Nick Rahall: Congress's Drilling Watchdog

April was a tough month for 17-term Congressman Nick Rahall. First, a coal mine outside his hometown of Beckley, W.V., collapsed, killing 29 miners — including some Rahall knew personally. Then, 10 days later, the BP's Deepwater Horizon well off the Louisiana coast blew, killing 11 rig workers and spewing hundreds of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It was one of the deadliest months in decades for America's plumbing of its natural resources, and in the eyes of Rahall, the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, much of the human and environmental toll was tragically preventable.

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