The bill, that passed today, purports to address coal, but in fact takes aim at a staggering array of basic laws that keep the American public safe.  This dangerous War on the World Bill, would fundamentally weaken the Clean Air Act and eviscerate the protections of the Clean Water Act. H.R. 3409 repackages many of the same attacks on health and environmental safeguards attempted earlier this Congress.  

"It is mind boggling that the majority in the House of Representatives can spend their precious time, before they go home to campaign, voting for bills they already passed earlier. I don't know any congressional districts where voting for dirty air and water is a vote getter", comments CWN Executive Director Natalie Roy.

• HR 3409. This bill would amend the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) to prevent the Secretary of the Interior from proposing or issuing any rule before 2014 that would in any way reduce surface mining coal production;
• HR 910 ("Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011") This bill amends the Clean Air Act to bar EPA from regulating greenhouse gases to address climate change and redefines the term "air pollutant" to exclude greenhouse gases for purposes of addressing climate change. This bill is an all-out assault on public health and would give the biggest polluters a free pass for unlimited carbon pollution by repealing EPA's science-based endangerment determination and simply declaring that carbon dioxide is no longer an air
  pollutant. This title would also cost consumers at the pump by eliminating final EPA clean car standards;
• HR 2401 (TRAIN Act). This bill would directly block two long delayed, critical public health safeguards - The Mercury and Air Toxics Standard for Power Plants and the Cross State Air Pollution Rule. These rules have languished in legal and bureaucratic limbo for decades and are desperately needed to reduce soot, smog and toxic air pollution being spewed into our communities; 
• HR 2273 (Title IV, coal ash) with changes to reflect the new Senate bill 3512.  This bill shields utilities from their responsibility to timely upgrade unsafe ash dumps, clean-up sites they have contaminated, and close leaking and unstable ponds and landfills. Title IV aims to maintain the dangerous status quo that led to the Kingston, TN coal ash disaster in 2008.  It lacks deadlines for states to implement whatever permit program they may create, even though there are over 1000 aging coal ash
  dumps, many of which lack adequate safeguards to prevent water contamination; and last but not least,
• HR 2018, entitled, "Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011, as passed by the House.  This bill is a direct assault on two key components of the Clean Water Act: enforcement of water quality standards and protection of aquatic resources from discharges of dredged and fill material. The bill would reverse decades of progress in cleaning our nation's waters. It would undermine the cooperative state-federal partnership at the core of the Clean Water Act. Under this title, EPA would be stripped of its important authority to ensure that water quality standards are enforced and reflect the latest science.This bill essentially takes us back to the days of the "Twilight Zone" - when cars had no seatbelts, pests were controlled with clouds of DDT, doctors advised pregnant woman to keep their weight
  down by smoking and states decided whether untreated raw sewage or toxic chemicals could be dumped into rivers and lakes for their downstream neighbors to deal with.