Dear Friends,
Thanks to all 46,000 of you who signed the petition to President Obama urging him to prevent chemical plant disasters like Bhopal. EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, recently gave the green light to assess all of their options to prevent chemical disasters. Soon we will have a meeting at the White House to present the petitions. Before we do we wanted to invite anyone who didn’t sign on to join in today. We need to show the White House that they’re broad support for strong action by the EPA. So far over 100 other national, state and local organizations called on the President to take this action.
In addition, former EPA chief, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R-NJ) joined in the call for action saying, “I cannot understand why we have not seen some action when the consequences of something happening are so potentially devastating…It is well-established that safer cost-effective alternatives are widely available…Unfortunately there is still no national program to assess the feasibility or to require the use of safer alternatives at the highest risk facilities…
But your signature on the petition is more important than ever. Before Lisa Jackson agreed to look into this she received a letter of opposition from House Republicans. More recently, Rep. Pompeo (R-KS) announced plans to weaken the Clean Air Act so that the EPA can NOT prevent chemical disasters. Pompeo proudly represents the headquarters of of Koch Industries. As we reported last year, Koch has been one of the leading lobbies against this. Your support today will help counter this opposition.
Do you live near one of the 483 highest risk chemical plants?
Thank all you again,
John Deans, Toxics Campaigner
