Virginia General Assembly Proposes Dangerous Clean Water Act Rewrite
February 8, 2011 - posted by jw
Update: SB 1025 passed the Senate this afternoon. The Wise Energy for Virginia Coalition has something to say about that.
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The Coal Lobby Fights Back by Making it Illegal to Test for Water Pollution Unless…They’ve Already Found Water Pollution
Before we talk about SB 1025 in Virginia, and the coal lobby’s radical attempt to completely grease the skids for the dumping of toxic waste into Virginia’s waterways, let’s begin with a all-too-common coal lobby sentiment on protecting water from Fenway Pollack, lawyer for the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP), when asked what would happen if the state actually enforced water quality standards.
Taken to its logical conclusion, [enforcing water quality violations] would mean no one gets renewals. We’d just shut down mining.
It’s a little disturbing isn’t it? The Clean Water Act is perhaps the most popular piece of federal legislation ever passed. Because of the Clean Water Act, millions of Americans are able to actually use the “waters of the United States” for activities from recreation to quenching thirst. The Clean Water Act was signed into law on the simple principle that every human being deserves the right to clean drinking water. In the most prosperous country on earth, it makes sense that we should not have a problem providing American citizens with a sip of clean drinking water. Beyond the intangible benefits to public health ad well-being, the Clean Water Act is estimated to bring in more than $11 billion in economic benefits every year. We all drink water, and we all think it is better when it is clean. Right!?!

Meanwhile those same industries have relentlessly attacked citizen protections in the courts, in federal and state legislative houses, and through the regulatory process.
However, recent events have made it clear. Absolutely nobody hates the Clean Water Act like the coal lobby does, and they have made perfectly clear that they have no intention of preserving the right to clean water that every American deserves. The coal lobby has waged a longstanding, nationwide “War on Water,” threatening much more than just the coal-bearing communities of Central Appalachia. Just over 40 years ago, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio was repeatedly catching on fire, all over the country people were piping their raw sewage into waterways upstream of communities and industrial waste was being wantonly dumped into American lakes and rivers. By passing the Federal Water Pollution Control Act in 1972, and the Clean Water Act in 1977, Congress set to address problems like these, and preserve our ability to use our precious water resources.


My colleague Tom Cormons, the Virginia Director for Appalachian Voices says:
Stream monitoring and effluent toxicity testing are indispensable tools for enforcing the law when it comes to water pollution, and that is precisely why big coal is trying to curtail their use. What’s astounding is that the General Assembly has passed this coal industry bill tying our own state regulators’ hands by restricting their ability to use standard water testing.
Why doesn’t the coal industry want you to know what they are putting in your water?
Well, it’s because their dumping of toxic waste into streams has been shown to have a well-documented, well-known, and peer-reviewed negative impact on human health and life expectancy. Even the pro-MTR Secretary of the WVDEP, Randy Huffman, has been caught off guard admitting that the impacts are real.
Our opposition [to EPA's permit reviews] has been more about the process than it has been about the science. There is a lot of validity to the concerns about the downstream impacts. I think that’s the change in direction everyone is going to have to make to meet the downstream water quality requirements. I don’t see any choice but to reduce the impacts. – Randy Huffman, WVDEP Secretary, 1-06-2010, speaking with the Charleston Gazette on West Virginia’s new state policy on valleyfills
This new state law in Virginia is a STEAL for the coal lobby. By taking away the ability to test waterways for toxic heavy metals and chemicals, they are preempting the documentation of their inevitable violations of the Clean Water Act. Meanwhile, they are continually burying thousands of miles of streams under toxic mining waste. Everybody wins except everybody!
How much are we as people worth to the coal lobby, or to Virginia’s elected officials for that matter? Here’s a good indication. Recently, EPA made a heroic and well publicized veto of the Spruce #1 mountaintop removal mine, which would have been the largest mountaintop removal site in West Virginia history. The original Spruce Mine permit would have buried more than 8 miles of headwater streams – an immense and unnecessary impact. During negotiations with Arch Coal, EPA brought forth an alternate permitting plan which would have reduced the impacts on water quality and human health by half, but Arch coal walked away because it would have cost them a grand total of 55 cents more per ton of coal. With Central Appalachian coal currently selling at $77.70/ton, this would represent an increase of 0.7% in order to protect human heath and water quality for this generation and the next.
Our headwater streams and our public health are certainly worth 55 cents to me, and I would wager to say most Virginians. I want that security for myself and for my family.
The coal lobby has made it clear that they would prefer that our families not be protected from their toxic waste. Is this radical act by the Virginia General Assembly the beginning of the end of the Clean Water Act? Anyone who enjoys a tall cool glass of water had better hope that the Virginia State Senate gets ahold of itself before the final vote, expected later today.
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