Wyoming Officials Hoping The EPA Doesn’t Make Them Measure Cow Farts
Your daily dose of regulatory absurdity:
Starting next month, the Environmental Protection Agency will designate the Upper Green River valley as being in “nonattainment” of federal ozone standards, because of natural gas drilling and production in the Jonah and Pinedale Anticline fields. In response, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality is drafting an implementation plan to address the air quality concerns.
But once that state plan is enacted, the BLM will have to account for expected emissions from all of its activities in the area, no matter how insignificant. And that’s where the cows come in.
The BLM’s Pinedale field office leases about 912,000 acres of grazing land for cattle. The EPA estimates a cow emits an average of 80 to 110 kilograms of methane, an ozone-causing gas, per year. …
“We would have to identify the acreage of these leasing parcels, the number of cattle occupying these parcels. We would have to calculate and develop an estimate of the emissions,” Tuers said. “It’d just be more of an additional workload for us here.”
Workload that costs the taxpayers a pretty penny. For measuring cow farts.
What’s next, measuring carbon/methane emissions from humans?
Update: Originally this post referred to officials in Wisconsin. It’s been corrected to indicate that this is happening in Wyoming.
Tags: Asshats, epa, global warming
