EPA Unveils New Emissions Reduction Plan - It's Voluntary, Of Course - ENN

[hatrack]

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Environmental Protection Agency launched an effort Thursday to reduce emissions in a string of central states, in part through voluntary corporate changes.

The Blue Skyways Collaborative focuses on the heavily trafficked Interstate 35, running through the nation's midsection to two international borders. It aims to cut diesel emissions from trucks, construction equipment and farm machinery, to implement use of alternative energy sources, and to look for innovative ways to curb pollution everywhere from rail yards to airports. "We're looking for large payoffs," said Jim Gulliford, administrator for the EPA's Region 7, which covers Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. "But they're done incrementally."

Officials pointed to about $9.3 million in funding for various projects, but the initiative is largely unfunded, relying on voluntary environmental improvements by businesses and municipalities. They're hoping to coax potentially expensive changes by pushing methods that could bring long-term cost cuts and by giving participants choices that federal regulations would not. "Whether a regulatory agency does it or Congress gets around to doing it, there's going to be a need to get more reductions," said Richard Greene, the EPA administrator for Region 6, which includes Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. "They get to chart their own future."

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Annette Sharp, executive director of the Oklahoma City-based environmental nonprofit Central States Air Resources Agencies, said Blue Skyways is focusing on pollution coming from industries that are not regulated, such as airports and trucking. "They all have emissions," Sharp said. "The only way to reduce them is voluntarily."

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Yes, we there must be no enforcement of any kind. Only voluntary plans will be allowed. It's simply impossible to legislate things like emissions from trucking and airports.

:eyes:

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=9900

[flobee1]

1. WTF!!!!!!

9.3 million for a program that nobody has to comply with?

thousands homeless in NO and this is the best use of taxpayer money?