Appalachian Headwaters and Streams Buried by Coal Companies

Appalachian Headwaters and Streams Buried by Coal Companies



Aug. 2007  - The federal Office of Surface 
Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, OSM, is proposing to exempt coal 
mining wastes from a 1983 regulation known as the Stream Buffer Zone Rule 
that prohibits coal mining activities from disturbing areas within 100 
feet of streams. 
Regardless of the rule, the agency has allowed thousands of miles of 
headwaters and perennial streams in Appalachia to be permanently buried by 
coal companies under millions of tons of waste generated by mountaintop 
removal coal mining. 
On Friday, the OSM will release a draft Environmental Impact Statement, 
EIS, considering the effects of its proposed revision to its Stream Buffer 
Zone Rule and several possible alternatives. The draft EIS will be open 
for public comment on the internet at www.regulations.gov. 
The agency said in a statement Tuesday that based on the findings of the 
draft EIS, it will revise regulations governing how much "spoil” or 
displaced rock surface coal mining operations are allowed to generate and 
where it may be placed. 
It also would clarify existing requirements for mining in and around 
streams, "requirements that are not being interpreted consistently," the 
agency said. "Uncertainty over what the rules do and do not address had 
resulted in conflicting legal decisions and inconsistent enforcement." 
Environmentalists who have received advance copies of the proposed 
regulations are outraged because the OSM proposes to exempt from the 
stream buffer zone rule those very mountaintop removal activities that are 
most destructive to streams, including "permanent excess spoil fills, and 
coal waste disposal facilities." 
"The Bush administration just doesn't give up in its quest to give away 
more and more legal protections to the mountaintop removal polluters," 
said Joan Mulhern, senior legislative counsel for Earthjustice, a 
nonprofit, public interest law firm. 
"Despite the federal government's own studies showing widespread, harmful, 
and irreversible stream loss in the region, the OSM proposes exempting the 
most harmful mountaintop removal mining activities from the buffer zone 
rule," said Mulhern. 
According to OSM figures, 1,208 miles of streams in Appalachia were 
destroyed from 1992 to 2002, and regulators approved 1,603 more valley 
fills between 2001 and 2005 that will destroy 535 more miles of streams. 
"OSM has chosen to turn its back on irreplaceable water resources of the 
Appalachian region," said Cindy Rank with West Virginia Highlands 
Conservancy. "Headwater streams are the lifeblood of the mountains and 
those of us privileged enough to live in those mountains. This new 
interpretation of the buffer zone rule is an unholy reversal of the 
original intent of the Surface Mine Act, which was to protect communities 
and streams, not bury them." 
The effort to repeal the buffer zone rule dates back to 2004, when OSM 
proposed repealing the Reagan-era stream buffer zone rule to allow coal 
companies to accelerate mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia. 
In response to protests from coalfield residents and conservation groups, 
OSM agreed it would do an EIS before changing the rule. But in its new 
draft EIS, the agency did not even consider the effect of enforcing the 
stream buffer zone rule as written. 
"OSM summarily rejected all alternatives that would reduce harm and only 
considered those that would allow stream burials to continue at the same 
rate as in the past," said Jim Hecker, environmental enforcement director 
at Public Justice. "OSM's own report shows that valley fills harm 
downstream water quality but this proposal does nothing to address it." 
The agency also assumes all stream loss will be fully mitigated, even 
though it freely admits that stream mitigation has generally failed. 
"While proven methods exist for larger stream channel restoration and 
creation, the state of the art in creating smaller headwater streams 
onsite has not reached the level of reproducible success," the OSM wrote. 
"Attempts to reestablish the functions of headwater streams…have achieved 
little success to date." 
"The coal companies have yet to show that they can successfully recreate 
streams after they completely destroy these mountains and bury these 
waters, yet OSM still gives them this major exemption from the law," said 
Dianne Bady, with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. "These 
headwater streams are the sources of our drinking water and our heritage, 
and this administration is knowingly allowing them to be buried and 
poisoned." 
This wholesale exemption for mountaintop removal mining will have 
significant impact to downstream water quality, permanently filling and 
destroying important headwaters that feed larger waters that function as 
drinking water sources and fishing and recreational waters for thousands 
of Americans. Already, mountaintop removal mining has flattened more than 
500,000 acres and permanently buried 2,000 miles of streams. 
"The OSM essentially wants to destroy our most valuable, life-giving 
resource to extract a filthy, polluting resource," said Vernon Haltom of 
Coal River Mountain Watch. "We who live near mountaintop removal sites are 
having our future sustainability destroyed for someone else's short-term 
profits." 
A detailed summary of the five alternatives and a chart comparing the 
expected impacts of each is available in the executive summary of the EIS 
available at: http://www.osmre.gov/execsummary/osm-eis-34.pdf. 
Details on submitting public comments will be made available on Friday. 

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