Mountaintop mining has gone on for some years in Appalachia. I am astounded this happens and am especially astounded by the shear volume of waste and pollution and destruction this practice introduces to the environment. Where's Byrd and Rockefeller on this?
Restrictions on this style of mining, which involves blowing or scraping the tops off of beautiful mountains that have aged from a size outmatching the Rockies to a rolling expanse palming some of the most beautiful forests, rivers and valleys in our country or in the world.
The US government estimates 1,600 MILES of Appalachian streams have been erased by this practice.
One restriction that has survived a bipartisan effort of neglect and silence has been the Stream Buffer Rule which creates a 100 foot buffer between streams and the impacts of mining. The Interior Department is seeking to revise this rule and in typical Bush Administration fashion not only will it introduce more tremendous amounts of waste into stream systems under the guise of actually having a "slightly positive effect", but since this rule is routinely ignored, it will essentially legitimize all the illegal dumping that has been ignored:
Under current rules, mining companies are prohibited from dumping massive "valley fills" within 100 feet of any intermittent or permanent stream, if it would harm the stream's water quality or reduce its flow.
This rule has been routinely ignored by mining companies, because it would be impossible to practice mountaintop removal otherwise. By their very nature, all valleys are intermittent stream beds, and completely filling these valleys causes irreparable damage to streams.
The Office of Surface Mining released last Friday a statement saying: (PDF)
The rulemaking alternatives considered in the FEIS address two requirements of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA): to prevent additional contributions of sediment to streams outside the permit area, and to minimize adverse impacts on fish and wildlife and related environmental values. The alternatives would address environmental concerns about the impacts of disposal of excess rock from coal mine excavation (“excess spoil”), coal mine waste, and other coal mining activities in and around streams. They would require minimization of impacts from these activities, and would clarify existing requirements that are not now interpreted consistently.
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The preferred alternative would also require coal mining activities to avoid the area in or within 100 feet of an intermittent or perennial stream (‘the stream buffer zone”), or show why avoidance is not possible. Activities in the stream buffer zone would be prohibited unless OSM grants a waiver, or unless the activity is specifically exempted from the prohibition.
Earthjustice senior legislative counsel Joan Mulhern said about the revisions:
"The final EIS is a sham. The agency did not even study, among available alternatives, the option of enforcing the stream buffer rule that has been on the books since 1983. Instead, they pretend that the existing stream buffer law does not apply to valley fills and sludge impoundments, so any minutely incremental effort to 'minimize' those waste dumps is, in their version of this, a net benefit to the environment. Of course this is completely backwards.
"They claim their rule is better for the environment when the exact opposite is true. What they are calling a treat is nothing other than a trick.
"This latest move is the capstone to the devastating legacy the Bush administration has left to the communities in Appalachia and to all Americans who care about our nation's mountains and streams. In just 8 years this administration has allowed coal companies to obliterate mountain ranges that have existed for millennia. Today they are announcing plans to accelerate that destruction into the future and spread it nationwide."
Carl Pope over at The Huffington Post:
The new regulation eliminates the previous requirement of a 100-foot buffer zone surrounding streams -- not for everyone, but just for mining operations, specifying that the rules do not apply to "permanent excess spoil fills, and coal waste disposal facilities."
In its justification, the agency said that its rule would require mining operations to minimize the impact of rock and spoil -- outside of mined areas. So you can't do mountaintop removal if it destroys a stream -- except where you want to do mountaintop removal. So, rivers and streams in places where there is no coal are protected from coal mining -- only the ones in the coal belt are at risk. One can imagine the political lawyers who write this stuff up for the administration conducting internal betting pools for who can come up with the most creative explanations for undoing the clear intent of the law.
The Washington Post reported on Saturday:
Environmentalists have been feuding with state and federal agencies for more than a decade over how to interpret the 1983 law. A federal court ruled in the environmentalists' favor in 1999, but that judgment was overturned two years later. President Bill Clinton pushed to restrict dumping of mining waste but left office before enacting any changes. The Bush administration has been seeking to rewrite the law since it took office.
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[The rule change] marks the next-to-last step in a 4 1/2 year battle over how companies should dispose of the rubble and slurry created when they blow the tops off mountains to get to the coal buried below. The revised rule will take effect after a 30-day review by the Environmental Protection Agency, making it one of the last significant changes to environmental regulations by the Bush administration.
The best site I have seen yet on this is I Love Mountains. There is a lot of information on the site includng maps and pictures and memorials of mountains killed by this practice. They have a layer on GoogleEarth under Global Awareness called Appalachian Mountaintop Removal which offers many in depth descriptive tools.
Also, importantly, they give you an easy way to tell the EPA to enforce the Stream Buffer Zone Rule, not undermine it.
We have to reverse this:
To this:
To prevent this:
"Its a sad time in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky that coal has lowered our economic standards to the point where my friends, my neighbors, my sons, my son-in-laws, have had to take jobs in an industry that is destroying the very environment we are trying to exist in."