WVEC Action Alert

July 26 , 2005

Action Alert Items:

• Please Come Out July 30 to help end mountaintop removal mining
• Please Comment--OSM Agrees To Do Environmental Impact Statement On Stream Buffer Rules

Action Memo of interest to WV:

• Toxic mercury pollution

Please Come Out July 30
If you can attend only one event this summer to help end mountaintop removal, make this the one! Join Friends of the Mountains member groups at noon on Saturday, July 30 as we show our numbers in a Stop Mountaintop Removal Rally. We'll gather at the Capitol Circle on the State Capitol Grounds (north of the Capitol Building). Tell Governor Manchin No More Mountaintop Removal! We need you, your family, your neighbors and everyone you can bring along.

If you can, bring a folding chair and an umbrella for shade from 'shine or shelter from showers.

Click here to download a flyer for the event. Help increase attendance at the event by posting the flyers about town. You'll need free Adobe Reader installed on your computer to open the flyer.

We hope to see you and your friends there!

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Please Comment--OSM Agrees To Do Environmental Impact Statement On Stream Buffer Rules
     Victory!--OSM delays changes to buffer zone rule (Charleston Gazette report)
 Tom Fitzgerald writes: In comments submitted to the federal Office of Surface Mining (OSM) in June, 2003 and again in April, 2004, the Citizens Coal Council, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Mountain Watershed Association (PA), Bull Mountain Land Alliance (MT) and Kentucky Resources Council warned OSM that further agency action to weaken the federal mining rules protecting stream buffer zones and to relax standards for management of excess spoil created by the mining, would invite litigation unless the agency halted efforts to change the rule and first complied with the National Environmental Policy Act's mandate that an Environmental Impact Statement be conducted evaluating the impact of the proposed changes and other alternatives.
 
 On June 16, 2005, OSM announced an intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement on the stream buffer zone and excess spoil rules, and invited more public comment on the issues and alternatives. Click here to take a look at what people said in hearings on the issue in 2004. To read a note from OSM, click here. 
 
 Please e-mail OSM at dhartos@osmre.gov (note: OSM has apparently changed the address to SBZ-EIS@osmre.gov). Note that you oppose the weakening of these rules, and support strict enforcement of the current rules, including an insistence that each state protect the full extent of headwater streams from filling with mine wastes. For more detail, click here and here.  You have until mid-August to comment.

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Toxic mercury pollution is so pervasive that more and more Americans cannot even safely eat fish caught in local waters. But rather than crack down on mercury pollution, the Bush administration recently gave polluters a pass, delaying reductions in mercury emissions from power plants for years to come.

Senators Patrick Leahy (VT) and Susan Collins (ME) have introduced a bipartisan joint resolution to overturn the Bush administration's mercury plan and send them back to the drawing board to write a rule that complies with the law and protects public health.

Let your senators know that that you're not brain dead (yet).

Tell them that supporting the Leahy-Collins resolution is "pro life" in the most relevant sense of the word. Click here to send a letter.

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