Things that make you want to scream... (more on WV spill)

How in the ##&! hell can this guy say this with a straight face?? Are we living in an alternate universe or something??


‘People are fed up’ in West Virginia
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/west-virginia-people-fed-up
02/04/14 06:41 PM—Updated 02/05/14 08:22 AM
By Ned Resnikoff

(excerpts)
Part of the purpose of Tuesday’s hearing was to discuss the recently proposed Chemical Safety and Drinking Water Protection Act, which is intended to prevent similar spills from occurring in the future. The bill was introduced by committee chair Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., along with West Virginia’s two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Jay Rockefeller. It would require regular inspections of chemical storage facilities such as the one that leaked in West Virginia and set minimum guidelines for emergency response plans...

...However, industry representatives cautioned against rushing to install new regulations or exercise more regulatory authority without further study. Richard O. Faulk, who leads the Initiative for Energy and the Environment at George Mason University’s Law and Economics Center, said that the energy industry is by and large very effective at self-regulating. Faulk, who is also a senior partner with the D.C. firm Hollingsworth LLP, recently authored an amicus brief in which the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups challenged new greenhouse gas regulations being proposed by the EPA.

Faulk, who is also a senior partner with the D.C. law firm Hollingsworth LLP, recently authored an amicus brief in which the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups challenged new greenhouse gas regulations being proposed by the EPA.

“Even when accidents happen in facilities owned by other companies in other industries, the American chemical and petrochemical industries use those incidents as learning opportunities to improve the safety of their own operations,” he said. “Unfortunately, the West Virginia chemical spill is a disappointing, and tragic exception to the practices I have observed in the mainstream of America’s chemical and petrochemical industry.”

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