Let Freedom Ring Blog

When it comes to approving mining projects, the EPA’s policy appears to be one of waiting as long as possible, then announcing that an additional round of studies must be completed before they reject the permit.

The EPA’s demands for additional EIS reports don’t have anything to do with the environment. It has everything to do with progressives trying to control our lives.

PolyMet is a perfect illustration of the progressives’ control freak nature. CREDO superPAC has set up shop in Duluth in their attempt to defeat Chip Cravaack. They understand that he’s a threat to their control freak mindset. This article explains why they’re pulling out all the stops in their attempt to defeat him:

There has been no action on the proposal in the Senate, which has been less favorable to major changes in environmental laws. And on Wednesday the Obama administration issued a statement saying the bill would circumvent public protections of federal lands, including eliminating appropriate reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, and the circumvention of the public input process and curtailing the ability for court review.

Supporters say the law is needed to speed up mining projects for heavily used minerals such as copper and nickel, which the U.S. now gets mostly from other countries.

“Duplicative regulations, bureaucratic inefficiency and lack of coordination between federal agencies are threatening the economic recovery of my home state and jeopardizing our national security,” Amodei said in a statement. The bill “would simply bring some predictability and transparency to the permitting process to leverage our nation’s vast mineral resources, while paying due respect to economic and environmental concerns.”

The bill would cap federal environmental review at 30 months, including permitting.

Cravaack noted that the PolyMet project has been in environmental review for about seven years. He said his amendment would ensure that mining projects are given a firm timeline that “workers, communities and families can count on.”

The bill “is a common-sense, pro-growth piece of legislation that would simply facilitate a timely permitting process for very important mining projects throughout the United States,” Cravaack said in a statement, adding that “30 months is plenty of time to complete the total review process for permitting a mine.”

I published this post to highlight how militant environmentalist organizations sued businesses until they gave up on their projects:

Along with our allies at the Izaak Walton League of America, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Wind on the Wires, the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and Fresh Energy argued — first in South Dakota, then before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) — that the new plant was a bad idea. Our message was simple: The utilities had not proven the need for the energy, and what energy they did need could be acquired less expensively through energy efficiency and wind.

We kept losing, but a funny thing happened. With each passing year, it became clearer that we were right. In 2007, two of the Minnesota utilities dropped out, citing some of the same points we had been making.

The MCEA didn’t care that people’s electric bills were getting expensive. They didn’t care that their claims were based on political consensus, not scientific proof. Talk about a growing consensus that global warming was real was just a vehicle for controlling people’s lives.

The next step in cutting the EPA’s ability to control our lives is to make them prove that their rulings are based on scientific proof, not political ideology. If the EPA can’t justify their rulings based on scientific facts, their objections should be automatically voided and the permitting ratified.

It’s time for We The People had the final say. It’s time these regulatory agencies were accountable to people beyond their agency chiefs.

Chip Cravaack’s amendment is a giant step in the right direction.

Tags: CREDO, Militant Environmentalists, Paul Aasen, MCEA, Attrition Litigation, Big Stone II Power Plant, Progressives, Democrats, Chip Cravaack, Permitting Reform, Jobs, PolyMet, Mining, GOP

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