Leaving environmental orgs to foot the legal bills:
While the EPA’s coal ash regulation seems like a major step forward in protecting America’s environmental health and drinking water, the truth is that it’s more of a preferred practice than a law. That’s because it is ultimately up to citizen lawsuits, usually via environmental organizations, to make states enforce the law.
Nearly half a million people commented during the agency’s eight city public meeting tour in 2010, though it took another four and a half years and dilution from the White House before the regulation was finalized, and an additional four months before it was published in the Federal Register. It’s taken yet another six months to get us to this point.
And after the years of delay and diluting, mostly the result of fossil fuel industry lobbying and astro-turf economic scare tactics, Republicans still try to portray the EPA as a hateful oppressing arm of the government. The reality is, these spoiled rich polluters got nearly everything they wanted, but still aren't satisfied. And our waters continue to be contaminated on multiple fronts.
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