THE FINE PRINT: A Word Accelerates Mountaintop Mining

[Shallah Kali]

Appalachia Is Paying Price for White House Rule Change
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6462-2004Aug16.html
Printer Version
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6462-2004Aug16?language=printer

Today, mountaintop removal is booming again, and the practice of dumping mining debris into streambeds is explicitly protected, thanks to a small wording change to federal environmental regulations. U.S. officials simply reclassified the debris from objectionable "waste" to legally acceptable "fill."

The "fill rule," as the May 2002 rule change is now known, is a case study of how the Bush administration has attempted to reshape environmental policy in the face of fierce opposition from environmentalists, citizens groups and political opponents. Rather than proposing broad changes or drafting new legislation, administration officials often have taken existing regulations and made subtle tweaks that carry large consequences.

-----

Paradise by John Prine
http://www.jpshrine.org/lyrics/songs/jpparadise.html

Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away


Sometimes the change hinges on a single critical phrase or definition. For example, when the Environmental Protection Agency announced proposals last year to control mercury emissions, it also moved to downgrade the "hazardous" classification of mercury pollution from power plants -- a seemingly minor change that effectively gave utilities 15 more years to implement the most costly controls. Earlier this year, the Energy Department helped insert wording into a Senate bill to reclassify millions of gallons of "high-level" radioactive waste as "incidental," a change that would spare the government the expense of removing and treating the waste

The fill rule is one of several key changes to coal-mining regulations that have been enacted or proposed by the Bush administration, which took office promising to ease bureaucratic burdens for the coal industry and expand the nation's energy production. To administration officials and mining companies, the changes are simply clarifications that eliminated ambiguities in the law. To environmental groups, they are the administration's payback to an industry that has raised $9 million for Republicans since 1998. The coal industry is a political force in West Virginia, a vital swing state whose five electoral votes for George W. Bush helped put him over the top in 2000.

[OneBlueSky]

1. have I mentioned lately how much I hate these people? . . .

BushCo is effectively gutting over 30 years of continuous progress in environmental protection . . . I remember participating in the first Earth Day in 1970, and the environment has been my own personal issue ever since I had the privilege of working with (and learning from) Pete Seeger on the Clearwater project around that same time . . . every president and Congress since Nixon has had at least some level of commitment to environmental stewardship, and we've seen gradual but significant progress over the past three decades . . .

until BushCo came upon the scene . . . in the past three years, they've done everything they could think of to reverse, dilute, cripple, and otherwise negate much of this progress, and they continue to do so every day . . . all that matters to them is more money for their corporate benefactors, and if that means more polluted air and water, less protected resources, and more toxic chemicals in our environment, so be it . . .

I really do hate these people and what they're doing . . . once they're out of office it will be just like starting over, and all of the fights that were once won will have to be re-engaged . . . if there's a hell, there's a very special place there reserved for George W. Bush and all of his minions . . .

[No Mandate Here.]

2. This, the mercury rules, the Archivist appointment

before there is a vacancy, the redeployment of US forces, and so on ...and on ...and on.

I found it very interesting that the NY Times and the WaPO both had long articles about this subject last weekend.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/14/politics/14bush.html>
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1315-2004Aug14.html?nav=most_emailed>

All of the regulatory changes by executive order that are sailing along under the radar that undo so many environmental gains and others- must be stopped with a decisive Kerry victory and taking back the Senate.

We have a lot of work to do, but we can do it.

[Hubert Flottz]

3. Here is a GREAT website!

Look what these EVIL greedy people are doing to our mountains:

http://www.ohvec.org/

[G_j]

4. can't help but think of how the evil ones in Lord of The Rings

always turn the the landscape into a desolate, ugly, wasteland.
Are these folks Orcs or what?

[pinniped]

5. Like I needed another reason to hate this asshole.

So can I use my vintage 19th century hydraulic mining water canon to blast mountaintops into streambeds in my quest for gold?

[DeepModem Mom]

6. Please consider thanking the WP for this article ([e-mail])

and the previous two articles in the series, all front-paged, on the Bush administration and regulation.

[Hubert Flottz]

7. Kick!

:kick: them out!