The following are comments prepared By Wallace McMullen on behalf of the Sierra Club Cumberland Chapter concerning Draft Environmental Impact Statement, Excess Spoil Minimization, Stream Buffer Zones (OSM EIS 34, April 2007): Docket Number RIN 1029 AC04. These comments were mailed to the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement in Washington, DC and delivered at a public hearing in Hazard, KY on October 24, 2007.
October 24, 2007
Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement
Administrative Record, Room 252 SIB
1951 Constitution Avenue,
NW Washington, DC 20240
RE: Draft Environmental Impact Statement, Excess Spoil Minimization, Stream Buffer Zones (OSM EIS 34, April 2007): Docket Number RIN 1029 AC04
I am opposed to any attempt to weaken or eliminate the Stream Buffer Zones rule that protects streams from mining activities. Kentucky needs jobs which can be developed from its beautiful mountains such as tourism, hunting and fishing, and clean renewable electricity, not permitting more sites for destruction and devastation from dirty coal mining.
The Stream Buffer Zones rule provides important protection for mountain valleys with intermittent and perennial streams by prohibiting mining activities from disrupting areas within 100 feet of the streams unless those activities in no way impact water quality or quantity. The proposed changes to the Stream Buffer Zones rule would eliminate these important protections for streams and allow mining activities to further bury, destroy and degrade waters with their waste.
The US Department of the Interior should withdraw this attempt to weaken stream protections and leave the existing Stream Buffer Zones rule in place.
The immediate and long term environmental impacts of mining are severe and irreversible. Lapses in the enforcement of the buffer zone rule have allowed nearly 2000 miles of streams to be buried or degraded by mining waste. The proposed rule changes would repeal stream safeguards that have been in effect for over two decades. The figures in the draft Environmental Impact Statement's (EIS) show that more than 1000 miles of streams will be destroyed every decade into the future in this proposed rule goes into effect.
The draft EIS documents that between 10/1/2001 and 6/30/2005, 1603 Valley Fills were approved in Appalachia, with 1079 in Kentucky and 372 in West Virginia. This assault on streams in Kentucky and West Virginia has been devastating with 98% of all excess spoil fills nationally and approximately 61 percent of the length of all streams directly impacted by mining occurring in these two states.
Furthermore, I and most of the population of Kentucky live downstream from the headwaters streams, streams that are impacted by the spoil fills which have been allowed in the past, and which will be more clearly allowed by this proposed stream buffer rule revision. We don’t want to be drinking or swimming in coal mining slurry, acid drainage, or any of the other kinds of noxious run-off and siltation which are associated with mountaintop removal mining and the related stream fills. Fully enforcing the present rule is a much better strategy than the proposed regulation.
The US Department of the Interior should not proceed with any rulemaking that would weaken the current Stream Buffer Zone rule that protects our vital natural resources from mining activity. Instead, it should enforce the existing Stream Buffer Zone rule as currently written.
Again, Kentucky needs jobs from its beautiful mountains such as tourism, hunting and fishing, and clean renewable electricity. It does not need any more permitting of mountain sites for destruction and devastation from dirty coal mining.
Please include my comments in the record. I thank you for considering my comments.
Respectfully Submitted,
Wallace McMullen
12907 Sunnybrook Drive
Prospect KY 40059
Top
| Chapter Home
|Sierra Home
| Become a Sierra Club member.
Privacy Policy | Copyright |About us | Contact us