You bet it can. Helps if you have a grape sno cone

There are only two creeks I will eat fish out of in Baldwin county. Majors creek and dyas creek.....only because the water quality it the best around

In case anyone missed it........

If it weren't for Louisiana we would probably be the most corrupt State in the Union top to bottom.

Like most everything in government, it's about filling out copious amounts of useless paperwork to justify some lardazz beaurocrats job.

So, to dumb it down for us common folk, buying permits is basically just bribing ADEM to look the other way while big companies trash the natural resources of the state? Good grief!

That is just all kinds of wrong.

From the outside, my dumbarse would have assumed that buying the permit was essentially paying them to use their resources to enforce proper disposal of said nastiness with their environmental protection tools and materials.

No that’s not true. ADEM places fines for not being compliant in environmental laws and regulations not to look the other way. Believe me you don’t want them to show up on your door.

Adem has to set the limits in the permits they issue as tight as, or tighter than Federal limits. Once again there are a lot of people on this thread who have no clue what they are talking about and believe what ol’ Bubba told them.

Okay.

So, are they the agency that is supposed to enforce the cleaning up of these spills, etc. beyond just levying some fines that are apparently not hefty enough to deter this from happening over and over? Are these monies received from the permits and fines for not being in compliance only covering the salaries of those who work for ADEM? Are there no funds being used to clean up the disasters that these companies are causing?

That's exactly right. But isn't limited to big companies. Anyone who buys the appropriate permit, and hires the necessary lawyers to navigate the copious paperwork process, can pollute all they want.

An example in another state a city each months buys the permit for overflow discharge. They discharge approximately 200 thousand gallons a month currently. They have been fined for discharge in the past and made to come up with a plan to fix their problem. A few years ago they completed their plan and the total cost to up grade their sewer system and treatment facility was in excess of a little over 1.75 billion. So by buying a monthly permit they are allowed to discharge each month until they can fix their system. Which will take a little over 15 years to complete and as long as they show progress everything is good. Which if like everything else done by government entities it will be out of date by the time it’s completed.

ADEM has like 600 employees.

And.....?

What city? 200,000 gallons per month would be about the average discharge for 25 homes. Spending 1.75 billion seems a little ridiculous for that.

The problem was that their entire system was antiquated a lot of their sewer lines were wood as well as their water lines. The treatment plant had been added on to for years instead of doing it right and it finally caught up with them. It was in a location that it could no longer expand with out major buy outs and that caused part of there cost.

They had a lot of lines buried down the center of streets that had to be replaced and the list of mistakes over the years were ridiculous. Had a lot of developments coming in and had no way to expand.

What city? All of this stuff is public record, and again a city who thinks they need to spend 1.75 billion for 25 households needs to fire their utilities manager. They could buy everybody a new septic system for way less than that

Adem has come to our job sites about red soil leaching or washing into streams or ditches. One example was the toyota/mazda plant. They shut us down over those fish. Red dirt washn into creek. So they shut us down for 2 weeks and fined whomever. I heard they fined toyota/mazda. We didnt fix anything at all. There was already surge rock and silt fence in place. It never got damaged, it just got overwhelmed with rain runoff. We didnt touch anything. We worked along the creek the whole time. I was there everyday nonstop. They paid a fine abd kept going. We never even saw adem come back not once.

So they shut you down, but you kept working? I’m confused.

No amount of money will “buy a permit” for a municipality to intentionally discharge untreated raw sewage into waterways in AL.

Please post a link to said permit on ADEM’s website. I’ll even show you where to look.. http://www.adem.state.al.us/DeptForms/default.cnt

Now it may be cheaper to pay the fine than to comply but you can’t simply buy a permit in advance to discharge raw untreated sewage.

Adem is corrupt. That’s about all I care to say on the subject.

Can you name a government entity that you feel isn’t corrupt?