Do you think perhaps you are ignoring an important section of the EPA order? Perhaps the Conclusions of Law section? Perhaps the specific part where the EPA states that Range had caused or contributed to the endangerment of persons through such contaminants, and that action taken by the EPA as proscribed in the Emergency Order was necessary to protect the health of persons?
Further, aren’t you perhaps missing the entire point of Range’s argument?
[QUOTE=Court Order]
In its Motion, Range contends that the Emergency Order, in only providing for an informal conference with no evidentiary hearing or opportunity to challenge the Emergency Order, does not provide Range with any process to challenge the EPA’s findings.
[/QUOTE]
Why don’t you actually read your own cite: the Court Order. This is an issue of due process. Can the EPA fine a company without even having to prove the company did anything wrong or without even allowing the company to defend itself?
[QUOTE=Court Order]
As noted at the hearing, the Court is struggling with the concept that the EPA can enforce the Emergency Order and obtain civil penalties from Range without ever having to prove to this Court, or another neutral arbiter, that Range actually caused the contamination ofthe Lipsky and Hayley wells, or without ever giving Range the opportunity to contest the EPA’s conclusions.
[/QUOTE]
I really don’t want to hijack the thread with a shale gas discussion or the Gasland documentary. It really is not pertinent to the discussion about the EPA. I’ll agree that the writer potentially poisoned the well by bringing that up. I won’t say he is wrong by calling the documentary fraudulent: it is. If you want as close to an unbiased source as any of us will agree to on the subject, let’s look at the New York Times’s review of both the Energy in Depth critique of Gasland and the Gasland rebuttal: Groundtruthing Academy Award Nominee ‘Gasland’
While I’m not going to say the New York Times always does a good job, I think they did a fairly decent and fair look at both the critique and the rebuttal. The bottom line though is that many of the claims made in Gasland are simply not true. I would be happy to comment in another thread on the subject if you wish to discuss further.
I never made that claim. I made the claim that here is one specific example of the EPA overreaching. Other people in this thread may think the EPA is putting companies out of business, but I don’t. I think they are seeking to make headlines and quick to jump the gun without completing the work. They may be putting companies out of business, but I don’t know anything about that.
Regulatory agencies do this sort of thing all the time. If three 757 jetliners crash with little explanation in short order the FAA will ground the fleet of 757’s. Do you think they need to go into court and bicker for a few years to “prove” the crashes were due to a flaw in the plane’s design?
No, they don’t. They ground the fleet.
Why would you want it otherwise?
If some harm is occurring you want to stop it now. Not in a few years after you dork around in court with a recalcitrant industry.
Certainly the issue is whether an emergency response was justified. If three 757s crash for no apparent reason, it is plainly obvious that an emergency response is justified.
This court order specifically states the following.
[QUOTE=Court Order]
the Fifth Circuit is presently considering whether the Emergency Order was issued arbitrarily or capriciously
[/QUOTE]
No. I didn’t read the cite. I just pulled concentrations, sampling depths, and the orders out of my ass.[/sarcasm]
I think it’s pretty clear that I read the references.
The fines the EPA wants to issue aren’t related to the pollution, they’re for not sampling and planning as required in the December Order. Range isn’t contending that they have done the planning, sampling, or reporting; they’re contending that having to do that monitoring and pollution prevention is unreasonable.
The EPA has presented a considerable amount of evidence that the well is contaminated and that the contamination is consistent with the contamination likely to come from the gas wells. The order would require that Range collect more data. That’s pretty routine. Landfills are required to place monitoring wells around the site to monitor for offsite gas migration. Sites with leaking underground storage tanks are required to install monitoring wells. If they don’t monitor, they face fines. Operations that have a significant risk of polluting must demonstrate that they’re not polluting. It’s not unreasonable to categorize natural gas production as having a significant risk for polluting, especially given the EPA’s data from the drinking water wells.
The EPA has the ability to require action to prevent pollution and that not following the requirements to prevent pollution are violations. That’s not even the subject of debate in the industry. It’s been challenged and upheld. They have the power to issue fines in cases where a facility doesn’t monitor emissions or test its discharge.
At the very worst, the EPA jumped the small step of going from finding a likely source of contamination to knowing the source of contamination, but that’s why Ridge should monitor. At the very worst, they’ve required a company that makes millions of dollars per year to conduct tens of thousands of dollars of monitoring after evidence has been presented that they are a likely source of groundwater contamination. This case isn’t one of overreach, and its certainly not the industry killer others were accusing the EPA of. There’s a good chance the EPA can demonstrate that the pollution is coming from Range’s facilities. I can’t rule out that it’s coming from somewhere else, but the EPA’s data is significant.
Think about this scenario. It’s not an uncommon one.
A gas station is known to have had a leaky underground storage tank, so it has monitoring wells installed. They’re sampled periodicity and typically show only gas-related contaminants. After a period of a couple years, they start to have consistent detection of perc (a dry cleaning chemical) in the up-gradient well. The local regulator (typically a county or water board level regulator here in California, but it varies by state) is likely to open an investigation of the dry cleaner up the water table, as that’s the likely source. If they don’t enforce the regulations to keep pollution like perc out of the groundwater, the EPA will step in to enforce the regulations. Given that the Railroad Commission isn’t enforcing any monitoring or cleanup, the EPA must step in to enforce monitoring and cleanup.
I don’t think it’s clear you read them at all. If you had, I wouldn’t expect you to so clearly misrepresent them. You stated the following.
[QUOTE=HookerChemical]
The EPA hasn’t told Range Production to shut down a single well, they told them to see if they were causing the contamination. This is the data collection phase I was discussing above.
[/QUOTE]
You have tried to characterize this as a case of the RRC not taking action and so the EPA is simply ordering precautionary measures to be taken (provide alternative sources of water, explosive monitoring meters, checking other wells) while the EPA tries to figure out what the cause is. That’s an outright mischaracterization. The EPA has stated outright that Range caused (or contributed to) the methane in the water. This was in the Emergency Order. There is no “see if they were causing the contamination” aspect to the order. They already decided. Then, in the deposition the EPA representative states he could not be certain of Range’s role in the contamination. Is that not a step back from the original EPA claim?
That’s another mischaracterization. I understand that the fine is for failing to follow the Emergency Order and not actually any pollution. However, Range is contending that they have been denied due process.
If the situation does not fit an emergency situation, then they should have continued investigating as the RRC was doing.
They have jumped the gun in issuing an emergency order when no emergency existed, stated unequivocally that a company was guilty of something in that emergency order and in the media, when deposed backed away from that saying they don’t yet know what role the company had, and ultimately a good possibility exists that the source of the contamination isn’t the company. That is a case of overreaching. In the end, we may find out that Range is responsible for the contamination. However, it is certainly not likely at this point considering the RRC has stated that Range had nothing to do with the contamination. Regardless, the EPA has significantly erred in their actions.
You have no evidence that the RRC was not enforcing regulations. Therefore, the scenario is not a metaphor for this case.
Ah…I see the problem. You quoted me when responding to a question. The quote from me was in response to JoelUpchurch who said:
So you did not say it but were answering the question I asked of him where he said that. It had been a few days so I forgot who I asked that of and assumed it was you since you were answering.
Sorry, I was just quoting everyone asking for examples of overreaching. I actually did not originally quote you; I added you on edit thinking you were asking for the same type of example. I am the one at fault.
It would seem to me this is fine. Government agency issues an order for you to follow. You think it is unfair so you go to court and protest.
In the interim you follow the order or you get fined.
If the FAA grounded the 757’s mentioned hypothetically above do Boeing and United get to cry they were denied due process? That it is unfair to ground them till the FAA can prove a design flaw? That they should not be fined for continuing to fly the planes in the meantime?
That would be disastrous to regulatory agencies.
See above.
Certainly Boeing and United could go to court and argue the order is without merit. Till the court settles it though they need to follow the order or get fined (or worse).
I think the courts should give very wide latitude to the regulatory agencies here. The court does not have the expertise and experience the agencies do. For a court to start second guessing them would be a mess. Unless the plaintiffs can show actual malice or extreme negligence or some other outside reason to make the court think the order was merely punitive then the court should defer to the regulatory agency.
The step back is that they didn’t investigate other potential sources of contamination. There is still a significant amount of evidence that implies the RR is the source of the contamination, and the only other source of contamination implicated is the other rock formation. That doesn’t account for the benzene contamination.
This still doesn’t imply that this is an EPA overreach. They have contaminated groundwater. They’ve gone to a likely source and required that they monitor for offsite contamination. The EPA should have identified Range as a likely source of the contamination rather than the source of contamination, but the monitoring would still be reasonable.
Furthermore, this is what you said:
They’re being fined because they stated they weren’t going to obey the order. They didn’t file their due process claim until a month and a half later. The answer to your question is still “yes.” If the EPA finds a river has been polluted with chemicals downstream of a chemical plant, they can fine the plant for violating regulations. The company then gets an opportunity in court to fight the fine if they think they were operating within the regulations.
The claim is that Range was denied due process, meaning they didn’t have the opportunity to challenge the order. The legal aspects are too out in the reeds for me to know who’s in the right. Even if Range wins the case, a minor procedural misstep by the EPA is a huge difference from shutting down entire industries like they were accused of upthread.
Are you characterizing this as an EPA overreach because it was an emergency order and the required timeline they required of Range? Is the overreach that the EPA required that Range assess the potential that their operation could lead to groundwater contamination?
I’m not sure how much of a backtrack the EPA did during the deposition. There are two statements that the judge focuses in on. First there’s the statement that they didn’t investigate other sources. The only alternative source listed in the documents is the other rock formation, which doesn’t explain the benzene and other VOC contamination. Ridge themselves dismiss other wells as unlikely. Likewise, the fact that the EPA representative indicated that he can’t be certain the contamination came from Range isn’t alarming. You can never be certain of much when it comes to underground contamination, but you can make an educated guess and support it with data.
The RCC clearing Range of the pollution is based on bad data. I can tell you that the soil gas data cited by the RCC is pure junk based on the sampling depth. They’re looking for natural gas contamination of groundwater a hundred feet below the ground surface by sampling 1-3 feet from the surface. Sampling at that depth for deep contamination is useless. Sampling that shallow for anything is almost useless. That demonstrates to me that either the sampling was poorly designed or designed to deliberately not find contamination. In either case, it puts a cloud of doubt over the other results. There’s not enough evidence in the other sampling information to know if it’s well designed or not, but there are EPA samples that show contamination in the wells.
The RCC is also relying on ambient air samples, which is even more ridiculous that the extremely shallow soil gas. Methane from underground doesn’t pose much fire hazard in open air where it can quickly disperse to non-detectable levels. The risk is in enclosed areas such as basements. That’s where the sampling should have been done.
The willingness of the RCC to accept these samples shows me that either they aren’t qualified to interpret the data (very likely, since they probably don’t get much) or they didn’t care that the data were useless.
Fair enough. May I assume we’re talking about water pollution then?
I think they’re dumping it into their own rivers, estuaries and bays. To cite the reverse situation, I doubt our complete besoiling of the Cuyahoga River had any impact on the Chinese environment.
Similarly, air pollution in China gets diluted long before it reaches the US; unless they elect to resume vigorous above-ground nuclear testing, I expect air pollution in China will be a problem that demands their own attention long before we suffer from it.
Earlier you were complaining because the EPA implemented rules that made RE production unprofitable in the US. Now you’re complaining because the rules are too lax in other countries? :dubious:
The mission of the US EPA is to protect the environment here in the US, not the whole world. If China wants looser regs in their country, well, that’s up to them.
Now the justice department is looking into the gulf oil spill. Now?
It was well known Exxon lied about the amount of the spill to lower their liabilities. They lied about everything else too. So now the government and the EPA are going to act?
If you recall, my original statement was that the EPA shouldn’t be allowed to implement NEW regulations. When asked for examples economic impacts of EPA regulations, I have to reference the past impacts.
You belief that the impacts of pollution stop at the U.S. border is frankly bizzare. It is almost like someone insisting the leak is at the other end of the boat.
Is it possible there’s a missing comma or semi-colon between the “I am not sure” and the "I would like someone…"in Whack-A Mole’s post?! In other words, could it be that Whack-a-Mole is calling on you as a resource rather than calling you out?
I’m a little busy working on some things for Cecil, unfortunately, so I can’t really type up a good analysis right now. However, I see that someone has written Cecil about this topic too. Maybe I can convince Cecil to cover it in a not to distant column.
