EPA says Tucson’s drinking water is contaminated but air force claims agency lacks authority to order cleanup
The US air force is refusing to comply with an order to clean drinking water it polluted in Tucson, Arizona, claiming federal regulators lack authority after the conservative-dominated US supreme court overturned the “Chevron doctrine”. Air force bases contaminated the water with toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” and other dangerous compounds.
Though former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials and legal experts who reviewed the air force’s claim say the Chevron doctrine ruling probably would not apply to the order, the military’s claim that it would represents an early indication of how polluters will wield the controversial court decision to evade responsibility.
It appears the air force is essentially attempting to expand the scope of the court’s ruling to thwart regulatory orders not covered by the decision, said Deborah Ann Sivas, director of the Stanford University Environmental Law Clinic.
“It’s very odd,” she added. “It feels almost like an intimidation tactic, but it will be interesting to see if others take this approach and it bleeds over.”
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We have an irresponsible and illegitimate Supreme Court and this is what we get.
there are also humans at the top of the ‘air force’ that made this decision not to clean up. its two sets of irresponsible…no… negligent humans at play.
That would be the Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall.
Also, he is appointed by, and reports directly to, the president. Biden could easily call this guy up and tell him to unfuck himself.
That’s exactly what I was thinking
“Do you know the chain of command? It’s the chain I use to beat you if you don’t cleanup the gorram PFAS.”
Biden is commander in chief. He can just order them to clean it up.
Playing by the rules and showing those that made them their flaws, is also a legitimate strategy to force corrections.
exactly, lets purposefully poison lots of people so we can force those regulations written in blood!
And playing with lives over to respond or not with unclear rules over the next 50 years is better? Folks will get sick either way. I’d prefer to force a decision sooner rather than later.
Well… Just poison the right watering holes that the people who have the power to act care about, and suddenly they’ll care about the EPA and water quality regulations.
You think the drinking water of Supreme Court justices is going to be contaminated as a result of this? They’re not being punished for making a mistake, a bunch of innocent powerless plebs will be.
I’m sure Clarence Thomas’s RVs have a water filter.
So you’re saying contaminate their water. I like the idea.
I can’t tell if this is a genuine attempt to dodge cleanup or an attempt to test a Supreme Court ruling before companies can get out of hand during the next administration.
But maybe I’m reading too much into the context.
They also made the decision to pollute in the first place. Let’s not divert the attention off the cause of the pollution.
To be fair, much of this pollution was done decades ago. The people responsible for the bulk of it are retired by now.
We have a *criminal, irresponsible, and illegitimate Supreme Court.
We have a nation of people who voted for the people who selected the extreme far right conservatives into the court.
Voters deserve much of the blame too.
id argue non-voters are equally to blame, and a larger block
…and who vote for a Congress that refuses to pass laws to address these problems.
What are you talking about? Congress did pass a law to address this: it’s called the Clean Water Act. The issue is that an illegitimate SCOTUS packed by traitors basically invalidated it.
The article spells out what I’m talking about pretty clearly. I work with the CWA literally on a daily basis. Congress hasn’t made the CWA more clear or specific since the Water Quality Act of 1987. Congress could literally fix this dispute between federal agencies tomorrow, but we elected Republicans to control the House, which means it has a snowball’s chance in hell of ever happening.
The CWA as of 1987 is plenty clear under any reasonable standard. The relevant problem here is that SCOTUS has ordained an unreasonable standard. Yes, Democratic control of both houses of Congress could “fix” that issue, but the point is it shouldn’t need to because the EPA should be allowed to do its job (which, contrary to the illegitimate tyrannical stooges’ diseased opinions, does include interpreting the law!).
Yes, Democratic control of both houses of Congress could “fix” that issue
Glad we agree.
Erm, all Americans who could vote share the blame but Mitch McConnel gets a big heaping serving of it.
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The consequences of people staying home and/or general apathy in regards to voting.
Gorsuch was an eternity ago, but thats where it started
WTF?
“Yeah, we polluted it, but you can’t make us do anything about it.”
Never taking responsibility for harming others is the American way.
It’s either a sign of false leadership, or it’s the type of behavior we value in our leaders. Either way, it doesn’t look good.
Wow. Fuck this supreme Court.
Cool, the thing we were assured wouldn’t happen because free market or something.
Even if it’s decided that the EPA has the proper authority, the damage will be done by the time it makes its way through the courts.
The EPA order requires the development of a system specifically designed for PFAS. A similar system is estimated to cost about $25m to develop, or about 0.1% of the air force’s annual budgeting.
Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool…
Do you realize how many Generals and Admirals will have to put off their monthly mahogany desk polishing because of this?
So “federal regulators lack the authority” to order a cleanup, even though feds made the orders that led to environmental damage in the first place. Riiiiight.
This is nothing. Wait until you see what the corporations will do when they’re told to stop polluting say the water source of a major city and they say fuck you to the EPA
It’s gonna get so so so much worse
"Millions leave Chicago because Dow Chemical poisons the water table. When asked for comment a DOW chemical PR representative said: ‘Yeah, suck a dick losers’ "
The EPA can still take them to court with a jury over things like this, but they won’t have the resources to take everyone to court.
So you still gotta be smart about it and not do something like completely wreck the water source for Chicago, because they’ll use their limited resources to go after them.
But some small town no one cares about? Probably much easier.
You’re talking about the same companies that own entire local governments. That get to choose the rules they play under in normal situations.
This is like nothing any human currently alive in America has experienced. It’s worse than 1800s robber Baron America. It’s the same attitude and people with (and I means this literally) million of times greater resources than the government.
The 44 years of dismantling and disrupting any power the government had is starting to pay off in spades.
The reality is, we’ll look at my original comment and laugh at how naive and quaint it was. Like people saying “Trump will never win” then "How bad could he fuck it up really?.. and then…
The AF also contaminated the groundwater in a large residential area just west of Spokane, WA adjacent to the Fairchild AF base. Until recently they seemed to be accepting at least partial responsibility but I wonder if that’s now going to come to an end. It’s not generally a wealthy area, lots of apartments and discount stores and has what I think of as a “military town” vibe. Apparently residents are largely dependent on PFAS-loaded well water and if the AF tells them to FO and be happy they’ve got anything to drink, they’re screwed unless some other entity with deep pockets will come in and clean up. https://ecology.wa.gov/about-us/who-we-are/news/2024-news-stories/feb-21-west-plains-sampling-for-pfas
It’s literally every AF base, probably every military base. Everybody learns it day 1 through word of mouth when they arrive.
I live near an airport that’s primarily civilian, but doubles as an AF base. What do you know, our local well is contaminated. City shut it down and is supposed to be installing new filters soon to bring it back online.
I’m more interested in who told them to do this.
I seriously doubt some jackass decided to attempt to expand the already bullshit result of Chevrons undoing from within the air force of their own decision. I’d almost guarantee some bought and paid for politician is pushing for this to go up to SCOTUS too.
I seriously doubt some jackass decided to attempt to expand the already bullshit result of Chevrons undoing from within the air force of their own decision
I find it very easy to believe some jackass said, “My job is represebting the Air Force and this could be a way to save them hundreds of millions of dollars, and worrying about the environmental and political consequences is somebody else’s job” and just charged on forward
The military exists to funnel large amounts of money into private hands. If they have to spend billions on cleanup that means that private companies are being left out.
Semper Fi is starting to ring hollow 🫡
We really do need to stop those fat cat regulators from harassing the woefully underfunded air force. /s
Sounds like the dog caught the car again.
To pollute and serve
I work just outside of the Pease air force base and drank the coffee and water for ages. They were on the base well system which was heavily contaminated. Thanks a bunch.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/12/air-force-epa-water-pfas-tucson