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TechnoratiCoalition Sues Over Mining Ruling
A coalition of environmental groups including Kentucky Waterways Alliance has sued the Interior Department and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, seeking to overturn a new rule that will make it easier for mining companies to dump waste rock into streams.
![[]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/mountaintop-1223.jpg "mountaintop-1223.jpg")
The revisions, made final Dec. 12, will let mining companies disregard a 100-foot stream buffer zone if they are able to convince regulators that no other option was available and that they had taken steps to minimize harm to the environment.
Attorneys with Earthjustice, Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, Appalachian Citizens Law Center, Sierra Club and Waterkeeper Alliance filed the legal challenge yesterday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. The suit was filed on behalf of the Kentucky environmental group as well as the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, Save Our Cumberland Mountains, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Coal River Mountain Watch and Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.
If not overturned, the environmental groups from Kentucky, West Virginia or Tennessee said the rule change would lead to more mountaintop removal coal mining. That's the mining practice of using explosives on the tops and sides of mountains to get at underlying coal seams.
"The notion that coal mining companies can dump their wastes in streams without degrading them is a fantasy that the Bush administration is now trying to write into law," said Judith Petersen, executive director of Kentucky Waterways Alliance.
Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that the federal agencies violated environmental protection standards, failed to consider the cumulative effects of stream loss from mining, and failed to analyze a full range of alternatives, among other allegations.
At issue is a new Office of Surface Mining rule that revised a 25-year-old rule that generally prohibited mining within 100 feet of streams, but has been a source of controversy and confusion since it was challenged in a federal lawsuit in West Virginia in the late 1990s. Despite the rule, companies generally have been allowed to fill the upper reaches of stream beds in mountain hollows.
OSM officials have said the change was intended to "minimize disputes and misunderstandings" and to "clarify what buffer zone requirements apply."
On Dec. 2, EPA spokeswoman Ernesta Jones explained in a written statement why her agency concurred with OSM. She said the new rule was "intended to reduce the environmental impacts of surface coal mining and to provide mining operators clear standards for mining near bodies of water."
She also said that the EPA "worked closely with OSM to enhance environmental provisions in the final rule, including requirements that no mining activities may occur in or near streams that would violate federal or state water quality standards."
Mining officials in Kentucky have said that the new rule codifies existing practices and that the original buffer rule was never intended to protect "dry ditches."
Kentucky political leaders have, in recent weeks, been divided on the change.
Gov. Steve Beshear along with Attorney General Jack Conway and U.S. Reps. Ben Chandler and John Yarmuth wrote letters to the EPA opposing the rule change. But 20 Kentucky legislators, including House Speaker Jody Richards and House Majority Floor Leader Rocky Adkins, followed up with their own letter supporting the change.
12 Comments so far
Show AllI love it when you have governors arguing about how law change is bad when all the change does is clarify the law better.
Is someone pulling my leg here? Greed is insidious!
This is that clean coal people are pushing.
Anyone who has spent any time in coal mining country knows that there is no such thing as clean coal. Trying to make it so, is just putting off the inevitable. We need to get away from fossil fuels.
There is plenty of coal in the United States and no reason why the EPA stream restriction can not be maintained. We should be mining for coal -- not blasting the tops of mountains off. This is just another big business abuse that can be avoided with a little engineering effort. Why should others have to degrade their lives for no benefit so that mine companies can make more money. All these companies leave behind is sickness and destroyed and valueless land owned by others.
Chuck Drinnan
.That coal is plentiful seems a poor excuse for continuing to use something that causes such pollution. The last several mine accidents in the coal industry prove that continued mining imperils lives, especially since the suppression of the unions has led to unsafe mining practices. Coal is a lose, lose scenario and we are far better off exploring, inventing and building clean energy solutions.
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
The sad part is that in addition to destroying the environment including drinking water for the people living there, poverty follows mining like night follows day.
I forget where, but one of the poorest counties in the country provided billions of dollars of coal to the corporate masters. They are suffering from environmentally connected illness and have no health care.
Did anyone watched Democracy Now yesterday?
It's killing me that the biggest threat to our Democracy - Karl Rove's election Rigging is getting no real estate on my favorite site.
The crash of Mike Connell's aircraft in Ohio.
I am now seriously afraid for Obama at the innaugration.
Love
Zero
.Lest we forget
Not only does coal contribute mightily to our global warming and to the pollutants that make cancer rather common but the coal industry has weakened the unions to the point where safety in those mines is little more than a joke.
The phrase "clean coal" which we have heard , sad to say, from our next President is a meaningless term. Coal pollutes, it kills our environment bringing it out of the ground and using it to make electricity. It would seem that, rather than emphasize new and cleaner technologies we will see a continuation of our dependency upon both coal an doil these next four years.
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
sue them to stop destroying the streams? what about a national coalition to sue for monetary damages for all the past destruction? give me the URL and i'll donate in a heartbeat, as would i suspect many thousands more. the system has some handles for us, but we're not using them very well.
There's what is good for our planet and there's money!
In a world that is built on greed there's no prize for guessing which of these two things will be chosen.
It's time to get rid of the Parasites who are running this world for their own selfish benefit. It's time to change the rules, set up a new economic system, one that works to advantage everyone, not just a handful.
It's time to treat greed and mega-wealth with contempt! It's time to despise those who spend their lives money-grubbing and flaunting their ill-gotten gains in the faces of the starving, the poor.
We, the people, must make life impossible for the Parasites before they destroy our planet completely.
Become a shoe-thrower today! Help change the world.
www.dangerouscreation.com
Come see the prosperity in Appalachia http://www.wisecountyissues.com thanks to Presidebt Bush, President Cheney, Sean Hannity and THE COAL INDUSTRY. Our mountains and people have been bombed, blown up, decapitated. Terror on the mountain.
Bernice. What a sorry state our country is in when citizen and advocacy groups must continually be having to sue the government to stop it from ruining our environment and any other number of dastardly actions (torture, false imprisonment, denial of civil rights, et cetera).
January 20 still seems so far away, and with a government that knows its job is to protect and nurture our democracy instead of violating it and our environment instead of selling it off to the highest bidder.