The oil and gas industry is on the verge of winning one of the most long-running environmental battles in history, as Congress concludes its four-year debate on the energy bill.
A little-noticed (by the MSM) provision in the bill would exempt oil and gas development activities from a crucial section of the Clean Water Act.
The provision, pushed hard by Big Oil, would allow oil and gas sites smaller than 5 acres to allow toxic runoff to flow unmanaged from well pads into neighboring properties, sewers, streams, rivers, lakes, etc. The reason: prodded by Chimpy's National Energy Policy, Big Oil has been contaminating surface waters across the American West in their mad rush to drill.
The state of Colorado recently decided to enforce the Clean Water Act (because Bush's EPA had refused to do so), so looks like Congress is offering an end-run.
This is not a small deal.
Leading into the energy conference between the House and Senate, Democrats had committed to "no environmental rollbacks," in the words of Bill Wicker, minority staff communications director in the energy conference that's taking place right now on the Hill. But New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman was not able to prevent the Repugs from keeping the CWA exemption language in the bill, and so has offered a band-aid amendment that, unfortunately, is exactly what the industry wanted.
President Bush's National Energy Policy, released in 2001, put the American West smack in the crosshairs of the largest domestic environmental assault in history, calling for the development of well over 100,000 new oil and gas wells in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana.
Lest ye think that these wells have anything to do with energy security, a deeper analysis proves the fallacy of achieving domestic energy security by drilling.
For example, according to Environmental Working Group, "despite having access to more than 200 million acres of public land over the past 15 years (1989-2003), the oil and gas industry has produced enough energy from this land to satisfy only 53 days of U.S. oil consumption and 221 days of natural gas consumption."
But the drilling has done wonders for the profits of Big Oil, whose shareholders are laughing all the way to the bank.
The latest assault against the Clean Water Act, lead by - yup, you guessed it - Repugs in the House, would be perhaps the most significant environmental setback of Bush's four years in office - significant because, unlike the dozens of other administrative rollbacks by this White House, it's actually about to be codified by Congress.
Will update as things progress if Kossacks find this of interest.