Bush EPA eases rules on mountaintop mining

December 3, 11:44 PMSacramento Environmental News ExaminerHarry Osibin

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In an action that many activists hope will be reversed by the future Obama administration, the Bush EPA Tuesday stripped away a safeguard that had put minimal regulation on mountain-top mining, the practice of blowing off mountaintops in the quest for coal.  The stream buffer rule had been on the books since 1983 and had prohibited surface mining within one hundred feet of a flowing stream.

The practice (mountaintop mining) most acutely affects Appalachia, in which more than 400 mountaintops have already been stripped of trees and flattened and 1,200 miles of mountain streams buried under rubble.

Environmental justice activists decried the decision as another slap-in-face to a disenfranchised community.  From the top, politicos from Tennessee and Kentucky, including the governors of both states have protested the rule repeal.

Earthjustice, the Sierra Club, the Ohio Valley Coalition, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and Coal River Mountain Watch are some of the NGOs involved in the decades-long struggle to regulate mining practices in the region.

Julia (Judy) Bonds of West Virginia and the Coal River Mountain Watch (photo-right) won the Goldman Environmental Prize  in 2003 for her activism on the issue.  She recalled her son's trying to splash in sediment-choked streams that were eventually buried due to mountaintop removal.  She has toured extensively since her award speaking about community activism and organizing.  She talks about reversing long-held "stereotypes of Appalachia."

About this rule change she writes, "Bush's most recent gift to the coal industry is a death sentence for the mountain communities and streams of Appalachia. Bush has made it possible for coal companies to continue the 3 1/2 million pounds of explosives detonated daily here in West Virginia.  It seems like Bush's motto is, 'If corporations can't obey the law, no problem, then lets change the law'".

The incoming administration will be held to a higher environmental standard, even though the President-elect is from Illinois, a coal-producing state.

Note:  Julia Bonds is pictured with Majora Carter (Executive Director/Founder of Sustainable South Bronx)

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