Obama mountaintop vow too little too late, says NRDC

Green groups have criticised a set of measures announced by the White House last week in an attempt to limit the environmental damage caused by mountaintop removal mining.

The Natural Resource Defense Council said that a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between a number of government agencies last week does not go far enough to address the environmental risks associated with controversial mountaintop removal mining.

The White House's Council on Environment Quality announced that the Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of the Interior, had committed to implementing a range of environmental protection measures by the end of the year, including providing better guidance on how they evaluate the environmental effects of projects, and improving oversight on water pollution permits in areas affected by mining.

However, NRDC senior scientist Dr Allen Hershkowitz warned that "unspecified references to strengthening permit reviews provides no assurance that the administration will end this abhorrent practice soon".

He added that the Army Corps of Engineers is still able to permit the huge stream fills associated with some mountaintop removal projects.

However, in the MoU the Corps promised to issue a proposal within 30 days to modify Nationwide Permit 21, making it impossible to use the permit to grant the discharge of fill materials into streams.

Hershkowitz added that the administration should instead signal its support for legislation designed to effectively ban mountaintop removal mining. "There are bi-partisan bills in Congress right now - the Clean Water Protection Act in the House and the Appalachia Restoration Act in the Senate - that would also help end mountaintop removal, and we look to the administration to push for legislation that ends mountaintop removal," he said.

The issue is particularly contentious at present, given the recent EPA approval of 42 controversial mountaintop removal projects in Appalachia.

Mountaintop removal involves exploding mountain tops to reveal previously inaccessible coal seams. Environmentalists decry the activity because of its tendency to spread pollutants across mountain environments, contaminating drinking water and other resources. They had hoped that the Obama administration would move to limit the practice, but were left disappointed by the decision to approve the new projects.