"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
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In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:
"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
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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.
I don't doubt that in Delaware, the point sources were significant (it's
an outlier, but never mind), but there is no way that such a study can
tell dishwasher detergent from clothes washer detergent from human
effluent. Phosphate is phosphate.
And the point remains that dishwasher detergent struggles to be 0.5% of
the problem, and probably far less.
If you want, I'll post a link to the study. It's long and dull, but, hey,
that's my life. d8-)
Sure. Life has been too interesting. As in the ancient Chinese curse
"may you live in interesting times". Which would be false advertising
in this case, the part about interesting, but never mind.
Ok, you asked for it. Here's a quick summary of what has happened in the
Delaware Basin:
http://www.wra.udel.edu/node/43
There also are some others that are specific to the municipal outflow
problems, which used to be horrific, but this one will keep you busy. It's
an interesting type of study:
http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/CMS/tchurch...31-160/151.pdf
I lost the discussion and timeline about phosphates from Rutgers Univ.
again, but I found the original data from which it was written. Take a look
at the graph in Figure 3-6, page 16 of the PDF:
http://www.state.nj.us/drbc/regs/MONa.pdf
The total phosophus levels drepped from roughly 32 mu-M in 1969 to about 12
in 1975, and then to 4 by 1982. The dramatic fall in the early '70s
corresponds with the elmination of detergent phosphates here at that time,
when New York State outlawed it, NJ and PA threatened it, and the detergent
makers pulled it out on their own because the market wouldn't support two
versions (and we were being bombarded with PSAs to use non-phosphate
detergents). If you want to see the discussion, I'll try to find it again.
If you really get into the whole Delaware situation, here is an extremely
detailed report. But I can't recommend it . It's 200 pages long: g
http://www.wr.udel.edu/publications/...t_07042008.pdf
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.
Huh? The big smell was close to NYC. I lived in the Philadelphia
suburbs, and the smell wasn't so large. Or I was inured to it.
Whatever.
You're talking about the refineries and petrochemical plants around
Elizabeth. They dump into the Newark Bay and Hudson estuary. That's the
opposite side of the state from the Delaware, and there is no connection.
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.
Umm. I think deeper research is indicated here. Polluters need not be
chemical industry, and NJ is and was heavily industrial.
Mostly on the eastern side of the state, Joe. Again, that has nothing to do
with the Delaware.
And the issue with the Delaware has always been oxygen deplation from
excessive nutrient loads, not from chemical toxicity. The chemical problems
are on my side of the state, in the Passaic River, the Raritan River, Newark
Bay and the Hudson estuary.
National Lead damned near paved the bottom of the Raritan before it was shut
down.
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.
Doesn't this prove my point?
Huh? You aren't following the issue, or you need to look more closely at the
geography. The chemcial pollution problems we have on the Atlantic side of
NJ are unrelated to the oxygen-depletion and eutrification issues in the
Deleware.
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.
Well, I'd like to read the report.
Have fun with the above. g I'd recommend a quick look at Figure 3-6 in
this report first, which I also listed above. It dramatically shows what the
phosphate history is. Because it's based on actual water samples, rather
than sediment samples, the dates reflect the actual status of the water at
those times:
http://www.state.nj.us/drbc/regs/MONa.pdf
Joe Gwinn