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"Where do we line-up to kiss Judge Haden?"
From
a press release
Valley fill ruling touted as victory for American system of government
CHARLESTON, W.Va. ˆ The Bush administration has been severely stung in
its attempts to aid the coal industry.
Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that valley fills at mountaintop removal
operations violate the Clean Water Act.
The Bush administration late Friday finalized a rule change that attempted
to legalize valley fills. U.S. District Court Judge Charles H. Haden II
said Tuesday that the rule change itself is illegal, as is the coal company
practice of fill hundreds of miles of streams with former mountaintops.
Coal companies blast off the tops of mountains in southern West Virginia
and
Eastern Kentucky to mine thin seams of coal.
Today, bipartisan members of Congress pledged to introduce legislation
that blocks the rule change and cements the original Clean Water Act rule
in question.
"Where do we line up to kiss Judge Haden?" asked Janet Fout,
co-director o the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC). The Huntington,
W.Va.-based environmental group says mountaintop removal has devastated
coalfield communities and disrupted entire ecosystems. The group also
says last week's deadly floods, which killed six people in southern West
Virginia, were most likely worsened by mountaintop removal strip mining,
because deforested and scalped mountains and filled-in valleys retain
less rainfall runoff than intact forest ecosystems.
"Bush's coal industry buddies were caught breaking the law, so they
lobbied the administration to rewrite the law in their favor," Fout
said. "But Judge Haden is a sage student of the law of the land.
He says valley fills are illegal under the Clean Water Act. In a victory
for our American system of government, both Judge Haden and members of
Congress have reminded Bush and Co. that only Congress can rewrite laws.
The judge's ruling will help coalfield residents reclaim both their future
and democracy itself from the grip of King Coal."
In an earlier ruling on a lawsuit filed by coalfield residents and environmental
groups, Haden had already declared large valley fills to be illegal. The
coal industry reacted with predications of its demise and appealed the
ruling. The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that
ruling, saying the case against a state agency should have not been filed
in federal court. Kentuckians for the Commonwealth then filed a new valley
fill case against a federal agency only, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
"Judge Haden's bravery, given the doomsday reactions to his first
decision, gives us some hope that the judicial system may actually serve
as a balance to the political and economic influence of the mining industry,"
said Bill McCabe, a field organizer with the Citizens Coal Council. "It
is refreshing to see a legal decision that clearly tells outlaw coal companies
that the
law does not allow them to destroy our pristine streams and mountains."
"Judge Haden's decision is a victory for West Virginia's rivers and
streams," said Jeremy P. Muller, Executive Director of the West Virginia
Rivers Coalition. "He has upheld the intent and purpose of the Clean
Water Act, and the fact that our rivers are not the coal industry's, or
any other industry's, waste bin -- no matter how much they protest to
the contrary."
