Bush Proposes Mountaintop Mining Plan


Associated Press , January 7,2004
by Nancy Zuckerbrod

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration proposed on Wednesday
revising a policy that limits mining activity near streams, changes
environmentalists say will encourage a particularly destructive way of
obtaining coal.


The method, dubbed "mountaintop mining," involves shearing off the
tops of ridges to expose a coal seam. Dirt and rock are pushed into
nearby stream beds, a practice known as valley fill.


The Interior Department's proposal would eliminate an existing policy
that says land within 100 feet of a stream cannot be disturbed by
mining activity unless a company can prove that the work won't affect
the stream's water quality and quantity.


In the proposed rule, the department said that the standard is
impossible to comply with and coal operators must instead prevent
damage to streams "to the extent possible, using the best technology
currently available."


Environmentalists said valley fills are a violation of the existing
buffer zone rule and that the Bush administration is caving into the
industry, which wants to protect its ability to use the increasingly
popular mining technique.


"Instead of changing industry practice to conform to the law, the Bush
administration is changing the law to conform to industry practices,"
said Jim Hecker, a Washington-based environmental lawyer. He is
involved in a West Virginia court case challenging the practice of
mountaintop mining.


A federal judge in West Virginia previously ruled that mountaintop
mining violated the "buffer zone rule," but an appeals court decided
that the judge lacked the jurisdiction to hear the case, saying it
should have been tried in state court.


The Bush administration argued the new rule is needed to clarify the
intent of the buffer zone rule, which was last amended in 1983 and
which federal officials say wasn't designed to prevent mountaintop
mining altogether.


"I think you've got to recognize that's a viable means of mining
coal," said Dave Hartos, a scientist with the Interior Department who
helped write the rule.


Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association,
said the current buffer zone rule is confusing and goes beyond what
Congress intended when it passed in 1977 a sweeping law that dealt
with the environmental impact of coal mining.


Joan Mulhern, a lawyer for the Washington group Earthjustice Legal
Defense Fund said the proposal is the second major blow to
environmentalists' efforts to prevent damage from mountaintop mining.
The administration issued a rule in May 2002 that eliminated an Army
Corps ban on mine waste and other pollution in waterways.


The Interior Department is taking comments on the proposal until
March.