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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPolluting Appalachia’s Streams With Mountaintop Removal Mining Just Got Harder
By Ryan Koronowski
This week the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia tossed out a late-2008 Bush Administration decision to scrap a decades-old rule protecting streams from the spoils of mountaintop removal mining. It said the rule violated the Endangered Species Act.
Use of the word spoil is not rhetoric here, it is the technical term for the broken rock that coal mining operators create after drilling, blasting, or bulldozing the tops of mountains to get access to the coal underneath. Since the spoil takes up more room when broken up, the companies cannot put it back where it came from, so they dump it elsewhere often in the tops of valleys, burying streams.
The rule in question, issued in 1983, established a buffer zone around streams to keep toxic coal mining spoil from entering sensitive waterways. In December 2008, the outgoing Bush Administration issued its own Stream Buffer Zone Rule that essentially removed those protections. The National Parks Conservation Association challenged the rule, and lawyers from the Southern Environmental Law Center argued the case. The Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency are defendants in the case, though they asked the Court to rule against them in a September hearing. The National Mining Association protested the governments position as an intervening defendant, arguing that the government erred in partially conceding the case.
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Last year, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that EPA had the authority under the Clean Water Act to veto so-called dredge and fill permits that allowed mining companies dispose of waste in streams. The decision confirmed EPAs rejection of a permit for what would have been one of the largest mountaintop removal mines in West Virginia history.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/22/3320911/mountaintop-removal-mining-stream-buffer-rule/
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)and please let it work to stop the decimation of coal country----some of the most beautiful scenery we have before it is destroyed.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)think
(11,641 posts)Laxman
(2,419 posts)I'll have to read through this decision. I was just preparing my lecture on the Clean Water Act (how sad it that for a Saturday night?) for next week and mountain top mining and fracking always figure prominently in the lesson. Very timely. The last few years, this has been a depressing/anger inducing lecture. Perhaps I can be a bit more optimistic this semester. I knew the SELC had the suit pending but I wasn't aware it had been decided. This has the potential to be an extremely positive development.
Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)getting so much attention.
thanks to the internet, Facebook.. little can be hidden
any more and when everybody starts seeing, really looking
at what's been going on with toxifying our planet, the law
is getting involved.
I am hopeful.. good on you for teaching about clean water
sanity.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)for more solar and wind power. What they are doing to the once beautiful Appalachians (yes, even the part that goes through WV ) is horrible.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)"We need to push hard for more solar and wind power."
...a huge push is needed.
U.S. Approves Two Huge Solar Projects On Public Lands In California
http://election.democraticunderground.com/10024547836
theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)... onto what has been a dismal time for the mountains and for those who love them.
sheshe2
(84,005 posts)The videos were heartbreaking, ProSense.
X_Digger
(18,585 posts)I grew up in Southwest Virginia, coal country. The only flat land available was flood plain down next to creeks and rivers.
If you lived on flat land, chances are you would be flooded once every 40-50 years. 1957, 1976, 1983, 1991- all saw a large portion of the town flooded.
There was little land for farming, no land for manufacturing or any kind of industry. Just coal.
A bit of flat land could mean a lot of economic opportunity to towns like that.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=grundy,+va&hl=en&ll=37.27699,-82.090788&spn=0.024211,0.044632&sll=31.168934,-100.076842&sspn=13.309797,22.851563&t=h&hnear=Grundy,+Buchanan+County,+Virginia&z=15&iwloc=A
bkanderson76
(266 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)Cha
(297,935 posts)marauded everything.. blood and treasure. McCain-palin would have finished us off.
thanks ProSense~
ProSense
(116,464 posts)WASHINGTON (AP) Industry groups and Republican-led states are heading an attack at the Supreme Court against the Obama administration's sole means of trying to limit power-plant and factory emissions of gases blamed for global warming.
As President Barack Obama pledges to act on environmental and other matters when Congress doesn't, or won't, opponents of regulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases cast the rule as a power grab of historic proportions.
The court is hearing arguments Monday about a small but important piece of the Environmental Protection Agency's plans to cut the emissions a requirement that companies expanding industrial facilities or building new ones that would increase overall pollution must also evaluate ways to reduce the carbon they release.
Environmental groups and even some of their opponents say that whatever the court decides, EPA still will be able to move forward with broader plans to set emission standards for greenhouse gases for new and existing power plants.
- more -
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/conservative-epa-supreme-court
Cha
(297,935 posts)caring smart people in other countries are looking at this in horror.
theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)ProSense
(116,464 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)to overrule, sue over, and ultimately destroy national environmental regulations.
Once again, the Third Way tries to celebrate offering us a band-aid with the left hand, while using the right to punch us out, foul the planet, and steal millions.
You cannot claim to care about the environment and simultaneously push the mammoth, predatory TPP. They are just as violently mutually exclusive as claiming to care about income inequality and pushing the TPP.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)"Good, but Obama's TPP will allow multinational corporations"
Translation: Good, but Obama sucks.
Obama EPA Revokes Largest Mountaintop Removal Permit in US History
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x591504
NutmegYankee
(16,204 posts)It's a complete destruction of the beauty and majesty of Appalachia.
boston bean
(36,224 posts)make me want to cry. I can't stand to see it.
That this is allowed to happen just shows you how far greed and purchase of politicians to allow this has gone..
It is a crime to do this to our environment. Just looking at it you can see the pure evil associated with it.