NYT: Many polluters escape prosecution - The New York Times- msnbc.com - 0 views
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Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators. As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising. Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad heredap('&PG=NBCMSN&AP=1089','300','250');The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation’s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.
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The best "justice" money can buy via packing the Supreme Court with "conservatives" is bearing smelly, polluted fruit. Specifically, those "conservatives" are showing themselves to be "activist judges" in "watering down" conservation and public safety laws passed by Congress. Polluting "business" entities are apparently NOT to be considered to be within the oft-quoted and loved "conservative" limitation of the purview of the federal government to merely protect the populace from "enemies foreign and domestic". That this pollution kills and injures thousands (and poisons the environment for the countless of the "unborn") apparently doesn't matter (but if Al Qaeda was doing it, then complete suspension of all domestic rights would be justified to "fight" that!). Pictured: In 2007, a pipe maker was fined millions of dollars for dumping oil, lead and zinc into Avondale Creek in Alabama. A court ruled the waterway was exempt from the Clean Water Act. The firm eventually settled by agreeing to pay a smaller amount and submit to probation.