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