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Take Easy Web Action on Valley Fills!
Urgent—make The Call For Anwr Today! Sens.
Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Ted Stevens (R-AK) are apparently collaborating to offer an amendment to the Energy Bill that would open the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and funnel any revenues into a fund for paying steelworkers pensions.
Please call to tell our Senators this is unacceptable!: Sen. Byrd's Office 202-224-3954 Sen. Rockefeller's Office 202-224-6472 Click here for their local contact numbers.
TALKING POINTS: --The amount of revenue projected in the Bush budget proposal for this year is about $1.2 billion. The amount required for the "legacy payments" to steelworkers is more than $14 billion. Drilling in the Arctic won't even come close to covering that shortfall, because there just isn't that much oil available. And the money will not be available for quite some time.
--Labor unions are opposing drilling in the Refuge: CWA, SEIU, UE
Take Easy Web Action On Valley Fills!
Yes! World Wildlife Fund has taken up the call to action on the valley fill rule change! Please visit their website NOW to take quick action! Click on "Major Threat to Rivers, Streams, and Forest Habitat."
Please do this even if you have sent faxes previously. Please ask your friends to take this action too.
Below is the background info they have up and the letter they'll send to the President, his chief of staff and the heads of EPA and The Council on Environmental Quality when you visit their Web Action Center.
BACKGROUND Within the next few weeks, the Bush administration proposes to dramatically weaken federal Clean Water Act regulations in a way that poses grave threats to rivers, streams, and forest habitat. The change would allow waste material to bury rivers, streams, and other aquatic systems across the nation and permit the continuation of a devastating strip mining practice known as mountaintop removal mining.
In West Virginia and other Appalachian states - in one of the most biologically diverse temperate regions of the world - mountaintops are torn apart to gain access to low-sulfur coal lying underneath. The leftover rock and earth is dumped into nearby valleys and streams. These practices threaten songbirds and other wildlife dependent on large tracts of interior forest, and the mussels, fish, crayfish, and invertebrates found in the streams.
Since 1997, World Wildlife Fund has been working to protect the rivers and streams of the Southeastern United States, which constitute one of the most species-rich river ecosystems in the world. Mountaintop mining wastes are devastating some of the headwaters of these streams.
In 1998 concerned West Virginians brought suit against regulatory agencies for failing to enforce the Clean Water Act, which should have prevented many of the streams in the region from being buried in mountaintop mining wastes. In 1999, a federal judge ruled that certain restrictions need to apply to mountaintop mining in compliance with federal law and regulations. Bowing to coal industry pressure, the Clinton administration in 2000 proposed the regulatory changes to the Clean Water Act that the Bush administration now seeks to finalize.
WWF Conservation Action Network activists were among the 17,000 individuals speaking out against this plan when it was proposed in 2000 (thank you!). Please let President Bush know that it is still a bad idea.
LETTER Dear President Bush:
I urge you to reject changes to Clean Water Act regulations that would authorize the dumping of waste into our nation's waterways and threaten fish and wildlife dependent on clean water.
The changes would revise the definition of "fill material" under the act. Such changes would result in the increased use and size of valley fills in mountaintop removal coal strip mining operations, where coal companies blow the tops off of mountains and dump the generated waste into nearby valleys, thereby destroying streams for miles. Moreover, the proposed revision would allow other strip and underground coal mines, hardrock mines, and other polluting industries to dump a wide variety of solid waste into our nation's waterways, contrary to the goals of the Clean Water Act. Such a broad change could endanger wildlife habitat in our rivers, lakes, and wetlands across the nation, negatively affecting numerous threatened and endangered species.
In West Virginia and other Appalachian states, mountaintop removal strip mines destroy huge tracts of some of the world's most biologically diverse forests. In West Virginia alone, mountaintop removal mining has destroyed over 300,000 acres of rich hardwood forest and buried over 750 miles of streams, including some of the richest temperate freshwater ecosystems in the world. These practices threaten songbirds and other wildlife dependent on large tracts of interior forest, and the mussels, fish, crayfish, and invertebrates found in the streams.
For the protection of both wildlife and human communities, please do not change the current rule to allow the dumping of waste into waterways.
Sincerely,
Your name and address will be inserted here
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