You may not have heard the latest outrage de jour--the Environmental Protection Agency wants to regulate spilled milk. It's being touted everywhere as a primo example of government run amok. "What could be sillier than regulating milk?" many ask, acting as if it is something that is obviously stupid.
First of all, the story is bunk, as wonderfully deconstructed here. What is currently in the works is not an effort to regulate spilled milk, but an effort to make sure that it is not regulated.
However, there has been an assertion by conservatives that it is some how crazy to regulate animal or any other non-petroleum oils. That is a ridiculous assertion. Animal and plant-based fats and oils can wreak havoc on our water and wastewater systems, and regulating this kind of pollution was actually one of the original aims of the Clean Water Act.
The Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasures regulations proposed in 2002 were written in such a way that they technically would cover milk. When industry responded (in our great democracy, there is almost always a chance for affected parties to comment on regulations, and they are actually listened to), milk producers were provisionally exempted from the SPCC regulations, until the regulations could be more completely revised. I think this action is reasonable, and that the conservative misinformation about it inexcusable and disgusting.
It is not crazy, however, to regulate non-petroleum oils.
When there are large spills of any kind of liquid, or when materials are managed in such away that they can be washed away by stormwater, they can end up in our waterways or our sewer system. While there is often a focus on hazardous waste, such as lead or petroleum products or pesticides, non-hazardous waste can cause serious problems, as well. One of the worse pollutants to our rivers and streams is just plain old dirt; if stormwater is managed so poorly that massive amounts of sediment are washed in the waterway, it can completely change the hydrology of a stream, kill the wildlife, and seriously damage water quality. That's why it's so important to manage stormwater on construction sites, and why one of the best ways to protect water quality is to set watershed limits on impervious cover.
As bad as sediment can be, fats, oils and grease, collectively referred to as 'FOG', can be just as bad. Most of us know, I hope, that we should not pour bacon grease or other fats and oils down the drain; FOG can clog up the sewer systems and cause a major headache for the public works department. In San Francisco, for example 40% of work calls are due to grease clogs in the sewers, costing about $3.5 million annually.
Recognizing animals fats and grease as a pollutant, however, isn't some new-fangled thing. Fats, oil, and grease were the principal cause of one of the pernicious environmental problems that helped usher in the era of environmental regulation: The Cuyahoga River kept catching on fire.
The Cuyahoga's problem with flammability goes much farther back than many people realize. Yes, there were famous fires in the 50s and 60s, but the river had been catching fire as far back and the mid-1800s. Yes, petroleum products were part of the noxious slick that formed on top of the oozing river, described so colorfully by Time Magazine in 1969:
Some River! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows. "Anyone who falls into the Cuyahoga does not drown," Cleveland's citizens joke grimly. "He decays". . . The Federal Water Pollution Control Administration dryly notes: "The lower Cuyahoga has no visible signs of life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes." It is also -- literally -- a fire hazard.
But a large part was fats and grease. A large number of sanitary sewers discharged in to the river. But even the waste that was sent to a water treatment plant--back in the day, water treatment plants focused on settling out the solids (a nice euphemism for poop), and would then discharge everything else. But the fats and grease didn't settle out quite so well, and would get discharged right back into the water system, leading to a big build-up.
One of the important things the Clean Water Act of 1972 did was provide funding to improve water treatment facilities, so they skimmed the surface of the water, as well as settled out solids (as well as other improvements, of course). There were also many places that constructed their first water treatment facilities following this act.
But why, if the Cuyahoga had been catching on fire for over 100 years, did the fires of the 50s and 60s finally prod action? The answer to the question is important, because it gets at the heart of why even the most conservative among us should support good environmental regulation: the fires started getting really expensive.
As more property was built on the river, as more bridges were built over the river that transported more and more goods, the destruction wreaked by these fire (fires, again, caused largely by non-petroleum fats and grease) grew greater. The fire in 1952 caused over $1.5 million in damages. In fact, railroads were some of the biggest proponents of addressing the problem, especially around waterways that were prone to igniting, since they had so much valuable property spanning those rivers.
And this is why environmental regulations are so commonsensical, even for the most bare-knuckled conservative. Why should I have to pay for your mess? Industry should not be able to shove the costs of dealing with their wastes onto the shoulders of the taxpayer by driving up the costs of our water treatment, by causing health problems for the surrounding community, and by burning up our bridges.
And yes, that includes those storing animal fats. The exception for milk is reasonable because milk has such a relatively low fat and oil content--it is, after all, mostly water. But there is nothing unreasonable about making an industry be responsible for the consequences of it's own messes, no matter what that industry might be.