BREATHING IN POOR LIBERAL POLICY

For every action taken there are consequences. Yesterday, and I’m sure more days to come, we in north central Idaho will be experiencing the consequences…POOR LAND MANAGEMENT!

As you can tell by the pictures the air quality isn’t good. At harvest time there is dust in the air, usually in the evening but by morning it is cleared out. Not the case with wildfire smoke being held in by a weather system change.

The cause for the smoke…lighting activated fires in public lands. The same public lands that are poorly mismanaged by environmental activist driven liberal policies whose demographics are in the rural regions of L.A., San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Boston, etc.

Are you getting the picture or is it too smoky to see through?

For years the environmental activist organizations and zealots have preyed on the emotions of city folk to “have passion for mother earth and care for the land” by sending a $10 or more donation to stop logging.

And Liberal lawmakers like Diane Feinstein are leading the charge. I wonder if she is out camping in a tent in our area to experience the fruits of her labor?

By not allowing logging to take place on public lands to remove dead trees, make clearings to help stop fires, and to manage the land has made for one heck of a fuel supply that we are inhaling and will be for weeks.

Senator Dianne Feinstein and her Husband Richard Blum have purchased a new home for 16.5 Million at the corner of Lyon and Vallejo st in San Francisco.

I’m sure that Senator Feinstein, her cronies in Congress, and the liberals and activists that support these poor policies make sure that their yards are watered and beautiful. I’m sure that after the lawn is mowed and weeds are pulled the refuse doesn’t just stay there. Why is my back yard any different?

Why should public lands be any different? Why can’t our government utilize the sale of the trees to help take some pressure off of us tax payers in more ways than one?

The answer is definitely clearer than the smoke invested air I am seeing and breathing…BIG MONEY!

Over $2 trillion is spent annually worldwide on environmental activism. Do you think these bloated back east elected officials care about me and my family in a town of 369 people in north central Idaho? Or do you think they care about the bundles of dollars their rich activist friends with townhouses in Manhattan think?

Not only do we need to clear the air on this issue, but we need to clean house. We need better policies that actually work regarding public land management. We need common sense policies instead of the kind driven by activist monies.

I’m sure that there is concern on the other side’s part to care for the environment and those that live in it…just not us humans that pay their way. Maybe if I was a three horned snail darter or painted lady toad strangler they would pay attention to my plea. It's down right unAmerican!  

New World Travels to the Old World

I know that it has been awhile since last writing. I have traveled to Chicago, Boise (3 times) and Washington, D.C. along with getting things done. Oh, Christmas and New Years was in there as well.

Right now I am on another adventure in my Fellowship life. I and the other 2011 Eisenhower Ag Fellow (Rhett Proctor) were invited to attend the Nuffield Scholars Contemporary Scholars Conference in Holland and the UK.

I left home Friday morning from Lewiston (5:30am flight) via Salt Lake, Detroit, and then Amsterdam, Netherlands (Holland). I arrived at 6am (9 pm home) and sailed through customs. I was also lucky enough to have my suitcase be one of the first 10 onto the carousel.

Schipol airport is home to the largest Burger King in the world. I also knew I was in Holland when I saw a large bronze sculpture of a clog. From he airport I took the train to Rotterdam and a cab to the hotel. I checked in, unpacked some, Skyped home, and tried to sleep. It felt good to get horizontal for a little. I was just getting to sleep when my roomate from Tasmania walked in.

We chatted for awhile and got to know each other a little. We both changed to get ready for our tour of Holland with the other Scholars from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, France, and Holland. We hopped on the bus and headed to the aiport to pick up the ones that were coming in at noon.

After picking them up we toured through Holland and stopped at a little fishing/tourist village for some pickled herring. I was able to take some good picts and see a shop where you stick your feet into a tank and have fish "kiss" them.

From there we went to a 150 head dairy. It also produces energy with large windmills and biofuel from dairy waste. A housed generator produced the energy for the dairy. They also had a settling pond and extracted the water from the solids, which were dropped into a pile for future use as compost.

That night we had a dinner with all sitting at tables. It was informal, but a good chance to get to know each other. I left there around 9:30 (been up 33 hours with just a 1/2 hour of nap in that time) and went to bed.

With our schedule I don't know when I can write again and have to cut this short to head for lunch and today's functions. Take care and keep it in the fence rows!

Dust in the Wind

Yesterday I woke up at 4am to make a meeting in Spokane, Washington (3 hours away) with the Environmental Protection Agency. I live in District 10 which is headquartered in the Pacific Northwest's farming community of Seattle (I am starting with sarcasm early today). As a stakeholder and farmer these are things that need to be done that take time away from my family and real job of farming.

The meeting is part of a mandatory 5 year review and deemed a listening session to take comments back to the EPA director in Washington, D.C. regarding agriculture dust. I did not stutter my writing...agriculture dust.

I want those in agriculture to know that they were well represented at the meeting by farmers, ranchers, organizations, and researchers. There were folks on the phone as well that had gathered in Boise to take notes and provide comments. How effective we will be is up to the whim of the EPA Director.

The gist of dust regulation is to examine the existing 24 hour standards for PM 10, or "coarse" particle pollution. PM 10 is for particles 10 micronmeters in diameter and smaller that had been set at 150 micrograms per cubic meter of air since 1987. The EPA is also looking at standards for PM 2.5 which is fine particles. All of this is under the clean air act and I am sure you understood completely what you just read.

The background information was presented to us by the EPA person brought in for this meeting from back east. He went through his PowerPoint presentation and explained the different formulas and procedures that are used for calculating days that violate the standards. (Now I am keeping things simple and not naming names because we have to work the problem at this point.)

Unless you are a scientist that studies air and calculates whether the EPA's standards are being met, you will have a glassy look in your eyes like the majority of people representing ag had. The "alternative standards" that EPA is looking at is called "the 98th percentile form."

Their fact sheet defines that as: "Using that form, an area would meet the standard if the 98th percentile of 24-hour PM 10 concentrations in a year, averaged over three years, was at, or below, the level of the standard. EPA staff also have concluded that the science could support revising the standard, in a range of 65 to 85, but only if the form of the standard is also changed." Now I am sure that this cleared things up for you. Don't feel bad, it took several times for everyone to understand it too.

The skinny of things is that EPA needs to review air standards every 5 years. There is a cutoff date for scientific studies to be used for review purposes. However, the one thing that was very clear to me, like a summer day in north Idaho, was the science is not conclusive.

Everyone there heard dozens of times from the EPA person heading the meeting and their expert standing by on conference call use the terms "What if," "Not conclusive," and "Uncertain." And we are talking about the science they are using to do the regulations and proposed revisions.

The science, along with the 98th percentile garnered chuckles from the crowd and eye rolling to be envied by a hot tempered mother cow that just gave birth. What I took from the dialogue exchanged was EPA wants to cut the standards in half, add a complicated formula, and more cities would have fewer days of violations.

My math skills are not the greatest, but I did learn in Kindergarten that if you make half the money you did before, things would be tougher to do than easier. EPA math, I gathered from that meeting, states otherwise. Are you getting a warm and fuzzy feeling yet?

The head EPA person also stated that we have to go through this regulatory process. There are procedures in place to ensure that things are done by the book regarding air standards. But what about the EPA? Are they supposed to follow proper protocol?

Is the EPA following the highest law of the land, the Constitution? Have their rules been proposed, debated, and passed by Congress or is it the whim of one person? I also heard the term executive order! That is a lot of control over tens of millions of people to be based upon inconclusive science by one person.

The ag people around the table asked unanimously to keep the standards where they are. When common senses was brought up by the EPA person, I asked him to add economic impacts as consideration for clean air instead of health as the only factor.

And if health is the only factor, what about the kids and people that would be malnourished or die in just our country alone if agriculture was not able to create some dust. What about suicide rates climbing even higher in rural areas when a farmer is told to close the doors after 100+ years of operation and can't handle it? Is that a health concern?

Common sense tells me that farming is an industry like no other, dirt is involved. It takes dirt to grow food to eat or feed animals that also live on dirt. In Idaho, the highest percentage of road miles are gravel which creates dust. Will the federal government sue my local highway district because there is not enough money to pave all of those road miles they are in charge of to limit dust? I think less regulation would be the common sense approach.

I am proud to say that I and others like me represented not only agriculture at the table, but the rest of the population and America. We asked tough questions and were direct in saying leave the standards where they are. How is that for common sense?