San Francisco Blog

The EPA's funding rationale explained...

In what appears to be a textbook example of Biggie Smalls' groundbreaking theorem regarding the direct correlation of augmented income to a resultant spike in maladies -- i.e. Mo Money, Mo Problems -- Recent environmental grants awarded to California dwarf those showered upon our neighboring states. Problem is -- there's a reason for that.

The Golden State cashed in to the tune of nearly $15.6 million in Environmental Protection Agency funds toward cleaning up leaky subterranean petroleum tanks. Since the EPA enjoys sending out blasts of loosely rewritten news releases with headlines and key paragraphs altered depending on projects' regional impacts, one can quickly glean that $3.2 million was allotted to combat leaky petroleum tanks in Arizona and only $1.2 million in Nevada (for that kind of money you could buy two nice restrooms in San Francisco).

At first blush, a California chauvinist might want to crow about how we've been granted nearly five times Arizona's cash and 13 times Nevada's. On the other hand, it stands to reason that we got more because we needed more -- we have more leaking tanks, more petroleum in the groundwater ... in other words, Mo Money, Mo Problems.
 
Folks in the leaking underground petroleum tank industry, meanwhile, can soon rattle off another Biggie Smalls song title: "Gimme the Loot."