Two syringes washed up on a New Jersey beach this summer — so we need a new federal law to test all beaches for “toxic contaminants”?
That’s what Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) think and so the two have introduced the “Clean Coastal Environment and Public Health Act of 2011. The bill would require new testing of coastal waters and establish public notification standards if contamination is detected.
Such nonsense is understandable from these two. The 87-year old Lautenberg has never met an environmental regulation that was too extreme and he regularly invokes the asthmatic death of his sister as evidence that air pollution kills.
As for Kirk, he was one of eight Republican House members to vote in favor of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, a vote which he subsequently renounced to gain support for his successful 2010 Senate bid.
As reported by Energy and Environment Daily,
Kirk stressed the importance of monitoring Lake Michigan, which borders his home state of Illinois and provides drinking water to more than 30 million Americans.
Perhaps Kirk has never heard of the Safe Drinking Water Act, which has been protecting U.S. drinking water since 1974.
Lautenberg needs to be put out to pasture, Kirk needs to have his head examined and their beach scare bill ought to be bottled and tossed out to sea — so when it washes up on shore, Lautenberg and Kirk can then introduce a bill to ban absurd legislation.
Syringes, and other medical waste, have been appearing on Jersey shores since the 1980’s, after massive dumping of garbage in the Atlantic ocean was shown to be the source. My question to the “esteemed” politicians is, “What took you so long to express concern for this?” This is just another attempt to further bloat the Federal government with another department to monitor and test (at taxpayer expense) our oceans. The states already do this. leave it to them.
Why a Federal law? In California, local public health officials monitor water quality at their local beaches — occasionally closing one when a failure of a sewage treatment facility causes contamination (by pathogens or other pollutants) to a particular beach. These same officials also monitor “red tides” that cause toxins to accumulate in filter feeders (clams, oysters, etc.) and likewise restrict harvesting those animals when they are found to be unsafe.
Only a committed progressive could equate discarded syringes (likely from local junkies) with ‘toxic waste.” Far more people are harmed by contaminated *FOOD* than contaminated beaches, so they should redirect the funding to USDA Food Safety Inspections.