Tomorrow is the deadline for public comments on the Bush Administration's proposal for dealing with the environmental damage caused by "mountaintop removal" coal mining.
What started as an effort to limit damage done by such mining has, under the Bush Administration, become just the opposite: the proposal would make the permit process for coal mining companies less rigorous, despite the Administration's own studies showing that more than 1,200 miles of streams and 350 square miles of forests and mountains have been destroyed by such mining.
To settle a 1998 lawsuit, the government had agreed to the first-ever environmental impact statement on mountaintop removal mining, to study ways to minimize the environmental impact. In this form of mining, used across Appalachia, the tops of mountains are shorn off to get to the coal. The millions of tons of debris are then dumped into nearby valleys and streams, burying them under mining waste.
Instead of concentrating on how to minimize the damage, after Bush took office in 2001, the focus of the study became how to enable mountaintop removal to continue at a faster rate.
"The Administration's studies confirmed that blowing up mountains and burying streams has enormous environmental consequences," Joan Mulhern of Earthjustice told BushGreenwatch. "It is astonishing that a study to look at ways of limiting the damaging effects of mountaintop removal was turned into a plan to make it easier for coal companies to get permits."
The architect of this about-face: J. Steven Griles, deputy secretary of the Interior and a former coal industry lobbyist. Griles is currently being investigated for possible ethics violations by the Interior Department's inspector general for meeting with former clients in his official capacity at Interior. Griles also continues to receive more than $250,000 a year from his former lobbying firm for past contracts.[1]
Correspondence between Griles and agencies working on the mountaintop removal environmental impact statement (EIS) show that Griles directed the agencies to reverse the course of the environmental policy.[2]
In an Oct. 5, 2001, letter to the EPA, Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies, Griles wrote:
"We believe the EIS is the logical vehicle to address environmental protection and promote government efficiency, while meeting the nation's energy needs ... . At a minimum, this would require that the EIS focus on centralizing and streamlining coal mine permitting, and minimizing or mitigating environmental impacts."
###
SOURCES:
[1] Center for Public Integrity report, "The Politics of Energy: Oil & Gas"
[2] Correspondence obtained by Trial Lawyers for Public Justice under the Freedom of Information Act.
