But if you damage someone’s property, take responsibility,” she said. It’s my family’s trade it’s our way of life. Sherry Walker, whose husband and father were coal miners and who sued a coal company that she believes contaminated her well, noted that supporting mining goes hand-in-hand with protecting miners and their families. Perhaps no industry’s history better captures the sheer amount of human tragedy buried in hard fought protections for workers, communities, and the environment that the government now seeks to eliminate. Yet that is exactly what the Trump administration has done, particularly by prioritizing the coal industry and aggressively dismantling regulations related to it. They should not eliminate existing regulations that serve to protect people from harm without putting in place effective alternative protections. Where evidence indicates that corporate activities pose risks to public health or other human rights, the US federal and state governments have a duty to regulate these activities so as to effectively mitigate these risks. The government’s response to the health risks of mountaintop removal offers a cautionary tale on the danger of viewing regulations solely as corporate burdens when in fact they are intended to protect health and other basic human rights. Compounding all of this, the Trump administration abruptly withdrew funding from a study that could have built new consensus around the practice’s health impacts. The report finds that Congress’ decision to repeal the rule ignored significant evidence indicating mountaintop removal poses a health risk to nearby residents and gave undue consideration to a deeply flawed industry-funded study that implausibly concluded that the rule jeopardized nearly all the jobs in the coal industry. It is based on research conducted over the course of one year that included reviewing dozens of scientific studies and government and court documents, as well as 42 interviews with mining and health experts, impacted residents, and others over five visits to the coalfields in West Virginia. This report examines how, following aggressive industry lobbying, Congress rolled back a modest regulation, making it easier for the coal industry to destroy mountains and bury the waste rock in streams, and the Interior Department canceled a study it had funded assessing the practice’s potential health impacts. Mountaintop removal mine on Coal Mountain in Wyoming County, West Virginia He has appointed industry lobbyists and insiders to top regulatory positions, many of whom opposed health and safety regulations. Trump has blamed regulations for depressing wages and extolled a vision that prioritizes unfettered business activity. This was only the beginning of an avalanche of deregulation under President Donald Trump, who promised not to stop until the number of federal regulations is “less than where they were in 1960.” To do so could be devastating for public health and the environment since it would return the US to a time when there were virtually no federal laws prohibiting companies from dumping toxins into the air and water.
The rule required mining companies to monitor and restore streams polluted by their activities, but Congress got rid of it in one of its first acts under the Trump administration. A study conducted by West Virginia University researchers revealed that tiny dust particles released to the air in Edwight promoted cancer growth when injected into human lung cells, while another by the United States Geological Survey, a science agency within the Interior Department, found that nearby streams have lost half their species of fish.Ĭiting “advances in science,” the US Department of the Interior, which oversees mining in the country, enacted the Stream Protection Rule in 2016 to mitigate some of mountaintop mining’s harmful effects. An Environmental Protection Agency assessment calculated that mountaintop removal has buried more miles of stream than the entire length of the Mississippi River.Ĭoal companies continue to operate these mines without stringent regulation, even as public health researchers have amassed significant evidence over the last decade showing that people like Bradford who live near mountaintop mines disproportionately suffer and even die from a litany of health problems, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. Mountaintop removal, a form of surface mining, has already leveled or severely impacted 500 mountaintops in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, according to Appalachian Voices, an activist group opposed to mountaintop removal. Land impacted by mountaintop removal between 19 using satellite imagery prepared by SkyTruth, an independent organization that promotes transparency on environmental issues.
0 kommentar(er)
