Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, this amendment simply strips the language that would block the implementation of the Stream Protection Rule. We should not willfully delay or stop this rule. I am very familiar with mountaintop removal mining. When I was Lieutenant Governor of Virginia in the 1990s, mountaintop removal mining became the most prevalent coal mining technique in central Appalachia. I made more than 100 trips to Virginia's coalfields, and I know firsthand the negative impact mountaintop removal has had on the environment and on the health of these communities. If we know of reasonable ways to mitigate negative effects, we should be doing everything in our power to implement them. That is why the Stream Protection Rule is so important. During mountaintop removal, tens of thousands of cubic feet of mountaintops are blown off with explosives and pushed over the sides, filling mountain valleys with enormous waste piles. {time} 1815 These valley fills, as they are called, bury headwater streams and everything else that once populated the valley. Already, mountaintop removal mining has flattened more than 500,000 acres of forested land and permanently buried over 2,000 miles of streams, destroying sources that feed our water. Emerging science has documented a dramatic decline in the diversity, the abundance, and the biomass of fish in streams with pollution that results from mining.…”