The Environmental Protection Agency, after years of abuses under the Bush administration, is back on the right track with its plans to give further environmental review to 79 permits for mountaintop removal mining. But what's really needed is an end to this practice.
This form of mining blasts the tops off mountains. It's a severe form of strip mining, which the Journal has long opposed. In the 1970s, investigative articles in the Journal and its now defunct sister paper, the Sentinel, played a leading role in stopping a company's efforts to introduce strip mining to Northwest North Carolina. Strip mining and mountaintop mining destroy the beauty of mountains and reduce property values. The mining also ravages ecosystems, including watersheds.
The permits in question allow mountaintop miners to dump their waste into streams. Mining operations have already destroyed at least 2,000 miles of Appalachian streams, environmental activists say. Whole communities have been displaced by mines.
Mountaintop mining doesn't happen in this state, but coal mined using this method produces electricity for many of us. Two bills in the state legislature last session would have banned electric public utilities that operate in North Carolina from purchasing or using coal from mountaintop mining, but they both stalled in committee. That's a shame. It's in our best interest to work toward reducing the environmental damage caused by this form of mining.
The EPA has determined that the destruction of streams and harm to watersheds in the region raise questions about the legality of the permits under the federal Clean Water Act. While welcoming "this action by the Obama administration to return the rule of law to the Appalachian coalfields," environmental activists want to see the permits denied and no more issued.
"While many mountains, streams and communities continue to be impacted or annihilated by mountaintop removal because of years of lawless mining, EPA's announcement ... provides people with some hope that from this day forward, real science and laws will be applied before any more permits are issued," Janet Keating, the executive director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, said in a prepared statement.
She noted that the EPA's decision doesn't apply to existing mountaintop-removal permits. "We ask that our politicians don't cry that ‘the sky is falling,' but instead let the scientific experts at EPA do the job that taxpayers expect of them -- to protect our water, air and land for us and for future generations."
That sounds like an excellent plan.
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