Bush administration enacts rule to ease mountaintop-removal strip mining of coal

UPDATE, Dec. 4: In approving the rule, EPA apparently ignored findings of its own studies, reports Joaquin Sapien of ProPublica.

"The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday approved a last-minute rule change by the Bush administration that environmentalists fear will lead to coal companies burying more Appalachian streams with excess rock and dirt from surface mining," report Renee Schoof, Bill Estep and Andy Mead of the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The rule proposed by the Interior Department and its Office of Surface Mining was revised at EPA's request, but will still "revoke parts of a key water quality rule that could have been used [in lawsuits or action by the Obama administration] to limit the burial of streams by mountaintop-removal coal-mining operations," writes Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette.

The old "buffer zone" rule, enacted 25 years ago, bans mining activities withing 100 feet of streams, including those that occasionally dry up. That complicates mountaintop-removal mining, which deposits the rock and dirt from the mined area in fills at the heads of hollows, or narrow valleys below the mined ridges. Federal and state agencies routinely grant coal companies variances from the rule, supposedly by showing that they won't "adversely affect the water quantity and quality, or other environmental resources of the stream," as the current rule states.

Under the final version of the new rule, "EPA would consider mining valley fills incompliance with water quality standards if mining operators obtained 'dredge-and-fill' permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers," Ward reports. "But the standard for obtaining such a permit allows a greater level of damage than would be permitted under OSM's previous version of the buffer zone rule." The new rule "would also require coal operators to minimize fills and consider alternatives." (Read more)

Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post reports, "A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the rule has not been published, said new safeguards in the regulation will reduce the amount of waste deposited in Appalachian mountain waterways and is 'going to impose costs on the coal industry.' But coal officials, who had lobbied for the change, said it would not burden the industry and would help protect Appalachia's 14,000 mountaintop-mining jobs." (Photo: Mountaintop mine near Mud River, W. Va., by Michael Williamson of the Post.)

The Obama administration could try to overturn the new rule, which would be a complicated and lengthy process. "Obama's transition team declined to comment on its plans on Tuesday," the Herald-Leader reports. "Another option would be for opponents to go through the courts. Opponents have argued that the rule change is illegal." Also, the administration could propose a broader regulation or legislaiton that would place new limits on mountaintop removal, a step Obama has said he favors.

The governors of Kentucky and Tennessee asked EPA to reject the new rule, but Kentucky "state legislators, including several from coal-mining regions ... sent their own letter to the EPA supporting the change," the Herald-Leader notes. The state's Democratic congressmen opposed the rule, and Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Versailles, said yesterday, "This decision ignores Kentucky's landscape and merely rewards bad behavior." (Read more)