For Immediate Release
March 30, 2004

Contact:
Sara Zdeb, Legislative Director, 202-222-0728
Keira Costic, Press Office, 202-222-0731

Bush Proposal Would Devastate Communities, Environment by Allowing More Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining
Statement of Dr. Brent Blackwelder, President, Friends of the Earth

Nearly 30 years ago, representatives of Friends of the Earth and the Environmental Policy Institute stood next to President Jimmy Carter as he signed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act into law.  Today, I stand before you in an effort to stop President George Bush from dismantling this landmark law, which we worked for years to enact in order to curtail the devastating impacts of coal mining on the communities and environment of Appalachia .

What’s at stake today is a rule that says coal companies can’t disturb land within 100 feet of a stream.  This regulation is evidently a little too straightforward for the coal industry, which wants to continue burying streams with waste from their giant mountaintop removal operations.  In West Virginia and Kentucky alone, mountaintop removal has buried more than 1,200 miles of streams.  It is hard to imagine an all-out war doing greater damage to the diverse forested mountains of this area.  Mountaintop removal has left grotesque scars on the landscape, devastating communities in the coalfields of Appalachia .  I have flown over dozens of sites to see firsthand the almost unbelievable obliteration of this part of America .

Indeed, the Bush administration’s own scientists not only concluded that mountaintop removal has destroyed vast areas of Appalachia , but that the destruction will continue unless new protective measures are put into place.  The administration’s recent Environmental Impact Statement said that without new restrictions on the practice, mountaintop removal will destroy another 350 square miles of streams, mountains and forests and harm over 200 species of wildlife.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has chosen to flout this compelling evidence.  Instead of enforcing the surface mining law’s prohibition against dumping mountaintop removal waste into streams, President Bush wants to repeal it.  This approach should come as no surprise: During the past three years, his administration has repeatedly weakened regulations in order to accommodate the wishes of polluters.

Today, the Bush administration has a clear choice: Protect the environment and communities of Appalachia by enforcing the law, or protect coal industry polluters by rewriting it.  Unless they choose the former, we can expect mountaintop removal’s tragic destruction of Appalachia to continue. 

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