Malibu Millionaires Embrace Bureaucracy.

There was a great line in the frat-house comedy movie, "Old School" where the college dean laments his inability to disband an unruly fraternity. A sycophantic student informs the dean, "The thing is, sir... they are very good at paperwork."

Well if there is one thing the Malibu millionaires know, it's movies. The Malibu LNG fight is now entering a new bureacratic netherworld as world's wealthiest NIMBY's are trying to kill Cabrillo Port with paperwork. Their latest move is to challenge the US Environmental Protection Agency's interpretation of air pollution requirements for Cabrillo Port.:

The EPA officials relieved Cabrillo Port of the tightest air regulations by interpreting local smog maps as placing Cabrillo Port in the Channel Islands air basin. Had the factory ship and its 270 tons per year of smog-producing emissions been considered onshore, BHPB would have had to buy and retire 150 percent of that smog generation ashore in Ventura County.

Basically, the EPA has said that Cabrillo Port is to be regulated by offshore rather than onshore smog restrictions. The Malibu Millionaires are up in arms and want to turn out bodies to an Air Pollution Control Board meeting next week in Ventura County to protest the decision.

Here's the problem: the EPA's decision was correct. Cabrillo Port is 14 miles offshore. The terretorial waters of the United States only extend 3 nautical miles off the coast. This 14 miles. Why in the world is it inappropriate to treat this like an offshore facility.

This fiasco in Malibu is getting rididculous.