 President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced it will reconsider the midnight memo issued by former EPA Administrator Steven Johnson which sought to prohibit controls on global warming pollution from coal-fired power plants.
The decision should halt virtually all new coal plant development until EPA decides how to address global warming pollution from coal plants.
On Friday, a panel of federal judges ruled in favor of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a controversial mountaintop removal mining case. The ruling would permit mining companies to conduct devastating mountaintop removal coal mining operations without acting to minimize stream destruction or conducting adequate environmental reviews.
As a result, Appalachia could be facing as many as 150 new mountaintop removal coal mining operations, 90 in West Virginia alone, which would destroy huge swaths of the Appalachian Mountains.
"Either Congress or the Obama administration need to reinstate the Stream Buffer Zone rule and to pass the Clean Water Protection Act," said Tierra Curry, conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. "But better yet, mountaintop removal should be prohibited and the burning of coal immediately phased out to save the planet from dangerous climate change."
Since mountaintop removal coal mining began in 1970, an estimated 1.5 million acres of hardwood forest have been lost, over 470 mountaintops have been blasted, and 1,200 miles of Appalachian streams have been buried.
Coal can be mined in a cleaner fashion and in a more limited fashion. A panel should be put together to make sure this happens and that the regulations are not violated in any way.
You can take action by writing to the EPA Administrator Jackson and letting them know your stance on the mining projects.Labels: coal, epa, Sierra Club |
