There are very good reasons to VOTE AGAINST THE SEWER PROJECT coming up in Torrington. First and foremost this project will not help the environment although it will make Licensed Environmental Professionals (LEPs) richer. The benefits of this project go to LEP firms, government employees and consultants. I am willing to bet very little proportionally will go to contractors and laborers.<\/p>\n

We all have stories of our government systems gone amuck. We love America on the one hand but notice so many things about our society that just don\u2019t work anymore. There are too many laws, and laws that don’t do what they are intended to do. The environmental laws Torrington is attempting to follow are a good example. Torrington is proposing spending more than $1300 for every child and adult who resides here claiming it will help the environment. It will not. We should be asking who gets that money.<\/p>\n

Simply put, reducing nitrogen levels from the Torrington area watershed into the Naugatuck River according to the goals expressed by the Federal EPA have no environmental benefit. The point of reducing ammonia (nitrogen and phosphorus) levels in our sewage is that it may help fish populations in Long Island Sound but there is no data to support such an assertion. Ammonia and phosphorus are organic nutrients, fertilizer, and the reduced levels we release into the river after paying so much money are equivalent to what might come from a dead tree.<\/p>\n

We all know that Torrington spent $1,670,000 to clean up a 42 space parking lot. But the only way to get the picture of what is happening is if we were to see who got that money. I would bet a large portion of it went to testing, administration and consultation. It seems to me the more we pay for administration the harder it is to find out where the money went.<\/p>\n

I know from my own experience that buying property designated by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, DEEP, as an \u201cestablishment\u201d needing clean up will cost about $100,000 to prove that it DOES NOT need to be cleaned, and much more if it does need to be cleaned. The money goes to testing, consultation, administration and forms preparation to Licensed Environmental Professional firms called LEPs, not the government. In many cases there is no appeals process and very little government oversight. If cleanup is necessary then all those who deal with the ”hazardous waste” must be specially trained even though no one touches anything directly and the levels of contaminants are extremely low.<\/p>\n

Again, we all know the system is broken but this time we can do something. Vote against an expensive, superfluous and silly sewer project. Maybe we need to replace old pipes, a new sewage tank and to update the electrical systems, but our population has not grown appreciably. Using the EPA goals as an excuse for spending $51,000,000 should be explained clearly.<\/p>\n

I have spoken with several people from our government and none have been aware of the reasons for EPA standards or looked into these environment issues. Essentially our government says the levels must be lower so hire an LEP and do whatever they say. The cause of our systemic problems is that no one has their eyes on the big picture. If the point is to clean up our environment then vote against the sewer project inTorrington, Connecticut<\/a>. \u202a#\u200e<\/span>torrington\u202c<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are very good reasons to VOTE AGAINST THE SEWER PROJECT coming up in Torrington. First and foremost this project will not help the environment although it will make Licensed Environmental Professionals (LEPs) richer. The benefits of this project go to LEP firms, government employees and consultants. I am willing to bet very little proportionally … Continue reading Vote for the Environment, not the government<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8FSV9-36","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simplifyandrepeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simplifyandrepeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simplifyandrepeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplifyandrepeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplifyandrepeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplifyandrepeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplifyandrepeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simplifyandrepeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplifyandrepeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplifyandrepeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}