Thursday, December 24, 2009

EPA, USDA Push Farmers to Use Coal Waste on Crop Fields

This is the type of idea that shows and proves our government is incompetent. The government promotes a "green" lifestyle in all its literature, programs and legislation saying that carbon dioxide is a deadly toxin despite the fact that humans and animals exhale it so that plants may use it to make oxygen. Despite the fact that carbon dioxide is NOT a toxin, the government is ready to impose trillions in taxes on the people in an attempt to solve the problem through cap-and-trade legislation.

However, when there is a real environmental issue, the government is either silent on the issue or actually promotes the environmentally damaging issue. Case in point,
the government is urging farmers to use a chalky waste product from coal-fired power plants on their fields and crops. What? Did I just write that accurately? A waste product on the fields where we grow our foods? Man, I have heard it all.

The federal government is encouraging farmers to spread a chalky waste from coal-fired power plants on their fields to loosen and fertilize soil even as it considers regulating coal wastes for the first time.

The material is produced by power plant "scrubbers" that remove acid rain causing sulfur dioxide from plant emissions. A synthetic form of the mineral gypsum, it also contains mercury, arsenic, lead and other heavy metals.


The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says those toxic metals occur in only tiny amounts that pose no threat to crops, surface water or humans. But some environmentalists say too little is known about how the material affects crops, and ultimately human health, for the government to suggest that farmers use it on their land.


"Basically this is a leap into the unknown," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "This stuff has materials in it that we're trying to prevent entering the environment from coal-fired power plants and then to turn around and smear it across ag lands raises some real questions."

Source: San Francisco Chronicle


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