Print |
E-mail to a friend
NEWS BRIEFS
Coal industry pans EPA water quality standards
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A key industry group is renewing its criticism of strict water quality standards developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to curb mountaintop removal coal mining.
The National Mining Association said Thursday that the EPA used bad science to develop the standards it introduced April 1. Among other things, the organization says the study underpinning the standards violated EPA guidelines by relying on field data rather than laboratory findings.
The EPA policy is aimed at sharply reduce the practice of filling valleys with waste from mountaintop removal and other types of surface mines in West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and Tennessee. The practice is considered highly efficient by mine operators, but terribly destructive by environmentalists.
