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CapitalPress.com
August 21, 2015
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approved by members of the
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the opinions of the authors but
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Opinion
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Publisher
Editor
Managing Editor
Mike O’Brien
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com Online: www.capitalpress.com/opinion
O ur V iew
Regulators only seek more regulation
ature and regulators
abhor a vacuum.
Where no regulation
exists, government moves in to
fill the void. And where there
is regulation, regulators find
reason to justify more.
Dairymen and livestock
producers are trying to
assess the impacts of a
move by the Washington
Department of Ecology
to expand permitting
requirements that now cover
10 confined animal feeding
N
operations to hundreds of
dairies and other farms that
use manure storage lagoons.
The permits set out what
producers must do to keep
manure from washing into
surface water, regulating the
size, design and maintenance of
lagoons.
Under the new proposal,
which Ecology officials
described as a “preliminary
draft,” the department turns its
attention to groundwater, as
well.
DOE assumes lagoons leak
manure into groundwater, so
any producer with a lagoon
will need a CAFO permit. Plus,
the producer would have to
test fields on which manure is
spread. Soil samples down to 3
feet deep will have to be taken.
The higher the contaminant
level, the stronger the action the
producer will have to take to
clean up the ground.
“This changes the universe
in which an operator lives,”
Washington Cattlemen’s
Association Executive Vice
President Jack Field said.
Indeed.
Permits will cost anywhere
between $263 to $2,373 per
year, depending on the size of
the operation, and will have to
be updated when the size of the
covered herd changes.
The regular field testing will be
expensive as well.
We are assured by DOE that the
rules are still in the early stages,
and that there will be “months” of
public comment before final rules
are written.
Although happy DOE is
expanding its reach, environmental
groups say the proposed rules
don’t go far enough. They promise
to use the rulemaking process to
press for even more strict rules.
So, there will be new, more
inclusive rules. The only thing left
to be decided is their degree.
Once a regulatory agency
decides to expand its authority,
there’s nothing that will come out
of months of public comment
that will change its mind.
There’s a better
response to EPA climate
rules than ‘Just say no’
By BOB INGLIS
and MARK REYNOLDS
For the Capital Press
T
Rik Dalvit/For the Capital Press
O ur V iew
Congress must pass PORTS bills
hile most of the public has
forgotten the months-long
slowdown at West Coast
container ports, farmers, ranchers,
processors and agricultural exporters
have not.
They are still paying the price for
the foolishness inflicted on them by the
International Longshore and Warehouse
Union and the Pacific Maritime
Association.
While the two sides were locked in a
slow-motion Kabuki dance negotiating
a new five-year contract, the ILWU
choreographed a work slowdown that
continued into the new year. Shipments
were stopped or delayed and stacks of
containers filled with agricultural goods
piled up on the docks.
The Port of Portland lost its last major
container carrier in part because of the
nonsense. That means exporters who
used that port have to pay extra to go
through the ports of Seattle and Tacoma.
While the ILWU and management
were hassling with one another,
customers in Asia were buying meat,
potatoes, hay, nuts and produce
elsewhere.
Once the new port contract was
signed, U.S. ag goods arrived overseas,
but many of them sat in storage because
their purchasers have already bought
W
replacement goods from other countries.
Hay from the 2014 crop is still
working its way through the system in
Japan. Meat had to be frozen, lowering
its value, to make it to overseas
customers because port workers were
so slow. A record apple crop was hung
up as containers sat at West Coast
ports. Potato products were stranded.
Christmas trees were late.
But there’s a bigger problem facing
agriculture. In 4 1/2 years, when this
ILWU contract expires, agricultural
exporters will find themselves in
precisely the same predicament —
losing massive amounts of money
because of a broken system that puts
them at risk while the port operators and
ILWU engage in more brinksmanship.
We have previously called on
Congress to do something to avoid
a repeat of the port debacle. Bills
introduced in the U.S. House and Senate
could help.
H.R. 3398, introduced Aug. 5, is a
companion measure to S. 1519. They
are known as the Protecting Orderly
and Responsible Transit of Shipments
(PORTS) Act and would allow
governors in West Coast states to put the
spurs to port operators and longshore
workers who impede the free flow of
containers through the ports.
The governors would be authorized
to appoint a board of inquiry under the
Taft-Hartley Act and seek an injunction
if the president doesn’t act in 10 days to
end a work slowdown or strike.
The House bill also tells the
comptroller general to study what went
wrong in the recent debacle and propose
ways to avoid a repeat.
No doubt big labor will resist these
efforts. Tough. Until the ILWU and the
port operators write checks indemnifying
their customers for the huge losses they
suffered, we’re not really interested in
their opinions.
U.S. exporters and importers paid
dearly for last winter’s shenanigans. The
slowdown cost the U.S. economy up to
$2.5 billion per day, damaged the U.S.
economy and cost American jobs.
We as a nation simply cannot afford
to allow our businesses and our economy
to be hijacked by another union
squabble. Reps. Dan Newhouse and
Dave Reichert, both of Washington, have
already signed on as sponsors of the
House bill. Every member of every West
Coast congressional delegation should
follow suit and sign on as sponsors of
the PORTS Act and push hard for their
passage.
If they don’t, then we’ll know for sure
where their allegiances lie.
Readers’ views
Another reason to
preserve farmland
Concerning the Capital
Press article, “Researchers:
Replenish aquifers by flood-
ing fields in winter,” on Aug.
4:
American Farmland Trust
finds it noteworthy that the areas
identified by University of Cal-
ifornia-Davis researchers as the
most suitable for active ground-
water recharge are farmlands
near cities that are expanding.
To accommodate growing pop-
ulations, these cities are paving
over the very land that could be
the key to the future water sup-
ply of both agriculture and the
cities themselves. This is docu-
mented by the San Joaquin Val-
ley Greenprint report (p. 27),
which shows the coincidence
of prime farmland and aquifer
recharge areas in that region.
Importantly, this research
provides yet another compel-
ling reason to conserve these
irreplaceable farmlands.
Edward Thompson, Jr.
California director
and senior associate
American Farmland Trust
Sacramento
Spotted owl an
environmental fraud
I read your opinion on the
spotted owl. How sad that our
ag paper is sucked into environ-
mental nonsense. The spotted
owl has always been a fraud.
Now you are telling us that you
believe the nonsense that we
should kill other better surviving
owls to protect what was never a
problem in the first place.
So you are saying we should
stop the natural process of suc-
cession to save a weak bird.
The only part of what we teach
about science and nature that is
true, is that some animals of a
species will be better suited to
survive over time and others
will decline. How dare you say
that we should interrupt that
process of natural selection.
This is the perfect time to
have said what has always
been true, the spotted owl was
always a hoax to stop logging,
nothing more than a furry friend
to use as a tool.
The owl should be delisted
and our forests brought back to
health before they all burn up.
Liz Turner
The Dalles, Ore.
he Republican talking
point on climate change
is evolving, thankfully,
from “I’m not a scientist” to
“let’s solve it through innova-
tion,” and that is good news
for the nation and generations
of Americans to come. After
all, the first step to solving a
problem is to admit that you
have one, and that’s now hap-
pening.
Jeb Bush, the presump-
tive candidate to beat for the
Republican presidential nom-
ination, said last month, “Ul-
timately, there’s going to be a
person in a garage somewhere
that’s going to come up with
a disruptive technology that’s
going to solve these problems,
and I think markets need to be
respected in this regard.”
Another candidate, Carly
Fiorina, offered a similar ob-
servation: “I think the answer
to this problem is innovation,
not regulation.”
It’s a very nuanced posi-
tion. In one breath they ac-
knowledge there’s a problem
we must solve and attack the
regulatory solution currently
leaving the station. There’s
just one problem: Suggest-
ing that innovation without
market reform will solve cli-
mate change is more wishful
thinking than a serious policy
proposal.
The truth is that we cannot
afford to wait for “a person in
a garage” to come up with a
magic bullet. The technolo-
gies that can wean society off
polluting fuels already exist.
What we need is the econom-
ic incentive — money talks —
to bring those technologies to
scale.
To be sure, there are tech-
nologies yet to be invented
that will have a game-chang-
ing impact on our ability to
undo the damage accrued
from burning fossil fuels the
past two centuries. But inves-
tors are more likely to fund
the research and development
for these new technologies
if they are assured a market
that values them and thus a
reasonable return on their in-
vestment.
What would give them
such assurance? A predict-
able, steadily-rising fee on
carbon pollution.
For those who worry that
pricing carbon will drag
down our economy, here’s
the other part of the equation:
Return the revenue from the
carbon fee back to the peo-
ple, either through direct pay-
ments or by lowering taxes.
A study from the highly re-
spected Regional Economic
Models Inc. (REMI), looked
at this type of policy, factor-
ing in an annual increase of
$10 per ton on the carbon
dioxide content of fossil fu-
els. REMI found that after
20 years emissions would be
reduced by 52 percent. More
impressive, though, was that
the policy would add 2.8 mil-
lion jobs over 20 years be-
cause of the carbon fee rev-
enue being recycled into the
Guest
comment
Mark Reynolds
Guest
comment
Bob Inglis
economy.
Leading
conservatives
like George Shultz, Secretary
of State under President Rea-
gan, have endorsed this solu-
tion, calling it an “insurance
policy” against the risk —
whatever it may be — posed
by climate change.
Now that President Barack
Obama has released the new
EPA regulations to reduce
carbon emissions at power
plants, conservatives will
step up opposition to a plan
they view as big-government
overreach. Expect lawsuits,
threats of a government shut
down and heated rhetoric on
the presidential campaign
trail.
Do opponents really want
or need to go down this path?
In previous stand-offs, public
opinion proved very harsh
for the GOP. With opinion
polls showing two-thirds of
Americans supporting the
new EPA rules, attacking the
rules seems like a strategy
that’s all risk and no reward.
The problem is that con-
gressional Republicans hav-
en’t come to the table on the
climate issue, and if you’re
not at the table, you’re on the
menu. By not being engaged,
the GOP has ceded climate
change policy to an executive
branch that is imposing more
government regulations, the
least desirable solution Re-
publicans can imagine.
But just saying “no” to
EPA regulations is not a vi-
able option, either political-
ly or environmentally. Why
not, then, offer an alternative
solution that adheres to con-
servative values? Tell the
American people, “We have
an effective solution that …”
Uses the power of the
free market, rather than the
government, to drive both
innovation and reductions in
greenhouse gas emissions.
Does not increase the size
and control of government.
Protects American busi-
nesses and grows our econo-
my.
As Republicans cast about
for a new talking point on cli-
mate change, the ones who
come to the table with a rev-
enue-neutral plan to price car-
bon will eventually be hailed
as visionaries, preservers of a
livable world, and saviors of
their party.
One of them might even
win the White House.
Bob Inglis is a former Re-
publican congressman from
South Carolina who now di-
rects republicEn.org, a think
tank promoting free-market
energy and climate policies.
Mark Reynolds is executive
director of Citizens’ Climate
Lobby.