Polluters getting breaks

Editor,

Successful polluters know slow and steady degradation will often go unnoticed until real damage becomes impossible to ignore. So when our country’s National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) appears willing to allow industries to create shortcuts when applying for permits, and to ignore (remove, actually) any mention of cumulative effects while speeding up the process of permitting by limiting the amount of information to be considered, you can bet it will only be a matter of time before waterways and reservoirs all over our country begin to pay the price.

Water and air are shared resources that humans depend on for life. These resources are about to be handed over to polluters with a big bow on top. The undoing of successful regulations that helped clear the smog from cities and stopped rivers from catching fire from the wholesale dumping of petrochemicals are about to be “streamlined” away. You may not notice the difference immediately but your grandchildren and mine will. 

If you care to comment, go to regulations.gov/ and follow the instructions for submitting comments to Docket ID No. CEQ-2019-0003. Comments accepted until 4 p.m. EST March 10. Tell NEPA to say no to pressure groups and yes to continued enforcement of regulations that recognize the cumulative impacts of industrial pollutants.

Lin Wellford