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It involves whether to allow mining companies to continue blowing the tops off mountains to get to coal more easily. The EPA put hundreds of mining top operations on notice recently that it needed to scrutinize the effect on local streams and wetlands before allowing them to proceed.
My good friend, Ekyprogressive, who lives in Kentucky, has written on this issue before. He states that, aside from destroying the mountain, that this process releases tons of ash and debri into the air when they blow off the mountaintop.
More and more people, he states, are suffering from asthma and pulmonary diseases since this began. In addition, the dumps sites and the ash have already polluted many of the streams.
Mining companies and environmental groups have fought over how to interpret the Clean Water Act, which prohibits dumping of mining waste that damages water quality. Courts have issued conflicting opinions, and federal officials estimate that since the mid-1980s 1,600 miles of streams in Appalachia have been wiped out by such "valley fills."
Companies had been hoping to get Corps of Engineers permits for dozens of new and ongoing mountaintop mining operations after a three-judge appeals panel in Richmond ruled last month that the Corps did not have to conduct extensive reviews before issuing the permits.
Just before leaving office, the Bush administration finalized rules that eased a 25-year-old prohibition on dumping mine waste within 100 feet of any intermittent or permanent stream, allowing such dumping if it was unavoidable and as long as harm was minimized "to the extent practicable" and was compensated for somewhere else.
Corps spokesman Doug Garman said the agency "will be working with EPA to address any concerns they have related to mountaintop mining permits."
Chuck Nelson, who worked as a coal miner in West Virginia for three decades and is now a community organizer for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, said the EPA's decision came "just in time." Mountaintop mining requires fewer workers than traditional mining, he said, and its environmental degradation leaves communities with few economic options.
"We're losing our way of life and our culture," Nelson said. "We're paying the price for mountaintop removal. It's big profits for the industry."
But William B. Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, questioned why the new administration would potentially put hundreds of jobs on hold when other land-clearing activities in Appalachia also affect the environment.
"It's absolutely puzzling to me why you would want to dismantle a state's economy," Raney said. "Does this mean in the steep terrain of eastern America, we're not going to have roads, we're not going to have economic development, we're not going to have Wal-Marts?"
The EPA's action was the latest step reviewing environmental decisions made under President George W. Bush. On Monday, the Fish and Wildlife Service filed a document in U.S. District Court saying it will reconsider a 2006 decision not to protect the Gunnison sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act.
Conservationists have sought to win federal protection for it, and the Interior Department's inspector general concluded in December that Bush's appointees ignored federal biologists' advice in not adding the bird and other species to the protected list.
