Sunday, March 6, 2016

Occam's Razor or Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? UPDATE

    "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem."[1]Translated from the Latin:"More things should not be used than are necessary."

    The theory of Occam's (or Ockham's) Razor is a philosophical belief that the simplest answer is usually the correct one.

Friends,

It is truly amazing what our minds can get up to in the dark hours of the night. Struggling with the the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) for months to get complete responses to numerous public records requests has been a frustrating experience. The requests pertained to the permitting of the Chatham and Lee County landfills where Duke Energy wants to dump millions of tons of dangerous coal ash. What was provided- including evidence of over 50 meetings, phone calls or other contact with no notes, and calls for permit decisions before the public comment period closed reflect  DEQ's willingness to manipulate the process to benefit Duke Energy.

However, this pales in comparison to a 2015 dinner date that Governor Pat McCrory had with DEQ Secretary Donald van der Vaart, and Duke CEO Lynn Good, which included an assortment of lawyers. WRAL. a Raleigh television station broke the story about the June 1st dinner. See story here: Governor, top Duke Energy officials met privately, won't say why. The attendees still won't say why. What we do know about the dinner was that it was not disclosed to the press, in discovery, or in the records provided to us. We also know that it was only 2 weeks after Duke Energy pleaded guilty to 9 criminal misdemeanors, 3 days after Charah, the company that owns the Lee and Chatham coal ash landfills was discovered operating without a permit for certain activities at the site, 4 days before the permits were issued for the 2 landfills, and before the DEQ cited Charah with violations- for which they were not fined. 

Now, I don't know about you, but this is as clear as coal ash to me. Stay tuned...

#coalash #DukeEnergy #BREDL

UPDATE October 19, 2016

At last night's gubernatorial debate, Governor McCrory spoke out about the June 1, 2015 dinner with Duke Energy and company.  From the WRAL story: 

"I didn't take notes," McCrory said during Tuesday's debate in answer to a question about the meeting. "I'll tell you what was discussed. I discussed that I was going to veto the bill that they wanted." He then recounted, "I said, 'I’m going to veto this thing. It's totally unacceptable, and I’m going to take it to the Supreme Court.'" 

Ummm- the Coal Ash Management Act was passed in 2014, and the bill he vetoed came in 2016.  Apparently he has had so many dinners with Duke Energy that he can't keep track. Or he is psychic...

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