EPA’s proposed PFAS regulations will cost trillions and make water bills skyrocket for those who can least afford it.
The framers of our Constitution understood that governmental power can be misused for partisan purposes. Therefore, they carefully designed a national government of limited powers, with separation of powers, and checks and balances. Unfortunately, later generations gradually removed most of the safeguards they had painstakingly built into our constitution: As I’ve written in TAS previously, “When government grows that big and powerful, politicians will find a way to warp power for their own ends.” (READ MORE from E. Donald Elliott: It Should Be Illegal for Politicians to Buy Votes With Our Money)
Joe Biden and Co. have perfected techniques for using the expanded powers of the modern Administrative State to funnel money to their political supporters. First, Biden mandated by Executive Order that “at least” 40 percent of the $329 billion supposedly meant to fight climate change was to be directed to “disadvantaged communities” populated by racial minorities that voted overwhelmingly for Biden in the last election.
Next Biden tried to “forgive” $430 billion in student loan debt, a blatantly illegal move that was eventually set aside by the Supreme Court — but the political damage had been done. Democrats got a double benefit with younger voters in the runup to the 2022 elections: they got credit for trying to give younger voters a $430 billion payoff, but then those nasty Republicans on the Supreme Court took away their gift.
Now comes Election Payoffs Part Three, which dwarfs the previous two: Biden and Co. are now trying to weaponize the enormous regulatory power of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), an agency for which I once served as General Counsel, in order to shovel billions of dollars in contingent fees to the plaintiffs’ trial lawyers. Such plaintiffs’ lawyers are big contributors to political campaigns with 99 percent of their contributions going to Democrats according to one study.
Here’s how the latest scam to use your money to buy Biden’s re-election works. The EPA proposed a rule to regulate extremely low levels of “per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances” (PFAS), a large class of chemicals used in a variety of consumer products. If adopted, the EPA’s proposed new rule would limit the levels of certain PFAS compounds in drinking water down to the unimaginably low level of 4 parts per trillion — which is equivalent to just four grains of sand in an Olympic size swimming pool. Meanwhile, the EPA quietly removed several PFAS compounds from its “Safer Choice” list of recommended ingredients for consumer products. ( The Left Does Not Believe in the Rule of Law)
If adopted, the EPA’s proposed rule for PFAS in drinking water may be the most expensive rule in the EPA’s history. The direct cost to water utilities to comply is estimated by the EPA at “only” about $1 billion per year, but the American Water Works Association (AWWA) says it would actually cost $3.
