Coal Crackdown?

For all you who enjoyed the Bay Daily story in December about my road trip to West Virginia to explore the issue of mountaintop removal coal mining, check out this update in today's Washington Post.

The newspaper reports that the Obama Administration launched a "crackdown" on mountaintop removal mines, scrutinizing 175 proposed mines in the Appalachian region over the last year, and only approving 48. 

But the EPA has signed off on some mines using the controversial practice of blowing off the peaks of hills and filling valleys with the waste. And this ambiguity has confused both coal industry officials and environmental activists.

Such confusion did not exist under the last administration, the Post reports.  From 2000 to 2008, federal and state authorities gave permission to fill 511 valley areas in West Virginia with coal mining waste -- the equivalent of filling a single valley at least 176 miles long.

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(Photo courtesy of ilovemountains.org)