Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Monday the administration will ask the courts to abandon the Bush administration’s buffer zone rule.
Since 1983, mining sites have been prohibited from dumping waste within 100 feet of streams.
But in the waning days of his presidency, George W. Bush changed the rule to allow dumping if it’s the cheapest, most convenient option.
Now, Salazar says Bush’s change to the stream buffer zone rule doesn’t legally hold water.
“This type of 11th hour rule—issued a little over a month before the previous Administration passed office—does not adequately protect our waterways and our communities. And it just doesn’t pass the smell test,” Salazar said.
Salazar says that coal is still an important part of the nation’s energy portfolio, but a balance has to be struck between energy and environmental protection.
Joe Lovett, executive director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, says it’s too early to know what the rule change means.
He said it could be a publicity stunt designed to coincide with the end of Obama’s first 100 days in office.
“However, if the Administration intends to actually enforce the rule, that would be a positive step.
“Since it said nothing about that, as far as I can tell, in the press conference or anywhere else, we really have no idea,” Lovett said.
Carol Raulston is a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association. She says the stream buffer zone’s changes are keeping the mining industry in a state of flux.
"So clearly we’d like to see some continuity of the policies that are going to govern coal mining in the United States and provide certainty to people’s employment and to our ability to produce the coal that’s used to generate half of this country’s electricity," Raulston said.
Salazar was short on details about the rule change.
"As I said earlier, coal must and will remain an important component of our nation’s energy portfolio," he said.
He says the rule change won’t reduce the nation’s coal production or affect any mines that are currently permitted.
Also, Salazar says the agency is taking comments on possible revisions of the 1983 rule.
At the Monday press conference, he didn’t tell state regulators what this all means. Instead, he said the agency plans to issue guidance to them in the future.
Lovett says the reality is that the rule-change, no matter what it might be, may not be enforced.
"We shouldn’t have to sue this administration to enforce this rule," he said. "The administration should just enforce it. The Clinton administration stated the meaning of the rule clearly, and we expect the Obama administration to follow that. If however it doesn’t, this rule change, as I said, will be not worth the paper it’s written on."
Environmental groups have filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the new Bush rules on buffer zones.
But this announcement may make their legal challenge moot.
The announcement today was the administration’s second pertaining to mountaintop removal coal mining. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would be taking a closer look at mountaintop removal permits.
Both environmentalists and coal industry officials say they don’t know just how far the Obama administration will go in regulating mountaintop removal.
They’ll be watching not the Administration’s words, but its actions.