The Interior Department has advanced a proposal that would ease restrictions on dumping mountaintop mining waste near rivers and streams, modifying protections that have been in place -- though often circumvented by mining companies -- for a quarter-century.
It sets the stage for a final regulation, one of the last major "environmental initiatives" of the Bush administration, after 30 days of additional public comment and interagency review.
The proposed rule would rewrite a regulation enacted in 1983 by the Reagan administration that bars mining companies from dumping huge waste piles -- known as "valley fills" -- from surface mining within 100 feet of any intermittent or perennial stream if the disposal adversely impacts water quality or quantity.
"The new rule will allow coal companies to dump massive waste piles directly into streams, permanently burying them," warned Joan Mulhern of Earthjustice, among the environmental groups that have fought the practice known as mountaintop removal mining widely used in Appalachia, especially in West Virginia, Kentucky and parts of Virginia and Tennessee.
Soft money contributions from the coal mining industry to the Republican National Committee during the
2000 election cycle were $767,825.
Isn't the Interior Department the same fuckers who were having those coke and sex parties? Um.. yeah.
Sex, Drug Use and Graft Cited in Interior Department
ENTIRE STORY HERE
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