PDF Update - August 12, 2009: Federal Court Blocks Interior Department; Bold Action Needed to End Destruction
Washington, DC: The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) today announced the availability of the final environmental impact statement (FEIS) evaluating potential changes to the excess spoil and coal mine waste disposal rules as well as the stream buffer zone rule.
The final environmental impact statement provides decision makers with information about the impacts that could result if these rules are revised.
The rulemaking alternatives considered in the FEIS address two requirements of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA): to prevent additional contributions of sediment to streams outside the permit area, and to minimize adverse impacts on fish and wildlife and related environmental values. The alternatives would address environmental concerns about the impacts of disposal of excess rock from coal mine excavation (‘excess spoil’), coal mine waste, and other coal mining activities in and around streams. They would require minimization of impacts from these activities, and would clarify existing requirements that are not now interpreted consistently.
The FEIS is a two book set: Book 1 and Book 2. To go directly to the FEIS, see links below.
Book 1: (the main body of the FEIS) OSM’s Final Environment Impact Statement (FEIS) for the revised “excess spoil minimization - stream buffer zone” proposed rule is available for review and download at regulations.gov
Book 2: contains copies of comments and the agencies response to those comments. The FEIS evaluates potential changes to the excess spoil, coal mine waste, and stream buffer zone regulations, and will allow decision makers in OSM and Department of Interior to make informed decisions on changing or not changing the associated rules. Fore more information, go to regulations.gov
PDF: Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining. Destroying Appalchia One Mountain At A Time
Coalfield Residents Face Continued Destruction Of Their Communities And Natural Resources
Earth Justice Press Release: October 17, 2008
Washington, DC:
The Bush administration is announcing today plans to finalize a major environmental rule change before the end of its term. This afternoon, the Office of Surface Mining (OSM) will release its final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that recommends effectively repealing one of the key programs at issue in the ongoing battle over the controversial coal mining practice known as mountaintop removal.
by Vivian Stockman, vivian@ohvec.org
The specific regulation the OSM is proposing to overturn is the Stream Buffer Zone rule, a Reagan-era restriction on surface coal mining activities that protects a 100-foot corridor around flowing streams in order to preserve water quality. The new rule, which is expected to be finalized in 30 days, will allow coal companies to dump massive waste piles called "valley fills" directly into streams, permanently burying them. Already, more than 2000 miles of Appalachian streams have been buried or degraded by waste from mountaintop removal mining.
Mountaintop removal coal mining -- the most environmentally damaging form of coal strip mining -- has received increased national attention in recent weeks as both Presidential candidates have expressed opposition to the practice.
Statement by Joan Mulhern, Earthjustice Senior Legislative Counsel:
“ The final EIS is a sham. The agency did not even study, among available alternatives, the option of enforcing the stream buffer rule that has been on the books since 1983. Instead, they pretend that the existing stream buffer law does not apply to valley fills and sludge impoundments, so any minutely incremental effort to ‘ minimize’ those waste dumps is, in their version of this, a net benefit to the environment. Of course this is completely backwards.”
“They claim their rule is better for the environment when the exact opposite is true. What they are calling a treat is nothing other than a trick”
“This latest move is the capstone to the devastating legacy the Bush administration has left to the communities in Appalachia and to all Americans who care about our nation's mountains and streams. In just 8 years this administration has allowed coal companies to obliterate mountain ranges that have existed for millennia. Today they are announcing plans to accelerate that destruction into the future and spread it nationwide.”
Contact: Joan Mulhern, Earthjustice, 202.667.4500
PDF: Earth Justice: Bush Admin Seeks to Lock Down Destructive Mountaintop Removal Mining Rule
PDF: Buffer Zone Rule: Side-by-side comparison
PDF: Sierra Club Poll Results on Mountaintop Removal
PDF: Office of Surface Mining (OFS): Environmental Impact Statement
More Sadness for Appalachia
Editorial New York Times:October 20, 2008
The Bush administration is writing one more sad chapter in the long, tortured history of Appalachia’s coal-rich hills. Last week, the Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining proposed a revision, amounting to a repeal, of one of the last regulatory protections against an environmentally ruinous mining practice called mountaintop removal is just what the name suggests: enormous machines scrape away mountain ridges to expose the coal seams. The leftover rock and dirt are then dumped into adjacent valleys and streams. The practice has gone on for years. By one estimate, 1,200 miles of Appalachian streams have been buried this way and hundreds of square miles of forests damaged.
No recent administration, Democrat or Republican, has made a serious effort to end the dumping, largely in deference to the coal industry and the political influence of Robert Byrd, West Virginia’s senior senator. But beginning in the late-1990s, concerned citizens tried to slow things by invoking the so-called stream buffer zone rule, which seeks to protect water quality by prohibiting any mining activity within 100 feet of flowing streams.
With the urging of the coal companies, the Bush administration started looking for creative ways to ensure that this destructive practice could continue. In 2002, for instance, the Environmental Protection Agency found itself inconvenienced by a rule explicitly prohibiting the use of mining waste as “fill” in streams and wetlands for development and other purposes. So the administration simply rewrote the regulations.
The nettlesome buffer zone rule still remained in place, so in 2004 the administration began a systematic effort to weaken it as well. That culminated Friday when the Office of Surface Mining sent its proposal for gutting the rule to the E.P.A., whose concurrence is required.
Both John McCain and Barack Obama have said in the last month that they oppose mountaintop removal, which may explain the administration’s mad dash to rewrite the rule before a more conservation-minded administration arrives in town. Their opposition also inspires slim hopes among environmentalists that Stephen Johnson, the E.P.A.’s administrator, would withhold his approval. That would be an enormous surprise, but also enormously welcome.
Union of Concerned Scientists Weigh In:
Mining Agency Buries Streams and Science
The Office of Surface Mining (OSM) proposed to eliminate a key rule that protects Appalachian streams and communities from a coal-mining technique known as mountaintop removal mining. The Office intends to replace the rule with a regulation that streamlines the approval process for coal mining permits.1 This marks OSM's second attempt in five years to scale back restrictions on the Appalachian coal industry, distorting scientific procedures for assessing environmental impacts in the process.
During mountaintop removal mining, coal companies dynamite entire mountain ridges in order to expose coal seams. Millions of tons of waste rock and dirt are then dumped into nearby hollows, burying headwater streams under enormous valley fills and simultaneously obliterating ecosystems. Waterborne pollutants that leach out from filled sites pose grave risks to people and wildlife downstream.
These ecosystems are legally protected under the 1983 stream buffer zone (SBZ) rule, which prohibits mining companies from digging and dumping within 100 feet of any stream,2 but this rule is rarely enforced as written.3 The scientific community overwhelmingly affirms this is the best method for protecting these waters.4 OSM agrees that implementation of the SBZ rule is "the best technology currently available" to protect stream environments,5 and their best means of executing the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA).6
Yet OSM plans to scrap the SBZ rule in favor of weak regulatory language allowing coal companies to dump mining waste directly into streams with only a vague requirement to minimize the adverse environmental impacts.7 To justify the change, the office released an environmental impact statement (EIS) in August of 20078 that distorts the scientific evidence and downplays the devastation caused by mountaintop removal mining.
For complete article access www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science