Statement by EDF President Fred Krupp on House Passage of the TRAIN Act (H.R. 2401)

“Today the U.S. House of Representatives made a stark choice, and put pollution over children’s health.

The TRAIN Act, if it becomes law, will result in more than 25,000 premature deaths in the first year alone, due to smog, soot, and toxic air pollution. There will be more than 175,000 more asthma attacks, many of them in children. This was no less than a fight about the integrity of the Clean Air Act, and clean air lost.

“Opponents of these common sense rules make the patently false argument that we can’t have both clean air and a strong economy. Actually, analysis has shown that the economic benefits of enforcing the Clean Air Act outweigh the costs 30 to 1. The same protections that the TRAIN Act strips have been widely supported by responsible corporations. Companies across the country are eagerly waiting to supply the equipment to achieve these new clean air goals — and create jobs in the process — while utilities are sitting on billions in cash that could be put to work.

“Some of the House members voting against healthy air today may really believe the misleading notion that public health protections kill jobs. But many are old enough to know better – because they voted in favor of these same common-sense environmental rules two decades ago, and they saw the ones that were put into place cut pollution ahead of schedule and at a fraction of the estimated cost – and create jobs in the process. Yet these same members are now voting against the successful regulations they championed in 1990.

“Now it is up to the Senate to stop this destructive bill.”

Fred Krupp, Environmental Defense Fund President