EPA Official's 'Philosophy' On Oil Companies: 'Crucify Them' - Just As Romans Crucified Conquered Citizens
By Craig Bannister
April 25, 2012

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) took to the Senate floor today to draw attention to a video of a top EPA official saying the EPA’s “philosophy” is to “crucify” and “make examples” of oil and gas companies - just as the Romans crucified random citizens in areas they conquered to ensure obedience.

Inhofe quoted a little-watched video from 2010 of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official, Region VI Administrator Al Armendariz, admitting that EPA’s “general philosophy” is to “crucify” and “make examples” of oil and gas companies.

In the video, Administrator Armendariz says:

“I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said:

“It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them.

“Then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.”

“It’s a deterrent factor,” Armendariz said, explaining that the EPA is following the Romans’ philosophy for subjugating conquered villages.

Soon after Armendariz touted the EPA’s “philosophy,” the EPA began smear campaigns against natural gas producers, Inhofe’s office noted in advance of today’s Senate speech:

“Not long after Administrator Armendariz made these comments in 2010, EPA targeted US natural gas producers in Pennsylvania, Texas and Wyoming.

“In all three of these cases, EPA initially made headline-grabbing statements either insinuating or proclaiming outright that the use of hydraulic fracturing by American energy producers was the cause of water contamination, but in each case their comments were premature at best – and despite their most valiant efforts, they have been unable to find any sound scientific evidence to make this link.”

In his Senate speech, Sen. Inhofe said the video provides Americans with “a glimpse of the Obama administration’s true agenda.”

That agenda, Inhofe said, is to “incite fear” in the public with unsubstantiated claims and “intimidate” oil and gas companies with threats of unjustified fines and penalties – then, quietly backtrack once the public’s perception has been firmly jaded against oil and natural gas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze3GB_b7Nuo

http://cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/...omans-crucified

Every day the mask slips a bit further off the beast.

T2G

Such insinuation is BS to say the least. As one oil company rep stated on the news in ND, "The state's acquifers are at their deepest, 850 feet. We are fracking at 15,000 feet. There is 2 1/2 miles of earth between the acquifer and what we're doing."

Nephew said the oil companies were doing some familiarity training with the fire department up in Minot and fracking mud came into the discussion. Said one of the guys told them it's absolutely safe, there is nothing in it that will harm you or the acquifer, and he mixed up a glass full of fracking mud and water, and drank it down.

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This is much like the hysteria creatd by the EPA over drinking water standards. They screamed and yelled, and spent billions and billions of dollars updating water treatment plants, rebuilding and building water distribution systems, harrassing small town governments, and water system officials, and everything they did was/is quite honestly, utter BS!!!

They screamed and yelled about naturally occurring arsenic in drinking water. Not 1 death has ever been attributed to natually occuring arsenic in drinking water. And, there were places in ND that I am aware of, that well water ran 3 - 5 times the Maximum Allowable Contaminant Level for that element.

They screamed and yelled about naturally occuring flouride in the water, then turned around and recommended you add flouride if it wasn't present. As one state senator said, "Yeah there is flouride in our water in Western ND, and there are a few of our kids out there have mottled and yellowed teeth. But judging by the Copenhagen cans in their back pockets, I'm not altogether sure it has anything to do with the fluoride in the water."

They screamed and yelled about aggressive water leaching the lead from the pipes, and how that was going to cause brain damage in our children and eventually kill us. Didn't matter that there was NO LEAD PLUMBING in the water distribution system, whatsoever. We were required to treat for the lead soldered joints inside the homes we served.

There had been lead solder joints in the plumbing in many of those homes for over half a century, there had been lead pipes in the older municipal water systems for over half a century, there had been naturally occuring lead in the ground water supplies serving many of those connections, since the beginning of time. And, again... not 1 death, not one case of brain damage, has ever been attributed to lead in drinking water.

Their cure for lead leaching was to inject ortho phosphates into the water system. What are ortho phosphates????? Fertilizer! What does fertilizer do??? Promote plant, bacteria, and algae growth. Then the chlorine has to be cranked up more, to offset the affects of the ortho phosphates. And, the ortho phosphates suposedly work because they coat the inside of the pipe and eventually break down and regenerate themselves. Problem is, that causes any deposits of any nature inside the pipes to break down, and precipitate, and turn black and nasty, looking something like crude oil, and it eventually winds up in the customers' household.

All of which is truly a pain in the asssss, but in some waters the combination of ortho phosphates, over chlorinating, and pucky precipitating also cause little by-products called trihalomethanes and those are carcinogenic... (cancer causing agents). In which case you had to quit using chlorine and start treating with ozone or chloramine, however neither of those carried a disinfectant residual to the extremes of our distribution systems, capable of fighting the effects of the ortho phosphates on bacteria.

And, all of this was implemented with a one size fits all firkin attitude from EPA, with exception to the fact, that you were given more time to try to find funding if your system was smaller.

I have never been so glad to have lost a job in my life as I was when I lost that one! I was simply fed up with the incessant battle to try and meet standards, while somehow trying to maintain affordability, on a system that was only marginally feasible to begin with!!

American Thinker gives the rest of the story on the EPA's GreeNazis.

I cast bullets.My house is plumbed with copper and has solder which has lead.This has been going on for 30 + years.When I was having blood test done I asked them to check for heavy metals.None.