Letter: Mining rule was Obama overreach

Your editorial “Trashing Streams and Rivers Was Job One” from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch made no attempt to explain why the Republican Congress and President Trump chose to rescind the Stream Protection Rule meant to regulate mountaintop coal mining. Simply put, it was because the Obama-era rule represented massive regulatory overreach.

The new rule focused on the requirement that coal companies avoid causing damage to the “hydrologic balance” at or near mine sites. Much detail is provided in the rule on what this may mean, but at the end of the day it means what the bureaucrats say it means, at each mining site.

Rules should give quantitative guidance to a permit applicant. Rules should not require an applicant to engage in a philosophical debate with regulators about whether the “hydrologic balance” at a given site will be adversely affected. Businesses cannot make decisions involving very large investments in such an atmosphere. This rule would have done what is was designed to do: completely eliminate mountaintop mining across Appalachia.

Stream protection for coal mining operations is currently regulated under the 1983 Stream Buffer Zone Rule. This rule has been woefully inadequate at providing appropriate protections for Appalachian streams. The smart approach to creating a new rule would have involved tweaking and strengthening the old rule and getting coal industry and stakeholder input on making things better. But, the previous administration’s approach was to try its best to develop regulations that would eliminate the entire Appalachian coal mining industry. Look where that got us.

This story was originally published February 9, 2017 at 4:09 PM with the headline "Letter: Mining rule was Obama overreach."