After Gutenberg

The Bush administration has submitted to its minions at the BPA (Business Protection Agency), formerly known as the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), a proposal that would weaken severely a restriction on coal mining. The provision under attack is known as the Stream Buffer Rule.

Another false impression with the term “clean coal” is that coal could be more environmentally friendly, whereas the truth is that even if carbon capture and storage were implemented, it fails to address water quality or other environmental quality issues.

Since 1983 the Stream Buffer Zone has prevented coal companies from disturbing areas that are 100 feet or less from Appalachian waterways, reports Shirley Siluk Gregory. The buffer zone rule states that coal mining activities cannot disturb these sensitive areas unless water quality and quantity will not be adversely impacted – a tall order for mountain top removal mines which routinely dump the remains of entire mountains on top of stream beds in a practice known as “valley fill.”

Never mind that some 40,000 people protested loudly when the rule change was suggested last year. Never mind that many of the waterways that could be affected are home to a wide variety of aquatic life, or provide drinking water to area residents. Never mind that 1,200-plus miles of waterways have already been buried by mountaintop-removal coal mining. Coal mining companies want more and the Bush administration is prepared to give it to them.

Oh, and if that doesn’t bother you, how about the fact that the feds’ near-trillion-dollar bailout of the financial sector includes almost $2.8 billion in tax credits for coal operators?

No longer can we claim ignorance. Denial equates to death on a planetary scale.

Jesse Jenkins notes that the proposal takes the “buffer” right out of the “buffer zone” rule and allows coal companies to dump waste directly into streams. ILoveMountains.org has a great “backgrounder”, so that you can understand that The Bush Administration essentially wants to allow coal companies to bury Appalachian streams permanently beneath hundreds of millions of tons of mining waste.

As ILoveMountains explains it:

The Bush administration has already relaxed Clean Water Act safeguards that protected Appalachian mountain streams from mountaintop removal mines. Now, the administration is targeting a Reagan-era rule known as the “buffer zone rule” … Already, nearly 2,000 miles of mountain streams in Appalachia have been buried by mountaintop removal waste, wiping out these streams and causing flooding and destruction in the surrounding communities. The Bush administration’s failure to enforce the buffer zone law led to an additional 535 miles of stream impacts nationwide during between 2001 and 2005. Thus, the repeal of the buffer zone rule allows more than 1,000 miles of streams to be destroyed each decade into the future. Permanently destroying thousands of miles of mountain streams is more than irresponsible; it is insane

For more spin on this particular dastardly deed, see this editorial in the New York Times. The NY Times editorial board offers a potential explanation for Bush’s urgent rush to gut the buffer zone rule:

Both John McCain and Barack Obama have said in the last month [thanks to urging from organizers like you!] that they oppose mountaintop removal, which may explain the administration’s mad dash to rewrite the rule before a more conservation-minded administration arrives in town. Their opposition also inspires slim hopes among environmentalists that Stephen Johnson, the E.P.A.’s administrator, would withhold his approval. That would be an enormous surprise, but also enormously welcome.

Jenkins and Gregory both urge their readers to tell the EPA to strengthen the buffer zone rule, not undermine it and send a letter to your member of Congress to urge them to put back in place Clean Water Act protections that would curtail the environmental and human devastation caused by mountaintop removal. “Whichever presidential candidate is elected,” writes Jenkins, “we face perhaps the best opportunity yet to end mountaintop removal once and for all. Make sure that president has a Congress that’s with them.”

Unfortunately, this blog sees as Pollyanna-ish the urging by Gregory and Jenkins. They seem to think this is a campaign issue, a rallying point for environmentally concerned citizens. It really is a non-campaign issue and such advocacy will fail to matter. The fix is in; the election essentially already over; coal has won. This most recent travesty is really a matter of “crossing the i’s and dotting the t’s.”