Ed Markey — Markey & EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy Discuss Abandoned Mines

Thank You mr. chairman very much and thank you administrator McCarthy for being here today so you know we've got a big mess on our hands we're dealing here with a law that was passed in 1870 to ulysses s grant was the President of the United States and it hasn't been amended since then and he did a great job by the way on winning the Civil War just a great job I just want to compliment him on that this law may have been appropriate for 1872 we were trying to get people to go out west colorado isn't even a state yet before Malia's we got to get people out there we're trying to get people to populate these states 1872 the law passes 1876 Colorado becomes a state so the law says you get out there kind of like the Homestead Act will give you access to these mines for free now it's 2015 some people say there are 160,000 abandoned mines so other groups say there are 500,000 abandoned mines what's the revenue stream now to put in place in order to ensure that we don't see more accidents like this happening we don't have a revenue stream what we did in the end of the 1970s beginning of the 1980s we created a Superfund program a program that was intended to deal with the worst sites across the country a Love Canal in New York State wooburn which was the subject of the movie a civil action in Massachusetts in my congressional district and we put that program in place but the mine industry even today doesn't want to pay for the minerals that are on federal lands these are taxpayers minerals that the companies believe that they should get for free for free now over in the House of Representatives I was the ranking member on the Natural Resources Committee and I introduced a bill saying that they should have to pay you can't have this bargain basement giveaway sale any longer we need a revenue stream so that we can put programs in place that ensure that we begin to work on the worst of these sites in a much more aggressive fashion and that is something that you would think we could agree that is necessary a hundred and forty seven years later after the lowest best to deal with the mess the obvious mess that's been created so do you agree madam administrator that the revenue stream is just completely insufficient in order to deal with a magnitude of the problem which this incident demonstrates is just looming out there as a continuing threat to the environment of our country I think the president's fiscal year 16 budget in earlier that suggests that we need a fee revenue that is based on the polluter pays principle that is exactly the same way that coal mines are treated and those abandoned coal mines are cleaned up is the same kind of sauce that we need to be looking for here to be instituted by Congress to begin to tackle this issue more effectively and I would hope that my Republican friends could agree that it's time for us to put a fee on this giving it away letting them mine letting them abandon and then not having a revenue supposed to deal with the mess that's created makes no sense at all and I would hope that we could work together on this although I found in the House of Representatives that it was impossible to find Republican supporters for something like this but it does leave a kind of a regulatory black hole you know and the alternative of course that some Republicans continue to propound is that we should have a kind of a good Samaritan Law where we just kind of wave the rules you know wave them and and I think that whatever minimal set of laws we have on the books you know just can't be cavalierly waived because that's kind of the last you know wall of environmental protections which we've got so you've got to be very careful when you go down that route but it would just seem to me that I know that people don't like to hear it but you need money when you've got 160,000 a 500,000 abandoned mines all potentially leaching into now a much more populated Colorado a much more populated in New Mexico because of those policies that you've now got a danger with regards to the health the air the water of people who live near them and it's time for us to do something about it thank you Matt I'm going to straight up for your great work