After close of business on Friday, Oct. 30, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar surrendered to coal mine operators who are rapidly destroying the central Appalachian Mountains. Interior’s capitulation was filed by the Obama administration in federal court in papers that reveal the Department will further delay its promise to rescind the Bush administration’s gutting of crucial surface mining regulations in effect since 1983.
When we voted for change in November of 2008, environmentalists rallied to a standard. We didn’t realize that it was a white flag.
Evisceration of the “buffer zone rule,” was the Bush administration’s December 2008 parting gift to the coal industry. Until then, that rule prohibited mining within 100 feet of larger streams if it would harm water quality, quantity, or other environmental resources of the stream. Because the rule was unequivocal, coal operators and the Bush Department of Interior realized that it had to be changed to legalize mountaintop removal in Appalachia.
Mountaintop removal mining is so destructive that it necessitates removal of streams on mine sites or their burial beneat... Read more
