Call Today! Put the Office of Surface Mining in Capable Hands!

Rumor has it that the Obama administration is looking to select a new director of the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE). This office helps enforce (can you guess?), surface mining and the reclamation of our land.

If you care about mountaintop removal and restoring Appalachia’s already devastated mountains — then you care about the OSMRE Director! There are a couple names rumored as candidates, some are very excellent, like West Virginia University law professor Pat McGinley and Lexington, Ky., lawyer Joe Childers.

This is what regulation looked like under the old OSM -- Time for a change!

Others are really, really bad — long term OSMRE insiders, who worked with Bush to allow the coal industry to increase mountaintop removal exponentially with no regard for local citizens, science, or common sense.

Please help us contact Secretary Salazar, and let him know that we need a OSMRE Director that puts our communities and our future before the profits of the coal industry — a Director from outside the OSM with no connections to the industry:
Phone: 202-208-3100
E-Mail: feedback@ios.doi.gov

Message: I urge the administration to nominate a new director of the Office of Surface Mining who is not from the coal industry or OSM. We desperately need someone who will fix this troubled agency and see that the surface mining laws are fully and fairly enforced.

Please call as soon as you get the chance. The nominee could be named any day.

Ken Ward, a reporter for the Charleston Gazette has written extensively about OSM and the appointment of a new director. Here are links to some of his news stories and blog posts.

From a March 28 Courier-Journal editorial:

“Mr. Childers has a distinguished 30-year record of advocacy on behalf of coalfield citizens who have been abused and exploited by the mining industry. He helped lead the legal team that fought the broad form deed, and forced mining interests to pay their fair share of property taxes in coalfield counties. He has worked tirelessly on behalf of coalfield residents whose water has been destroyed by mining, and has worked to limit the damage of blasting on surrounding properties. He knows these issues literally from the ground up.”Read the entire editorial here.

Similar views were expressed by the Lexington Herald-Leader on April 7, which you can read here.

It\’s Getting Hot In Here