Rep. Katie Porter to Oil and Gas Companies: ‘You Want to Drill? You Need to Clean up Your Messes’
Petroleum corporations no longer should reap profits while the US government foots the bills for environmental clean up, congresswoman says
Recent US history is marked by episodes in which a petroleum company sets off an environmental catastrophe of some sort — polluting the land or water, or both. The federal government often responds with the cleanup — and paying for that cleanup — while the offending oil and gas company walks away still recording profits.
It's time for that to change, according to Rep Katie Porter (D-Calif), chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on the Natural Resources Committee.
“And so what happens is one of two things, and they're both really, really bad for the American people: either these wells sit abandoned, where they present both potential risks of people wandering onto the land, getting harmed, the land is polluted, it can't be used — and that's a loss, an economic loss to the taxpayers — or we, the federal government, pick up the tab and do the work pr we put it onto the states,” Porter said. “This is really simple for me as a parent. If you want to dump the bin of Legos out on the floor and play with the Legos, that's fine. You will pick up every single Lego. Every parent understands this. You want to make a mess? You got to pick it up. Same thing for the oil and gas companies. You want to drill, you need to clean up your messes. You can't just walk off and leave the rest of us on the hook.
“Everyday American people working hard, you know, some of them — many of them making minimum wage, people paying taxes. Why are we on the hook for cleaning up after your profits?” Porter asked.
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