Will Obama Reverse "Parting Gift" Coal Decision?

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Angry environmentalists launched an online campaign Wednesday urging President-elect Barack Obama to undo a federal rule that clarifies when coal companies can dump mining waste in streams, calling it a long-awaited "parting gift" from the Bush administration.

North Carolina-based Appalachian Voices and others blasted Tuesday's Environmental Protection Agency decision to endorse the mining rule as the death of freshwater streams and the likely start of a new surge in mountaintop removal surface mining across Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.

Although the regulation would apply nationwide, mountaintop removal operations are of special interest in Appalachia, where surface mines now outnumber those underground.

An EPA study estimated 400,000 acres of forest were wiped out and nearly 724 miles of streams buried between 1985 and 2001 by mountaintop mining, in which forests are clear cut and holes are drilled to blast apart rock. Massive machines, some with buckets big enough to hold 24 compact cars, scoop coal from the exposed seams.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/04/will-obama-reverse-partin_n_148365.html