EPA Announces Plan to Use Clean Water Act to Preemptively Strike Down Pebble Mine Project Permits
[ The planned mine is a copper, gold, moly mine. ]
Last month the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suffered what should have been an embarrassing defeat when the Supreme Court ruled that Mike and Chantell Sackett could bring suit against the EPA. That Supreme Court decision was the culmination of a costly 3-year battle between the Sackett’s and the powerful Obama Environmental Protection Agency which used the Clean Water Act in an attempt to prevent the couple from building their home on their property in Idaho.
Apparently the Sackett ruling might not have been such an embarrassment to the mega-bureaucratic government agency because just last week the EPA announced plans to use the Clean Water Act to preemptively prevent the Pebble Mine Project from being built in Alaska. This battle has also been going on for about three years.
It seems that many of the well-heeled in Alaska and Oregon don’t want the Pebble Mine Project built close to an area they consider their personal playground, Bristol Bay, Alaska. And so, under the guise of environmentalism, the powerful few help finance astroturf campaigns and environmental activists in an attempt to ‘Keystone’ the Pebble Mine Project without concern for the Native populations of the area and the much needed jobs and the hundreds of millions of dollars that will be infused into the depressed economy both directly and indirectly.
These NIMBY activists ( Not in My Back Yard) have shut down projects across the country. The most famous recent case is the Keystone Pipeline. Now, through the EPA’s announcement last week, it seems the next Obama Administration ‘Keystoning’ will be focused on the Pebble Mine Project.
The question is, what does anyone have to gain by preventing mining, transporting oil or even a couple from building a house in Idaho? Why is there an entire large government agency focusing its attention and spending tax-payer money on preventing these projects that would only help the economy, give people jobs and lower energy prices?
By all appearances it has mostly to do with returning political favors and asserting power, both over those attempting to get the permits and those who are having to pay the price of having to buy energy from places like China, Chile, Venezuela and who knows where else. Those countries are reaping the profits while Americans are paying the price.
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Barack Obama: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” (January 2008) – Video
http://resourcefulearthnews.org/2012/04/24/epa-announces-plan-to-use-clean-water-act-to-preemptively-strike-down-pebble-mine-project-permits/ |
