A river to a major city is now so polluted that almost half a million people residents have been told not to drink their tap water. Sounds like China, right? Think Toledo, Ohio. While we have been following the rolling environmental disasters in China, we often forget about our own failure to protect the basic health of our citizens. Toledo is such an example. While newspapers have detailed how algae blooms are releasing toxins, they largely fail to state the likely reason or downplay it: phosphorous and nitrogen from farm fertilizer runoff.
Way back in the late 1970s, I worked at the Smithsonian Center for Environmental Research in Maryland where scientists were doing some of the early work on how such runoff was killing the Chesapeake Bay. It was and remains a touchy subject in Washington because of the agribusiness lobby.
In Toledo, over 400,000 people have been told to avoid swallowing the water. They were also told not to try to boil the water because that would increase the concentration of the microcystin toxin. The City of Toledo issued a warning that water “should not be consumed until an all clear is issued.”
Restaurants were asked not to use city water to even wash dishes.
The source of the water is Lake Erie, where phosphorous and nitrogen runoff has continued to pollute the waters.
Source: Inquirer
Annie, We don’t just need an EPA, we need a functioning EPA! I do think Squeak is partially correct about liberals fixating on symbols and forgetting about reality. I disagree with her on what I believe to be her thinking that we do not need tough environmental regulations Squeaky, if i’m wrong about that, please correct me).
Just as it’s not enough to have any black man or any woman of any color as president, it’s not enough to have an agency. The president needs to be a person who at least cares about having a functioning society and the agency needs to protect the environment.
In this case, the EPA, due to regulatory capture, has: 1. not protected our environment and 2. lied to the people. That is not O.K. with this liberal!
Why should the EPA be reined in? They should’ve had more clout here, maybe this wouldn’t have happened if they had.
@nicks
Oh whatever shall we call this latest fiasco??? Maybe The Bay of Twerps???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky, A new example of utter incompetence by Obama was revealed over the weekend. It was well intended. They recruited Latino students from Central and South America to travel to Cuba and foment unrest, hoping to end Castro’s reign of terror. But it was incredibly mismanaged. These recruits were given virtually no training, no backup, and were sitting ducks for Castro’s intelligence agency. Obama makes Carter look like a success.
How would it be better without an EPA?
JT, Our press has actually been pretty good at pointing to the need to address the root causes of this disaster. They have been recommending ways to reduce lawn chemicals, talking about better waste water treatment and reducing agricultural run off. One thing they haven’t linked it to is global warming. Apparently, that is taboo! (Although they have been talking about how so much sunshine is worsening the bloom.) The press has interviewed environmentalists, something I thought was both shocking and great!
The Ohio EPA was not releasing its test results of our water to the public. They may have finally, but I have not seen them personally. Marcy Kaptur even weighed in in trying to get them to do so, saying that the public had a right to know those numbers. She tried to get the Federal EPA to pressure them for release. Even she was simply blown off (and she does have drag in the House.)
I look at the EPA as one more corrupt agency with regulatory capture. I absolutely feel we need very strong regulations regarding this issue and many others effecting the environment, but I do not see that happening in this corrupt agency.
As of right now, we are supposed to be able to drink the water after flushing our systems. When I flushed mine I was hit with an extreme chlorine smell. I had to stop flushing, it was so strong.
Everyone understands this problem has been around for a long time and it isn’t going away today. It’s a start, but I do not know if that realization will take us to the point of actions necessary to remedy the problems at their root cause.
I will also say, I most certainly did not like all the lying and obfuscating by the local, state and federal govt. That feeling is shared by many!
Comment gobbled by WordPress. Who are these people? Why can’t or won’t they fix this problem? If they were in the business of delivering milk, how long will they last spilling every other shipment?
@annie
Gee, did Obama do all the stuff he said he was going to do??? An argument could be made that Obama is the perfect Republican President. He found a thousand things wrong with government, then when he won and had to actually do something, he went buh-duh, buh-duh, buh-duh. . .
The point is, maybe you are putting way too much faith in what politicians say.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Toledo, another disgusting example of what America has become.
The first thing that impressed me in my travels to Eastern Europe was the pure water and organic food — pristine vegetables, fruit, and berries that came from kitchen gardens in every backyard — in countries where there are no EPAs. Beautiful, nutritious borscht, which I enjoyed with every lunch and dinner, is hot and ready to serve at every food outlet. The only downside I saw was the organic vodka (and Chernobyl), without which it’s certain everyone would live to be centenarians. While Americans can no longer survive without its health care system, Russia, for example, is not buying the Western lifestyle that comes with frakenfood, glyphosate, and fast food outlets such as McDonalds, which may be thrown out of the country in very near time, and GMO crops are banned and will remain so forever. Future generations will look back on ours in the US as a tragic time in history when every consumer was an empty-headed android plugged into and directed by Madison Avenue, when PC was believed to be the ultimate form of freedom of expression, when salt, sugar, fat and chemicals were actually preferred to nutritious food, when debt was believed a birthright, consumption a virtue, and village a family.
While it is commendable that officials have put the skull and crossbones on the Toledo water system, why haven’t they not yet done so with our food supply, which is contaminated with every known carcinogen, genetic modification, and then formulated not for nutrition but only for taste, using fat, sugar, chemicals and salt, served up to our children, for chrissakes, with no shame in it for any public official?
Samantha, I retrieved your comment at 12:29.
http://youtu.be/jhssboY4Liw
Squeeky what is Hillary Clinton’s stance on the EPA? Why would you vote for her when she doesn’t reflect your political philosophy?
@annie
Do you ever actually read the stuff that you link us to??? Because I just wasted my time on the three which worked and they weren’t even about wanting to get rid of the EPA, they were about trying to rein in the EPA.
Sooo, let me give you my assessment. The EPA is a SYMBOL of environmentalism to you, and other Leftists, and any attempt to make it act responsibly is an assault on the SYMBOL, that is an attempt to get rid of it. That is why the Left is unable to do much beyond name calling in arguments.
People can tell you all they want about how the EPA has royally screwed up and done bizarre things and I really don’t think you will be able to conceptualize it. All you will see is an assault on the SYMBOL.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
The EPA just dumped enough water from CA into the ocean to run a city of 500,000 people for an entire year, in order to oxygenate a bait fish, and in the hopes that one day salmon might return. During a record drought, when there is talk of water rationing. It caused 40% unemployment in some areas. Dried up farmland.
THIS is what they’re talking about regarding government overreach, and the unanswerable actions of unelected officials.
Conservation is near and dear to me. But the EPA has acted irresponsibly, and abusively. Wrong is wrong, no matter what person or government agency does it.
Annie – I read the article. In this case, the Liberal bias of the Huffington Post presented only one side of the issue, although they did include the quote that they had a problem with unelected officials in the EPA effectively creating laws and regulations that elected representatives were not able to do. This makes the EPA unilateral and unanswerable. Taxes are supposed to be voted on, and yet the EPA gets around that. And yet, the journalist said it would remove powers vital to the EPA’s job. As if created taxes without representation is vital to the EPA.
If it had been straight news, rather than an opinion piece, it would have addressed both sides of the issue – namely overreach of federal agencies. Putting a carbon tax kills jobs, and does nothing to address pollution.
For example, we can tax the carbon emissions of truckers, but trucks will still bring our groceries and goods to distribution centers along our roads. The tax does not reduce pollution. It’s just a tax that makes everything more expensive for us all, and the air is just as dirty.
I recall when the CA air quality district suddenly decided to obsolete construction vehicles prior to a certain year. It costs as much as a house to replace them. A lot of people were going to go under.
Again, when anyone criticizes the EPA, or demands reform, they are labelled.
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/06/23/republicans-threaten-withhold-government-funding-obamas-epa-rules.html
Republicans threaten to withhold government funding over Obama’s New EPA rules.
Annie – The EPA has not done a bang-up job here, so why not?
http://t.washingtonmonthly.com/washingtonmonthly/#!/entry/the-environment,523c8d31da27f5d9d0238c39
Newt Gingrich at Republican Convention. “Get rid of the EPA”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/09/epa-republican-war-defund_n_1000664.html
War on the EPA: Republican bills would erase decades of protection.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/23/2012-republicans-take-aim-at-epa_n_883182.html
Republican Presidential candidates pledge to revoke EPA’s authority.
In 1973 Schumacher said Small is Beautiful, but nobody listened .