The AEF Board of Directors wisely voted in July to move forward with an adjudicatory appeal of the ADEQ’s brand new industrial stormwater general permit, which had become effective July 1.  Federation concerns are technical, financial and philosophical.  The technical issues are deliniated in the Water Committee section of this website (members only).  The financial issue can be summed up in 6 million reasons–as in dollars of expenditures for new compliance efforts statewide.  Philosophically, we believe that a requirement by ADEQ that has broad-based application to a large category of facilities is a “rule”…whether it’s called a “regulation,” or a “general permit.”  If it walks like a rule and talks like a rule…chances are it is a rule.  Rules in Arkansas can only become such after formal public hearings, cost/benefit analysis, analysis of small business impacts, Legislative analysis and Legislative review.  Even EPA has recently been slapped down by a federal court on this same issue and has quietly moved to a formal rulemaking process for its own general permits.

ADEQ thinks otherwise, and reportedly is taking steps to eliminate all general permits if the AEF’s appeal is successful.  This is not the only response the Department could take, and furthermore it is not an appropriate response.  A quickie Google search finds at least 15 states that already require general permits to go through a rulemaking process.

The AEF believes that general permits are needed, they are a cost effictive method of regulating permittees and they are beneficial to the environment when appropriately applied.  Threatening to toss that regulatory tool from their toolbox in a pique over losing on the issue of “process” is delitorious to sound management of the water quality program.

The AEF’s appeal will continue and is expected to be adjudicated by mid-November 2009.  In the mean time, ADEQ has notified permittees that the new general permit is no longer available to potential permittess.

The Grand Poobah

The Turk power plant battle has taken some odd twists and turns in recent months, with the Sierra Club and Audubon Arkansas taking the lead in challenging the coal fired ultra super-critical power plant in southwest Arkansas.  In early June, the same two groups announced their backing of a backyard wind turbine project at the Dunbar Community Center in Little Rock.  Nice little project and we hope they are successful.  We need all the diversification of power sources we can find and create. 

But, it does strike one a little odd that the growing mountain of evidence indicates that wind turbines are indeed a source with negative impacts to our feathered friends, the very creatures that these two wind-advocating groups were originally focused on in decades past.  Recent studies indicate that for every megawatt of installed wind power, one to six birds are whacked annually.  The American Bird Conservancy estimates that US wind turbines currently kill between 75,000 and 275,000 birds annually and with the environmentalists’ goal of producing 20% of our energy needs by 2030 by these aviarian cuisinarts, the feather count will explode…no pun intended.  With 300,000 mw in production by 2030-a twelve fold increase from 2008 levels-an estimated 300,000 - 1.8 million birds will be sliced and diced annually.  (Source:  Wall Street Journal, Sept. 8, 2009 Windmills are Killing our Birds by Robert Bryce)  Arguably, between 3 million to 18 million birds will become victims of windmill blades getting us to that goal over the next two decades.  It’s an inconvenient truth that feathered fans have yet to confront in their anti-coal war.

One wonders when the feds will apply the same strict enforcement to wind farms, turbine producers and alternative power companies that they have heaped upon traditional power companies in recent months.  Exxon was fined $600k for killing 85 birds in August under the provisions of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.  Pacificorp paid $1.4 million for killing 232 golden eagles in Wyoming over the past two years.  Comparable fines on the wind industry for today’s death toll would add about $1.95 billion annually to wind operation costs.   Those chickens have not yet come home to roost.

The moral-every form of energy has an environmental price…even “free” energy.

The Grand Poohbah

In an unannounced shakeup at ADEQ, the Solid Waste Division has been reassigned from the purview of Dep. Director Steve Martin to Chief Dep. Director Karen Bassett.  No word on reason, but we’ve heard that further shuffling to balance the loads of the Deputies is forthcoming.  Martin still has oversight of the Water Division and Public Outreach.

The Grand Poohbah

We’ve just learned that regional solid waste management districts are working on plans to tap the Landfill Post Closure Trust Fund to finance some of the operations of their recycling efforts.  Details are sparce, but apparently some of the district’s overhead costs will be the targeted recipients of the now accumulated $24 million in the trust fund.  Problem is, very soon, if not already, the LFPCTF revenue stream will be diverted to E-Waste management, the result of efforts in 2007 to create a plan for E-Waste collection, transportation and recycling/disposal.  Legislation passed then allows the $1/ton tipping fee that has finally…once again…capped out the LFPCTF above $20 million, will be redirected to establishing the E-Waste system.  However, when the LFPCTF drains down to $10 million in the not so distant future, the $1/ton tipping fee again activates, BUT the E-Waste $1/ton continues.  A net increase of 100% on the state’s tipping fee take.

More details will follow, I’m sure.

The Grand Poohbah

Gov. Beebe gave an inspiring and challenging speech to the combined House and Senate yesterday, challenging the Legislature to move forward on health care, a lottery that’s efficient and transparent, economic development, grocery tax reduction and pressing for alternative energy.  Beebe noted that Arkansas recently ranked 10th nationally in overall education efforts, that economic development efforts over the past two years had netted $2.7 billion invested and 19,000 new jobs, and that millions in new road money was coming in due to the new severance tax on natural gas.  No question, Beebe has the gravitas of high popular polling numbers, exceptional economic development record and a strong state budget performance to pull this Session’s agenda off without breaking a sweat.

For the first time in this blogger’s memory, “ADEQ” was mentioned in a governor’s state of the state address.  One would probably need to go back to Clinton’s early years when he was establishing himself as a pragmatic environmentalist to find a reference to the ADPCE/PCE/ADEQ agency.  Beebe mentioned that ADEQ is now receiving revenues from the severance tax haul…part of his deal to siphon 5% of the tax away from ADHT to the state’s general fund.  ADEQ sorely needs the additional funding, as EPA has consistently pushed unfunded programs onto states during the Bush years and the Fayetteville Shale play is creating new environmental demands on the agency that has had minimal oil and gas enforcement experiences in the past.

Of interest is what Beebe didn’t say.  Not once was the Governor’s Global Warming Commission mentioned, nor any of its 54 recommendations, nor Arkansas’s contribution to the warming of our home planet.  He did talk about being “stewards of our environment,” conserving, operating efficiently and the state’s partnership with the Clinton Climate Initiative that will allow the state to “lead by example”…one assumes that refers to conservation measures by state building retrofits and efficiencies.  Me thinks the message in the tea leaves is as the Poohbah has predicted months ago.  Both Beebe and GGWC Chair Rep. Kathy Webb are pragmatists.  We will not see the more archaic, government mandated, top down restrictions that global warming advocates have pushed on other states.

For complete coverage of the Governor’s State of the Sate address–

http://governor.arkansas.gov/newsroom/index.php?do:newsDetail=1&news_id=1384               

The Grand Poohbah

David Sanders has published 3 articles in the past week on the work of the Governor’s Global Warming Commission.  Sanders contends that the Commission hired staff, the Center for Climate Strategies, that pushes the agends of wealthy environmental activist donors and spews canned “solutions” that have little in common with Arkansas’s economy. 

“Here’s how the scheme works:

CCS helps set up a state-based global warming policy study group and then gets hired to direct it. The group will adopt one of CCS’s canned policy reports. Then, the policy group’s members lobby their state government to adopt controversial and costly environmental policies. The GCGW reproduced one of CCS’s reports, which contained 54 policy recommendations and carried a price tag of $3.7 billion.”

Sanders contends that CCS stifled debate on the science of Global Warming contrary to the state law that created the Commission, then presented canned solutions with little relevance to the economy of Arkansas, charged the state only $50k while collecting the balance of $370k from left wing agenda driven donors.  Sanders further contends that CCS is doing this throughout the nation in an effort to pressure states into passing GW laws that will then pressure Congress into action this year–an orchestrated grass roots effort to influence Congressional action.  Sounds a lot like lobbying to me. 

You can find 3 of schedule 5 Sanders articles on the GGW Commission’s work at http://dev2.arkansasnews.com/?cat=95

The Grand Poohbah

 

On August 27, ADEQ issued its final modifications to the Minor Source General air Permit for Natural Gas & Oil Gathering Facilities.  Permit 1868-AGP-000 is now final.  Extensive comments were furnished by producers who seemed most worked up over the fact that since all internal combustion engines manufactured after July 1 of this year will be subject to an NSPS and NESHAP, those engines will be subject to individual permitting rather than utilizing the new general permit.  ADEQ apparently addressed this concern with the comment that “Regulation 18 is currently at public notice with a change to add NSPS JJJJ to the list of NSPS in Regulation 18 s 18.301(B)(3) of not requiring a minor source permit for just because a facility has a source subject to NSPS JJJJ.

The Grand Poobah