This decision will actually kill real, live Kentuckians who have to drink selenium-poisoned water. Will it even get mentioned at the
Eastern Kentucky "summit" being promoted by Governor Beshear and Rep. Hal Rogers?
This is not an acceptable decision from the EPA during a Democratic administration:
Today, the Environmental Protection Agency allowed the
Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection to change how toxic
selenium pollution from mountaintop removal mines is measured for the
purposes of determining compliance with the Clean Water Act. Selenium,
which causes significant biological damage to fish native to the waters
of Appalachia, is a toxic pollutant discharged from valley fills into
rivers and streams below mountaintop removal sites. The EPA-backed
changes to how Kentucky measures selenium pollution allow the state to
rely on an impractical and complicated test of tissue samples from fish
rather than the current practice of directly sampling the water
discharged below mountaintop removal mines and other selenium sources.
EPA’s capitulation gives a free pass to industry and will allow
unacceptably high levels of selenium pollution to continue flow into
Kentucky’s waterways.
If anything, Obama’s EPA should be cracking down on coal mining and
making it harder for the mountaintop removal industry to destroy the
mountains and ecology of Appalachia. There is no good reason not to
directly sample the water. None. Except that the coal industry doesn’t
like it. Because ultimately this isn’t about the poisoning of fish. It’s
about the poisoning of people. If the fish are poisoned, the people
probably are at higher risk as well. Of course, one expects nothing else
from the coal industry; it’s spent the last 125 years treating the
people of Appalachia like feudal serfs. But for the Obama EPA to
actually weaken testing rules, that I don’t get.
Here’s some background on why this all matters:
Current selenium limits in states like West Virginia have helped the
Sierra Club and other nonprofits force coal companies to hand over
millions of dollars in fines and cleanup costs, but those standards are
based on older EPA water criteria and guidance that hasn’t been revised
in nearly a decade. New data has suggested less stringent requirements
would be adequate and the EPA has said it is updating the acute and
chronic freshwater ambient water quality standards for selenium, though
the agency has yet to act.
Kentucky is now trying to move ahead while the agency drags its feet,
having developed its own criteria with help from the EPA and submitted
it for federal approval. The proposal would require that high selenium
levels be present in fish tissue before triggering a violation, and it
would likely be emulated by neighboring states if it gets the green
light from the EPA.
In taking the initiative, Kentucky is hoping to put more regulatory
control in its own hands on an issue that has been litigated frequently
in other states like West Virginia, according to Crowell & Moring
LLP partner Kirsten L. Nathanson.
“The environmental groups have been driving enforcement through
lawsuits,” Nathanson said. “Kentucky is trying to find an instructive
solution to these issues and avoid some of these ad-hoc enforcement
actions by taking affirmative control of its regulatory program for
selenium.”
Industry has always preferred state-led regulatory programs because
the states are far easier for industry to control than the feds.
Politicians come cheaper and they tend to be much friendlier to local
industry.
A very disappointing decision.
And it is all on the head of Affordable Care Act hero Steve "Coal Dust is Delicious and Nutritious" Beshear.
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