Groups sue over mountaintop mining

WASHINGTON - Environmentalists sued the Bush administration yesterday, trying to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from changing a rule they said keeps mining waste from entering mountain streams.

"The notion that coal mining companies can dump their wastes in streams without degrading them is a fantasy that the Bush administration is now trying to write into law," said Judith Petersen of Kentucky Waterways Alliance, one of the groups that sued in US District Court in Washington.

At issue is mountaintop mining, in which forests are clear-cut and holes are drilled to blast apart rock. Massive machines then scoop coal from the exposed seams. The rock and dirt left behind are dumped into adjacent valleys, changing the natural shape of the earth, lowering the height of the mountain and covering streams.

Current policy says land within 100 feet of a stream cannot be disturbed by mining unless a company can prove it will not affect the water's quality and quantity. The new regulation would allow mining that would alter a stream's flow as long as any damage to the environment is repaired later.

Opponents want a federal judge to overturn or delay the new regulation.

Mining industry groups, though, argue the rule change has been in the works for years, and would change very little over how mountaintop removal mining is done.

"There's been an enormous amount of overreaction to this," West Virginia Coal Association president Bill Raney said yesterday. "They're trying to make it something that it truly is not."

ASSOCIATED PRESS