Trump and Big Coal
Re “Letting Polluters Run Free” (editorial, Feb. 23):
The “fresh hyperbole” you attribute to the president better describes your editorial against the sensible action he took.
Contrary to your suggestion, coal companies require a multitude of federal and state permits intended to minimize or avoid impacts to water bodies, and they must comply with water-quality standards policed by the states and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Because the stream rule duplicated and confused these responsibilities, nullifying this costly rule will not diminish environmental protections.
You say the stream rule would have cost just 260 jobs a year. But the source for this figure is a Congressional Research Service report that merely summarized the self-serving analysis from the Interior Department championing the rule.
An analysis of actual mines shows that the rule would cost at least a third of coal-mining jobs paying wages and benefits that alone support the mining communities you defend.
Federal land management planning does require closer scrutiny when political appointees arbitrarily withdraw tens of millions of acres from mining activity in the absence of any evidence to justify such a draconian action.
If we cannot develop our domestic resources on federal land, where do you expect to obtain the minerals this country needs for everything from infrastructure to electric vehicles and cellphones?
HAL QUINN, WASHINGTON
The writer is president and chief executive of the National Mining Association.
See the article here.
- On March 3, 2017