"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:
"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote in message
in.local...
In article ,
says...
"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:
"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:
[snip]
Now, about EPA overreach and the dishwasher detergent
regulations:
They
aren't from EPA at all. It's 16 individual states that
enacted
the
near-ban
in 2009 and 2010.
The question is what prompted them.
And if the EPA had declared dishwasher detergent phosphate use
as
de
minimus, the states would not have argued. Actually, they
could
not
have argued, by federal preemption. So, we are back in
Washington.
Uh, I'm not sure where preemption enters this. EPA did not
dictate
to
the
states what they had to do. They supplied research and analysis.
There was a recent Supreme Court case on just this. If the Feds
have
entered an area, the states have to back off.
For instance http://www.faegre.com/13445.
There may be others, but I wasn't paying attention at the time.
Joe Gwinn
Yeah, I'm aware of the law regarding federal preemption, but I have
seen
no
evidence that it applies in this case. If the EPA wrote a
regulation
on
it
and if a state tried to oppose it, there would be a preemption
case.
Again, I have not come across any such issue in the little reading
I've
done
about it.
I believe that he's saying that IF the EPA had declared phosphates
in
dishwasher detergent to be ACCEPTABLE then the states could not have
banned it.
If that's what he's saying, that's not the case. On the other hand, if
the
EPA banned it, and a state tried to legalize it, preemption would have
kicked in.
That's the case with lots of laws. Unless there's a 14th Amendment
issue
involved (regarding a "fundamental right"), or some specific federal
authorization, states can make more restrictive laws than the related
federal ones. Those issues have been involved, with the resolution
still
to
be determined, over immigration. Likewise, even after a constitutional
Amendment legalizing alcohol, states can regulate it, and can
authorize
municipalities to outlaw its sale.
I didn't follow this dishwasher-detergent/phosphate law to the end of
the
line, but it looks like the EPA wasn't involved in the bans. It
appears
that
it's all state law. I could be mistaken, but I didn't see any federal
administrative law involved in it.
I don't recall that the EPA did anything explicit either, which is the
point. The EPA could have prevented extension to dishwasher detergents
with a word, but chose not to. (One assumes that there were lots of
private discussions.)
In other words, if the EPA had said that a dishwashing detergent
phosphate ban was unnecessary, it would have undermined efforts in the
states to legislate or by regulation impose such a ban, and no such
bans
would have happened.
Joe Gwinn
I have no way to know if that's the case, but, assuming it is, I'd still
want to see some up-to-date reports that analyze these challenged rivers
and
estuaries before making a judgment. I'm not convinced that the cost of
eliminating phosphates is greater than the cost of not doing so.
Notice the slide here, from dishwashing detergents (which struggle to be
a 0.5% problem) to all phosphates (95% of which are used in agriculture,
and thus are largely out of reach).
Joe, do you remember the numbers from that report I cited? Point-source
outflows were measured as 80% of the phosphate source in this river. Since
there is no tertiary recovery, the conclusion is that almost all of that
comes from detergents.
If you want, I'll post a link to the study. It's long and dull, but, hey,
that's my life. d8-)
And as for dead rivers in Delaware and NJ, the claim is being made that
these rivers were restored by the phosphate ban. Forgotten is all the
cleanups of the chemical industry that happened at the same time. (I
lived in NJ in the late 1950s, and do remember the smell of the chemical
plants.) So which cleanup caused which good effect? Or, was it the
aggregate of all the cleanups?
What chemical industry are you talking about? The only chemical industry on
the Delaware is around Philadelphia, just before it dumps into the bay.
The whole middle Delaware and much of the upper Delaware were dead when I
was a kid. Completely dead. It was not the chemical industry. There wasn't
any up there.
You may be thinking of the Raritan or the Passaic Rivers. They both have
serious chemical problems. In the case of the Raritan, a lot of it comes
from the closed John's Manville and National Lead plants, plus two others
that dumped heavy metals and paint chemicals. The Hudson's problem is PCBs.
I don't know specifically what the Passaic's problem is.
Again, that report gave a pretty good analysis of before-and-after phosphate
loads on the Delaware before and after the original ban, at numerous points
along the river, so the evidence is not trivial. I'm not going to try to
judge its veracity; I don't do chemistry. But the evidence does seem pretty
clear.
--
Ed Huntress
Joe Gwinn