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TODAY Wednesday 4 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Wednesday 4 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: Swine and Federalism
Today you get two-for-one in the easy outrage department.
Outrage number one is a giant hog-confinement facility in Virginia. Liberty Tree readers remember that Marty Strange told us back in April that there's no such thing as a good giant hog-confinement facility, but the Smithfield Foods operation is an impressively nasty variant. According to Greenwire, the Smithfield people illegally dumped so much untreated pig manure into the Pagan River over the past six years that a federal judge found the corporation liable for up to $133 million in fines for more than 160 violations. This is the Chernobyl of hog effusions.
Smithfield defended itself by saying that the federal courts had no jurisdiction over an inside-Virginia operation. The judge told them to read the statute that established the EPA and then took a welcome swipe at the "virtually toothless" laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
What she didn't say -- but what was readily reported by the newspapers in Richmond and Washington -- is that EPA had to bring suit aginst Smithfield because Virginia was shirking its duty to enforce national standards. It is not generally understood that the feds don't usually enforce local applications of US environmental laws; states do, and are paid for it. In Virginia, the EPA alleged, the state was "not doing the job." Which comes as little surprise to anyone acquainted with Governor George Allen, who has made a name for himself by criticizing the federal standards and by firing or stifling diligent bureaucrats in the state's department of environmental protection, all with the usual malarkey about jobs and the business climate, overlaid with an ideology of states' rights.
There are tough issues of federalism and politics here. To what degree should the national government delegate the enforcement of national standards? To what degree can environmentalists exploit the opportunities made available by the delegation of those powers through grassroots organizing? Peter Bahouth will explore these issues intelligently and probingly in an upcoming op-ed on the Devolution of Environmental Protection.
For now, though, I just want to get in a few bad words on Virginia. As a New Englander and a Union man, I've never liked Virginia. I like Plymouth over Jamestown, Boston over Richmond, and John Adams over Thomas Windbag Jefferson. I dislike intensely all that slave-culture folklore about cavaliers and chivalry and Robert E. Lee and The Cause. The northern Virginia suburbs, especially around Tyson's Corner, constitute the worst example of sprawl you can find east of Houston. Too much Pentagon, too much CIA, too many military retirees on generous pensions who complain about government spending. Pat Robertson, Oliver North, George Allen Senior and Junior.
The Shenandoah Valley is pretty good, though. And the Blue Ridge Mountains and the rolling country that brings you to them. And Jefferson certainly had a good eye, not to mention the best opening paragraph in political history. The weather's not bad. It's tough to sustain a dependable contempt in the big complicated American empire. You go to Petersburg and see the trenches carried by the Army of the Potomac in 1865, and then follow the lines of Confederate retreat and Yankee pursuit, crossing at last at Appomattox, rebellion finally at bay, and you can see the republic transformed unalterably from its agrarian past, and the mixed blessings that flowed.
TODAY ON THE SITE
Lots of new news on the climate front. Look into Leonie Haimson's updated Climate feature in our In The Trenches section, and get ready for the struggles over the Kyoto Conference later this year.
6/03: A New Measure
6/02: My Front Yard
5/30: Funders
5/29: Quantification
5/28: Over the Top
5/27: Solar Hippies
5/23: Spiffy Cars, Clunker Bikes
5/22: Petroleum Heresy
5/21: We Irish
5/20: Shallow Backpackers
5/19: Songbirds
5/16: Fat, Fat, Fat
5/15: Our Forthright Administration
5/14: Coral Reefs of the Sahara
5/13: (Life Before) Death and Taxes
5/12: Kids
5/09: Free Trade and Hormones
5/08: Sherry Boehlert, Republican
5/07: Fort Davis, West Texas
5/06: Europe (yawn)
5/05: Divorce, Mothers, Equality
5/02: Killer Grannies and the Highway Bill
5/01: China
4/30: Pity the Mangrove
4/29: Grizzlies off Battery Park
4/28: Mighty Monsanto
4/25: Growth
4/24: Refrigerator Wars
4/23: The Day the Earth Day Stood Still
4/22: Doorman Ecology
4/21: Toyota Steps Out
4/18: Victims of Extremism
4/17: Our White Guy Problem
4/16: Coca-Cola and the Merrit Parkway