Speaking at a coal-fired power plant in his home state of West Virginia, Sen. Joe Manchin (D) last week decried U.S. EPA's 2011 veto of a sprawling mountaintop-removal mine in Logan County. The Clean Water Act veto -- delivered four years after the permit was issued by the Army Corps of Engineers -- is the first retroactive veto in the history of the 40-year old pollution law. EPA's action infuriated Manchin and other coal-state politicians.