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Folks
The simplest way to describe a permit is
a license to pollute. The permit is supposed to set the amount that
a facility canl pollute. We here in Alpena have watched every permit exceed
its limits. We have videos and photographs to prove so. Overwork and
understaffing and a permitting process that does not have teeth to it is
our main concern. Past penalties for violations have just been a tap on the
fingers. We have a document where proposed penalties that could have
been near 22 million were knocked down to $700,000,00 when finished. It was
around 1.2 million but a storage dome for the Canadian fly ash, our main source
of our mercury emissions, qualified as an environmental improvements
for Lafarge. Kind of like us paving their roads to keep the dust down as
they have asked for in a class action settlement now pending.
Permits to pollute cost the polluter little or
nothing. We even told the MDEQ that we would take up a collection out of
our own pockets to have them deny a permit once in awhile. It would be healthier
for us and they would make a couple of bucks.
Bill Freese, Director
Huron Environmental
Activist League
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