Enviros seek OSM takeover of WVDEP

Ken Ward Jr.
Coal Tattoo Blog, Charleston Gazette

Citing continued failure to apply the stream buffer zone rule to the footprint of valley fills, a coalition of environmental groups late today demanded a federal takeover of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s mining program.

The petition, filed by the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment and other groups, asks the U.S. Office of Surface Mining to substitute federal enforcement of this key strip-mining rule:

West Virginia has long refused to enforce the buffer zone rule, and it still refuses to do so. The State’s systematic failure to apply the rule to those activities that are most harmful to the streams the rule was intended to protect defies logic. Indeed, the WVDEP’s decision to exempt valley fills and huge stream elimination projects from the scope of the rule’s protections renders the regulation meaningless.

Read the story here.