WASHINGTON - September 21 - Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today spoke out against the so-called “Stop the War on Coal Act” on the House Floor. He called for an end of coal’s war on the health and safety of the American people.

See video here.

“The ‘Stop The War on Coal Act’ is up today. It is the coal industry which is waging war on our mountains by leveling them, war on our lungs by burning dirty fuel, war on healthy children by being the single largest source of mercury exposure, war on our rivers and streams by filling them with toxic waste, war on groundwater through poisonous ashfills, war on its workers through conditions which continue to kill, war on families by breaking unions and relentlessly reducing jobs, war on our national debt by taking billions in subsidies and now, war on rate payers of municipal utilities across the Midwest. Time to stop this war.

“Peabody Coal’s Prairie State coal plant in southern Illinois has brokered a series of shady deals that puts 217 local utilities across the Midwest on the hook for billions of dollars for energy they may never get, while paying twice market rate – a corrupt boondoggle that will raise utilities’ rates and saddle many publically owned utilities with crushing debt obligations. Congress must stand up for utility customers in these areas.”