In one of the first of what will likely be many terrible Bush Administration last minute decisions as his term comes to an end, they are trying to force through the Stream Buffer Zone (SBZ) rule change. Last year, you may recall grassroots groups from across the US teamed up with national groups to send between 40,000 and 70,000 comments to the Office of Surface Mining, Reclaimation, and Enforcement (OSMRE) asking them to block the rule change — which would legalize and expand the worst abuses of mountaintop removal.
The Bush Administration’s response to these comments was to wait 10 months and then try and push the rule through, hoping that with the election and sense of economic doom, no one would notice.
If adopted, the new regulation would be one of the Bush administration’s biggest giveaways to Big Coal, exempting coal companies from a law that prohibits surface coal mining activities from disturbing areas within 100 feet of streams.
Changing this “stream buffer zone rule” would destroy thousands of miles of our nation’s mountain streams and accelerate the growth of moutaintop removal coal mining — destroying another 700 mountains over the next decade, according to one estimate.
However, the OSMRE proposal must be approved by the Environmental Protection Agency before it can be published into law. Which means as many people as possible need to let the EPA know that their job is to protect, not destroy, our nation’s streams.
Click here to take action — as soon as possible, they could try and finish this in the next few weeks: http://www.ilovemountains.org/action/sbz
And when you’re done, tell a friend!
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