Navajo Moving Forward with Lawsuit Against EPA
Meanwhile, Obama honors native Alaskans with Denali name-change… and mountain shrinks 10 feet.
President Obama has been busy this week, renaming the nation’s highest peak from Mt. McKinley to the traditional Alaskan name, Denali (meaning high one…which seems a clever way for Obama to actually name the place after himself with nobody being the wiser).
Because Alaska doesn’t have many golf courses, he has been working hard, too. Obama has been staring down glaciers to fight climate change and giving millions of taxpayer dollars away in specialty commissions to aid in this epic battle.
After enjoying the warmth of native Alaskan hospitality, it is unlikely the President will want to head to Colorado and meet the another group of native Americans, however. In the wake of the contamination from EPA-caused Animas River spill, the Navajo Nation is moving forward with a lawsuit against the agency.
….[T]hey’ve hired law firm Hueston Hennigan LLP to represent them in what some are predicting could be a multibillion-dollar lawsuit expected to be filed in the coming weeks, as lawmakers on Capitol Hill prepare for a round of hearings examining the issue.
And heading their legal team is powerhouse attorney John Hueston, who was the lead prosecutor in the 2006 case against former Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, who were found guilty of fraud and conspiracy.
Russell Begaye — president of Navajo Nation, which totals roughly 300,000 people — also sent a letter to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) officials on Monday, calling on them to appoint a FEMA official to coordinate their efforts in the response to the spill.
“This expansion into Navajo lands via the San Juan River has critically impacted the River and its dependent ecosystems including wildlife, fish populations, and the land base adjacent to the River,” Begaye wrote in the letter, first obtained by The Hill.
…Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch said in a statement that the hazardous-material spill “has been devastating to our culture and economy, as well as to the peace of mind of our people.
I must admit, I will really enjoy seeing the EPA get the Enron treatment in this case. In part, it is because further investigation is revealing the EPA knew about the potential for a blow-out at least a year before they proceeded with the project that led to the disaster.
Two congressional committee leaders from Utah say the Environmental Protection Agency and a federal contractor knew more than year ago that work in an abandoned Colorado mine could cause a toxic spill.
Rep. Rob Bishop, chairman of the House Resources Committee, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent letters late Monday to the EPA and Missouri-based Environmental Restoration demanding documents for their investigation of the incident.
…Chaffetz said the EPA has a lot to answer for.
“They could have avoided this spill, but they caused it,” he said. “There are indications that they were given warnings that this type of spill could happen if they did what they did.”
As Obama basks in the glories of Alaska’s natural beauty, his administration is going to have to address the consequences of polluting Colorado’s.
In a fitting conclusion to the Denali drama of this week, new numbers from the US Geological Survey indicate the nation’s highest peak is 10 feet shorter than previously thought. Truly, there is less of everything under Obama—except crises, that is.
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Meanwhile, Obama honors native Alaskans with Denali name-change… and mountain shrinks 10 feet.
He stared it down.
The mountain wouldn’t budge, so Mohammed went to the mountain. It’s all coming together now…
Peak Pandering.
Barracula is SUCH a moron.
Look at the valley where he’s standing. Note the glacier up at the choke-point where it exists today.
Reckon MAYBE the face of the glacier recedes faster NOW than when it was in that broad valley?
Idiot.
Sounds like “Plausible Denaliability” to me.
What do we have here? Is this a PBS type picture story of ancient glacier receding or an analog of the current U.S. recession? Which one is trekker Obama analyzing? Why, it is phenomenally both!
Obama threw in “Flora and fauna” to show us his close nexus with the environment (‘green’ money). Now I am surprised that he didn’t rename flora and fauna. But, then again, both start with an “F” so that is fair and equal.
Maybe Obama should go to Iraq and see the mountains receding when hit with multiple U.S. “LONG-TERM campaign” air strikes and soon by “LONG-TERM campaign” Russian air strikes. Then, maybe, he would rethink his battle strategy. Nah!
It’s time for this POTUS to take a hike.
That’s Exit Glacier, near Seward. I have a photo of it that I took in September, 2008. It looks pretty much the same.
God Bless the Navajo!
And all that oil that is being pumped out of Alaska where did that come from? Did it flow in an underground river all the way from Texas or perhaps sometime in the past there was abundant plant life in the Arctic which now thousands of years later has changed to oil. The evidence is staring us in the face. Yes climate change happens. No one disputes that just the mythology of AGW.
We needed a ten year old kid to ask Obama that question … How is there fossil fuel here if it was always colder before global warming? Was it warmer when the all that oil formed?
Obama would have the kid and his family thrown overboard, for embarrassing the chosen one.
Do you really think the EPA is going to be treated like Enron? Really?!?! By this administration, or the activist judges sitting on many (most?) benches today?
I feel so bad for the Navajo. The same fork-tongued, federal gov’t tyrannical ideologues who screwed them over on treaty after treaty in the past ARE THE SAME ONES running this O admin., ideologically speaking. The claim to “care” and say sorry about our evil past……then they do WHATEVER IT TAKES to push their agenda, regardless of who it hurts, how much damage and destruction it causes, regardless of cost in dollars or to the environment.
The ends justify the means. It’s the Obama way.
I bet the EPA ignores discovery in this case. And, after being threatened by the judge they will dump a truck load of faux data on them.
(all the while sending emails via GMAIL and YAHOO accounts.)
Just think. If we had a time machine we could transport Obama back 25,000 years. If Obama were giving his little speech 25,000 years ago, he’d be standing on a pile of ice more than two miles thick. With Obama as president of the Stone Age people, he could devise clever taxing schemes to stop the ice from melting. With those magical taxing schemes, we would not have those pesky Great Lakes to deal with. But we’d have ice! Lots and lots of ice!
But unfortunately, as much as humanity would benefit if we could send Obama back 25,000 years and leave him there, we have no time machine.
What do glaciers and Obama’s foreign policy have in common?
The history books will not be kind to Obama.
They’re erasing him as we type……
When I spent three weeks in Alaska in the mid 80s everybody up there referred to the mountain as Denali. I never heard one Alaskan call it McKinley. It’s only in the lower 48 that it’s called McKinley. Obama is slow getting up to speed.