Your help is needed to protect important safeguards for human health and the environment

We all want a healthy future for Kentucky. But HR 2584 threatens to strip the EPA of it’s ability to protect Americans--and Kentuckians--from polluters and their pollutants. Your voice is needed today.

Kentucky Congressman Hal Rogers has represented southeastern Kentucky in Washington for three decades. As Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, he is one of the most powerful members of Congress. Sadly Rep. Rogers is using his position – and the budget process – to push through dangerous new rules that eliminate important protections for public health, clean water, and clean air

As Kentuckians, we want the same things as people everywhere: We want a safe environment where we can drink the water and breathe the air without worry, and a government we can trust and be proud of.

Yet major decisions are being made in Washington right now that threaten our chances of creating a better and healthier future here at home.

Kentuckians already suffer cancer, heart attacks, asthma and other severe health conditions that result from repeated exposure to unacceptably high levels of toxic pollution, a situation made worse by weak enforcement of health and environmental laws. [1] [2]

With an EPA that has shown an increased commitment to protecting our health, we have an opportunity to turn this around.

But now Congressman Hal Rogers and others in the US House of Representatives are on the verge of passing a bill that has been called "the worst anti-environmental bill in historyâ€--and slashing our environmental protections means we pay with our health and our kids' health.

HR 2584, approved on Monday by a committee chaired by Congressman Rogers, will be voted on this week in the US House of Representatives. It is the first of 12 budget bills that will move through this committee in coming weeks.

This bill orders steep budget cuts for the US EPA and other agencies, and is loaded with dangerous provisions that would block federal agencies from enforcing environmental safeguards that protect our health. Click here for the full text of the bill.  Or see the summary below.

Can you call your Representative in Congress today?

Bill summary:

Here are some of the devastating things his bill would do:

• Slash the EPA’s budget to the point that the agency will be unable to implement its core mission of protecting human health and the environment.
• Block the 2009 agreement reached between the EPA, the Office of Surface Mining and the Army Corps of Engineers to carefully review and enforce permits for mountaintop removal mining.
• Block the EPA from regulating coal combustion waste as hazardous. This ignores the science, endangers public health, and makes it nearly impossible for communities to get a fair hearing if utilities seek to build or expand coal ash dumps.
• Block the EPA from implementing new rules to control toxic air emissions, soot, and other power plant emissions known to cause premature death and illness.
• Block the EPA’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants and oil refineries.
• Cut funds to states for air quality monitoring and water quality permitting programs.

"H.R. 2584 would overturn 40 years of bipartisan progress protecting the clean air and water on which all Americans depend, and the lands and wildlife that Americans treasure. The American people reject the false choice between a prosperous economy and a sustainable environment, which we’ve proven can go hand in hand.â€ [3]

- The Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition in the US House of Representatives

Sources:

[1] Birth Defects Study: http://www.kftc.org/blog/archive/2011/06/21/birth-defects-higher-in-areas-with-mountaintop-mining

[2] Toxic air pollution study: http://docs.nrdc.org/air/files/air_11072001a.pdf

[3] Statement by the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition in the US House of Representatives: http://seecblog.inslee.house.gov/2011/07/updated-seec-instead-of-addressing-default-crisis-or-jobs-gop-pushing-unprecedented-back-door-attack.shtml