Obama's Tax on Rainwater

[.p.jm.]

Most localities have ordinances with similar concern and intent, enacted by LOCAL ELECTED officials.

Is this something you feel is appropriate for a FEDERAL regulation ( as opposed to your local ordinance ) ?

And something that you feel should be written, enacted, and enforced by unelected bureaucrats in DC ( The EPA ) ?

BTW - if the EPA rules happen to be tougher, or even just 'different' than your existing local ones, you will be personally financially responsible for bringing your property up to 'Washington Standards'.

If you don't like it - write a letter to Washington, you won't get to speak to or at your next local town council meeting, because the Federal rules supercede your local ones.

Don't worry, be happy.

[Oscar_Lives]

Would President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency really force Americans to pay a tax on "rainwater runoff" from homes and small businesses? You bet they would. In fact, the EPA, under radical environmentalist Lisa Jackson, is proposing regulations to do just that. Take a look at the EPA's own Federal Register filing, where the EPA generally describes the initiative it's proposing: ...requirements, including design or performance standards, for stormwater discharges from, at minimum, newly developed and redeveloped sites. EPA intends to propose regulatory options that would revise the NPDES regulations and establish a comprehensive program to address stormwater discharges from newly developed and redeveloped sites and to take final action no later than November 2012. This is bureaucratic-speak for having the EPA force cities and counties to limit stormwater runoff to levels the EPA deems acceptable. Limiting "rainwater runoff" will mean forcing homeowners and businesses to pay new taxes in order to rein in rainwater, and that's no pun intended. Think about just how big-government this is. A Washington, D.C. bureaucracy plans on forcing your local county or city to slap new taxes on you and me because this big-government bureaucracy wants to micro-manage rainwater across the entire country. Already, several counties and cities across the United States are moving to pass new taxes and fees in anticipation of the new EPA rules, including cities in states as disparate as Florida, Ohio and Kansas. But really, this new EPA outrage is part of the pattern of the Obama Administration. Cap-and-trade is bogged down for now in the Senate (though they'll try to bring it back this year), so the liberals try to use an un-elected bureaucracy to pass their radical agenda. First, they declared that greenhouse gases are a "threat" to the environment and to health, so they're pushing new regulations that will in effect pass cap-and-trade without Congress having to act. Now, they're pushing this new "rainwater runoff" tax.

[Steve]

Sources??

[.p.jm.]

I don't have a URL, but I've read the proposal. It's real.

Not only would all new construction require an EPA permit for 'rainwater management', but also all RESALE of property ( like a house ) would require the same permit / certification, with any required retrofits being done and inspected before you can sell your house.

They want to do the same thing with insulation, efficiency, 'Energy Star' rating, etc. IOW, before you sell your 50 year old house, you would have to get it inspected for 'efficiency', add insulation, replace appliances, etc, until the government was happy.

[Steve]

freakin wonderful..... I can barely handle the work I got now......been workin my ass off for the last 2 months. I don't need any more right now, thanx.

[The King]

The dow is up to 11K and everyone is working their ass off me included. What recession. Obama has turned the corner in just over a year.

[The King]

This will be a boon for de-watering companies. Th democrats are creating jobs and the republicans are whinning about it, so whats new.

[Alexander]

Yeah..With hot checks and high hopes that China doesn't dump our IOU's. It was a questionable plan from the beginning. Oh thats right... Bush set that plan in action and Obama continued it. Also Obama was going to get us out of that mess in the ME that Bush got us into. Can you see any difference between the two on these issues? Our budget deficit is now $1.7 Trillion and our debt has leaped to $12.8 Trillion Israel basically spit in the face of Obama and yet he wants to attack Iran for them.

[Don Ocean]

During the great depression< Heating guys were overworked and got very wealthy. The markets are vastly overpriced today. If they were liquidated for value..Investors would lose their ass. If our overseas debt were called in today..We would be flat screwed. Most of our top manufacturing jobs have been outsourced to other countries..Do you think maybe we could outsource your Unions and our moronic Government and maybe come out ahead?

[.p.jm.]

Bullshit.

[.p.jm.]

'Creating jobs' by mandating us to buy whatever he thinks we should buy, and by blowing the deficit up by more trillions of dollars than all previoius Presidents combined, including GWB.

[Steve]

If the recession had turned the corner, I would be runnin my ass off doing service, not system replacements. I have been installing 1 - 2 systems a week, and have only been getting 1 or 2 calls for service. All but 2 of the system replacements have been for existing customers, the rest have been from word of mouth. The calls I am getting are "We are ready for a new system, come pick up a deposit check. When can you install it?" No bidding, and they are not calling anybody else.

The only thing I can figure is that folks are still stinging from their winter heating bills, and figure there is going to be a record long, hot summer, and/or they are tired of being screwed over by the cheapest price, and now they want it done right. I dunno.

[Grumpy]

I don't know about recession at present I have 9 jobs waiting and I want to quit??? I did not even call back all of them!

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[Alexander]

\ You can bet that treasury destroying stimulus for energy conservative equipment is helping our industry. The Energy companies have received a huge amount of stimulus money from the Feds plus the 30% tax rebate to the Home owners. Not to mention the kickback from the manufacturers. Maybe we too can get subsidized like the Corn farmers. They lose about $30/acre and that is made up by roughly a total subsidy of $128/acre. So maybe if you can lose money every year, a subsidy will make you rich. Remember our national Mott!

1 Drink yourself Sober. 2 Eat yourself Thin 3 Spend yourself Rich

We can save our industries by exporting Unionism to the 3rd world countries. I just have got to buy a Toyota so that I too can get rich with a bullshit Lawsuit. I kind of wonder if these idiots didn't leave cruise control in standby and accidentally hit resume.

>

[Alexander]

Keep humping Grumpy! 4 million illegals need your tax dollars. Not to mention UpyourBuma medical care.

[Grumpy]

Anything is possible however I like Mott and I am going to use it!

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[Hell Toupee]

Scare tactic that has it backwards. We've had this for years in the Twin Cities metro area, for a very good reason: to keep taxes _down_.

Too much storm water runoff from properties overwhelms municipal sewage treatment systems. You either have to spend money on new treatment plants, or keep the storm water out of the system. So in the Twin Cities, the stormwater inflow is monitored and measured on a municipal basis, and the cities that put a disproportionate amount of runoff into the system are fined. Those cities can either raise their taxes to pay the fines, or require property owners to reduce the amount of runoff from their properties. My city has several approaches

- as streets are built/rebuilt, they're constructed to a new, narrower, standard (there was no standard width in the past); they landscape shallow swales on the edges of adjacent properties to keep water out of the storm drains; they give property owners the opportunity to have rain gardens dug on the edge of their properties. They also require all sump pumps and downspouts to discharge onto the owner's property, not into the sanitary sewer.

The whole point is to reduce the burden on a taxpayer-supported common utility. Properties that produce a disproportionate amount of runoff are responsible for dealing with it, or paying for it. Better them than all of us.