the size of West Virginia. Alexander calls this a "massive intrusion into the natural landscape." By comparison, coal plants and the mines on which they depend occupy only a few square miles each. Read More

There are many environmentalists that would try to tell you it’s impossible to use coal energy and not destroy the planet. However, there is technology to deal with many of these environmental issues. It’s irresponsible to advocate for the elimination of a energy source that powers half the country without first having an equally affordable system ready to replace it. There is no doubt that our society will evolve into using different forms of energy, but it shouldn’t be done if it is going to bankrupt our nation and leave us with massive amounts of people that can't afford electricity.

Dealing with the EPA

Is the EPA in tight with Obama administration?
By David Kruse
POSTED: November 17, 2008

One guy that will see some job security during the economic recession as a result of the Obama election is Feedstuffs Magazine columnist, Trent Loos. He's a strong advocate for animal agriculture, who loves to torture the Humane Society and their liberal sect.

I suspect the change being planned by the Obama administration is going to include an EPA that doesn't think agriculture deserves special treatment. There is even talk of the appointment of Robert Kennedy Jr., as EPA administrator. Even if it's not Kennedy, as that would be overreaching, it is likely to be an RK Jr.-type. It's not as if environmental rules in agriculture had not been tightening up under George W. They have a lot.

State environmental laws have grown and toughened as well. The worry of livestock producers is that they had a seat at the table when environmental policy was debated and decided by the Bush administration. Policy was science based, real science, not the fruit loop pseudo science promoted by the Wachos.

The Obama campaign promised the science based policy evolution would continue but most livestock groups will believe that only after they prove it. The question that I would ask livestock producers is...are you ready? Read More

Regardless of who you voted for in the recent presidential election, our industry needs to start preparing for the renewed effort to regulate livestock production even further. If you have new representation headed for Washington, DC that you haven’t met, now is the time to start developing those relationships. There aren’t any mind-reading elected officials, so if you want them to know your thoughts on an issue, you need to contact them.

When Environmentalists Cause Harm

World’s Scariest Words: ‘I’m an Environmentalist and I’m Here to Help’
June 11

Two weeks ago the media was thrilled and alarmed by a film of a “lost” tribe of naked, painted Indians, living somewhere on the Brazil-Peru border and firing arrows at a helicopter flying overhead. Some reports claimed that this tribe was previously uncontacted by the modern world. But some anthropologists admitted that “this group is one of many in the Amazon that have chosen isolation.”

The fact that this tribe chose isolation did not stop the activists from the Brazilian government’s National Indian Foundation from distributing these films worldwide. They deliberately violated this tribe’s privacy because they wanted to use these Indians to prove that logging can be harmful to indigenous people.

Of course, the film shows no proof that loggers have violated this indigenous group’s privacy. It only shows proof that environmentalists violated their privacy. It also shows how much the natives appreciated their presence. Read More

Environmentalists have never looked at the law of unintended consequences. Some of their proudest accomplishments have worsened the human condition. Malaria was once nearly eliminated throughout the world until DDT was banned to allegedly save the birds. And also consider this, countless numbers of birds have died from West Nile disease because DDT isn’t available to effectively control mosquitoes.