Rule Change May Alter Strip-Mine Fight By JAMES DAO, NYTimes
The Bush administration is moving to revamp a rule protecting streams that Appalachian environmentalists view as their best weapon for fighting the strip-mining technique of mountaintop removal.
Over the past six years, environmental groups have used the rule, which restricts mining within 100 feet of a stream, to block or slow the issuing of state permits for mountaintop removal.
Strip mining involves dynamiting away mountaintops to expose seams of low-sulfur coal, then dumping the leftover rubble into nearby valleys and streams. Some of those valley fills, as they are known, are hundreds of feet deep and several miles long, making them among the largest man-made earthen structures in the East.
The proposed rule change by the Office of Surface Mining would make clear that filling valleys and covering streams is permitted under federal law if companies show they are minimizing mining waste and the environmental damage caused by it.
Administration officials say the proposed changes to the rule, affecting the stream buffer zone, will clarify conflicting federal regulations and thereby reduce litigation. …
The struggle over the stream buffer zone underscores how some of the most significant battles over government policy are waged on the overlooked fields of little-known laws and lesser-known regulations.
And the struggle comes as mountaintop mining has emerged as the most common form of surface mining in central Appalachia. The process produces more coal, requires fewer employees and is less costly than other forms of mining.
But opponents contend that strip mining also levels mountains, fills narrow valleys, covers streams and destroys forests. Mining companies are required to reconfigure hilltops and replant forests, but those efforts rarely approach the natural beauty of the original landscape, residents argue.
Again, Bush uses executive fiat to change things to benefit corporations at the expense of everything else. mjh