Earth Equity News

Bush's Stream Buffer Rule for Mining Will Remain Until 2011. By Patrick Reis, Greenwire, November 2, 2009. "The Interior Department will leave in place George W. Bush-era changes to a rule designed to protect streams from mountaintop-removal coal mining until 2011, according to court documents filed by the Obama administration on October 30... Interior will formally announce the start of the rulemaking this month and open a 30-day window for public comments, according to the court papers. Then, the mining office will move 'as expeditiously' as possible to finish the rule, but no formal timeline can be set without knowing the volume of public input... The papers were filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where environmental groups sued over changes to the stream-buffer rule, which requires a minimum 100-foot buffer between streams and mining operations. The Bush administration granted exemptions to that rule for waste dumps and other activities that environmental groups say are polluting the waterways. The groups sued over the changes and hoped the Obama administration would cancel them. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in April moved to do so on the grounds that their environmental impacts had not been adequately analyzed. But a federal judge in August rejected Interior's authority to do so without going through a full rulemaking process and accepting public comment."