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It's pretty hard to understand what is in the minds of the legislature that they would decide "Reviews we don't need no stinkin Envornmental reviews" for Ethanol Production Refineries.
You really have to wonder why they would even consider this given that 12 of the 14 (upps 13 one blew up last year) Ethanol Plants are under EPA Consent Orders to come into compliance with the Clean Air Act
Only an industry as arrogant as the ethanol industry can get away with, a proposal is now in front of the Minnesota House of Representatives that pretty much gives the industry a free ride on environmental review.
They must have learned from GSE "If we build it first, they'll never be able to shut us down no matter how many laws we break!" business plan so, the industry has now proposed that all ethanol plants built outside the Metro area and using up to 100 million gallons of water per year be totally exempt from requirements of state law that would require the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement. Makes sense don't it?
House File No. 2633 has this little gem snuck into Minnesota Environmental law:
"No environmental impact statement may be required for an ethanol plant, as defined in section 41A.09, subdivision 2a, paragraph (b), that uses less than 100,000,000 gallons of water annually and is located outside of the seven-county metropolitan area."
Yes, the industry that was found to be lying for years to the EPA, the MPCA (who actually did know but obligingly bent over backwards to keep the fact secret) and a host of other regulators over the fact that they are in fact Major Sources of pollution under the federal Clean Air Act has decided that if people get a chance to weigh in on their potential toxic emissions, they'll never be able to build the STINKING plants! So the solution in their eyes is to gut environmental review, build the plants first, and then make the regulators play catch up as they try to prove that these places do in fact produce pollution and suck up groundwater faster than anyone knows.
Hey, it's been working in St. Paul, hasn't it? GSE has been in violation of so many laws for so long that if you or I had done this we would be in jail, so I guess we should allow Rural people to suffer the same fate that we in the W7th area have suffered with for so long.
YOU ARE NEVER SAFE WHEN THE LEGISLATURE IS IN SESSION. -- Sincerely, John Birrenbach [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Six years on the council has trained me to feign interest for long periods of time" Chris Coleman Jan 21, 2004
W 7th Neighborhood, St Paul MN
Political & Business Consulting http://www.birrenbach.com/
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