Monday, July 25, 2011

Uranium Mining in Grand Canyon, Bad Air, Bad Water, Dead Animals

Just when you think the Earth might be safe. . .

The House is stuffing the Interior Appropriations bill with 40+ anti-environment amendments and policy riders. They are not finished. When the bill comes to the floor, many members of Congress will have a chance to add more.



Below are just four of the more outrageous amendments in the bill:
  • Blocking EPA from regulating deadly pollution like mercury, smog, and soot from power plants and cement plants. The pollution that these facilities would then be allowed to spew could cause up to 27,800 premature deaths.
  • Opening up lands immediately next to the Grand Canyon to uranium mining, despoiling one of the most iconic landscapes in the United States, and potentially contaminating its waters with radioactivity.
  • Stripping Clean Water Act protections for the drinking water sources of 117 million Americans.
  • Driving endangered plants and animals to extinction, by preventing federal agencies from listing any species as endangered or protecting their critical habitats.
These four provisions alone would represent a historic assault on the environment and on human health. There are many, many more contained in this bill.

Remember the words of Carl Sagan:
Anything else you're interested in is not going to happen if you can't breathe the air and drink the water. Don't sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet. ~Carl Sagan~

Please take action at the Environmental Defense Fund website.  It only takes a minute. The breath you save may be your own or that of your children,

2 comments:

running sandals said...

We often forget how important is the environment and how we live in an environment where there's biodiversity and symbiosis. This mining has got to stop!

Laura said...

I think it is really frightening how humanity plays tough with the environment. We have to be more careful with it or our children will have a world where it´s not able to live in. A teacher in my early years in school always told us that "you can´t eat or drink oil or other resources"