Washington's bad calls on environment

I wonder how many Obama Democrats saw the article "EPA eases air pollution rules" [News, Feb. 24]. The Environmental Protection Agency was about to demand that heavy industrial boilers, which provide heat and power at factories, cut toxic air pollution. This is a move that would cost paper product makers, chemical plants, and manufacturers $3.9 billion a year.

The EPA had to scale back its demands to compromise with businesses and (those nasty old) Republicans. They now will demand only $2.1 billion in toxic reductions annually from these private industries. Do the Democrats ever sit down and figure out how many construction and manufacturing jobs are lost, how many plant expansions are put off, how the costs of manufactured products will rise, how much investment money will end up overseas where costs are a fraction of what they are here, if their baseless and tyranical enviro-political policies are implemented?

They're cutting off the nose to spite the face, yet they continue their disastrous war against business and industry, heedless that workers will be the losers in the end.

All we hear from President Barack Obama's supporters are hysterical rants about taxing the rich, without a thought as to who's going to employ them after they've run all the businessmen-investors out of town.

Ben Beekman

Woodbury
 

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that wages the most sweeping assault on our air and water in recent history ["Cutting blindly into the bone," Editorial, Feb. 22]. The bill blocks the Environmental Protection Agency from protecting our health from dangerous carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants and also puts at risk the drinking water of more than 11 million New Yorkers by barring EPA from restoring Clean Water Act protections to vulnerable waterways.

While New Yorkers voted for many things last November, they did not vote for more asthma attacks and more contaminated drinking water.

Eric Whalen

Manhattan

Editor's note: The writer is a field organizer for Environment New York, an advocacy organization.