In a previous post, “How NEPA crushes productivity,” I wrote about the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a byzantine Federal bureaucratic maze that stifles productivity.  The length, complexity and uncertainty of the permitting process of NEPA now takes a mining company about 10 years to obtain the necessary Federal permits for a major project.  That puts the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage since other countries are more efficient in this regard.  For instance, permitting time in Canada and Australia is typically less than two years.

In contrast to the Federal NEPA process, ADEQ has a process that gets the job done much more efficiently and now ADEQ is striving to make it even better.  The ADEQ system should be a model for the Feds.

I asked ADEQ Director Henry Darwin some questions about the philosophy and workings of ADEQ:

Wryheat: 1. What advancements in regulations and permitting time lines has ADEQ made recently?

Darwin:

ADEQ has applied “Lean techniques” to its permitting processes and is now making permitting decisions much faster.  Permits that previously required 18 months to process are now being processed in less than a year.  Certain interim permitting steps, administrative review for example, previously took up to 60 days and can now be completed in a single meeting.

Wryheat note: “Lean techniques” according to Wikipedia “is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or service, ‘value’ is defined as any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for.  Essentially, lean is centered on preserving value with less work.”

Wryheat: 2. Do you believe that economic activity, especially mining, can co-exist with good environmental stewardship? If so, how?

Darwin:

I have long believed environmental protection and economic development go hand in hand. It is a little recognized fact that poor countries and countries that are emerging from poverty have the most difficult time protecting the environment. The converse is also true; a strong economy provides society the wherewithal to protect the environment.  As a result, the best indicator of a healthy natural environment is often a healthy economic environment.

Wryheat: 3. To some, mining and environmental quality are opposites. How does ADEQ reconcile the apparent conflict?

Darwin:

This is a false choice. Prudent use of natural resources and environmental protection are not at odds. Conflict between the two only arises at the extreme of either activity, and legal protections exist to minimize mining’s adverse impacts. ADEQ doesn’t get to decide whether a mine opens, but through our permitting processes, we ensure mining operations occur in an environmentally responsible way that limits harmful emissions to our air, water and soil. It’s worth noting, as important as the mining industry is to Arizona’s economy, our state leaders recognized the value in protecting our precious natural resources. This is why they passed the Environmental Quality Act in 1986, which not only established ADEQ as a separate, cabinet level agency, but also created the Aquifer Protection Permit program, the first comprehensive groundwater protection program in the nation. As a result, every mine that operates in Arizona must obtain a permit that ensures groundwater is protected.

Wryheat: 4. What do you regard as the minimum time for ADEQ to vet a major project and what does the process consist of?

Darwin:

In the recent past we have permitted several large projects in as little as six months, but timeframes are project-specific and providing a general timeframe would be subject to error. We encourage any party who is planning a major project to visit with us to establish a plan for expeditious permitting. An expeditious process consists of the following major steps:

Pre-Application Meeting: Face to face pre-application meeting

Administrative Review: A real time and face to face administrative review meeting to make sure the applications is complete

Substantive Review: Regular phone contact between the ADEQ permit writer and the applicant’s consultant during substantive review

Applicant Review of Permit Conditions

Public Comment

Public Comment Response

Final Payment

Issue Permit

Wryheat: 5. Does ADEQ regard itself, in its role of protecting the environment, a partner of business or a strict watchdog, or both? How is that reconciled?

Darwin:

As I said in my response to Question 2, above, a strong economy and safe, healthy environment are not adversarial. In fact, one of our agency’s strategic goals is to support environmentally responsible economic growth. Companies that do business in Arizona often require our products and services (permits, or example) in order to operate. Such companies are, in fact, our customers, and ADEQ must deliver value as our customers define it. This doesn’t mean we give our customers everything they want, because the customer is not always right. We have shareholders, too, namely taxpayers, who require a solid return on their investment; they want clear skies, clean water and land that is safe to roam, work and play. There must always be a healthy balance between delivering customer value and providing that solid return on investment for Arizona taxpayers.

I asked some representatives of the mining industry about their perception of ADEQ.

From Kathy Arnold, VP Environmental & Regulatory Affairs, Rosemont Copper Company:

ADEQ has made great strides with permitting both in setting specific requirements and in setting specific timeframes. This gives businesses the certainty necessary for determining timeframes.  ADEQ has been working on developing processes and rules for programs and their stakeholder system allows people to give input necessary so rules can be fully vetted and understood before implementation. The overall process for permits is fair and can be followed without political interference. The enforcement of the rules and permits is tough but again fair.  

From  Steve Trussell, Executive Director, Arizona Rock Products Association:

The ADEQ has recently worked on several projects that have been of key interest to citizens of our state in terms of air and water quality, but two that come to mind as of late are efforts to respond to  components of Governor Jan Brewer’s Four Cornerstones Document which was presented at the State of the State Address in January of this year. 

The ADEQ began the laborious task of process waste reduction regarding the amount of steps it takes to get a permit out the door by reducing licensing time frames.  ADEQ hosted events which included stakeholders in order to identify the factors that arise in permitting that could be potentially holding up permit approvals.  Permitting can be a challenge depending on the specific project and the current regulatory requirements and is a key factor in business investment in Arizona.  ADEQ has employed LEAN process improvements that have and will continue to reduce permitting delays for both air and water permitting and will be implementing the lessons learned across the boards and within all sections of the agency.  The agency reports that processing times have been reduced by one-third and have allowed companies to allocate valuable resources elsewhere. 

Additionally, the ADEQ will further enjoy expeditious submittals, approvals and reporting compliance as a result of their proposed e-portal which will allow the agency to move in a paperless direction.  The portal will enable a permitted source to track, report and submit payment on all of their various permits with the agency, and all in one place.  A process that once required a tremendous amount of time and effort from a record keeping and delivery standpoint would now be possible at the project site.

These are merely a few examples of progressive steps the ADEQ has taken to be protective of the environment while addressing time and resource sensitivity of Arizona’s businesses. Governor Brewer had this to say about the initiative, “The completion of this project, with its cost savings, convenience, and compliance assistance, will be a boon to business regulated by the ADEQ and help attract new business to Arizona” and the members of the Arizona Rock Products Association. couldn’t agree more.  All business organizations regulated by the ADEQ should encourage the legislature to support this laudable effort.

Mr. Darwin sent me some information on the proposed e-portal Mr. Trussel mentioned.  The new site will be called MyDEQ.  The program “will  funded through existing revenue ($10 million) from the Vehicle Emissions Inspections Fund.”

Here are some highlights of the proposed program:

The Federal government should take notice of ADEQ methods and try to emulate them.

See also:

Mining and the bureaucracy

How NEPA crushes productivity

Uncorrected Forest Service errors block marble mine

Pima County versus Rosemont

The importance of minerals to our economy and national security

Attorney Karen Budd-Falen says this practice is both a scandal and waste of taxpayer dollars.  The following is her charge (I’ve made some minor edits for clarity):

This is a plea for help, to raise awareness and public outcry regarding yet another federal government cover-up.  The scandal –- the Justice and Treasury Departments’ refusal to inform the American taxpayer how much, and for what, their tax dollars are being spent and … the inability of Congress to put forth legislation that requires this information to be available to the American public.  How can there be reform of a crisis (or how can radical environmental groups prove that our claims of abuse are blown out of proportion) without transparency and an accounting?

According to a study from Drexel University, there are 6,500 national and 20,000 local environmental organizations with an estimated 20-30 million members.  This study opines that the “environmental movement” dwarfs other modern social movements such as the civil rights or peace movements.  Because it would be impossible to study all 6,500 national groups, we reviewed all the federal district court complaints over a series of years for just 3 of these groups and found:

–Thirty-five percent (35%) of federal court complaints are filed ONLY based on a missed procedural step under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA);

–Twenty nine percent (29%) of federal court complaints are filed ONLY based upon missed timelines under the Endangered Species Act (ESA):

–Eleven percent (11%) of all federal court complaints are filed because of a failure to complete the process for considering an action under “Section 7″ of the ESA.

Importantly, these are not cases where the federal court can rule that there is harm to the environment or that additional substantive actions are necessary; the ONLY thing a court can do is send the case back to the federal government for more process.

But that is not why this litigation is filed: litigation is filed because the courts have the power to delay private lives and livelihoods while the federal government completes more process.  The harm to American families is not whether the federal government can comply with a process, the harm is in the endless delay in issuing a decision so that America can move forward.  It is red-tape at its [worst], and radical environmental groups are absolutely making the most of the red tape and killing [the livelihoods of] American families in the meantime.

Let me give you more details:

As stated above, this firm reviewed the federal court complaints to analyze the claims underlying each of their cases; the families that are being targeted by the litigation; and what a federal court could do to grant the relief requested.  Over 400 federal court complaints individually analyzed were filed by either the Western Watersheds Project (WWP), WildEarth Guardians (WEG) or the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD).  WWP’s Policy Memos list as a “to do”: “Get all cows and sheep off federal lands ASAP!”  The WEG uses ” litigation, science, public outreach and organizing, the media, and lobbying” to make progress towards their goals of phasing out fossil fuels, obtaining formal listings of species under the Endangered Species Act; ensuring public lands “are not destroyed” by “over development, overgrazing, or natural resource extraction.”  CBD is noted as a group that uses litigation and petitions to “effect change.”  Its campaigns include listing species, stopping unsustainable human population growth and species extinction crisis and opposition to motorized recreation.

For these groups, we documented:

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is the litigation tool of choice for the WWP and CBD, with 58% and 36% of their complaints respectively including a NEPA claim.  NEPA is a process; according to the Supreme Court, NEPA’s purpose is “to ensure a fully informed and well-considered decision, not necessarily a decision the judges of the Court of Appeals or of this Court would have reached had they been members of the decision making unit of the agency.”  Thus, the courts enforce the NEPA process, but rarely over turn the substance of the federal agency decision.

The problem, however, is that the courts are willing to enjoin or stop a project or decision until the federal government complies with the NEPA process.  So what does this mean for American families?  Consider that 89% of the federal district court complaints filed by WWP directly attack livestock grazing by claiming a violation of a NEPA procedure and then seeking to stop (temporarily or permanently) a rancher’s use of the lands he has used for generations because the federal government violated the NEPA process.  NEPA is a powerful hammer to eliminate these families because if they rely on the federal government to make a decision and the federal government cannot get through enough procedural hoops to make a decision, that American family cannot continue to make a living.   These ranch families are not the only ones under attack because of litigation over process.  The industries that produce America’s energy from our natural resources are bearing the brunt of the NEPA litigation from the WEG and CBD, specifically 22% and 18% of the federal court complaints respectively oppose natural resource producing power plants, energy production, and mining.  Even “green energy” is now being attacked by the WWP, CBD and WEG as part of their litigation strategy.  Again, the issue being litigated is not whether energy production is beneficial or detrimental to the environment, but whether the federal government properly completed the process. And just like the harm to the ranching families, the Courts can stop all movement until the NEPA process is complete and the radical groups cease their litigation wanting more and more process.

Another huge litigation arena is the federal government’s compliance with the timelines in the Endangered Species Act.  Over 46% of the cases filed by the WEG are ONLY to force the federal government to comply with these time frames; 30% of the CBD cases and 25% of the WWP cases contain the same claims.  As with NEPA, the courts cannot enforce any listing or critical habitat decision; the court can ONLY hold that the federal agencies failed to comply with the timelines and then pay attorneys fees to these radical groups because the federal government cannot meet the time-frames set by Congress.  Attorney hourly fees can range from $500.00 per hour to $750.00 per hour.   And it has cost the American taxpayers millions of dollars paying radical groups to harm American workers.

American families are being targeted by groups being paid your tax dollars to put Americans out of work, not in the name of environmental protection, but in the name of procedures and technicalities. Please contact your Congressional Representatives; we have to stop yet another federal government cover-up.  We need an accounting now.

Wryheat comment:

Environmental laws, as currently structured, contain too many bureaucratic hoops and traps that have nothing to do with environmental issues. For many federal agencies it is all about process rather than substance and good environmental stewardship. Environmental groups have learned to take advantage of the bureaucratic hoops and traps to delay the process and enrich themselves to the detriment of American families, industries, and our economy.

See also:

Property Rights and Freedom

Regulating behind closed doors, the cozy relationship between the Feds and environmental groups

Mining and the bureaucracy

How NEPA crushes productivity

The EPA is destroying America

Repeal the Endangered Species Act

Endangered Species paperwork to cost $206,098,920

We often see ominous headlines similar to the one above in the mainstream media. They can cause great concern. But it pays to look at the details. The headline is qualified in the first sentence of the press release with the phrase “may experience higher blood lead levels” but many of the media reports went with the headline. This headline came from a press release by the  Mount Sinai School of Medicine (see the entire press release here).  So, what methods did the researchers use to justify even the modified description?

The operative paragraph in the press release is this one:

“Researchers measured lead levels in soil and drinking water at 200 toxic waste sites in 31 countries then estimated the blood lead levels in 779,989 children who were potentially exposed to lead from these sites in 2010. The blood lead levels ranged from 1.5 to 104 µg/dL, with an average of 21 µg/dL in children ages four years and younger. According to Dr. Chatham-Stephens, first author of the study, these higher blood lead levels could result in an estimated loss of five to eight IQ points per child and an incidence of mild mental retardation in 6 out of every 1,000 children.”

There are many precise numbers implying rigorous research. But, the phrases “estimated the blood levels,” “potentially exposed,” and “could result” should raise a red flag.

The whole thesis of this research is based on guesswork and assumption. The researchers did not measure lead levels in children’s blood; nor did they test IQ levels; and they did not interact with 779,989 children. Further investigation reveals that all the numbers, including the reported blood lead levels, are extrapolations from computer modeling.

The paper title is “The Pediatric Burden of Disease from Lead Exposure at Toxic Waste Sites in Low and Middle Income Countries.” I could not find the full published paper, but I did find the abstract here. From the abstract we find that the numbers reported in the press release are indeed products of computer modeling, not from actual measurement. The paper in question is apparently a subset of a larger study by the same authors:“Burden of disease from toxic waste sites in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines in 2010″ which is available online. The methodology described there confirms that no blood tests were performed. So, all those impressive looking precise numbers in the press release are mere artifacts of the assumptions used in a computer model.

The point here is that while the contention of the research might be correct, the reality is that we don’t know because the researchers, as far as I can tell, never validated the modeling with ground truth. We know no more now than we did before the research was conducted and the relationship postulated.

I think stories like this reflect poor practice in both journalism and science. I also noted that the study was done in conjunction with the Blacksmith Institute, an advocacy group, so there may be some promotional incentive for the press release headline.

The principle danger from this kind of study, besides worrying the public, is that policy makers may read only the headlines and propose inappropriate solutions to problems that may not exist.

A version of this article first appeared in the Arizona Daily Independent.

See also:

Be wary of statistical traps

Although established with good intentions, the reality is that NEPA has turned into a byzantine bureaucratic maze that stifles productivity. For instance, remember a few years ago when President Obama touted “shovel ready projects” to get the economy working again? Well, those “shovel ready projects” were delayed because they had to contend with NEPA. Before a single shovel can hit the dirt it usually takes more than five years for the average Federal project to jump through all the normal environmental hoops. Some private projects take longer, for example the proposed Rosemont Copper project is seven years into the permitting process.

Hal Quinn, president of the National Mining Association, notes that permit delays are among the biggest hurdles for mineral development. “The length, complexity and uncertainty of the permitting process are the primary reasons investors give for not investing is U.S. minerals mining. In the U.S., necessary government authorizations now take close to 10 years to secure, resulting in decreased competitiveness and increased reliance on foreign sources of minerals.” Permitting time in Canada and Australia is typically less than two years.

That being said, let’s look at how NEPA should theoretically work. The Council on Environmental Quality has published a Citizen’s Guide to NEPA, which I will summarize with excerpts and comments:

NEPA applies to a very wide range of Federal actions that include, but are not limited to, Federal construction projects, plans to manage and develop Federally owned lands, and Federal approvals of non-Federal activities such as grants, licenses, and permits.

NEPA requires Federal agencies to consider environmental effects that include, among others, impacts on social, cultural, and economic resources, as well as natural resources.

Frequently, private individuals, companies, and municipalities will become involved in the NEPA process when they need a permit issued by a Federal agency. Federal agencies usually require the private company or developer to pay for the preparation of analyses, but the agency remains responsible for the scope and accuracy of the analysis.

Although many Federal agencies get involved, there are three Federal agencies that have particular responsibilities for NEPA. Primary responsibility is vested in the Council on Environmental Quality. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reviews environmental impact statements (EIS) and some environmental assessments (EA) issued by Federal agencies. The third agency is the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution (located within the Morris K. Udall Foundation, a Federal agency located in Tucson). This agency is supposed to provide an independent, neutral, place for Federal agencies to work with citizens as well as State, local, and Tribal governments, private organizations, and businesses to reach common ground.

Navigating the NEPA process:

Once the lead Federal agency has received a proposed action, it has three possible actions: it can issue a Categorical Exclusion (CE), require an Environmental Assessment (EA), or require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

A Categorical Exclusion means that the agency has determined that the proposed action will not have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment.

In an Environmental Assessment, the purpose is to determine the significance of the environmental effects and to look at alternative means to achieve the agency’s objectives. The EA is intended to be a concise document that (1) briefly provides sufficient evidence and analysis for determining whether to prepare an EIS; (2) aids an agency’s compliance with NEPA when no environmental impact statement is necessary; and (3) facilitates preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement when one is necessary. The EA process concludes with either a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) or a determination to proceed to preparation of an EIS.

The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is the big, expensive, time-consuming process. A Federal agency must prepare an EIS if it is proposing a major Federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment. [In actual practice, a private company such as a mining company prepares a draft EIS and submits it to the Federal agency.] It begins with publication of a Notice of Intent (NOI), stating the agency’s intent to prepare an EIS for a particular proposal. The NOI is published in the Federal Register, and provides some basic information on the proposed action in preparation for the scoping process. The NOI provides a brief description of the proposed action and possible alternatives. It also describes the agency’s proposed scoping process, including any meetings and how the public can get involved.

The next major step in the EIS process is when the agencies submit a draft EIS for public comment. The agency must analyze the full range of direct, indirect, and cumulative effects of the preferred alternative, if any, and of the reasonable alternatives identified in the draft EIS.

When the public comment period is finished, the agency analyzes comments, conducts further analysis as necessary, and prepares the final EIS. In the final EIS, the agency must respond to the substantive comments received from other government agencies and from the public.

When it is ready, the agency will publish the final EIS and EPA will publish a Notice of Availability in the Federal Register. There is an additional (but rarely used) procedure worth noting: pre-decision referrals to CEQ. This referral process takes place when EPA or another Federal agency determines that proceeding with the proposed action is environmentally unacceptable. If an agency reaches that conclusion, the agency can refer the issue to CEQ within 25 days after the Notice of Availability for the final EIS is issued. CEQ then works to resolve the issue with the agencies concerned. CEQ might also refer the agencies to the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution to try to address the matter before formal elevation.

The end of the process is the Record of Decision (ROD), a document that states what the decision is; identifies the alternatives considered, including the environmentally preferred alternative; and discusses mitigation plans, including any enforcement and monitoring commitments.

What I have described above is the streamlined NEPA process. But we are not done yet. Sometimes a Federal agency is obligated to prepare a supplement to an existing EIS if it makes substantial changes in the proposed action that are relevant to environmental concerns, or if there are significant new circumstances or information relevant to environmental concerns and bearing on the proposed action or its impacts. An agency may also prepare a supplemental EIS if it determines that doing so will further the purposes of NEPA. A supplemental EIS is prepared in the same way as a draft or final EIS, except that scoping is not required. If a supplement is prepared following a draft EIS, the final EIS will address both the draft EIS and supplemental EIS.

In actual practice, the NEPA process is complicated by lawsuits and sometimes by foot-dragging Federal agencies. There are no statutory time limits imposed upon Federal agencies to complete the NEPA process. The NEPA process is long and complicated, and environmental groups have used this to their advantage to cause delay after delay in the hope that the project would become too expensive to continue. From Enviro Defenders legal handbook: “Though a lawsuit by itself will seldom stop a project, it can serve as an important element of a larger campaign to do so.”

A 2007 Congressional Research Service report notes: “As a procedural statute, the courts have ruled that NEPA does not require agencies to elevate environmental concerns above others. Instead, NEPA requires only that the agency assess the environmental consequences of an action and its alternatives before proceeding. If the adverse environmental effects of the proposed action are adequately identified and evaluated, the agency is not constrained by NEPA from deciding that other benefits outweigh the environmental costs and moving forward with the action.”

It seems that Australia and Canada have found a more efficient way to move forward while addressing environmental issues. The U.S. economy would benefit by taking note of their methods.

If you found it exhausting just reading about NEPA, imaging how it is trying to comply with it.

(This article first appeared in the Arizona Daily Independent.)

See also:

Mining and the bureaucracy

Uncorrected Forest Service errors block marble mine

The “Southern Arizona Public Lands Protection Act of 2013” H.R. 1183, proposes to ban new mining claims.  The Act will, subject to valid existing rights, withdraw “all forms of entry, appropriation, and disposal under the public land laws; location, entry, and patent under the mining laws; and operation of the mineral leasing and geothermal leasing laws, and the mineral materials laws” on all National Forest and Bureau of Land Management lands in Pima and Santa Cruz Counties. Grijalva has introduced similar bills every year since 2007.  This will preclude all new mineral exploration in Southern Arizona.

Southern Arizona is mineral rich with several operating mines, soon to be operating mines, and very good country for mineral exploration.

Arizona mining directly employs 11,300 people, who earned $1.22 billion in 2011. Arizona mining companies spent a total of $2.80 billion in 2011 purchasing goods and services from other Arizona businesses which supported an addition 8,700 jobs. In 2011, the mining companies themselves paid $212 million in business taxes to Arizona governments. Employees of mining companies are estimated to have paid $96 million in individual taxes.

Grijalva states concern about our “valuable natural heritage” but seems to ignore the fact that mining is part of that heritage.

Mr. Grijalva notes on his website that he is against a land exchange that Resolution Copper is seeking with the Forest Service to enable Resolution to develop a copper mine near Superior, Arizona. The proposed underground copper mine could supply 30% of America’s copper needs and bring $1 billion per year to the state’s economy for 60 years. In the land exchange, Resolution Copper would get 2,422 acres from the Forest Service in exchange for 5,344 acres of environmentally sensitive land.

Grijalva’s “Grand Canyon Watershed Protection Act” would make permanent the “temporary” withdrawal (for 20 years) of one million acres near the Grand Canyon to prevent uranium mining.  Uranium mining on the Colorado Plateau near the Grand Canyon poses no danger to the Colorado River water quality according to several studies. (See: Uranium mining and its potential impact on Colorado River water)

The “Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area Act” would establish a 3,325 acre National Heritage Area in Pima and Santa Cruz Counties which could have adverse affects on private property.

For a long time, Mr. Grijalva has been a tool of the environmental industry to the detriment of his constituents, their jobs, their safety, and the Arizona economy. He has supported establishment of wilderness areas along the Mexican border which would interfere with the Border Patrol’s ability to monitor the border.

As one of Mr. Grijalva’s constituents, I urge him to show more concern for people and their economic environment.

See also:

Our unsecured border – causes and consequences

City Councilman Steve Kozachik, in his November 15, 2012 newsletter, noted: “I see far more newspapers, cans and papers blowing around than I see plastic bags hanging from cactus and otherwise trashing the City. There are clearly multiple benefits to encouraging people to clean up their own messes, and to reduce/reuse/recycle. But what was presented to us on Wednesday in the form of a change in our Plastic Bag Ordinance struck me as being an over-reach, possibly counterproductive, and not a burden we need to place on the business community and consumers without first having made a better effort at educating people as to what measures we already have in place to encourage recycling of plastic bags.” Yet, he joined all the other council members in voting to impose such overreach and imposition on local businesses.

Quoting from the Arizona Daily Star, the current quixotic council campaign is to require:

Large retailers in Tucson will soon have to train their clerks and baggers and begin educating the public on ways to reduce plastic bag usage.

The council voted unanimously to amend the city’s plastic bag ordinance in an attempt to better track, and possibly reduce, consumption.

Retailers are now subject to mandatory reporting periods when they must document the average bags used per transaction, the total number of bags handed out and the weight of plastic collected for recycling.

Retail representatives must also meet quarterly with city officials to review the retailers’ progress.

The idea is to collect data over a two-year period and see what a fair reduction goal would be for the city to set for retailers in the future.

In addition to the tracking and training requirements, retailers will have to formulate a public information campaign geared toward “school-age children” and the general public. The campaign must include contests and in-store promotions while incorporating videos and social media.

There are no penalties for not complying with the amended ordinance, which takes effect July 1.

So, we see that the goal of this grand scheme is to collect data that will somehow reduce use of plastic bags. Will that reduce litter? Will businesses comply?

From my observations, some of those fugitive plastic bags fly out of garbage trucks during their trip to the landfill. That could be solved by people using one bag to store other bags to make them less buoyant and less likely to fly out of the trucks. We can also take bags back to the recycling bins in stores from which they are transported to a special recycling plant. Plastic bags cannot be put in Tucson residential recycle bins because the city plant cannot handle them even with “A new state of the art Materials Recovery Facility” to be opened in July.

The current action by the City Council will have little impact on littering and imposes an unnecessary burden on businesses. I would think that businesses already know how many bags they use in a given time period because they have to buy them. The average number of bags used during a transaction is a meaningless statistic. The idea of a public information campaign may have some merit and it should include the options people have for disposal of bags. Perhaps that information could be incorporated into the regular City PSA announcements we see on TV regarding recycling and waste disposal.

The alternative to plastic bags are either paper bags or reusable bags, but these have their own problems:

Some people bring their own reusable bags, especially for groceries. However, bags made from non-woven polypropylene, the most commonly used material in reusable grocery bags, have been shown to contain excessive lead which can pose a danger. Also a study by Canadian microbiologist Dr. Richard Summerbell found that unless you wash reusable fabric grocery bags after each use, they can harbor unacceptably high levels of bacteria, yeast, and mold. “The study found that 64% of the reusable bags tested were contaminated with some level of bacteria and close to 30% had elevated bacterial counts higher than what’s considered safe for drinking water,” according to the National Post, Canada.

By the way, a British study of all types of bags found that plastic bags were superior because they take less energy and water to make and less energy to recycle, as well as taking up less space in landfills (link).

This make-work city proposal is geared toward solving the wrong problem and will just add to business expense without reducing littering. I repeat: The problem is not the number of bags used; it is the manner in which they are disposed.

In Arizona we are witnessing governmental delays in the permitting process for the Rosemont copper mine south of Tucson.  Near the small town of Dragoon, Arizona, a proposed marble mine has been delayed for more than 15 years due to US Forest Service bureaucracy including establishing a Roadless Area which encompasses the quarry site, even though there is a dedicated county road to the quarry.  In Alaska, the EPA is delaying what could be one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, the Pebble mine, because of some unwarranted concern over salmon.

Some of the permitting delays are due to activists in government and radical environmentalists who don’t want any development.  But much of the delay is caused by inefficiency and lack of coordination in and among federal agencies.

Hal Quinn, president of the National Mining Association notes that permit delays are among the biggest hurdles for mineral development.  “The length, complexity and uncertainty of the permitting process are the primary reasons investors give for not investing is U.S. minerals mining. In the U.S., necessary government authorizations now take close to 10 years to secure, resulting in decreased competitiveness and increased reliance on foreign sources of minerals.”

These bureaucratic delays affect businesses other than mining, because the supply of raw materials gets harder to obtain and more expensive.

This is not just a recent problem, but one that is growing as more and more agencies are embracing “green” or “sustainable” principles.  In 1999, the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council found that: “The process has become much slower and more costly than was originally intended or than it needs to be. It commonly imposes data collection and analysis requirements on the applicant and the regulatory agency that are poorly coordinated, excessively expensive, and of uneven value in protecting the environment. Mining operators are entitled to a permitting process that is as timely and cost effective as possible while still achieving compliance with all statutes and regulations.”  There has been no improvement since that study.

Quinn notes that “Behre Dolbear, the international consulting firm that advises mining companies globally, has identified the U.S. as having one of the longest permitting processes in the world for mining projects, placing domestic mining investments at a competitive disadvantage.”  It also means  that we will need to import more and more of our minerals.

The US Geological Survey studied domestic permitting and found that “permitting time frames are often lengthy and unpredictable” sometimes taking as long as 17 years and even with an “expedited permitting schedule” taking seven years.

Quinn says that “more efficient permitting does not mean less environmental protection.”  Among the needed reforms in the permitting process are:

Clearly defining the responsibilities of a lead agency to include the establishment of binding time frames, coordination with other agencies and reliance on existing data and reviews.  Limiting the total review process for issuing permits to 30 months unless signatories to the permitting time line agree to an extension. Reduce delays posed by litigation over permitting decisions by requiring challenges to be filed within 60 days of the final agency action.

It’s not just the mining industry that suffers under a bureaucratic bottleneck.  Investor’s Business Daily notes that the Obama administration has issued more regulations than Bush and Clinton combined.  Just the EPA and Department of Transportation have increased the regulatory burden on manufacturing by $142 billion per year.

If you want your automobiles and iPhones, a reliable electricity supply, transportation, and jobs, we need to cut the red tape and make access to and production of the raw materials for industry more efficient and timely.  That can all be done while providing rational environmental protection and in doing so will prove to be a boon to our economy.

See also:

Uncorrected Forest Service errors block marble mine

Why imposing royalties on hard rock mining is a bad idea

Pima County versus Rosemont

Uranium mining ban near Grand Canyon all politics, no science

Jaguar Listing and Habitat Designation Based on Junk Science

Jaguars versus the Rosemont mine

Clean Coal: Boon or Boondoggle?

EPA versus Arizona on regional haze issue

EPA war on coal threatens Tucson water supply

BLM Wild Lands Designation Attempts To Bypass Congress

Politics versus American Energy Security

Plastic bags are recyclable; some are even biodegradable.  According to the Arizona Daily Star, “Tucson currently requires grocery stores to provide recycling collection for plastic bags.”  Even easier is to dispose of the bags in your home recycle container.

The war on plastic bags is a current eco-fad.  Other cities charge fees, some even ban plastic bags.  But, alternatives to plastic bags present their own problems.  Paper bags pose a littering problem too and use up trees.

Some people bring their own reusable bags, especially for groceries.  But that too, has problems.

Bags made from non-woven polypropylene, the most commonly used material in reusable grocery bags, have been shown to contain excessive lead which can pose a danger.  Also a study by Canadian microbiologist Dr. Richard Summerbell found that unless you wash reusable fabric grocery bags after each use, they can harbor unacceptably high levels of bacteria, yeast, and mold.  “The study found that 64% of the reusable bags tested were contaminated with some level of bacteria and close to 30% had elevated bacterial counts higher than what’s considered safe for drinking water,” according to the National Post, Canada.

By the way, a British study of all types of bags found that plastic bags were superior because they take less energy and water to make and less energy to recycle, as well as taking up less space in landfills (link).

I suspect that some of the bags seen plastered to cactus needles are fugitives from garbage trucks and land fills.

It seems that Cunningham is following the second law of government institutions: “All problems will be solved with infusions of money taken by coercion from the people.” -Mark David Ledbetter

As for Mr. Cunningham’s concern about aesthetics, I have just one word: POTHOLES.

]]> http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2011/12/26/tilting-at-plastic-bags/feed/ 18 http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2011/04/14/rosemont-copper-mine-would-benefit-economy-and-community-but-is-buried-in-bureaucracy/ http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2011/04/14/rosemont-copper-mine-would-benefit-economy-and-community-but-is-buried-in-bureaucracy/#comments Thu, 14 Apr 2011 15:15:05 +0000 Jonathan DuHamel http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/?p=668 The proposed Rosemont copper mine to be developed south of Tucson will provide many benefits to the area.  According to studies, the mine will produce over 400 direct jobs and about 1,600 indirect jobs that will provide about $3 billion in increased personal income over the next 20 years.

The mine will provide local governments with tax revenues of about $19 million per year and create $700 million in local economic stimulus in such things as services, real estate, retail purchases, utilities and manufacturing.

The total physical footprint of the Rosemont mine, including the mine itself, the waste and tailings dumps and the physical plant will be about 4,440 acres which is half the size of the Sierrita mine and one-third the size of the Mission mine.   Even thought Rosemont will have a smaller footprint, it will produce more copper than the Mission mine, about 240 million pounds of copper per year versus Mission’s 170 million pounds.  Pima County wasted $13,000 of taxpayer money building its own model of the footprint (see Hugh Holub’s stories on the mine here.)

Among the concerns with the Rosemont mine is water use.  Rosemont is projected to use 6,000 acre-feet of water per year.  To put that in perspective, the Mission mine uses about 7,200 acre-feet, the Sierrita mine uses about 29,000 acre-feet, and agriculture near Green Valley, mainly the pecan grove, uses 32,000 acre-feet per year.  According to Rosemont, “The initial source will be groundwater withdrawn from wells in the Upper Santa Cruz sub-basin of the Tucson AMA basin and replenished by Colorado River water delivered by the Central Arizona Project.”  Rosemont has already stored 45,000 acre-feet of water in the Tucson AMA.  Rosemont’s water conservation and recycling techniques should result in the mine using only 50% of the water compared to older, traditional mining and processing methods.

Rosemont submitted a draft environmental impact study (DEIS) to the U.S. Forest Service in mid-2007.  You can read the study at http://www.rosemontcopper.com/ (Click the Studies tab).  The Forest Service had originally planned to release the study in the spring of 2009, but the bureaucracy has produced delay after delay, possibly due in part to opposition from some local politicians and environmental groups.  (See Local Politicians Against Jobs.)

The Forest Service then promised to release the DEIS by the end of last year, but that was not to be.  Just yesterday, buried deeply within an obscure part of the national Forest Service’s website, the Forest Service announced that they will publish the DEIS in the Federal Register in August, 2011, and publish a decision in January, 2012.  After that there is a 90-day period for public comment.  And then the plan must go to and get approval from so-called “cooperating” agencies which includes Pima County and a bunch of state and federal agencies.

Delays such as this are unconscionable but seem to be the norm with the current administration and its policies of putting all possible impediments in the way of developing our natural resources.

The bureaucracy is exacting the cost of lost opportunity upon us at a time when we could have been enjoying the economic stimulus of a new enterprise.

Disclaimer: I am a retired geologist who was employed by a major copper mining company, but I have no connection to Rosemont Copper.

We often hear the plea from preservationists that we must save the pristine desert, or stream, or forest, or jungle, or whatever, because these are the “last best places” untrammeled by man. But are they really so pristine?

Archaeological and anthropological research during the last 15 years or so, shows that much of what we thought was pristine in the Western Hemisphere, even the Amazon rain forest, is actually human-formed landscape created by the first New World inhabitants, the Indians. It seems that American Indians, from North America, Mexico and South America, were the ultimate land managers, and they transformed the land to suit their needs. They constructed the world’s largest gardens.

The quest of some preservationists to return the land to pre-Columbian times, to its state prior to 1492, is a quest in pursuit of a myth. “The pristine view is to a large extent an invention of nineteenth-century romanticist and primitivist writers such as W.H. Hudson, Cooper, Thoreau, Longfellow, and Parkman, and painters such as Catlin and Church.”¹ Reality, according to the new research, is quite different.

The Amazon forest in the Beni region of Bolivia consists of “an archipelago of forest islands, many of them startlingly round and hundreds of acres across. Each island rose ten or thirty or sixty feet above the floodplain, allowing trees to grow that would otherwise never survive the water. The forests were linked by raised berms, as straight as a rifle shot and up to three miles long.”² Researcher Clark Erickson of the University of Pennsylvania believes “that the entire landscape, 30,000 square miles of forest mounds surrounded by raised fields and linked by causeways, was constructed by a complex, populous society more than 2,000 years ago.”² “A growing number of researchers have come to believe that Indian societies had an enormous environmental impact on the jungle. Indeed, some anthropologists have called the Amazon forest itself a cultural artifact, that is, an artificial object.”²The 1539 expedition of Hernando de Soto across what is now the southeastern U.S. encountered not some primeval forest, but “thickly settled land, very well peopled by large towns.”² In 1519, Hernan Cortes saw that the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was bigger than Paris and contained “wide streets, ornately carved buildings, and markets bright with goods from hundreds of miles away.”² Even the first settlers in the northeastern U.S. found that forests were open and park-like, not the dense grow romanticized by writers hundreds of years later.

Many researchers estimate that the Americas were well-populated before the arrival of Columbus, with a population of between 40- to 80 million, greater than the population of Europe at the time. “Moreover, the native impact on the landscape of 1492 reflected not only the population then but the cumulative effects of a growing population over the previous 15,000 years or more.”¹American Indians built cities and civilizations, cultivated forests and farms, and developed more than half of the crops grown worldwide today. Indians, rather than subsist passively on what wild nature provided, instead “survived by cleverly exploiting their environment.”² Their principal tool was fire.³ They did not domesticate animals for meat, but instead used fire to change whole ecosystems to raise deer, elk, and bison. “Millennia of exuberant burning shaped the plains into vast buffalo farms.”²

But then the Europeans came and unintentionally brought with them smallpox, typhus, influenza, diphtheria and measles, (and later on cholera, malaria, and scarlet fever). Within about 130 years after first contact, 95% of the native population was wiped out by disease.² By 1682, when French explorers retraced de Soto’s journey, they found the land nearly deserted. Because the hunters were gone, buffalo, elk, and deer populations exploded. Because the fire-using land managers were gone, dense forests, romanticized by 19^th century writers had taken over the carefully managed forest parks. In one sense, Europeans did not destroy pristine wilderness, but recreated it.

By “1492, Indian activity had modified vegetation and wildlife, caused erosion, and created earthworks, roads, and settlements throughout the Americas. This may be obvious, but the human imprint was much more ubiquitous and enduring than is usually realized. The historical evidence is ample, as are data from surviving earthworks and archaeology. And much can be inferred from present human impacts. The weight of evidence suggests that Indian populations were large, not only in Mexico and the Andes, but also in seemingly unattractive habitats such as the rainforests of Amazonia, the swamps of Mojos (Bolivia), and the deserts of Arizona.”¹

I would argue that humans have enriched the land by making it produce more, and have increased diversity by creating more habitats than would otherwise occur. When preservationists whine about losing our “pristine” desert, and pine for a return to Walden, when the “vision” statements of federal land management agencies speak grandiosely of ecosystem management in search of the pristine myth, remind them that nature is not so pristine. It is always changing. The “forest primeval” doesn’t exist.

References:

1: Denevan, William M., ca. 1992, The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin.

2: Mann, Charles C., 2002, 1491, The Atlantic Monthly, March 2002.

3:Krech, Shepard, 1999, The Ecological Indian, W.W. Norton & Co.