23 Quotes by Tom Rathbun

Work at that site has just come to a standstill.

We're not going to wait around for federal money to continue addressing these problems. We're looking at other options.

Mining is dangerous, but it is work habits that make it unsafe. When there's an accident you need to learn from it, so you can make sure it doesn't happen again. You learn from the accident so it doesn't repeat itself.

Mountain streams and rivers that were orange when I was a kid are now filled with fish, are now lined with trees and rhododendrons, and that's progress.

What we want is to find a more permanent arrangement, a long-term reauthorization (of the fund) that meets the needs of a state with our mining history.

I think they appreciate that; our modern mining industry sometimes faces a lot of anti-mining bias based on things that were done in the past.

Management was a bigger concern to us than the finances. The reclamation just wasn't being done despite several amended agreements.

We need something that's going to work for the Appalachian states; any place there was mining before the 1970s, there's a real need for reclamation. And that money still only cleans up higher-priority sites; it doesn't even touch on all the non-coal quarries in need of reclamation.

We don't want to order these companies to spend $100,000 on something that's going to be obsolete before it's paid for.