The U.S. House and Senate voted this week to overturn the Interior
Department’s Stream Protection Rule, a regulation requiring coal companies to
clean up waste from mountaintop mining so it doesn’t pollute the water in local
streams. The resolution goes now to Alternative President Donald Trump, who is
guaranteed to sign it.
I find this very disturbing. I’ve seen what mine discharges
can do to rivers and streams in West Virginia. Over the course of my 67 years,
I have watched as the EPA and the state Department of Environmental Protection
waged an uphill battle against wealthy coal mine owners in their attempts to
clean up the air and water in this state.
Sadly, it took only 13 days for the Trump regime to undo part of that environmental progress.
I’m also disturbed because all three of our Representatives –
Jenkins, McKinley and Mooney – and both Senators Manchin and Capito voted to
throw out the regulation and open the door for more orange and yellow streams
pouring off mountaintop strip mines in the West Virginia hills. It’s bad enough
that coal companies are blasting away the tops of our mountains but now they
will be able to pollute our streams with impunity.
Welcome to wild, wonderful, third-world West Virginia.
That the House members and Capito voted as they did was no
surprise. They are all Republicans, after all, and Capito is the daughter of
former Governor Arch Moore, famous for extorting money from coal companies and
for allowing the Pittston Coal Group to escape paying the cost of the Buffalo Creek disaster.
[In case you’ve
forgotten, in 1972 a coal slurry dam owned by Pittston burst during a period of
heavy rainfall and flooded 16 coal towns along Buffalo Creek in Logan County,
killing 125 people, injuring 1,100 more and leaving 4,000 others homeless.
At the close of his
last term in 1977, Moore accepted a $1 million payment from Pittston to settle up
for Buffalo Creek – a mere pittance compared with the $100 million the state
had sued for and far less than the $9.5 million cleanup costs paid by the
federal government.]
Manchin is another story. Joe is a DINO (a Democrat In Name
Only) who routinely votes with the Republicans now that West Virginia is a deep
red state. No doubt he’ll be out today or tomorrow promoting his “yea” vote on
this issue as a way to get the miners back to work, and the miners will be
shouting back, “Way to go, Joe.”
The problem is, someone’s got to show me how rolling back
this environmental regulation will put one single miner back on the payroll or
do anything to restore lost wages, insurance or pension benefits because it has
nothing to do with actually mining coal. What it does do is fatten the pocketbooks of the coal mine owners who no
longer will have to pay the price for environmentally responsible mining.
Coal operators argued that this regulation placed such
a substantial financial burden on them that it killed mining jobs in Appalachia.
Seriously? The cost of wastewater treatment is your biggest problem? Bigger
than dwindling markets, cheaper natural gas and played out mines? Besides, the clean streams regulation wasn't even implemented until December, and those jobs had already been lost.
On the other hand, environmentalists, public health
advocates and Democrats broadly supported the rule, saying it would protect
waterways and prevent health risks for people living in coal-heavy areas. They see
it more as a cost of doing business in a manner that respects the environment.
“If you (really) want to help miners,” said Sen. Maria
Cantwell, (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources
Committee, during floor debate, “then come address their health and safety and
their pension program.”
Instead, Congress is loosening an environmental regulation that
is not likely to increase the state’s coal severance tax revenue or payroll
taxes or any other measure of economic prosperity in West Virginia, despite
what your elected representatives will probably tell you. It is a victory for
the coal industry and the coal industry alone, and that’s just sad. It’s just
one more example of West Virginia selling out to (mostly) out-of-state coal
companies under the guise of protecting the state’s economy.
How’s that been working out so far?
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