West Virginia: Is anyone willing to take on Big Coal’s Senator Robert Byrd

A recent court decision has given the green light to as many as 90
mountaintop mining projects in Appalachia’s coal-rich hills, which in
turn could destroy more than 200 miles of valleys and streams on top
of the 1,200 miles that have already been obliterated.

Full text of the NYtimes editorial opinion:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/opinion/16mon2.html?_r=2

The right course for the administration is clear: stop the projects until the
underlying regulations are revised so as to end the practice
altogether.b

Mountaintop mining is just what the name suggests. Enormous machines —
bulldozers and draglines — scrape away mountain ridges to expose the
coal seams below.

The coal is then trucked away, and the leftover rock
and dirt are dumped into adjacent valleys and streams. Both John
McCain and Barack Obama vowed to end the practice during the 2008
campaign — even though no recent administration, Democratic or
Republican, has been willing to take on Robert Byrd, West Virginia’s
senior senator, or the coal companies, which insist without proof that
there is no other cost-effective way to dispose of the waste.

There is a long and tortured legal history surrounding mountaintop mining, but the essential question is this: Is dumping mine waste into streams a
violation of the federal Clean Water Act?

On its face the answer is yes, but various regulatory maneuvers have allowed this practice to proceed. The worst of these was a 2002 rule by the Bush administration that in effect removed mining waste from the list of the law’s
prohibited pollutants.

The rule has made it easy for the Army Corps of
Engineers to issue mining permits and hard for the courts to deny
them. Mr. Obama promised to find better ways of mining coal “than
simply blowing the tops off mountains.” The time to do so is now.

Full text of the NYtimes editorial opinion:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/opinion/16mon2.html?_r=2