Supreme Court likely to discard Chevron

You should see what happens when the Agriculture industry objects to a reg! lolz

 

Respectfully, @enviroGator is correct. The public comments do matter. An agency completely ignoring them might result in the rule getting struck down for being arbitrary and capricious. Will the public comments prevent the government from going the direction it wants to go? Generally, no. But the agency at least has to address them and explain in a reasoned manner why it's going another direction.

 

Hasn't been my experience with government agencies but whatever.

 

i have. it is why big ag is allowed to continue to pollute our waterways. I am doing a 2 acres site with a small dentist office on it. Nearly $200k to build the stormwater system to meet the nutrient removal rules. Also doing the first phase of a 400k SF indoor greenhouse with food processing facility built in. It is ag so it doesn't have to do anything for nutrient removal. Building will be 5x as big as the entire dentist property at buildout and the impervious parking /loading area will be nearly as big as the dentist lot. no stormwater treatment or attenuation required because it is ag. have to make some "commitments" to employing best management practices to get and keep the ag property exemption and sales tax exemption

 

Ha, it is already bad enough to watch SCOTUS babble about things they have no clue about, like modern tech. Now you're going to have tens of thousands of even dumber nimrods interpreting laws. There is no way this doesn't produce some massive catastrophe in a matter of weeks.

 

Not trying to get into your area of expertise, and the green house should have some requirements. But I also know that typically fertilization rates are based off what the crop is expected to yield. These rates have been determined by testing the nutrient load of a box of the crop being removed. So, if I want to the crop to yield 400 boxes and each box contains x# Nitrogen, Phosphorus, potash, etc.. I need to apply that much to the soil and then the vast majority is removed by the crop. I am not naive enough to believe that is all removed and there is some runoff, evaporation and leaching. These issues are being addressed by the increase in slow-release fertilizers that release with soil temperature rather than moisture. Composting and adding additional Humus type materials to increase the CEC is also being done on a much larger basis than in past. I'm about to get all the fertilizer needs for a cane grower that is nothing, but polymer coated slow-release fertilizer. This particular customer has significant acreage.

 

that sounds good in theory, but the nutrient runoff from the wet season pumping is high. I will agree that some ag is trying, simply out of greed (buy no more fertilizer than you need) if nothing else and that cattle and dairy are as bad or worse. these big ranches being put under CE's with big purchase prices from the state to preserve the greenbelt for the panther should be required to implement BMPS to detain and treat the sheet flow as it crosses their properties. a few hundred acres of bamboo marsh on a massive ranch aren't going to impede it's function, especially now hat thye got hundreds of millions for the property without losing the use. Buy it from me and let me keep using it. Good deal if you can get it.

question, would your cane client be in business if sugar wasn't subsidized? what would he do with the land if cane wasn't profitable?

 

I may be wrong, I don't do a lot in dairies or beef cattle, have salesman do those, but I thought all of them have had to implement BMPS for managing nutrient runoff from manure, but I may be wrong. Not sure what he would grow if not cane, they have grown watermelons, pepper and cukes also in past but not sure.
Well, where we may disagree is that there is just not much nutrient added in the rainy season so not much there to pump off. I agree the decision to use the CRF is an economic one not an environmental one. But in this case, he is seeing additional sugar content with less input, with an economic alternative. I think as whole with the cost of fertilizer having skyrocketed in the past 3-4 years, the luxurious applications of excess nutrients are diminishing greatly. Still happens, but not the extent it was in past. As technologies improve for post application of economical nutrient options, the need for excess before planting continues to be less of an advantage economically. It is not where the environmentalist would want it to be, but it has improved dramatically in past 20 years.

 

here are the bmp's per industry at the link below. lots of good stuff in there. i haven't been out in a while but if these are being built and maintained as designed, it would be a surprise. note that these are voluntary and not subject to inspection or testing requirements. i applaud those that are implementing these by the rule and doing the required maintenance. some rules still leave a lot to be desired as they are process driven instead of efficiency driven. process are assumed that do not occur over extended periods when tested. read the cattle one if you are bored..

BMP Research / Agricultural Best Management Practices / Water / Agriculture Industry / Home - Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services (fdacs.gov)

the summary on the cattle one is counterintuitive but it is what the numbers say it is.
Semi-annual Progress Report (fdacs.gov)

 

You are right from the aspect that most of these are voluntary rather than mandated, but in the past 15-20 years as these BMPS were created, for the most, at least to a level, nearly everyone I know is trying to participate. Simply from the standpoint as if it looks like you are trying to comply and making an effort, they will help you get the rest of the way if that is your desire. If you are not doing anything and don't care, then we need to check all your records a little closer!

 

good stuff..the challenge with any of the bmp's right down to flooded fields, is that nutrient in = nutrient out, you can slow it down but you cannot prevent it without harvest of some sort. the natural system reaches an equilibrium and if organic material is not removed the system, will only pass along the nutrient as the system efficiency declines rapidly with age. i can tell you that the regs on development are onerous at best and about to become much worse if the propsoed changes go through legislature. that is going to drive the cost of all new development up another 5 to 10% but the legislature has been deaf to the concern of housing costs to date as the rulemaking has evolved.

 

Simple question. Is building more developments more positive on environmental concerns or leaving it as a cow pasture with no adherence to voluntary BMPS?

 

The Audubon Society in FL has some juice. At least at the state level. I’ve had experience with them successfully having plan changed at the last moment that the relevant state agencies have negotiated and studied over the long haul (years).

 

Steve Vladeck with some insightful takes on how the Conservative Court’s expansion of the Unitary Executive doctrine, which is absurd, as he shows in part, undermines one of the key philosophical arguments for ending Chevron deference

Instead of focusing on that dynamic, though, I want to flag a different point that ought to be relevant to any conversation about the democratic accountability of executive branch agencies, but has largely been missing from recent discourse about Chevron (including at Wednesday’s arguments): How, in recent years, the Supreme Court itself has made executive branch agencies more democratically accountable, at least on paper. Whatever one thinks of the Court’s aggressive move toward the “unitary executive” theory of presidential control of the executive branch bureaucracy, it seems, at the very least, that it’s in significant tension with the argument that deference to agencies is problematic because the relevant decisionmakers at those agencies are not accountable to the people. To whatever extent that was true in 1984, it’s far less true today.

The “unitary executive” theory of presidential power is the idea that Article II of the Constitution, by vesting “the executive power” in a single person (the President), gives that person indivisible (“unitary”) control over the executive branch, including over the actions (and, if necessary, removal) of all of his subordinates. Thus, anyone who wields executive power must be directly accountable to the President, or else that arrangement unconstitutionally deprives the President of his unitary control. Although unitary executive theory is often defended on (highly disputed) originalist grounds, it also has a democratic accountability hook: unlike the Administrator of the EPA or the Assistant Secretary of Transportation, we vote for the President. Thus, ensuring that the President can directly control his subordinates improves the democratic accountability of their decisionmaking.

To be sure, there are lots of objections to the unitary executive theory, many of which I find compelling. The relevant point for present purposes is that, in the last 14 years, the Supreme Court has taken three major steps toward embracing it in the context of presidential control of the administrative state. Those steps have had the effect of bringing far more of the federal bureaucracy under the President’s direct control. And whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing in the abstract, it sure seems to pour cold water on claims that judicial deference to those agencies is generally un- (or even anti-)democratic.


63. Chevron and the Unitary Executive

Really, ending or limiting Chevron is just based on the same reasoning as Citizens United and it it’s progeny, and the naked payoffs from Leonard Leo and friends to Clarence Thomas and friends, namely that the US should be ruled by unaccountable oligarchs that are not subject to legal limitations on purchasing policy

 

new development generates less nutrient load than ag.

ag is better for birds and bunnies

is water quality or birds and bunnies what is best for the environment? if both, then you need to have ag contributing a lot more capital towards water quality

current nutrient rule is based on pre v post, ie, you must not runoff anymore than what was there when you started the process, and then you msut increase your required treatment volume by 50% if on any sort of impaired waterway (everywhere)

pending legislation, you must remove 95% of all nitrogen and phosphorous if you are on impaired waterway.

big problem, legacy pollution on the bottom of lake O. feet of muck containing millions of pounds of nutrients. ag could quit polluting tomorrow and it will take generations for that legacy pollution to dissipate

 

Great discussion

AITA? SCOTUS Edition - Strict Scrutiny