One wouldn’t think that rainwater could be an issue of concern to the average American. . If there was concern the topic of flooding would probably be on the top of the list, or a lack of rainwater that hurts the farmer’s crops. But this is 2010 and we have seen what rain water does around here. It was only a few years ago that a consent decree was signed by the powers that be and the EPA to stop overflows in the sanitary system.
It was Hurricane Hugo that started the oversight. The EPA got involved because in old towns like ours the sewer systems were built as a co-mingled system. That means that storm water, or rainwater runoff, is directed into the sanitary system and goes through the treatment plant. In severe weather the treatment plant overflowed, causing sewage to go into the river. The original idea of co-mingled systems was to push the sanitary waste out of the pipes and down stream. That was before we had water treatment plants as far back as the 1800’s.
Our town has been upgrading our sewer system for the past 20 years but spending big money in the past 10 years. The City of Pittsburgh has finished their work that leads to the Farragut sanitary line and storm line, Bellevue and Ross Township finished years ago. The visible result is the reworked “Tiger Cage” that was installed on Farragut at the end of Jacks Run Creek back in the 1950’s. The Tiger Cage was originally installed when raw sewage was still being put into Jacks Run and needed to be directed to the treatment plant. The Tiger Cage is gone, replaced with a series of debris interrupters that stop trees and tires from entering the sewer system from Jacks Run Creek. Now, storm water from Bellevue, Ross Township and the City of Pittsburgh headed for the Farragut valley is directed to the Ohio River rather than ALCOSAN.
If you have been paying attention you know that ALCOSAN is about to raise fees that we will pay on our sewage bills to help pay for the EPA consent decree work that ALCOSAN has to do. By the time the work is completed, and who you choose to listen to or believe, the cost will be somewhere between $1 billion and $3 billion dollars.
It is nice to talk about the nostalgia of the “Tiger Cage” and pre water treatment days, but this is all old news. Yes, fellow resident, it is old news that we haven’t really started to pay for yet. However, our elected leaders are already pushing their weight around through the EPA for a new round of regulation and taxes. The EPA is looking to regulate the discharge of “rainwater runoff”.
That means a U.S. government agency wants to tax me for the water that falls on my house, driveway or sidewalk and is “runoff” or discharged somewhere. The proposed rule making says the plan is only to affect new or newly redeveloped sites. I guess I shouldn’t worry because my house would be grandfathered wouldn’t it? Well, that depends on what one means by newly redeveloped sites. Did Bellevue just newly redevelop our sewer system? Does that mean that Bellevue will be forced to figure out how much water is coming off private property and into our new storm sewer system?
Does this mean that the surcharge I pay to the Borough for the sewer system we put in, is being added to a surcharge to ALCOSAN for the sewer system they are going to upgrade, for water I use to water my lawn? In the future will I have to pay an EPA tax for the rain when I don’t have to water my lawn?
Oh, by the way, ALCOSAN existed prior to the EPA. We were cleaning our water in Allegheny County before the EPA began operation in 1970. The EPA was originally charged to protect human health and the environment and exists to develop and enforce regulations based on laws passed by Congress.
The EPA ‘s 2010 budget exceeds $10.5 billion, $1 billion of that is for clean air and global climate change investigation and close to $1billion for what they call compliance and environmental stewardship. I’ve got an idea, since the EPA has solved all of our health problems to the point that they want to figure out how much rain water runs off our property, I think they have outlived their original mandate. They aren’t protecting human health any more, if they ever did. It’s time for Congress to pass a law dissolving the EPA.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Trustworthiness
What a week for trustworthiness. The U.S. intelligence community is looking to develop methods that would give clues to who can be trusted, or who is trustworthy. In the same week we have ACORN announcing they are closing down their operations we’re looking for methods to identify trustworthiness. I’m guessing they will reconstitute themselves, let’s wait and see what they call themselves next. In the same week a former representative is convicted of 14 counts of corruption, we’re still looking for clues to identify trustworthiness. In the same week our Congress buys off some, threatens others and claims they are looking out for the little guy, and we find out they violated their own rules, we are still looking for tips on trustworthiness.
It is important that our intelligence and law enforcement community be able to identify trustworthiness in the people they deal with so they can keep us safe. But, I’ll bet they can do that already, if we let them. Our problem is we will not permit them to identify those who are not trustworthy. If you wonder who is trustworthy, trust them until they show that they aren’t trustworthy and then don’t believe them at all.
We can’t use every day trustworthiness tests in our public affairs. The TSA will pull every tenth person out of the line at the airport rather than someone who looks like a mid-eastern terrorist because that would be profiling and we all know that profiling is bad. It isn’t bad if we pull out an 80 year old woman with a cane and search her for bombs because it was just her turn. We didn’t do it because she was a white woman we did it because she was tenth in line. That is where we have come in our truth meter.
If you were aware of this type of activity in the 1970’s you will remember the Baader-Meinhof Gang. They were a group of Germans who were the leftist radicals of the time. If you don’t remember them by name, or nationality, maybe you will remember them as the terrorists in the raid at Entebbe. Back then, when we were looking for them and the Red Army Faction, profiling wasn’t an issue because they were blonde haired and blue eyed criminals. Those radicals didn’t violate our new found sensitivities.
We were taught as children how to test trustworthiness why don’t we just remember what we were taught? Is a community activist group that continues to violate federal and state laws a bad organization that should not be trusted? Does it take trying to fix an election and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to make people see how bad they are? Or should we have seen it before they closed their doors? Does an elected official who is convicted of 14 felonies get to cry foul because he wasn’t convicted of another 100 crimes?.
The President said that health care reform has been 100 years in the making. Let’s see, that would mean he is speaking of the Progressive Era that brought us President Wilson and the Depression. You see, in the U.S. it was called the Progressive Era, in Russia it was the Bolshevik Revolution, in Germany it was National Socialism. Trustworthiness surely is needed at the federal level but when someone shows you or tells you what they are, and it is not flattering, believe them. We only have to look at the facts, just the facts.
It is important that our intelligence and law enforcement community be able to identify trustworthiness in the people they deal with so they can keep us safe. But, I’ll bet they can do that already, if we let them. Our problem is we will not permit them to identify those who are not trustworthy. If you wonder who is trustworthy, trust them until they show that they aren’t trustworthy and then don’t believe them at all.
We can’t use every day trustworthiness tests in our public affairs. The TSA will pull every tenth person out of the line at the airport rather than someone who looks like a mid-eastern terrorist because that would be profiling and we all know that profiling is bad. It isn’t bad if we pull out an 80 year old woman with a cane and search her for bombs because it was just her turn. We didn’t do it because she was a white woman we did it because she was tenth in line. That is where we have come in our truth meter.
If you were aware of this type of activity in the 1970’s you will remember the Baader-Meinhof Gang. They were a group of Germans who were the leftist radicals of the time. If you don’t remember them by name, or nationality, maybe you will remember them as the terrorists in the raid at Entebbe. Back then, when we were looking for them and the Red Army Faction, profiling wasn’t an issue because they were blonde haired and blue eyed criminals. Those radicals didn’t violate our new found sensitivities.
We were taught as children how to test trustworthiness why don’t we just remember what we were taught? Is a community activist group that continues to violate federal and state laws a bad organization that should not be trusted? Does it take trying to fix an election and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to make people see how bad they are? Or should we have seen it before they closed their doors? Does an elected official who is convicted of 14 felonies get to cry foul because he wasn’t convicted of another 100 crimes?.
The President said that health care reform has been 100 years in the making. Let’s see, that would mean he is speaking of the Progressive Era that brought us President Wilson and the Depression. You see, in the U.S. it was called the Progressive Era, in Russia it was the Bolshevik Revolution, in Germany it was National Socialism. Trustworthiness surely is needed at the federal level but when someone shows you or tells you what they are, and it is not flattering, believe them. We only have to look at the facts, just the facts.
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