EKB News

A preliminary public comment period on the "Stream Buffer Zone Rule" will push back any proposed changes until, at least. early 2011. The Obama administration is re-examining a last-minute Bush-era surface mining regulation which rewrote rules adopted in 1983 by the Reagan administration Under the 1983 rules, mines were barred from dumping waste within 100 feet of streams unless operations could show it would not harm water quality or quantity. Revised requirements allowed buffer requirements to be skirted, if compliance was determined impossible, therefore giving a " green light" to dump mountaintop fill if it was the cheapest and most convenient option. In 1999, a federal court determined the rule did not apply to valley fills, prompting government regulators and coal lobbyists to begin an attempt to eliminate the rule.