Good News For Appalachia

I have voiced my reservations about the Obama administration’s record on the environment. So it’s heartening to have some good news coming out of Washington. The EPA is appealing a ruling by a District Court judge over the permitting of a huge mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia. This is great news for Appalachia and the rest of our country.

            The mine, which had been permitted by the Army Corps of Engineers, would bury about seven miles of streams near the historic town of Blair, West Virginia. The Corps has been the department issuing mountaintop removal permits since the establishment of the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act, the legislation that controls mountaintop removal and other surface mining operations, in the late seventies. The EPA is stepping up to the plate here and, in my opinion, doing the job that it should have been doing all along in the case of this horrendous mining practice: protecting the streams and fresh waters of this country.

            In their move to revoke the permit, the EPA said the proposed mine would use “destructive and unsustainable mining practices that jeopardize the health of Appalachian communities and the clean water on which they depend.” I think every mountaintop mine fits that description, so in many ways this move by the EPA is a day late and a dollar short for around 500 mine sites in Appalachia.

            But good news for the environment is so rare, so I am thankful for this recent development. Kudos to the EPA and the Obama administration.

New Fracking Disclosure Requirement (Sort Of)

“New Proposal on Fracking Gives Ground to Industry” reads the New York Times headline.

Apparently the Obama administration gave a lot of ground.

Although the measure will, for the first time, make a federal requirement to disclose the chemicals used in fracking, those chemicals can be disclosed after the fracking has been completed. As originally proposed, the regulation would have required oil and gas companies to disclose the chemicals and solutions 30 days before they started the process of fracking.

If this original regulation had gone forward, we would have been able to see what they were planning on pumping into the cracks and crevices of the rocks that lie thousands of feet below us, and we could have ascertained the risks posed to our groundwater and health as we reviewed the chemicals and mixtures used in fracking. If we found carcinogens or poisons, we would have been able to raise our objections and have the energy company change the fracking constituents or possibly halt the process altogether.

            But with the “significant concessions” they can go ahead and frack away, using whatever chemicals they please, and they only have to tell us what’s in their fracking solutions after those chemicals are in the ground. Does this make any sense? Have you ever heard of anything else working this way? Your city council looking at the design for a community redevelopment after they have approved it? Learning the name of your wife after you’ve married her?

            With industry being so powerful we wind up with legislation that seems like it was written in Bizarro Land and that in reality doesn’t do a whole lot of good.