Political Quotes

“This amendment simply strips the dirty water riders in this bill. These four poison pill riders do not need to be in the bill. Each in its own right is a good example of a bad rider, and together they represent an assault on clean water, an attempt to forcibly supplant Agency expertise with ideology. The first dirty water rider, section 120, undermines the Interior Department's Stream Protection Rule which updates regulations which would allow coal mining companies to pollute and often extinguish altogether our mountain streams. We need this rule, and it is sufficiently flexible to accommodate regional variability. It is stringent enough to protect the people of Appalachia from the negative health and environmental impacts of mountaintop removal mining. The second dirty water rider, section 425, prohibits the EPA from updating the definition of fill material under the Clean Water Act. It was never congressional intent to allow mining refuse and similar material--some of it hazardous--to qualify as fill material and thereby bypass a more thorough environmental review and meet Federal pollution standards. Downstream water users have every right to be concerned that the section 404 process fails to protect them from the discharge of hazardous substances. To freeze those definitions in time, as section 425 does, ties the hands of implementing agencies despite evolving scientific understanding and current regulatory insights.…”