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USA Republicans use budget Bill to promote Grand Canyon uranium mining

The Interior spending bill now goes to the full House for approval. If it passes — as expected, on a largely party-line vote — the Senate should make certain that none of the anti-environmental provisions survive in the final appropriations bill. And President Obama should veto any legislation that includes them.

EDITORIAL: Protect the Grand Canyon, House Republicans target a mining moratorium, Register Guard,  July 14, Congressional Republicans are continuing their assault on the nation’s environmental safeguards with a proposal to reverse a recently imposed 20-year ban on mining 1 million acres bordering the Grand Canyon.

Democrats were unable to strip this rapacious proposal from an Interior spending bill that was approved Tuesday by the House Appropriations Committee. Never mind that 3,500 mining claims have been filed in the Grand Canyon area alone. Never mind that uranium mining would generate toxic wastes that would pollute the Colorado River, on which millions of Americans rely for drinking water.

Never mind the blight that mining would inflict on an iconic landscape. Never mind that the moratorium has little effect on the nation’s uranium supply, most of which comes from New Mexico and Wyoming.

Rep. Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who sponsored the rider, says Congress should be making such decisions, not the secretary of the Interior. Flake has a point. Why bother with consulting those pesky scientists about environmental protections when a political agenda is so much more predictable and makes the mining industry so happy?…..

Republicans also tossed other anti-environmental provisions into the Interior spending bill. They included reductions of 12 percent and 20 percent respectively to the budgets of the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. Another would delay for one year EPA rules limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from such industrial polluters as power plants and oil refineries, and prohibit the agency from regulating such discharges from vehicles after model year 2016.

The Interior spending bill now goes to the full House for approval. If it passes — as expected, on a largely party-line vote — the Senate should make certain that none of the anti-environmental provisions survive in the final appropriations bill. And President Obama should veto any legislation that includes them.

http://www.registerguard.com/web/opinion/26547360-47/interior-bill-environmental-mining-republicans.html.csp

July 15, 2011 - Posted by | politics, Uranium, USA

2 Comments »

  1. Outrageous! What happened with this?

    activistalliance's avatar Comment by dontcutmedicaid | July 30, 2011 | Reply

  2. dontcutmedicaid is now activistalliance

    activistalliance's avatar Comment by activistalliance | August 22, 2011 | Reply


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