EPA says Tucson’s drinking water is contaminated but air force claims agency lacks authority to order cleanup

The ruling is expected to have a profound impact on the EPA’s ability to protect the public from pollution, and the Tucson dispute highlights the high stakes in such scenarios – clean drinking water and the health of hundreds of thousands of people hangs in the balance.

Several air force bases are largely responsible for trichloroethylene (TCE) – volatile organic compounds – and PFAS contaminating drinking water sources in Tucson. A 10-sq-mile (26 sq km) area around the facilities and Tucson international airport were in the 1980s designated as a Superfund site, an action reserved for the nation’s most polluted areas.

  • conditional_soup@lemm.eeEnglish
    5·
    3 months ago

    Oh, cool. Not only is it a way to avoid corporate accountability, it’s a way for our government to slip accountability too. Thanks, SCOTUS! I’m certain this is exactly what the founders had in mind, a totally unaccountable government that gets to pick winners and make them totally unaccountable too.

  • Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    So at least temporarily and with military and other Federal government functions, the President should simply order them to continue with the necessary cleanup.

    Longer term, only apparent solution is to pass laws to explicitly give the federal agencies all the authority to regulate such things.