ARROGANT ENVIRONMENTAL BULLIES

A metal stamping plant owner says he plans to sue EPA criminal investigators for at least $10 million over a fruitless investigation that nearly ruined his business. Steve McNabb, whose wife, Jan, owns American Carolina Stamping, this week said he is gathering information to sue members of the Environmental Protection Agency's Criminal Investigation Division for discrimination and retaliation during a more than four-year investigation of the Transylvania County company.

McNabb said he plans to sue for $10 to $15 million for lost business, attorneys fees and other damages. "When you're under criminal investigation you can't take government contracts," he said. "Sixty-five percent of our business was government contracts."

On Jan. 15, 1999, CID and other law enforcement officers raided the plant that manufactures wire forms, electrical contacts and metal stamping products. Officers were acting on tips that the plant between U.S. 64 and Old Hendersonville Highway was improperly disposing hazardous waste, including a hexane-based solvent, commercially sold as Zep. "The investigation to date has revealed the illegal storage and disposal of hazardous waste by American Carolina Stamping," special agent Tyler Amon said in his request for a search warrant.

McNabb contended that the solvent was too expensive to dump and that he reuses it until it evaporates. Zep is only considered a hazardous waste because of its flammability, he said.

As is the custom of federal law enforcement groups, the CID refused to talk about the case while it was open or even to confirm whether such an investigation existed.

In 2003, 10 months before the expiration of the five-year limit on investigations, the EPA closed the case against McNabb. The organization then took up civil action against him. But in November it dropped that too.

Organized in 1982 the CID has a staff of 200 and handles criminal investigations of environmental violations. Like other law enforcement officers, CID agents are armed and use body armor. They receive nine weeks of training, including one on the use of protective gear, such as respirators.

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FUNNY THAT!

EU countries jib at Greenie nonsense when it hits the pocket

The EU's carbon dioxide emissions trading scheme (ETS), the world's first market-based plan for cutting greenhouse gases, is in danger of being stillborn because of threatened legal action by Britain, Germany and other countries against the European commission. Margaret Beckett, environment secretary, has warned Stavros Dimas, the environment commissioner, that the UK will take Brussels to the European court of justice if he does not approve a new version of Britain's plan for emissions by power generators and energy-intensive sectors that is more generous to industry.

The threat of legal action, which could delay trading in the ETS for several months, is causing consternation within Britain's manufacturing sector, which fears that the European Union's scheme will add significantly to increased energy costs this year. The ETS was launched on January 1, with the first deal (on forward credits) between Shell and the mining group BHP Billiton executed three days later in London, when 5,000 tonnes of CO2 were brokered by TFS at a price of five pounds, eighty pence a tonne. It aims to help to cut EU emissions to 8% below 1990 levels by 2012.

The EEF, the manufacturers' organisation, has warned ministers that delays to the scheme, including legal action, will add further uncertainty to industries whose energy costs this year are expected to rise to 6 billion pounds, compared with 4.2 billion pounds 2003 - with 30% of the rise down to the ETS. It has told Ms Beckett that, if legal action produces a more effective and equitable scheme, manufacturers would back the government. An EEF report argues that, because of Britain's liberalised market, British companies will end up paying more for energy than their EU rivals.

The government's national allocation plan, which sets out how much CO2 companies or plants can emit in a given year and enables them to trade such allowances on the open market, was approved by the commission in July last year - subject to a few technical changes. But after further reports from consultants, ministers submitted a revised scheme in October, which the commission has rejected as it contains bigger and more generous allowances.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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