As threatened, the Bush Environmental Positively-useless Administration has repealed key parts of the Stream Buffer Act. Previously, the EPA had been cooperating with companies to subvert the act, but judges in some districts were still slowing down approval of mountaintop removal operations. Now even that token obstacle has been removed.
Approval by EPA and the White House Office of Management and Budget paved the way for Interior Department officials to finalize industry-backed changes in the 25-year-old stream "buffer zone" rule.
Environmental groups had fought the change, because they hoped that either court actions or moves by the incoming Obama administration might use the buffer zone as a tool to more strictly regulate mountaintop removal.
Despite the destruction of more than 400 mountains, and the routine violation of the existing rules, the Bush administration still hustled through this gift to the worst operators in the coal industry. In doing so, they fulfilled one of the dreams Bush has held since coming into office.
For nearly five years, since January 2004, the Bush administration has been working to essentially eliminate the more than 20-year-old buffer zone rule. Generally, that rule prohibits mining activities within 100 feet of perennial and intermittent streams.
Coal operators already can obtain variances to mine within the 100-foot buffer. To do so, though, companies must show that their operations will not cause water quality violations or "adversely affect the water quantity and quality, or other environmental resources of the stream."
Ridiculously, the EPA and Office of Surface Mining had already been issuing such variances to operations that completely buried flowing streams, because blasting a stream out of existence somehow negates the need to worry about water quality. That's how 1,200 miles of flowing water has been eliminated from the Appalachian region.
Now the EPA has stopped even the pretense of caring.
Way back when he was running (unsuccessfully) for a seat in Congress, Bush declared that he wanted to do away with both safety and environmental regulations. There are plenty of dead miners and ruined communities to mark his accomplishments in the White House.