The latest in a flurry of environmentally-devastating, last-minute rule changes from the Bush administration will give the go ahead for coal mining companies to fill valleys with the mining debris left over from lobbing-off mountaintops.

[social_buttons]Earlier this week, the EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality approved a rule change that will allow coal mining companies to lawfully bury stream valleys and fill them with the tops of mountains that have been carved off for the coal they contain.

For years, coal mining companies were allowed to file for exemptions to a 25 year-old rule prohibiting the dumping of fill from mountaintop removal mining within 100 feet of streams and were granted them the vast majority of the time. In practice, the government had essentially been ignoring the rule for years; now they have codified that ignorance into a regulatory standard.

The practice of mountaintop removal (MTR) has buried 1200 miles of streams in Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and elsewhere. The largest valley fills can approach 800 feet in height and swallow more than a mile of streambed. Along with the damage of riparian systems, MTR obviously requires the clearcutting of forests, increasing erosion and biodiversity loss.

The final step in MTR creates a sludge that contains coal dust and other sediment, and may contain heavy metals or chemicals that would impair water quality in streams and rivers if it were allowed to flow freely off the mine site. To keep any hazardous materials out of local water supplies, mine operators contain the coal sludge in nearby valleys, behind huge earthen dams known as valley fills.

It is hard to see how the new rule abides by the Clean Water Act which requires the federal government to protect all streams and rivers from being dumped in. Edward C. Hopkins, a policy analyst at the Sierra Club, said: “The E.P.A.’s own scientists have concluded that dumping mining waste into streams devastates downstream water quality. By signing off on this rule, the agency has abdicated its responsibility.”

Sierra Club executive director wrote, “This new rule is so bad that the governors of two of the most-affected states, Kentucky’s Steven Beshear and Tennessee’s Phil Bredesen, opposed it, Beshear saying it would increase pollution of Kentucky’s “beautiful natural resources.”

It is not entirely clear how president-elect Obama will handle the new mining waste rule. As a candidate, Barack Obama expressed serious concerns about the environmental implications of mountaintop mining, telling one environmental organization, “We have to find more environmentally sound ways of mining coal than simply blowing the tops off mountains.”

The new mining debris rule will join a litany of Bush administration midnight regulatory changes that are particularly damaging to the environment, including a rule change permitting the development of oil shale and another that creates an exemption for perchlorate, a known neurotoxin found at unsafe levels in the drinking water of millions of Americans.

The Department of Interior plans to make the rule final in December after briefing members of Congress this week and next. It will likely go into effect 30 days after that.

Related:

Bank of America’s Coal-Funding Concessions Delight Climate Activists

Bank of America Divests from Mountaintop Removal, Refocuses on “Clean Coal”

Bush Administration Proposes Fire Sale of Rocky Mountains for Oil Shale Development

Images: 1. WhiteHouse.gov; 2. NASA