The tactic of a Colorado congressman, whose ties to the coal industry run deep, may be less surprising than it is brazen.

A mountaintop removal coal mining site in West Virginia. nrdc_media/Flickr

When award-winning West Virginia anti-coal activist Maria Gunnoe went to Washington, D.C. last week, she was prepared for obstructionist tactics. She was prepared to face icy stares and hard questions from Republican lawmakers. She was not prepared to be branded a pedophile.

On Friday, Gunnoe testified before the House Committee on Natural Resources in a hearing on the Obama administration’s contentious relationship with the coal mining industry. She had prepared a slideshow presentation that included a photograph by the photojournalist Katie Falkenberg depicting a nude young girl sitting in a bathtub filled with murky brown water. The photo was meant as a salient statement to legislators on the impact of coal mining on society’s most vulnerable. “We are forced to bathe our children in polluted water,” she said. “Or not bathe them.”

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