On the recordSeptember 21, 2012
The Stop the War on Coal Act is up today. It is the coal industry which is waging war on our mountains by leveling them, war on our lungs by burning dirty fuel, war on healthy children by being the single largest source of mercury exposure, war on our rivers and streams by filling them with toxic waste, war on groundwater through poisonous ash fills, war on its workers through conditions which continue to kill, war on families by breaking unions and by relentlessly reducing jobs, war on our national debt by taking in billions of subsidies, and now war on ratepayers of municipal utilities across the Midwest. Time to stop this war. Peabody Coal's Prairie State coal plant in southern Illinois has brokered a series of shady deals that puts 217 local utilities here, across the Midwest, on the hook for billions of dollars for energy they may never even get while paying twice the market price--a corrupt boondoggle that will raise utility rates and saddle many publicly owned utilities with crushing debt obligations. Congress must stand up for the utility cuts in this areas. ____________________
