Departments to Toughen Standards for Mining

The Obama administration said Thursday that it would toughen standards for mountaintop-removal coal mining but would not end the practice as some environmental groups had hoped. Officials from four agencies said they had agreed to order a more rigorous legal and environmental review of pending and future applications for mountaintop mining in Appalachia. The technique involves blasting the tops off mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams. The practice has buried hundreds of miles of streams and has polluted water throughout the region. The officials, representing the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Interior Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, did not make clear whether the new process would result in the granting of more mining permits or fewer. Earlier this year the administration imposed a virtual moratorium on mountaintop mining pending this review, leaving the status of 110 permits in limbo. In the interim, however, the administration has granted 42 such permits while denying 6. It appears that those 42 projects will now move forward...NYTimes