Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I wish to take some time this evening to congratulate our Environmental Protection Agency and to thank them for the rule they proposed this week regarding new coal-fired powerplants. They have taken a certain amount of heat over this rule and have been criticized. But I come from Rhode Island, and Rhode Island is a downwind State from the coal-fired powerplants of the Midwest. We pay the price for the coal power those Midwestern States burn. We pay the price in children coming in to our hospitals with asthma attacks. We pay the price in ozone levels that are outside our control. We are a State that contributes very little in pollution to other States, but we are on the receiving end. We are down the gun barrel of the big array of coal-fired powerplants in the Midwest. They have not only continued to burn dirty coal, they have built particularly high stacks so the emissions from that coal plant get pushed into the high atmosphere and they move east toward Rhode Island in the prevailing winds and we experience that as smog, as ozone, as air pollution. So there is an element of deliberateness to this. There are places in this country that are in compliance with air quality standards because they have put their emissions up high enough that it lands somewhere else. Rhode Island is often out of compliance with air quality standards, and it is not from emissions in our home State.…”