Community and Health Advocates: OSM Bending to Coal Companies
Monday, July 20, 2015
RICHMOND, Va. - The Office of Surface Mining's (OSM) new stream protection rule shows federal regulators bending too much to the coal industry, according to community and health advocates. Many are still digesting the complex regulation OSM proposed last week.
The coal industry's political allies are already attacking it in Congress, saying it would make mountaintop removal mining unprofitable in Virginia and neighboring states. But Michael Hendryx, a public health professor at Indiana University, says the new rule is weaker than what it replaces. He says it would allow such serious health impacts as birth defects and cancer to continue.
"One of the studies we did found direct correlations between the quality of stream life and human cancer rates," says Hendryx. "I don't care one little bit what the profit is of the mining companies."
Hendryx stresses the impacts of mining are not only environmental, but on human health and communities. The Office of Surface Mining says it plans to hold public hearings on the proposed rule.
Joe Lovett, a lawyer and executive director of Appalachian Mountain Advocates, says he and others had gotten a federal court order to make OSM properly enforce the previous buffer-zone rule against the valley fills essential to mountaintop removal.
Lovett thinks the only reason OSM wrote the new rule is to create a weaker substitute.
"There was a stream protection rule in place, it was called the Buffer Zone Rule," says Lovett. "It was a strong rule. We had a federal court order saying it prohibited valley fills. In response to that, OSM weakened the rule."
A few environmentalists say there may be some good to come from the new rule, but groups including the Sierra Club and Earthjustice say doesn't sufficiently protect streams or communities.
Lovett describes the rhetoric coming from Congress about a war on coal as nonsense.
"It's just a myth," he says. "There's no reason for anybody in Congress to be upset, unless they're actually trying to protect the water."
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