Environmental groups are marshaling efforts to fight a Bush administration proposal they say would reduce protection from strip mining for Appalachian streams.

The U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement will release today proposed changes to rules on mining near streams and on disposal of rocks and dirt displaced by mining, called spoil.

Right now, environmentalists say, the rules bar mining disturbances within 100 feet of streams that flow all or some of the time.

But there has been a great deal of conflict among environmentalists, the coal industry and regulators over what streams and types of mining activity the rule covers, causing court fights and what OSM called "inconsistent enforcement."

The proposed rule change will say the rule requiring buffer zones does not apply to putting excess spoil into valleys near mines -- called valley fills -- or to impoundments that coal companies build to hold slurry -- water and fine particles -- left over from processing coal, said Joan Mulhern, legislative counsel for Earthjustice, an environmental group.

That's a problem because valley fills and impoundments bury more streams than other mining activities, environmental groups argue.

"Despite the federal government's own studies showing widespread, harmful, and irreversible stream loss in the region, the OSM proposes exempting the most harmful mountaintop removal mining activities from the buffer zone rule," Mulhern said in a statement. "Once again, OSM is demonstrating that it is not an effective regulator for the public, but the 'Office for Slicing Mountains' and 'Office of Stream Mangling' for coal companies."

However, OSM said its proposal would make the rules clearer and do more to protect the environment by requiring mine operators to reduce excess spoil, build valley fills no larger than necessary, and consider alternative configurations for fills and impoundments, then use the one best designed to protect the environment or explain why that's not possible.

But representatives of several environmental groups said yesterday that they will fight the proposed rule change on stream buffer zones, first by filing comments against it. If OSM puts it in place anyway, the next option would be to sue.

"Obviously we think it's absurd to drop the rule," said Teri Blanton, former chairwoman of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. "Destroying headwater streams is not protecting human health and the environment."

In practical terms, the new rule wouldn't mean a lot more mountaintop mining because regulators haven't been enforcing the current rule on stream protection anyway, routinely granting exemptions from the buffer zone, said Joe Lovett, head of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment in West Virginia.

Strip mining has buried hundreds of miles of streambeds in Appalachia the last 20 years.

Rather, one big problem environmentalists have with the proposed change is that it would end their chance of getting a court order for OSM to enforce the stream-protection rule to their liking, or of some future administration requiring tougher enforcement.

"If we don't have that law, we're up a buried creek," said Vivian Stockman of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, which has fought to limit mountaintop mining.

Surface mining leaves behind huge amounts of rock and dirt that have to be put somewhere. Ending or reducing exemptions from the stream buffer rule would limit -- perhaps even cripple -- mining by making more areas off-limits.

"They know that this is a threat to the coal industry," Lovett said, so the administration wants to change the rule before Bush leaves office.

OSM spokesman Ben Owens said in a statement that the federal strip-mining law, passed in 1977, does not ban burying streams, and that the agency has consistently enforced the stream-buffer rule.

Bill Caylor, head of the Kentucky Coal Association, said the buffer rule was never meant to apply to "ephemeral" streams, which he said are more accurately described as dry ditches at the heads of hollows.

In Kentucky, that is where almost all the impact to "streams" occurs -- spots before the point where a true stream starts, Caylor said.

Caylor said the coal industry works to minimize environmental impacts, and that OSM's proposed new rule would merely put in law what is already being practiced.

Environmentalists say those headwater areas are integral parts of the ecosystem and shouldn't be filled.

Large-scale strip mining, or mountaintop mining, has become increasingly controversial in recent years, with opponents decrying damage to water supplies and the flattening of thousands of acres of mountains.

Mountaintop removal -- blasting and scraping away the entire tops of mountains with bulldozers to expose coal seams -- has been a particular flashpoint, but there is very little true mountaintop removal in Kentucky. The term mountaintop mining includes such things as area mining, which does not involve removing the entire top of a hill but produces the same environmental impacts.

The coal industry defends mountaintop mining as the most economical way, and at times the only way, to recover some coal.

People have 60 days to submit comments on the proposed rule by mail or courier to the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, Administrative Record, Room 252-SIB, 1951 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20240, or by Internet through the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov. Please identify the comments by including docket number 1029-AC04 in the subject line.