Norton Blasts House Republicans for Propping up Coal Industry, Which is Poisoning Americans While Losing Competition to Other Forms of Energy
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today, at an Oversight and Government Reform Committee (OGR) hearing, criticized Republicans for putting all of their energy into protecting a dying coal mining industry unable to survive in today's energy competition, even in the face of devastating statistics on harmful health effects and water contamination caused by coal mining. During the hearing, Republicans unanimously opposed the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement's proposed Stream Protection Rule, which would better protect the environment, as well as humans, from the harmful impacts of coal mining. Norton cited recent peer reviewed studies that indicate that people living near the sites of mountaintop removal coal mining are 50 percent more likely to die of cancer and are 42 percent more likely to be born with defects. Norton said that Republican Members who represent these Americans are defending the very industry that is harming them, while doing nothing to help these communities build new economic sectors.
"Even if the health impacts of coal mining were not so devastating, it is incomprehensible that Republican Members would protect the coal industry as it is becoming noncompetitive, and certainly not because of regulations that protect streams, fish, wildlife, and related environmental values," Norton said. "The free market that Republicans revere has led to competition from other sources of energy, which have made coal mining an obsolete industry of the 19th and 20th centuries. These communities are desperately in need of jobs. However, trying to save jobs from a fading industry that is sickening their constituents and poisoning their water wastes energy that should be directed toward creating jobs in new areas, such as other energy industries, for the communities that are most impacted."