Administration Sends Mixed Signals on Mountain Top Removal Mining

Obama Administration officials announced today that they are taking "unprecedented steps to reduce the environmental impacts of mountaintop coal mining" in the six Appalachian states of Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The announcement focuses on plans to coordinate reviews of mountaintop removal permits among the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of the Interior, and Army Corps of Engineers.

Unfortunately, the administration's announcement fails to address the destructive impact of mountaintop removal mining. So far, the administration's approach to mountaintop removal coal mining has been a mix of strong words, but weak action. Today's announcement is more of the same: unspecified references to strengthening permit reviews provides no assurance that the administration will end this abhorrent practice soon. Mountaintop removal is the among the worst forms of energy acquisition and its destructive impacts are well known.

The science is clear -- this practice devastates ecosystems, obliterates streams, and pollutes water supplies. Searching for environmentally acceptable mountaintop removal, which the administration has not ruled out, is futile. This administration promised a science-based environmental policy, which is impossible to square with mountaintop removal.

Sadly, today's announcement will not bring about what is needed: an end to mountaintop removal. America needs to move to clean energy solutions and mountaintop removal does not fit in that picture. Mountaintop removal is a highly mechanized process that uses explosives to blow the top off of mountains, filling valleys and streams with coal waste.

Even after today's announcement, mountaintop mining will continue to devastate Appalachia, until loopholes in the law are closed. The administration must expeditiously undo the so-called "fill" rule adopted by the Bush administration in 2002 that gives the Army Corps of Engineers the authority to permit the huge stream fills associated with mountaintop removal. There are bi-partisan bills in Congress right now -- the Clean Water Protection Act in the House and the Appalachia Restoration Act in the Senate -- that would also help end mountaintop removal, and we look to the administration to push for legislation that ends mountaintop removal.

Clearly, White House officials trying to address this issue face numerous bureaucratic barriers in the way of their desire to stop MTR.

Moreover, I am sure that White House officials are correct when they said, during a conference call today with some of us from environmental groups, that the MOU announced today among EPA, the Department of Interior and the Army Corps of Engineers represents a big departure from where the agencies have been under President George Bush, and that getting these agencies on the same page on MTR has taken a lot of work.

And given how little has been done in the past to regulate MTR, I am also sure that whatever comes out of this process will indeed result in the most stringent enviro review of MTR to date.

But at the end of the day, we remain without any specifics about what science and regulatory interpretations will guide their claim of more stringent reviews of permits, their claim of stronger mitigation requirements, the use better waste treatment methods. None of this yet exists. So what was the announcement about?

Nor do we know what White House officials mean when they announce their intention to ramp up oversight over state permitting of MTR.

They have told us that they intend vacate the pro-MTR Bush Steam Buffer Zone rule, but that has not yet been done either and it is up to the Army Corps to do it, not typically our friend.

So where does that leave us?

It leaves us with an obligation to acknowledge their good intentions, but an obligation as well to point out that today's strong words by the White House have not changed anything. No rule was changed, no permit was rejected, no legislation was proffered.

Consequently, I think that NRDC's position on the White House's MTR announcement today--that they talk a good talk but have not yet delivered any meaningful change--is the right one to take.

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