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• Buffer Zone Press Conference and Meeting Wednesday

 Buffer Zone Press Conference and Meeting Wednesday
This Wednesday (Aug. 24) at 5:30 p.m. please join us for a Friends of the Mountains press conference, followed by the Office of Surface Mining's (OSM) meeting on the scoping process for the environmental impact statement on proposed changes to the stream buffer zone rule. Meet us inside the Washington Street entrance to the Embassy Suites Hotel (corner of Court and Washington) in downtown Charleston, W.Va.

The stream buffer zone rule is clear, and it is clearly being broken. If the stream buffer zone rule of mining law were enforced, coal companies would not be able to construct as many valley fills as they do. The rule says no land within 100 feet of an intermittent or perennial stream shall be disturbed by surface mining operations. Under the Bush administration, OSM wants to change the two-decade-old stream buffer zone rule so that coal companies practicing mountaintop removal mining can legally bury streams under millions of tons of former mountaintops. Please do you part to stop this rule from being changed--attend this meeting. 

Good news on getting your written comments in to OSM--the deadline has been extended 'till September 1. For details on what and who to write, please click here.

Protect Appalachian streams from being buried alive --stand up for the stream buffer zone rule!

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