As if he hasn’t done enough damage in his 7 years and counting, he’s now rolled back a rule from the 80’s protecting streams from mining waste. This guy is on a bend to destroy this country wholly up until his last minutes.  I recall reading that Teddy Roosevelt was on his knees drawing up national monuments and passing them through executive order  the night before signing a bill saying he wouldn’t designate any more monuments.  It’s great when it works for us and now we’re seeing what happens when it works against us.

Yesterday, the Bush Administration’s EPA agreed to relax the conditions under which mining companies can dispose their waste.  They can now dispose it within 100′ of a stream.

I have confidence that our president elect will attempt to roll these orders back, but you can’t always be sure.  In concert with the Tennesseans for Wilderness Planning, we can make available to you draft letters that support rolling back this rule to previous protection levels that you can send to Tennessee’s federal delegates.  Reply to this blog and I’ll send you a copy of the draft letter.  If you don’t know who your legislator is, I’ll find out for you.

Also, check out this site: http://www.ilovemountains.org/ for more information what you can do to send the message that our streams deserve a break from the worst of environmental pollution - mining waste.

By the way, I was speaking at the Knoxville Technical Association on Monday.  A representative from National Coal attended the meeting and was very curious about the 303d list.  Hmmm…. I’m sure the reason for their interest will become clear later…

RvH

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Building the River Movement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.