Examples of Bureaucracy run wild from the
                 ""Get Government off of our Backs" Website

                       EPA: As Clean as Clean Can Be!

Dispatches from the clean water wars, etc.:

"EPA water-quality rules mandate that arsenic levels be no more than two or
three parts per billion, while the average plate of shrimp contains about 30
parts per billion." (Newsday, Aug. 22, 1994)

"Robert Pritzker, CEO of the Marmon Groups Inc. and chairman of the National
Association of Manufacturers, learned first-hand about the horrors of the EPA's
tyranny. One of his companies that makes custom steel doors in North Carolina
inadvertently wrote the company's name on line 18 rather than line 17 of an EPA
form.  EPA's fine: $5,000..."  (The Washington Times, Dec. 1, 1993)

"An elderly woman in Wyoming was prohibited by bureaucrats from planting a bed
of roses on her land.  A Pennsylvania couple was threatened with a federal suit
for installing a tennis court on their land.  The charge was polluting a
waterway.  James and Mary Mills of Broad Channel, New York, were fined $30,000
for building a deck on their house because, among other things, it cast a shadow
on a wetland."  (The Freedom and Fairness Restoration Act: A Comprehensive Plan
to Shrink the Government and Grow the Economy, Representative Dick Armey)

Rep. James Hayes remarked, "In Nevada [housing] developments in the midst of
cactus and parched earth are now being classified as 'wetlands' because standing
water can occur for seven days in a hole dug for a foundation. The fact that
such a rain occurs vary rarely no longer seems relevant in what was once
considered a desert state, but which is now 'The Great Wetland State.'" (Lost
Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty,  James Bovard [1994])

"A Louisiana family wanted to use eighty acres of land to build a crawfish pond
and spent $35,000 to get the federal permits.  But at the last minute, the EPA
denied permission because: 'High quality habitats such as these provide food,
shelter, nesting, and spawning areas to a variety of game and non-game fish and
wildlife species including the red swamp crawfish.' Rep. Bill Tauzin of
Louisiana denounced the EPA for 'denying a permit to raise crawfish in an area
they say should be used to raise crawfish .'"

"The federal government once held up a license for a residential project in
order to protect a 'wetland.'  The wetland in question was .0006 acres, or about
the size of a ping pong table."  (The Freedom and Fairness Restoration Act: A
Comprehensive Plan to Shrink the Government and Grow the Economy, Representative
Dick Armey)

"Environmental and other regulation can increase start-up costs for a single dry
cleaner as much as $138,000..."  (Statement by Rep. John Mica [R-FL],
Congressional Record, May 12, 1994)

"Remember the $300,000 study of whether cow flatulence contributes to global
warming?  Now the government's spending even more money to analyze what comes
out the front end of the cow.  The EPA has given Utah State University a
$500,000 grant to round up rangeland cattle and fit them with special breathing
devices that measure the amount of methane cows release when they burp.  The new
grant lets Utah State expand on a $300,000 study that began in 1991 at
Washington State University and provoked widespread ridicule.  Researchers
estimate that confined cattle produce about 20 percent of global methane
emissions.  But two Cornell University economists concluded in 1991 that the
methane emitted by one cow in a year has the same effect on global warming as
the fuel burned to power a single 75-watt bulb."  (Chicago Tribune, May 29,
1994)