James R. Carroll

WASHINGTON – The Republican-controlled House on Tuesday passed legislation blocking the Obama administration from issuing a rule intended to protect streams and the public health from mountaintop mining in Kentucky and other states.

On a mostly party-line vote of 229-192, lawmakers approved a bill that would reinstate regulations issued during the George W. Bush administration that allow the coal industry to dispose of mine waste near streams and as a result, supporters said, would protect 7,000 mining jobs.

The bill faces an uncertain future in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

“It’s well-known that the Obama administration has waged a long-running war on coal,” said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, during the House debate.

Issuance of a new so-called “stream buffer zone” rule, still being written by the Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, means “thousand of Americans will be out of work and home heating costs for middle class families will rise,” Hastings said.

But opponents of the bill, including Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Louisville, warned that the measure ignored the long-term environmental and health impacts of coal mining in Appalachia and other regions.

Holding up a plastic bottle filled with orange-colored water, Yarmuth told his colleagues: “This is what comes out of the taps in Appalachian communities where the water is contaminated by dangerous mine waste. It fills their wells and flows through the streams in their yards.

“It is the result of an inadequate law that is failing to protect public health and safety near mountaintop removal mining sites,” he said.

Yarmuth invited those who wanted to block additional stream protections to have a sip of the contaminated water, taken from a Pike County, Ky., well in 2010. No lawmaker took up the offer.

The White House opposes the House bill, saying in a statement this month that the measure “inadequately protects drinking water and watersheds from strip mining.”

In February, Judge Barbara Rothstein of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the Bush stream buffer zone rule, saying it did not take into account the effects of mountaintop mining on threatened and endangered species.

Neither the White House nor the Interior Department has provided details on a new rule, though it is believed the administration wants at least a 100-foot buffer between mine waste and streams.

Hastings and other Republicans said the administration has spent five years and $10 million on a new rule lawmakers and the public have yet to see.

Committee efforts to see a full Interior Department inspector general’s report on the making of the rule have been unsuccessful, Hastings said. So he has issued a subpoena for the full report.

“The Obama administration rule-making process has been and continues to be an unmitigated disaster,” Hastings charged.

But Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., said GOP lawmakers were imagining conspiracies.

Instead, “we should be making the protection of people and the environment of Appalachia our top priority and making the mining companies act responsibly, not just cheaply,” Holt said.

Yarmuth said those trying to block stronger protections against the toxic byproducts of mining ignore the health crisis that communities already face.

“Mining communities already have more instances of chronic pulmonary disorders and hypertension, as well as higher mortality rates, lung cancer rates, and instances of chronic heart, kidney and lung disease,” he said. “Proximity to mountaintop removal mining operations also correlates with a higher risk of birth defects and damage to the circulatory and central nervous systems.”

Reporter James R. Carroll can be reached at (703) 854-8945. Follow him on Twitter at @JRCarrollCJ.