Move to Green Energy Blocked by Rules Against Having Roads

Tongass National Forest (Unsplash)

This article originally appeared on WND.com

Guest by post by Bob Unruh 

Not even gravel paths allowed

Everywhere activists, corporations, government officials, even consumers are talking about green energy.

The idea is to move away from fossil fuels to green energy, because of a climate emergency – even though 1,600 scientists say there is no emergency.

Diesel power plants are therefore very, very bad. Hydroelectric and geothermal projects are good.

But those green advances are being blocked, and diesel generators are being kept in operation, in one location because of a ban on roads.

It is the Pacific Legal Foundation that explains a lawsuit has been filed by the Inside Passage Electric Cooperative against Joe Biden’s Agriculture Department because it won’t allow roads, any roads, in the Tongass National Forest.

“The cooperative provides power — at cost — to several small, predominantly indigenous communities located within the Tongass. IPEC seeks to build several hydroelectric and geothermal projects to replace the expensive diesel generation that these communities currently rely on. But the USDA’s prohibition on roads — including gravel and dirt roads — in the Tongass makes the construction and maintenance of these projects infeasible because they would be accessible only by helicopter,” the foundation reported.

Luke Wake, a lawyer for the organization, said, “Congress has mandated that regulation must account for both preservation and reasonable economic use. When executive agencies wrest legislative power from Congress, they tend to pursue whatever goal they have to the exclusion of all other priorities — as is happening here.”

The organization noted that only Congress can make laws, and lawmakers never gave the USDA authority to impose a blanket ban on road work across tens of millions of acres of forests.

“In the name of conservation, the USDA’s rules are keeping remote Alaska communities dependent on diesel for power generation when green alternatives are available,” charged IPEC’s Jodi Mitchell.

“Diesel is one of the most expensive sources of power generation. As a result, these communities pay some of the highest electricity rates in the state and among the highest in the country.”

The complaint notes that the USDA’s rule

Source: The Gateway Pundit