Ed Markey: “I thank the gentleman for yielding. So what is the majority doing in this bill? They're saying that sand is a…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. So what is the majority doing in this bill? They're saying that sand is a ``critical'' material; gravel, clay. There's no crisis in the sand industry. We don't need to wad it down, the environmental protections for drilling for sand or gravel or clay. There is no crisis. That's what this whole bill is. It's a Trojan horse. It's moving in to undermine environmental protections where they're working and where there's no need to reduce them. If they want to talk about scandium or europium or cerium or terbium or some other critical strategic material that we should be discussing out here that we need for cell phones or we need for solar panels or we need for our defense systems, that's one thing. But that's not what this is about. This is about watering down environmental protections for sand and clay and endangering the health and well-being of the Nation for no reason whatsoever because there's no strategic relationship between those very prosaic minerals and our national security.”