I noticed the following while looking through the (subscription only) Web site of my hometown newspaper this morning:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Interior Department has advanced a proposal that would ease restrictions on dumping mountaintop mining waste near rivers and streams, modifying protections that have been in place — though often circumvented by mining companies — for a quarter-century.
The department's Office of Surface Mining issued a final environmental impact analysis Friday on the proposed rule change, which has been under consideration for four years. It has been a top priority of the surface mining industry.
It sets the stage for a final regulation, one of the last major environmental initiatives of the Bush administration, after 30 days of additional public comment and interagency review...
...Mining companies remove vast mountaintop areas to expose the coal. While they are required to restore much of the land, the removal includes many tons of rocks, debris and other waste that are trucked away and then dumped into valley areas, including stream beds.
Despite the 100-foot buffer requirement, environmentalists estimate hundreds of miles of streams have been impacted, some of them obliterated, because of lax enforcement of the 1983 restrictions or different interpretations of the federal rule.
This proposed rule "legitimizes mountaintop removal and its most damaging effect which is putting valley fill and sludge into streams," Mulhern said.
This ruling will literally make more poor people sick because local water supplies will be more polluted. More children will get asthma, with more coal particulate in the air nearer their homes. And so on. It serves as a reminder that, on its way out the door, the Bush administration is likely to do as much of this sort of thing as it can, loosening federal regulations, handing out goodies to corporate backers, and so on. Terrible stuff will happen.
