Don 'Killer' Trumpillini claimed he has done a lot for the environment in last night's debate. What is true amid his avalance of lies is that he has done a lot to degrade the environment by rolling back over a hundred environmental regulations and taking the US out of the Paris Climate Accord.. The latest effect of his extreme pro-extraction policy bias comes from another swamp--non-metaphorical--the Okeefenokee in Georgia. A mining company is set to dig without a federal permit next (within four miles) to the Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge, the largest east of the Mississippi, thanks to the regimes relaxation of Clean Water Act permit regulations. Army Corps of Engineers, hardly a group of environmental activists, recently concluded that permitting the mining would drain most of the swamp, whcih is home to allegators, bald eagles, fish and other protected species. The company says no permit is required because "no federal waters will be affected". In January, as part of the regime's anti-environment protection program, the heads of EPA and the Corps agreed to narrow the definition of water bodies that require a federal clean water permit before extraction can begin.
“These [restrictive] decisions are being made across the country, and we’re only starting to see the consequences,” said Geoff Gisler, a senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “I think what we’ll see over the next several months, until this rule is thrown out or changes, is that we’re going to lose the streams and wetlands that we depend on.” The company, Twin Pines, originally submitted a permit application for mining titanium dioxide that would have covered 630 square miles near the Georgia-Florida state line. It withdrew that application and submitted one that covers less than half of the original request.
The Corps agreed that under the new rules, Twin Pines would not need federal permission to start digging. The agency said in response to protests over the decision that wetlands are no longer under its jurisdiction. All of the directly affected wetlands lie outside the Okefenokee’s boundaries. The Okefenokee Swamp is an ecological gem that draws 600,000 visitors a year to its flooded cypress forest and prairies. Twin Pines still needs permits from Georgia's environmental agency where it has five permits pending. The US Fish and Wildlife Service said in a letter to the Army Corps a year ago that there was “great uncertainty” surrounding how mining near the swamp’s edge might affect its ability to hold water, according to AP.
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| That was a real whopper!.... |
