Earth Equity News

Movement to Outlaw 'Mountaintop Removal' Reaching Critical Mass. By Debra McCown, Bristol Herald Courier (VA), August 11, 2008. "Mountaintop removal could be ended by as early as next year, said [Matt Wasson of Appalachian Voices]... 'Now there is an increasingly powerful and vocal national movement to stop [it].' ...What makes [mountaintop removal] cost-effective is a valley-fill permit, which allows the overburden -- dirt and rock removed to expose the coal -- to be dumped into adjacent valleys... Wasson pins his hopes on two distinct possibilities -- a pending U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on a West Virginia court case and the election of a new U.S. president... The West Virginia lawsuit seeks to put a stop to valley-fill permits, which are issued by the Army Corps of Engineers. Central... is the question of whether the discard from mining should be considered waste under the 1977 Clean Water Act, which limits the release of pollutants into streams. 'I don't know what will happen...' [said Joe Lovett of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment]. 'I can tell you we haven't had any significant permits issued since March 2007 because the court found that the federal government was illegally issuing permits at that time. ...[Lovett added that] if the appeals court upholds the decision, the federal government, which he said loosened its regulations during the current administration, would have to completely change its permitting processes. 'How can they approve the filling of hundreds and a couple thousand miles of mountain streams in this region and say that's not significantly degrading the water?' ...Activists say that while opposition to mountaintop removal is reaching critical mass, it will ultimately take action by a new administration in Washington to clarify Clean Water Act regulations to define mine spoil as waste or prohibit mountaintop removal outright."