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Say No to the Blowing Up of Appalachia

Picture of Mountaintop Removal SiteThe Bush administration has already relaxed Clean Water Act safeguards that protected Appalachian mountain streams from mountaintop removal mining and "King Coal." Now, the administration is trying to weaken the "buffer zone rule," a Reagan-era protection that prohibits coal-mining activities from disturbing areas within 100 feet of streams.

If this new rule goes forward, coal companies will be allowed to dump massive amounts of waste directly into streams, destroying them completely. Already, nearly 2,000 miles of mountain streams in Appalachia have been permanently buried by mountaintop removal waste. Destroying thousands of miles of mountain streams is more than irresponsible; it is immoral.

The Bush administration has prepared a draft environmental impact study it claims looks at alternatives to the elimination of the buffer zone, but the administration failed to even consider enforcing the existing law as an option!

Now is your chance to say "No" to this latest attempt to weaken or eliminate the buffer zone rule that has protected streams from coal mining activities for decades!

Tell the administration to stop trying to diminish the buffer zone rule and start enforcing it!

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Sample Letter for Campaign

Subject: Do Not Weaken the Stream Buffer Zone Rule Docket Number RIN 1029-AC04

Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,

I am opposed to any attempt to weaken, change, or eliminate the stream buffer zone rule that has protected streams from coal mining activities for nearly 25 years.

The buffer zone rule is an important protection for coal mining regions that prohibits coal-mining activities from disrupting areas within 100 feet of streams unless those activities in no way impact water quality or quantity. The changes to this rule proposed by the Bush administration would eliminate these important protections for streams and allow mountaintop removal coal mining companies to further bury, destroy and degrade waters in the Appalachian region with their wastes.

The Bush administration should withdraw this attempt to weaken stream protections and, instead, leave the existing stream buffer zone rule in place. While it claimed to examine the environmental impacts of changing this rule, the agency did not even study the benefits to streams of enforcing the law as written. That failure by itself makes the environmental study useless.

According to the administration's earlier studies on mountaintop removal coal mining, the immediate and long-term environmental impacts of this form of coal mining are severe and irreversible. Lapses in the enforcement of the buffer zone rule (as well as the Clean Water Act) have allowed almost 2,000 miles of streams to be buried or degraded by mining waste.

The administration should not go forward with any rulemaking that would weaken existing laws like the buffer zone rule that protect our vital natural resources from mountaintop removal coal mining. Instead, it should rely on sound science and enforce the rules as they are currently written, as this is the best way to safeguard streams from the destructive effects of mountaintop removal mining.

Sincerely,

Campaign Launched:
September 06, 2007


Background Information

 Earthjustice At Work

Photo of Appalachian Mountains

Earthjustice has long been working to keep to stop the destructive practice of mountaintop removal:

- In an Earthjustice victory,a federal judge in has ruled that the practice of dumping the rubble into streams from blown up mountaintops violates the Clean Water Act.

- A federal court granted a temporary restraining orderthat limits expansive mining at several mountaintop removal mines currently being challenged in Appalachia.

- Earthjustice is seeking court action

On August 24, 2007, the Bush administration proposed repealing a longstanding environmental protection law in its relentless campaign to allow the coal mining industry to continue "mountaintop removal" mining.

In mountaintop removal mining, coal companies actually blow up entire mountaintops and dump millions of tons of waste into nearby streams, burying them forever. This parting gift from the administration to its coal industry friends would allow coal companies to continue their assault on the forests, streams, and communities of Appalachia.

The Buffer Zone Rule of 1983 prohibits coal mining activities from disturbing areas within a 100-foot "buffer" of an intermittent or perennial stream. The buffer zone rule states that coal mining activities cannot disturb these sensitive areas unless water quality and quantity will not be adversely impacted.

The new rule would allow companies to dump massive amounts of waste directly into streams -- nearly 2,000 miles of mountain streams in Appalachia have been buried by mine waste, wiping out these streams and causing flooding and destruction in the surrounding communities. The Bush administration's failure to enforce the buffer zone law led to an additional 535 miles of stream impacts nationwide between 2001 and 2005. Thus, the repeal of the buffer zone rule would allow more than 1,000 miles of streams to be destroyed each decade into the future.

The Bush proposal repeals this important regulation and allows coal companies to permanently bury Appalachian streams beneath hundreds of millions of tons of mining waste. This proposal takes the "buffer" right out of the buffer zone rule and allows coal companies to dump waste directly into streams.

Federal law requires a draft environmental impact study to analyze the alternatives to repealing the buffer zone rule. However, while the administration prepared a DEIS, it refused to even consider leaving in place and enforcing the existing rule in its alternatives analysis. This is outrageous, especially given that the law has been on the books for 24 years!

To view the proposal, please click here and search for Document ID "OSM-2007-0007-0001"

The attack on the buffer zone rule is the latest in a long series of attempts to make mountaintop removal mining easier for "King Coal." In May 2002, the Bush administration eliminated a 25-year-old Clean Water Act regulation that prohibited the Army Corps of Engineers from allowing industrial wastes to bury and destroy U.S. waters. Then, one year later, the administration released studies detailing the harm caused by this practice up until that time, including:

  • Over 1,200 miles of streams have been damaged or destroyed by mountaintop removal up until 2001 
  • When past, present, and future areas that have been or will be effected are added together, the estimated area of forest impacts is 1.4 million acres by the end of the decade
  • Forest loss in West Virginia alone has the potential of directly impacting as many as 244 vertebrate wildlife species

Without additional limits, an additional 350 square miles of mountains, streams, and forests will be flattened and destroyed by mountaintop removal.

Despite these findings, the administration is now recommending further easing of the permitting process to allow even more destruction by effectively repealing the buffer zone rule.

You can read a front page story in The New York Times about this latest Bush administration move to destroy the environment and also an editorial from that newspaper calling for better protections for our streams and rivers.

What you can do:

Please send your comments by October 23, 2007, and let the Bush administration know that it should stop this attempt to weaken stream protections and, instead, leave the existing stream buffer zone rule in place.