Yep, it makes you wonder, industry can do a great job making things, but usually not so great at how to get rid of it, electronics comes to mind, there is a huge load of heavy metals buried in landfills and while the noble metals may stay stable the amalgams tend to break down. Another little mess is the mercury from florescents, which has gotten a lot better but a whole bunch went in the garbage. I know I used to break them as there was no good way to get rid of them. Just like your ni-cad issue. My factory had no method to dispose of e-waste until I set one up, and got no help from the haz waste dude, even though it is a 50K fine if you dump any in the trash now. They are still bumbling around with it, they have a vendor who will take it, but no system to make sure it was gotten to them. What a mess. And I am not a haz waste dude, just had to get certified to deal with Emergency Response stuff.

whatta squash! . yeah, we just plowed it in and the veggies
loved it. . gradually, we converted marginal soil to exceptional
stuff for a garden. . and now, all we have is one dog. . oh well....... -- j
.

I agree! And when I read the original 'expose' in Reason Magazine (about Love Canal) that pretty well set my views on UC and 'fairness' and blame-fixing...
There was some kind of similar pollution cleanup near the Raleigh-Durham Airport a few years ago. The contractor basically dug up a LOT of dirt, baked or burned the Bad Stuff out of it and put it back. It created a water-vapor plume a hundred or two feet in the air for weeks or months on-end. I haven't heard anything negative as a follow-up so far. Apparent success. I wish more 'cleanups' were as successful and quick, too!
Now about those UFO fluids... :))))))))))

Always open to discussion, but I just wanted to point out that (my view) is the generator has a responsibility to both know and understand what their process is and what results. I know that that position was totally ignored up until the late 60's, but it still does not excuse it. Case in point, at Area51, they evidently generated a large amount of some kind of nasty waste (maybe they changed UFO fluids or something), so their brilliant idea was to "burn it". Did not go well at all, there are 30 or so people who have gone public because a lot of them died, and the rest all have some really bizarre conditions, so they sued. The lawsuit, last I heard, was tossed by a federal judge. I totally understand UC, and push where I work to stop and think solution through, because what looks really good from one angle may become unworkable from another. Many engineers I work with cannot comprehend their "solution" is not perfect.

Please do not take my comments negatively, I just wanted to point out that doing what is the norm does not make it the right thing to do, no one thought that discharging crap into water or burying it was a bad idea, out of sight out of mind so to speak. It just doesn't work that way.

Indeed, I give mine away to anyone who wants it. The idiot next door thought he would charge 50.00 a truckload, and you had to pick it up, no one did so it just gathered and gathered and..yuck. It makes a great compost, I have a couple differnt piles my wife "cultivates", some is recent, some is older and it becomes a rich black. We had some mutant zucchini get in there a few years back and we had a 23lb monster. No good to eat, it was like made of wood..

Dale, I like it, well stated and clear. I did not see it in there, but consider something along the lines of " a regulatory agency will be treated as a single person entity in legal actions, with the senior agency personally responsible". The reason they are so blatant is that they are never held accountable as an entity, it is a fractured responsibility, which means no one is ever accountable. That would also limit the number of political hacks who get appointed, knowing they are personally accountable for what happens. Much like a Commanding Officer is responsible for his ship, even when he is not on the bridge.

On a practical level one of the problems is that there are no real consequences if the EPA loses such a lawsuit. No one is fined or goes to jail and they will just slowly ignore this case. Rand Paul is coming to the Gulch the 22 of September and he has been a sponsor of the REINS Act, but this only requires congress to vote when a regulation has more than a $500 million impact on the economy.

I proposed in my a Regulatory Bill of Rights (http://hallingblog.com/2010/12/02/reg...) to give individual citizens real power to fight regulatory over reach with real teeth

To compare the USPTO to the EPA or IRS is absurd. The USPTO is closer to the recorders office, it registers property rights.

I once had fun driving a bobcat to muck out a barn which was
hip-deep in hay and poop -- and it made for some very fine
tomatoes, beans, squash and potatoes!!! -- j
.

Well, of course, your points are valid, but ...
The company DID try to do the best, cheapest, if not longest term solution for the community, and THE COMMUNITY, via its government, did THE OPPOSITE and Then Blamed The Chemical Company!!! THAT is the point I was trying to make... the nonsense of blaming the company for something which MIGHT have been avoidable (maybe forever... no way to tell) if the local government hadn't acted the way it did!!

Likewise, when the PCBs in the Hudson River were discovered to have come from a GE transformer plant, there WAS a brief point made that leaving the nasties at the bottom of the Hudson might be a good solution, compared to dredging 'em up, stirring them into the surface water and top of the river channel, too!

And here's a HazMat conundrum for you... Some months back, I went to my local hardware store to try to recycle some dead NiCd batteries.

The folks there explained to me that they no longer did that. Why not? They couldn't justify the Cost of that much Green-ness. It cost them hundreds or thousands of dollars EVERY time they wanted the ni-cads removed, because they were charged basically for a full EPA HazMat team to come out, secure the area and make sure it was spotlessly clean after the 'cleanup.'

Unintended Consequences, anyone? Have you ever read the Freakonomics series? Their analyses of unintended consequences and surprising 'connections and results' of many laws and "good ideas" is very mind-expanding. I'm recommending it to all my friends, relatives and gifting some with 'em...

Open for discussion, or are you too much of 'an expert in your field' to be open to a discussion?

Why does this feel like a Global Warming or Jesus Is Coming And The Bible Says So kind of interchange? Because yes, that's what it feels like.
.... over....

Yes, to be stopped if we can ever find a way to break their lock on it all.

Of course, remember "Change"? Nuthin changed, other than who got the goodies, and who they took action against. Every 4 ears it is the same litany, which is why Trump is where he is..he at least voices what everyone knows. But there is no brilliant ideas in politics except "how much can I squeeze it for?".

Only if the farm had years of manure and it ran off the property. The problem goes back to responsibility. If a farmer is responsible, and manages their animals well, there is no problem, but when they leave it to pile up that the animals are standing hip deep in it, then it becomes an issue. In that case you have to shut it down.

Plus, how many times has there been cases of "stuff" being dug up in the past? Putting the waste into drums was NOT a good way to dump it, many drums ruptured and leaked, meaning they lost control of it. Just getting an agreement that no one will use it, is not any way to handle nasty stuff, but it was cheap, and efficient for them. The idiots were in the company, as no one who had any "good" knowledge of what was being done, would never have done it in the first place. Sorry to disagree, but if you are going to do things like that, you need to know what will happen to it, until it is completely harmless. Look at what happened to nuclear waste when someone decided to use a different type of kitty litter! The one nuclear waste site available was shut down, I don't know if they ever were able to reopen, but hazardous waste is something you just can not "toss in the ground". I do work with it, and am certified as a Haz Waste Handler. This isn't just about business, it has the potential to kill or seriously injure if not done right. So we get saddled with the EPA.

um, some Decades Ago, Reason Magazine did an issue on Love Canal... the folks that put the pollution in place agreed to give up the property if, in perpetuity, no public use would be made of or on it. The locals got the property and promptly built communities on the land, and when the genetic shit started to hit the fan, promptly sued the chemical company...

Study History, please. The idiots were NOT the folks at the chemical company!

and shutting down a farm because it rained would be the same. -- j
.

I don't think that "brilliant" is quite the right word.
--If you know what I mean.

That depends, Herb.

If you're looking for brilliant ideas regarding how to stay in power, looting a treasury and self-aggrandizement, politics would be the grand daddy of them all. If however one is looking for ideas as to help the populace, well, not so much.

Good idea though!

+1

If you want brilliant ideas, I'm sure you'll agree,politics is not the place to look for them.

Another government horror story. There are way too many of them. I don't see where Boehner and McConnell have done much of anything to help matters. Maybe they just want control of the money, which in turn will control us.

maybe when legal actions fail to take care of it, we need to
employ Chicago or New Jersey methods? -- j
.

Indeed, and that is proof they are a culpable as the people they are supposedly policing. There is a rancher being fined 16 million and he did a great job, and the pig next to me dumped ecoli off the scale and manure into a stream that feed a drinking water source and it took 3 years and he was fined 900 he never paid. It is a completely broken system, and broken because you cannot trust idiots in govt to do what they are tasked with without going power mad.

yes, Herb, you are indeed right on. It comes down to an issue of some few companies making a mess and doing some bad things that will get us, or a huge govt agency, either choice sucks.They haven't even gone into what happens to all the open pit dumps from the last100 years leaching their crap into the groundwater. Burying it was not the most brilliant idea.

Yes, I do agree John, but there will have to be some idiot rules and protections, because the Love Canal idiots just did it, and I am not sure they ever bottomed out on the blame.