Urban Ecoist

Last week, I wrote about how the EPA is considering revisions to protections that prohibit mining within 100 feet of a stream or river.   This little rule is called the Stream Buffer Zone, and you can read more about it here.

Why do we need stream buffers? Mostly to ensure that huge mining operations don’t bury rivers beneath waste product from the coal industry. And anything mined that is not coal is considered waste, so all those mountains in Kentucky and West Virginia that have been dynamited and leveled have to be deposited somewhere and valleys are the logical choice. Except that most valleys have some sort of water system running through them. Also, mining operators can also release some nasty stuff when processing coal, so buffers are needed to reduce contamination of stream and rivers.

I mentioned in that previous post, in addition to urging you to email or write the EPA and tell them not to revise the laws in place to protect said streams, that there must be some bigger reason why the Bush Administration is looking to open up more land to mining. And then I ran across this little article in the Dot Earth blog on the New York Times website.

Appalachian Coal to Power India?

Hmm. Maybe Bush and his EPA Administrator (by presidential appointment) are trying to open more land up to destructive mining practices because they have found new buyers for American coal. But wait, India doesn’t want to simply buy coal, they want to buy the coal mines.

In an email dispatch to our Green Inc. blog, Somini Sengupta confirmed some reports that top Indian government and industry figures, with some $4 billion to spend, were shopping in Appalachia and elsewhere not just for American coal (exports of coal from the United States have growing for awhile), but coal mines.

So let me get this straight, Indian mining companies operating in the United States. Will the companies hire American miners, or import Indian miners? It would be really ironic if the Indian mining companies hired American workers that had lost their previous jobs to outsourcing to, ta dah, India.

India, coal, mining, Stream Buffer Zone, Bush, EPA, pollution, mountaintop removal, rivers, streams, Kentucky, West Virginia, mines, coal mines, Indian, United States