One of the most environmentally damaging practices in the U.S. is about to get worse, if the Bush administration is successful in changing an Interior Department rule concerning mountaintop removal for coal extraction.
The agency announced yesterday it is prepared to issue a final rule that will make it easier for mining companies to dump their waste near rivers and streams, according to a Washington Post report.
The revised rule will go into effect after a 30-day review by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It marks yet another deplorable change to environmental regulations by the Bush administration.
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 government estimates that about 1,600 miles of Appalachian streams have been erased by this practice since it began in the mid 1980s.
The new rule states mining companies must avoid the 100-foot stream buffer zone "or show why avoidance is not possible"--which it never is.
In addition it states that if they do dump waste in the buffer zone, they must try to minimize or avoid harming streams "to the extent practicable"--which it isn't.
The Interior Departement said in a statement that the change in regulation would have a "slightly positive" effect on the environment "because it requires coal mining operations to minimize certain impacts," but Joan Mulhern, senior legislative counsel for the environmental law firm Earthjustice, called the environmental impact statement "totally inadequate."
"It didn't even include the alternative of actually enforcing the rule on the books," she said. "The implications of this ruling are devastating, they're widespread and they're irreversible."
EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson must now certify that the new rule is in compliance with the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. If he were to determine that the environmental impact statement is inadequate, he could block the law. But based on his record of obeisance to the administration, that is unlikely.
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