WHEN THE SHOE FITS

The following observation from Oregon caught my eye recently:

"Feedlot waste. In Oregon both dairies and feedlots must have a separate sewage disposal system. The prices start at $60,000 for the systems. That's why we lost so many of our dairies. My county alone went from 60 dairies 15 years ago to 8 today. Just wait until they start regulating you for nonpoint source pollution.

I wrote a report a couple of years ago about Oregon's Fish and Wildlife Dept collecting and selling hatchery fish to the wholesale fish market. They sell over a million pounds of salmon to the market right about the time the salmon fishermen take a huge price hit. The entire fleet in Oregon sells 3 million pounds a year, not counting what the Department sells. And ODFW regulates the season and catch limits. So, in Oregon we have state agencies that compete with the markets they regulate. This report recently
surfaced again. It's kind of fun to see others run with it.

On the coast, we have to deal with everything you have to deal with (in Montana) in natural resources, PLUS all the environmental complaints on estuaries, beaches, oceans, dunes and it goes on and on. Count up your problems and double them. That's our world."

Our courts and politicians and bureaucrats have acquiesced for too long with the growth of a double standard. Today there are two standards for every imaginable environmental and animal rights matter. There is the standard that targeted citizens must adhere to and then there is the standard the Federal (and increasingly State) government may or may not adhere to.

As we consider the above example of dairy demolitions in Oregon and the State competition in the salmon market I am reminded of something I discovered several years ago in Nebraska. I was asked to determine how much pollution (nitrogen, potassium, bacteria, etc.) was being deposited on Nebraska farm fields in the fall and winter by millions of ducks, geese, sandhill cranes, and other migratory birds that fed in those fields daily for months on end and then loafed in other fields for the balance of most days. People that lived along the Platte River also noticed the soupy, green, and disgusting smell and appearance of four or five wetlands (owned by the Federal government) where millions of ducks and geese roosted every night. The farmers were alarmed because environmentalists and their Federal “partners” were accusing the farmers of “polluting” the Platte River by fertilizing their fields. In fact, the centers of many fields were not growing any crops because of exceedingly high nitrate concentrations.

I worked hard at analyzing what was happening and after many stonewalls and nasty remarks from State and Federal bureaucrats I made the following discoveries:

- The Federal government has done only limited and desultory research on fecal depositions by any wild birds. It is merely a few papers on resident Canada geese and it makes no hard conclusions or really defines how much, what it contains, when it is deposited, where it is deposited, or what the danger to humans and other animals really is. Consider that not only are there many millions of such resident Canada geese across the northern US but consider the 50?, 75?, 100? Million wild ducks and geese that concentrate on the same National Wildlife Refuges annually and spend fall and winter every year concentrated in the same wetlands and fields in flocks of enormous size. Think of the visitors and workers on those refuges. Further consider that central Nebraska holds 6 to 8 million ducks and geese for months on end (depending on weather) roosting on a handful of government-owned wetlands and loafing on the same fields day after day. NO RESEARCH!

- Stumped, I turned to a professor of domestic duck production. He listened to my story and was amazed. He told me there were rooms full of University and government research on domestic duck feces. The droppings were very high in all sorts of chemical pollutants and disease. He spoke of reams of government (EPA) regulations and policies that supported a government bureaucracy of great extent. He said that I should talk to duck producers (if they would talk) about the oppressive and expensive regulatory world they operated in, complete with Federal inspectors with the power to put them out of business.

- The several commercial producers I spoke with would not be quoted and one actually lowered his voice as he spoke. They are in constant fear of Federal inspectors. The small producers have all but disappeared. The cost of operations has skyrocketed. There are two kinds of feedlot regulation in the Code of Federal regulations, there is Duck Feedlots and there is All Other Feedlots. Because the Federal government has determined that domestic ducks are so dangerous (because of their droppings) the Federal government has seized (from States) jurisdiction over all flocks of 5,000 or more ducks. Producers must have two lagoons on site and aerial sprayers for pollution treatment. Any runoff not treated that leaves the property (as happens in severe storms) results in big fines and possibly loss of the vital “license” or permit to operate. The Federal inspectors (take note dog owners and dog breeders and others clamoring for “more” laws and controls for your pet peeves) tend to be environmental zealots and seem to look forward to the day when all these “polluters” are history. The “rooms full” of “research” about the danger of such runoff mentions not only surface water pollution, groundwater pollution, soil pollution, but also air pollution and dangers to fish and wildlife and human health. If this is reasonable for domestic duck flock management, why are wild birds ignored and of no note? What about those Nebraska wetlands and fields? What about certain National Wildlife refuges? What about our City Parks and schoolyards and urban ponds? You don’t have to be a wildlife biologist to answer these questions.

Five years ago a Washington Conservation Organization took the Federal government to Federal court. For decades the US Army Corps of Engineers (who administers the Washington DC water system) has been dumping tons of sludge twice a month, during the night, into the Potomac River through three pipes and creeks that flow through a National Park. For the past decade they have done this under the hidden auspices of an EPA Permit agreed to by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the National Park Service, the District of Columbia, and the State of Maryland. The River lies in DC and the State of Maryland. The River contains Endangered Shortnose Sturgeon, indeed the upper sludge outlet pours out on the only spawning grounds of the Endangered Shortnose Sturgeon. The sludge is black and oily and smelly. It contains all manner of metals (like Aluminum that is very toxic to young fish and some exotic chemical warfare weapons residue found in the soil of Northwest DC [the rich part] from the World War I days when Northwest DC was a Top Secret chemical weapons development site similar to the atomic weapon development site in New Mexico during WW II).

The Court delayed and delayed. The agencies failed to provide documents and fought with all the alacrity of an ostrich that cannot be dislodged. Government Solicitors (i.e. lawyers) got bonuses and promotions for their successful evasions and trickery. The big “Conservation” organizations (whose Executives commute right by the site daily) didn’t notice anything; indeed they were often heard to sniff that the suing organization was somehow beneath notice. Occasionally they were even heard to observe that the suing organization was like Beers, someone who will never need Preparation H because he is perfect in every way. Today the pollution goes on and the suing conservation organization went broke and has closed down.

So there you have it. If you produce domestic ducks in flocks of 5,000 or more you are a danger to the nation and subject to every draconian penalty and punishment that government can devise because duck droppings are toxic in myriad ways. If you are a government bureaucracy responsible for wild and resident ducks and geese that concentrate in flocks of millions and spend months on the same waters and fields or golf course or City park or schoolyard the pollution problem from feces is non-existent. Conversely, what could ruin the livelihood of a citizen and destroy a valued food source for American citizens (domestic duck feces) is something to be restricted and eliminated if at all possible. In fact Federal and State bureaucrats can even ally themselves with lying environmental radicals determined to put farmers out of business and gain control of their property because there is nothing to refute their allegations about “fertilizer”.

Similarly, if your septic tank overflows or you wish to build on your property or you want to construct fish ponds or you have to “go” while boating, you are subject to all manner of Federal and State regulations meant to stop you from doing these things and to punish you drastically if you do them. However, if you are a Federal Water Treatment Bureaucracy you can dump tons of your sludge at night into a “National Heritage River” on an Endangered fish’s spawning ground and all of the bureaucrats (US Army Corps of Engineers, National Park Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, DC government, Maryland government) get promotions and bonuses for stonewalling the public, frustrating Courts, and driving real conservation groups out of existence to keep polluting a River in the Nations Capital and poisoning Endangered Species spawning habitat (any one of which would land you or me in the hoosegow and result in the loss of all our property).

Whose fault is this? Not the bureaucrats, like hippopotamuses they are simply behaving as they always have from Nero and Nebuchadnezzar to Stalin and Hitler. Not the environmentalists and animal rights radicals, they too, while more numerous of late due to (what? rainfall?, global warming?, affluence?, feminism?, secularism?, dumbed-down schools?), are behaving as always from the pagan priests worshipping volcanoes to the anti-vivesectionists out to stamp out any animal use under Queen Victoria. Not the scientists, they like bloodhounds simply follow the money. Not the politicians; why heck you and I elect them.

That leaves just you and me. When we elect politicians that fail to change these BAD laws and stop this double standard because we “want” more of everything that they promise; we are getting what we deserve – a burgeoning dictatorship. When we don’t confront arrogant bureaucrats that threaten our neighbors or other citizens or their way of life, we are getting what we deserve – a ruling oligarchy of bureaucrats like Russia under Stalin or Germany under Hitler. When we let radicals and extremists destroy our nation and our government because of their narrow and hateful agendas, we get what we deserve – a suffocating tyranny disguised in high-sounding purposes that disguises a hateful and repugnant society that our forbearers fought and died to avoid.

So if government can’t wear the shoe they make for the rest of us, then the shoes need to be destroyed and not allowed to be remade ever again.

Jim Beers
20 March 2005
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