Obama admin's green-energy "investments": Saving the environment, one abandoned toxic sludge heap at a time

You may recall the exceptionally unsuccessful saga of Abound Solar, one of the Obama administration’s pet “green”-energy stimulus projects second in infamy only to fellow failed solar-panel maker Solyndra, and the millions of dollars for which taxpayers were left on the hook when the once “promising” company went belly-up last year — but that isn’t quite the end of the Abound Solar story. Behold: This is what the end result of a $400 million exercise in venture socialism looks like. Via Fox News:

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Now its Longmont, Colo., facility sits unoccupied, its 37,000 square feet littered with hazardous waste, broken glass and contaminated water. The Northern Colorado Business Report estimates it will cost up to $3.7 million to clean and repair the building so it can again be leased.

“As lawyers, regulators, bankruptcy officials and the landlord spar over the case, the building lies in disrepair, too contaminated to lease,” the report stated. …

The owner of the property tried to force a bankruptcy trustee to clean the facility, but the report said it would “place humans at imminent and significant health risk.” One of the hazards is the presence of cadmium, a cancer-causing agent that is used to produce the film on the solar panels, the report said.

While the loan guarantees exposed taxpayers to hundreds of millions of dollars, the federal government lost a total of $70 million backing the failed company. Unsold inventory which should have been used to offset those losses, including 2,000 solar panels, mysteriously disappeared, according to the National Legal and Policy Center.

“If a coal, oil or gas company pulled something like that the EPA would send out SWAT teams and the U.S. Marshals to track down the offenders, bankrupt or not,” the center said in a report of its own.

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In a nutshell, a taxpayer-funded toxic waste dump with nobody around to pick it up. Perfect.

The Obama administration has a history of selectively enforcing environmental regulations when it comes to their politically preferred and personally supported pet projects, and seem all too willing to gloss over the fact that wind and solar energy have their own associated tradeoffs and risks just like every other energy source. Exit question: “What’s there to be defensive about?

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