[EBH]

Finally the games that the EPA plays get a slap.

[EBH]

FYI PIng

[factoryrat]

The EPA really needs a smackdown to give them a reality check. Their science and mandates have long passed the point of diminishing returns as far as pollution is concerned. Some of the upper limits they mandate for toxic materials are swamped out by natural occurrences. In effect, they are trying to mandate limits on nature.

[alice_in_bubbaland]

Good! They are becoming scary powerful and need to be neutered.

[muawiyah]

This is not limited to EPA, nor is it a new idea.

When you have an authority to sign documents "Final Agency Decision" your client on the other end is then free to go to Federal District Court if he doesn't like your answer.

This presents a problem when dealing with APPEALS of prior decisions. You gots' ta' cite an established regulation or the law, or both, elst the judge will hand you your head.

About 99% of everything handled by that same administrative office will not consist of "final agency decision" business ~ instead, it will be advisory in nature, or a warning, or a process just short of the way formal appeals are handled.

About 99.99999% of the time the clients on the other end are happy to have "the answer" because, as it turns out, federal rules can be so obtuse that it really does take highly experienced staff people to deal with them as intended.

Since you don't always have those highly experienced staff people around ~ particularly at the field office level, you work up "blurbs" or as EPA described them "advisories".

You can call them "precedents" if you want, and we actually tried to base our own "blurbs" on precedental cases ~ many of which actually ended up in federal court (where we won ~ if we lost, you never heard about it).

I really need to laugh about this EPA problem because only the most IGNANT of executives would have allowed this to happen. My advice is for ALL of their GS15 and above personnel simply resign, get out of there, and let some people who know something move in.

[mrsmith]

I hate to see the NRDC succeed at it’s mission of destroying industry with false ‘science’.

But it is nice to see that the areas granted leniency here are almost all Democrat power bases:

http://environmentalappealscourt.blogspot.com/2011/07/natural-resources-defense-council-nrdc.html
“...EPA’s latest attempt to reconcile the 8-hour standard with Subpart 2. This time its effort relates only to the application of section 185 fees to the eight regions in severe or extreme nonattainment of the 1-hour standard: Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Houston, New York City, Sacramento, the San Joaquin Valley, the South Coast Air Basin (CA), and the Southeast Desert (CA). “