A federal court Wedensday rejected an attempt by the Department of Interior to reverse the Bush Administration’s last-minute weakening of the stream buffer zone rule, a key protection for waterways near mountaintop removal coal mines.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wanted to return to the 1983 regulation, which forbid coal mining companies from dumping debris within 100 feet of streams unless they could prove that water quality or quantity would not be affected.
He directed the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to file a pleading with the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. requesting that the rule be vacated.
But U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. ruled that granting Salazar’s request would equate to changing a federal regulation without public input.
The Interior Department said it is reviewing the decision.
Under the Bush rule, coal mine operators are able to dispose of excess mountaintop spoil in perennial and intermittent streams and within 100 feet of those streams whenever alternative options are deemed "not reasonably possible." Disposal into streambeds is permissible when alternatives are considered "unreasonable," which occurs under the Bush rule whenever the cost of pursuing an alternative "is substantially greater” than normal costs.
Environmental watchdogs have long said that even the 1983 rule was largely ignored, as seasonal stream beds are routinely filled by debris from mountaintop coal mining operations.
"Today’s federal court decision is unfortunate, and it shows that it will take bold action to truly end mountaintop removal coal mining," Sierra Club Environmental Quality Program Director Ed Hopkins said in a statement.
"When Secretary of the Interior Salazar first announced his intent to reverse the Bush-era rule, he said that it alone would not be enough to completely end mountaintop removal coal mining. Restoring the previous stream buffer zone regulation remains one component in the complex effort to end mountaintop removal coal mining," Hopkins continued. "But with the administration currently considering more than 80 permit applications for new mountaintop removal coal mining, it will take policy changes at the Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Interior and Environmental Protection Agency, along with tough enforcement, to end the destruction completely and protect Appalachian communities."
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