Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, WV

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November 2, 2009

AFTERNOON UPDATE — Mining stream buffer rule could be ready by 2011

CHARLESTON (AP) — The Obama administration says reversing a last-minute Bush-era surface mining regulation criticized as too friendly to coal companies is going to take at least another year.

The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement plans to start the process of replacing the regulation by mid-November and hopes to complete the job by early 2011, acting director Glenda Owens said in a court filing. The document popped up in a lawsuit aimed at overturning the Bush administration’s stream buffer regulation, which was approved shortly before Obama took office.

The regulation rewrote rules adopted in 1983 by the Reagan administration that barred mining companies from dumping material removed from surface operations within 100 feet of streams if the disposal harmed water quality or quantity.

Instead, the revisions required mine operators to keep debris piles as small as possible, but allows them to skirt the buffer requirement if compliance is determined to be impossible.

For more about this story and other news, read Tuesday’s Daily Telegraph.

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