The EPA has scaled back a rule from the Obama Administration that strictly reduced the amount of toxic waste that power plants could dump into our waterways. As a result, corporations are now free to dump even more cancer-causing, brain-disrupting chemicals into the water that we use for drinking and recreation. The Trump administration should change their motto to “Make America Toxic Again.” Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Transcript:
The Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency has been working to roll back a rule that limits the amount of toxic waste that companies can dump into the water, into rivers, streams, waterways, aquifers, whatever it is. Obama, his EPA said, you know what, let’s cut back on the amount of toxic waste that we’re pouring out into the environment. Well, Trump’s EPA, after being heavily lobbied by just two industry front groups decided they were going to roll back the rule and that is what they’re doing today, telling corporations, we’re going to raise the limit on how much toxic waste you can dump into people’s water.
Now, this is toxic waste coming from power plants. Most of the time those are coal-fired power plants and if you’re not familiar with the kind of waste that time out of those, let me give you a quick rundown here. We have arsenic, we have mercury, we have cadmium and chromium and all kinds of other heavy metals that are known not only to cause damage in adult bodies, but in fetuses and young children. They disrupt brain development. They can lead to impulsive behavior. They can cause mental retardation in unborn children and yet the Trump EPA, because corporations told them to, thinks that that’s perfectly okay and reasoning that these industries gave the EPA was ’cause these regulations by Obama were to burdensome and just too darn costly. Burdensome and costly, is that worth it?
Is that worth having a generation of children whose brains do not work properly because they were poisoned by American corporations. Is it worth it? Saving corporations that you’re not invested in, that we don’t work for, a few dollars. No, it’s not and anyone who thinks that it is, is an absolute idiot and I encourage you to go live by one of these power plants that’s now going to start releasing more toxic waste. If you think it’s so fine, you go drink the water. You go fish in that water. You go play in that water and take your family there on vacation because I guarantee you the people have no problem with this are the people that don’t have to worry about stuff like this.
They don’t live in the communities where toxic waste is dumped. No, they live in the gated communities, high up on a hill with their private water supply, whole household water filters. They don’t have to worry about it. They don’t take vacations down by a river or a small lake, they go down to the Cayman Islands and check on their money or they go to the Bahamas or Hawaii or to Europe, not where the people who don’t have anything have to take their families. They’re not the ones who suffer the consequences, we are and until those Republican voters out there who think Republicans have their best interest at heart wake up and understand that they are literally being poisoned by these people they put into the office, then nothing is going to change.
At this point, it is up to them because I’m pretty sure everybody on the Democratic side, with the exception of Joe Manchin, understands the danger that corporations represent when they are allowed to go ahead and dump as much toxic waste, as much pollutants into the water as possible. We understand it. It’s up to Republicans and Republican voters to finally realize that we’re being slowly poisoned by corporations because the people they put into office think that that’s okay.
