EPA mandate New renovation rules to push up costs(epa police now in your home)

Renovation companies nationwide are preparing for a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s mandate beginning April 22 and local experts say homeowners should be prepared to see a higher bill because of it.

According to the EPA’s new Renovation Repair and Paint rule, beginning on April 22 builders performing renovation, repair and painting projects that disturb lead-based paint in homes, child care facilities and schools built before 1978 must be EPA certified and must follow specific work practices to prevent lead contamination.

“Some things won’t change, but one thing is for sure – it’s going to increase the cost of remodeling a home that was built before 1978,” said Stephen L. Polozola, an attorney with Decker Jones McMackin McClane Hall & Bates P.C., who specializes in construction law.

The new rules will require builders to send in their application to the EPA to become a certified firm and each employee must get his or her certified renovator status, which requires an eight-hour training course and passing an exam. According to the EPA, this employee also will be responsible for training other employees and overseeing work practices and cleaning.

Once work starts on the renovation of a pre-1978 home, the certified renovator has a ‘check-list’ to complete including giving homeowners handouts and securing a signature from the homeowner notifying them of safe renovation practices.

Certified renovators also will be required to post warning signs outside the work area and supervise setting up containment to prevent spreading dust using specific containment procedures for both interior and exterior projects – such as cleaning the area with HEPA vacuuming and wet washing.

It’s these steps local experts say will bump up renovation project costs for home owners.

“Contractors typically use a wet/dry vac to clean up after themselves on a job, but now they’re going to have to purchase one with a HEPA filter, so instead of $200 or $300 for a vac, they’re looking at $1,500 and they’re obviously going to have to pass along those expenses to the consumer,” Polozola said. “It will without question increase expenses.”

Robert S. Mathews, the current president of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry’s Fort Worth chapter and owner of Curb Appeal Renovations Inc., agreed renovation costs will increase, but said the outcome was worth it.

“I wouldn’t really say it will drag out the process; it will add more to the cost of the remodel but more importantly, it will make it safer for those living in the homes, especially if there are children living in the homes,” he said.

According to a report by the President’s Task force on Environmental Health and Safety Risks to Children, an estimated 24 million pre-1978 U.S. dwellings were at risk for lead-based paint hazards.

Both Polozola and Mathews agreed that many contractors and home owners may still be unaware of the changing law – something that could be even more costly down the road.

“[Homeowners] need to start using certified professionals to complete the work on their homes so they don’t endanger themselves and their family,” Mathews said. “This is also a great way to make sure those in our industry know about the new laws as well – many in our industry aren’t even aware that the laws have changed, but with the first fine starting at $32,500 this is not a slap on the wrist. The EPA is taking this very seriously and so should our industry.”

Not all projects will be subject to the new rule. Pre-1978 structures that include minor repairs or where interior work disturbs less than six square feet or exteriors disturbing less than 20 square feet will be exempt. And any home that tests lead free will be exempt as well.

“There are many in our industry who, as with any law, won’t abide,” Mathews said. “The public needs to be made aware of the new law to make sure that everyone in their family is safe.”

Is ‘Green Goon Squad’ at your front door?
‘Climategate’ warns of privacy invasion that could be coming

Posted: April 12, 2010
8:42 pm Eastern

Just when you thought the government couldn’t get any more invasive than the 2010 Census and requirements under “Obamacare” that your medical records be posted on the Internet, a coming book called “Climategate” by veteran meteorologist Brian Sussman warns that soon there could be a “green goon squad” visiting at your door.

Sussman’s book, the newest title by WND books and scheduled for release April 22 “Earth Day,” has been charting for several weeks already among Amazon’s top 10 preordered titles. It arrives just as people who thought the campaign over global warming was being dropped over revelations of apparent manipulation by researchers in the field are becoming concerned that Washington still has it on the fast-track.

Sussman writes in “Climategate” that not only are promoters of the belief that starting a car in Texas or heating a home in North Dakota contributes to a cataclysmic environmental warping are continuing their campaign, Washington already has parts of it in writing.

In Chapter 10 of his book, he cites the 2009 America Clean Energy and Security Act which already has passed the U.S. House.

(Story continues below)

“Buried in the 2009 America Clean Energy and Security Act are federally mandated energy-efficient building regulations, which supersede all local and state codes and which will be enforced by a national, green goon squad, funded in part by revenues from energy taxes, as well as by an annual $25 million from the Department of Energy ‘to provide necessary enforcement of a national energy efficiency building code,’” he confirms.

“The legislation also authorizes the Secretary of Energy to ‘enhance compliance by conducting training and education of builders and other professionals in the jurisdiction concerning the national energy efficiency building code.’

“The plan is modeled on building code enforcement in California. Each time a home is built, remodeled, or – in the case of the federal plan – preparing to be sold, a G-man wearing a federal badge and armed with a clipboard will show up at your house to make sure ... all of your appliances have been updated with the most recent Energy Star-approved internal communication devices, and that the Home Area Network has been properly installed and connected to your new SmartMeter, whether you like it or not,” he says.

Be the first to see the full documentation of how your life could be changed by climate-related laws, taxes and regulations, in “Climategate”

“This is not a helpful plan to assist you in meeting your family budget; it’s a social engineering scheme, designed and promoted by the federal government to change your behavior,” he said. “By having the capability to read your meter many times a day, the utility company is able to effectively establish demand pricing schedules; thus, using too much electricity during the peak periods is going to cost you.”

Further, he writes, part of the Big Brother spy system actually already is embedded in the law..

“The term SmartGrid [made law in 2007] refers to a distribution system that allows for flow of information from a customer’s meter in two directions: both inside the house to thermostats and appliances and other devices, and back to the utility. … Once the…SmartMeter [is] connected to the SmartGrid, Big Brother will become the new authority figure in your home. Want to do a load of laundry or read at 3 p.m. on a hot afternoon in August? Good luck. With a bureaucratic keystroke, anything attached to your [home] could be selectively turned off – or on – without your approval.”

The book details, among other things, the warping of the scientific process over global warming, the massive enrichment of its supporters, President Obama’s early and continuing support and the anti-American roots of environmental alarmism.

Sussman, formerly a highly acclaimed San Francisco meteorologist, also is the newest morning host at KSFO Radio (560 AM), the highest-rated talk show in the San Francisco Bay Area and the fourth-largest radio market in the country.

In the original scandal that spawned the name Climategate, the hacked e-mails of Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit in Norwich, England, and others uncovered schemes to employ “tricks” with warming trends, squelch skeptics and defame journals that published them.

But Sussman reveals that Jones’ work at the University of East Anglia wasn’t alone in its apparent manipulation of research. He charges that James Hansen, director at NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, has treated his position as “activist-scientist.”

Hansen is quoted in the book with the opinion, “We’re leaving a situation for our children and grandchildren which is not of their making, but they’re going to suffer because of it. So I think they should start to act up and put some pressure on their elders, and on legislatures, and begin to get some action.”

Probably the most visible alarmist over global warming has been former vice president Al Gore, who reportedly has made tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars for himself. Sussman notes that Gore has said “our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands.”

Sussman even documents how Obama, as a board member for the Joyce Foundation, voted for a $1.1 million grant to launch a privately owned “Chicago Climate Exchange.”

Sussman warns it never has been about weather; it’s about control of Americans and everything they do.

“It’s obvious to everyone that this global-warming facade is in meltdown mode,” said Joseph Farah, publisher of WND Books and founder and CEO of WorldNetDaily.com. “Now Brian’s important book comes along just in time to reveal exactly why this Big Lie was foisted on us – and what we can do to stop it cold.”

Earth Day is all the evidence of deception needed, said Sussman. First celebrated in 1970 on the 100th anniversary of the birth of communist leader Vladimir Lenin, it was founded by Sen. Gaylord Nelson, D-Wis.; former Stanford student body president Denis Hayes; and author and Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich.

“Lenin’s core political philosophy was linked at the hip with these newly fangled environmentalists who maintained that America’s government must be altered, its economy planned and regulated, and its citizens better controlled,” writes Sussman. “The environment would be the perfect tool to force these changes, and the most efficient way to gain converts would be through the public school system – the earlier the better.”

University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit

In one of Obama’s first acts during his reign, he pushed for the 2009 “Stimulus Bill,” which allows $20 billion for programs relating to energy efficiency. $16 billion for weatherization of private home and $11 billion for “modernizing the nation’s power grid.”

Among WND’s previous reports on the global warming dispute was when Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Joe Barton, R-Texas, cited doubts about the integrity of “climate change” science when he wrote a letter demanding an accounting of U.S. taxpayer support for the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC.

The controversy exploded late last year when a series of e-mails was hacked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain that indicate scientists were hiding and manipulating data and trying to marginalize critics.

The revelations were significant, because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed two findings Dec. 7 that concluded greenhouse gases in the atmosphere “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” The EPA’s rulings could mean thousands of dollars in additional taxes for individual consumers.

As the allegations of fraud expanded, Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., has suggested the Justice Department investigate scientists for potentially falsifying data.

The Orange County Register has posted a chart for consumers to try to keep up with all the scandals developing in the “global warming” community.

Among the scandals listed are:

ClimateGate: The scandal over the CRU e-mails from East Anglia.

FOIGate: In which British officials are investigating whether East Anglia scientists refused to follow that nation’s freedom of information law about their work.

ChinaGate: In which dozens of weather monitoring stations in rural China apparently have simply disappeared. This would lead to higher temperature averages since city levels frequently are warmer.

HimalayaGate: In which an Indian climate official admitted in January that he falsely claimed Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035 to prod governments into action.

And PachauriGates I and II, SternGates I and II, AmazonGate (in which a claim that global warming would wipe out rain forests was exposed as a fraud), PeerReviewGate, RussianGate I and II and nearly a dozen others.
WND also reported recently when the St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, the largest private coal company in the world, petitioned the EPA to re-examine its decisions in light of the controversy over the scientists’ e-mails.

The company noted the “seriousness of the flaws” in the work.

Given the EPA’s “extensive reliance” on those reports, “the “agency has no legal option but to re-examine the Endangerment Finding in light of this new information,” the petition said.

On its website, the company said the EPA’s earlier ruling “could mean regulation of hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of buildings, farms, businesses and other facilities in the U.S.”

Texas officials also have filed a lawsuit accusing the federal government of using “tainted” information to arrive at the EPA conclusion and it asks that the EPA’s decisions be set aside. Virginia’s attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, also filed a petition demanding the EPA reconsider its greenhouse gas finding.

The scientific community actually is anything but unanimous on climate change.

The disunity is documented by the Petition Project, launched some 10 years ago when the first few thousand signatures were gathered. The effort by Art Robinson, a research professor of chemistry and cofounder of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine in 1973, now lists tens of thousands of qualified scientists who endorse the following statement:

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

Among the original e-mails hacked from East Anglia and posted online was, “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society) 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.”

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