Religious leaders are among the Texans urging the US Environmental Protection Agency to adopt strong regulations for coal ash. At an all-day hearing in Dallas, leaders of Texas Interfaith Power & Light testified that government must protect all members of the public from harmful impacts of industrial pollution, especially vulnerable individuals such as the poor, who often live in areas subject to coal ash contamination. Texas Interfaith Power & Light is a project of Texas Impact, Texas’ oldest interfaith public policy advocacy organization.
“Economic considerations which do not protect human life and the Creation or which place short-term profits for shareholders above the needs of those who are God’s primary concern—the human and natural stakeholders in a well-tended Creation—are not only short-sighted economically. Such considerations are, to put it in blunt religious language, sinful. They defy God’s intention for the divinely-wrought Creation and the creatures who inhabit that Creation. That is a perilous way to live and act and have our being,” said Reverend Dr. T. Randall Smith, a United Methodist pastor and president of the board of Texas Impact.
The EPA is taking testimony at hearings across the nation as part of its consideration of new rules that would regulate coal ash as a hazardous chemical. A waste product of coal combustion, coal ash may look like dirt, but contains such harmful toxins as lead, arsenic, cadmium, sulfate and mercury. According to tests conducted by the EPA, coal ash leaches arsenic at levels 1,800 times the federal drinking water standard and over 3 times the hazardous waste threshold.
“When a group of people are sailing in a boat, none of them has a right to bore a hole under his own seat. The EPA’s responsibility is to prevent the coal industry from sinking the boat for the entire human community,” said Amanda Robinson, Texas Interfaith Power & Light Coordinator.
Following the hearing, Smith and Robinson led a short service of healing and reflection for participants, many of whom traveled to the hearing from communities affected by coal ash. Smith said it is important for faith communities to ensure that pastoral care is available for victims of man-made environmental trauma just as much as for victims of natural disasters.
Texas Interfaith Power & Light is the Texas affiliate of Interfaith Power & Light, a national organization advancing a religious voice on energy and global warming.