Political Quotes

“Since this bill is supposed to be about making the Clean Air Act work better, I have offered an amendment--that is identical to a bill with 64 cosponsors that I coauthored--to close a very glaring loophole in the law that frankly harms the air in my State, across the Mountain West, and indeed across the country. My amendment, which is based off legislation I first introduced in 2011 and have introduced three times, including this Congress, is called the BREATHE Act. Essentially it is very simple. It would close the oil and gas industry's loophole to the Clean Air Act's aggregation requirement. Currently, oil and gas operators are exempt from the aggregation requirements in the Clean Air Act. What the aggregation requirement does, it is small air pollution sources that cumulatively release as much air pollution as a major source, are supposed to be required to curb pollution by installing the maximum achievable control technology. But oil and gas is exempt, not for any policy reason, but simply because oil and gas has a lot of influence here in Washington, D.C. This directly affects the air quality in my district. Take a county like Weld County, Colorado. There are over 20,000 operating fracking wells. Any one of those has a very small emissions profile. But in the aggregate, when you start talking about 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, it looks a lot more like multiple emissions-spewing factories or other highly pollutive activity.…”