This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1434161
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1434161
Who needs clean water anyway?
Well she did…
And so do I
I dunno…maybe the conservative members of the SCOTS look forward to brown water out of their taps.
Around Tampa there are phosphate mines in the area known as Bone Valley. There are waste ponds there that contain small amounts …but nevertheless significant amounts, of uranium and thorium. Enough to be concerning about local ground water in the absence of a hurricane. Now those ponds are flooded… Just imagine it… Anybody for a glass of water? I have seen very little coverage of this in the media as there is massive destruction from Ian that rightly should be addressed.
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I haven’t heard frogs croaking at night for the past two years, even when my hearing aids are in!! I don’t think it is me, since no one else has, either… I have two or three little green tree frogs, but they don’t have much to say.
We all need clean water – birds and bees, flowers and trees, peoples and pups. All of us.
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Water is life.
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I have no doubt that the right wing SCOTUS will decide on the side of big corporations to pollute and poison people as much as they want in the service of profit.
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OH BOY!!..having lived in Florida for 60+ years, i have seen wet lands filled and developed for housing…we are now seeing the reults of ‘filling’ wetlands… We have always asked for the flood plain info when buying property… the ‘locals’ will approve any construction if enough money is involved…if you look at the pictures of the areas flooded, you will row upon row of ‘houses’…all it takes is one monster rain event to put them under water…the ground is saturated and there is no place for the excess water to go…same goes for beach housing…the water/tides/ wave action, erodes the sand from underneath the dunes…and the surface collpases.even sea walls collapse…old timer ‘naturalists’ have been warning about this for years. one way to control such stupidity is to stop FEDERAL insurance,and make it too expensive.Florida developers use’ retention ponds’ to drain excess water…but evn those have over-flowed, this time areound…
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The farm in CT and here in western WI, I hear the peeper frogs all the time. There’s a drainage ditch in the warehouse district behind the WI house and the natural pond and the koi pond at the farm in CT. Noisy as all get-out.
That said, however (and to the topic at hand), I expect this SCOTUS to rule for the destruction of the environment because there’s nothing in the Constitution about it. The justices are all well-off enough that a Flint situation will never happen to them. They will do this in the face of all the destruction in the southeast from Ian and the remaining damage from prior hurricanes that has not been dealt with yet.
It’ll all depend on what their benefactors wants, but I don’t imagine they will find in favor of anything useful.
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Which wetlands and bodies of water can the federal government regulate under the 1972 Clean Water Act?
All of them. Water is life.
I’m pro-life
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i expect to see a massive fish-kill in coastal waters. from the waste water draining into the coastal waters, which are already so polluted the fish caught there cannot be eaten,well you can eat them, at your own risk.
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On a positive note, continued destruction of our environment may speed up the arrival of end times. That should make the fundamentalist on the court happy.
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They certainly seem to think that’s a desirable objective. They’re mighty confident that they will be among the chosen.
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I was a baby in the early 1950s when my family moved to a tiny village in southern Door County, Wisconsin. We lived on the outskirts of the town, in farm land, and had a well and pump for our water source. The water was often yellow/brown, and it smelled sulphurous – like rotten eggs. We drank it anyway. Years later, I am sure that that the well was highly contaminated from the paper mills from the Fox River Valley (connecting Green Bay with Lake Winnebago.) I have survived three cancers now – the most recent, just a few months ago. It was caught early and removed, with all signs of being fully eliminated. And the kinds of cancers are those that are found in high numbers of people from the areas where I lived. No one else in my family ever had these cancers. Because I was so young, these chemicals concentrated heavily in my little female body, and are no doubt still there, ready to go haywire.
The Koch Brothers were responsible for the majority of the worst polluters of the paper mill and paper products/manufacturers in this area. And the atrazines used in the corn fields quickly leached into the water sources and aquifers. And the DDT foggers that came through all summer long to kill mosquitos. Along with all the other poisons we gladly used to fuel our post-war commerce of the 50s and 60s.
We had a brief period in our history that was hopeful, after Rachel Carson wrote “Silent Spring.” The EPA was created, and we learned what pollution was responsible for – the poisoning of our bodies and environments. We know what needs to be done, and we have the tools to do it. We just lost the will. And we lost all manners of justice for Earth.
From “Agrarian Justice,” by Thomas Paine, in 1796:
Liberty and Property are words expressing all those of our possessions which are not of an intellectual nature. There are two kinds of property. Firstly, natural property, or that which comes to us from the Creator of the universe–such as the earth, air, water. Secondly, artificial or acquired property–the invention of men.
In the latter, equality is impossible; for to distribute it equally it would be necessary that all should have contributed in the same proportion, which can never be the case; and this being the case, every individual would hold on to his own property, as his right share. Equality of natural property is the subject of this little essay. Every individual in the world is born therein with legitimate claims on a certain kind of property, or its equivalent.*
This article contains information on the poisoning and pollution of the area of the country I grew up in:
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Oh, Lordy, that just brought tears to my eyes. I am glad you keep beating the odds, but appalled at the fact that you have to because of assholes like the Kochs.
Sending you a long distance hug.
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Pollution, war, financial crises, etc. seem to be cyclical. During the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, a lot of effort went into cleaning up the toxic messes that had been allowed to grow and fester over decades. By the late 80’s, a lot of the sites were habitable and usable, the fish could be eaten, you could swim in the lake, and breathe the air. Now, most of the folks in charge have never experienced rivers that catch on fire or land that is totally poisoned and so the disregard for good environmental practices is again on the increase. So PFOAs in water wells, fracking that poisons the ground water, blue green algae blooms that kill animals and make people sick are all returning. The corporations figure they can keep privatizing profit while socializing the environmental costs until things get so dirty people are once again dying from the pollution. Depressing.
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RACHEL CARSON’s book was terrifying…however…it did get people to act… its hard to believe that a lot of prgress was made under NIXON… and our then Republican Governor… Claude Kirk… he was a reluctant warrior, but that great envviromentalist, NAT REED, made him see the light…the cross-florida barge canal was stopped. DDT spraying was stopped…and other boondoggles…these were the last times the Republicans ever did anything that actually helped our enviroment/ people…
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Leonard Leo has decreed that environmental protection must end.
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Of course. He is just a lawyer who really knows nothing about the environment but is a Federalist so he thinks that counts.
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I hope you did ok in this storm
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One thing is certain. Mother Nature is not gonna be listening to Leonard Leo
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TY! 
I set my own odds. Then I play my hand, usually radically. I’m not very wealthy, but I am pretty healthy at 70. I’ll stick with that. 
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