A group of 11 Republican-led states and energy industry groups have challenged a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rule that bolsters state and tribal veto power over pipelines and other major infrastructure projects that might pollute rivers and streams.
Why do people vote for the people who want to pollute where they live? American right-wing politics never make any fucking sense.
They don’t
They voted for something else and didn’t care about the environmental point to begin with. It was never a talking point for their base.
But they’ll be the first to scream bloody murder when the creek in their backyard turns orange and smells like motor oil.
No, because the pipeline was built on tribal land and not through rich white suburbs
Yeah they’ve learned not to visibly pollute water or air used by people who can afford to sue.
Republicans: “State’s Rights!”
Also Republicans: “Wait, not like that!”
Yet more evidence that the Party of Small Government & the Party of Personal Responsibility are nothing but power hungry liars.
I read this article and the ones it links too and there’s not enough detail in any of them to figure out WTF is going on with this. It’s clear that they’re changing something about the Water Quality permitting process but the articles keep talking about things like Climate Change which is primarily about Air Quality.
Another thing that is unclear is why the articles keep talking about “wider impacts to water resources” while not saying what those may be. It also appears that these undefined water resource issues are no longer bound by State lines so if a project crosses or touches multiple States then any of them can refuse to issue a WQ permit based on what’s happening somewhere else.
There’s more going on here than just pipelines too as “carbon sequestration” is called out specifically, which makes me wonder if Wyoming isn’t involved in this because of the Carbon Capture and Deep Well Sequestration project being built in the SE corner of the State. When its done it will be the biggest of its kind in the world and I can see why they’d be pissy about another State being able to stop the project.
Obviously chemical dumping into water is bad and shouldn’t be allowed but on the other hand one Polity shouldn’t be able to deny a permit based on what’s happening inside the area of another Polity.
I wish these kinds of articles would at least attempt to get into the nuts and bolts of what’s changing.
Small Government!
Take away the only legal means of stopping these projects and people will look for less-legal alternatives.
