Relaxed rules proposed for strip-mining

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration wants to quit requiring coal operators to prove that their surface mining will not damage streams, fish and wildlife.

Under proposed new regulations that it will put out today for public comment, strip mine operators would have to show only that they intend “to prevent, to the extent possible using the best technology currently available,” such damage.

“With this proposal, we can establish a consistent, nationwide means to reduce the impacts of surface coal mining and provide clear rules specifying what mining activities can and cannot be conducted near bodies of water,” said C. Stephen Allred, Assistant Secretary of Interior for Land and Minerals Management.

Current policy from the Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining says land within 100 feet of a stream cannot be disturbed by mining unless a company can prove it will not affect the water’s quality and quantity.

Interior officials have said that complying with that buffer zone requirement is impossible in “mountaintop removal mining,” which involves shearing off the tops of ridges to expose a coal seam. Dirt and rock are pushed below, often into stream beds, a practice known as valley fill.

What would change

The new regulations would allow mining that would alter a stream’s flow as long as any damages to the environment are repaired later.

Valley fills allowed under the old, 1983 regulations will still be permitted. The volume of rock that can be displaced to get to the surface of a coal seam and the area where that rock is put can be “no larger than needed,” according to the proposal.

Environmentalists want such fills banned entirely.

“The Bush administration just doesn’t give up in its quest to give away more and more legal protections to the mountaintop removal polluters,” said Joan Mulhern, an attorney for the Earthjustice legal firm.

The latest changes to the buffer-zone rule were first proposed more than three years ago.