Whoever takes over the White House is sure to do more for the environment than the current occupants.
Well, it would be hard do less.
In fact, doing nothing would be better than the administration’s current drive to help favored industries lock in their gains by knocking a few more loopholes into already porous regulations.
For example: in 2007, the Environmental Working Group found that rising prices for uranium, gold and other metals had caused some 810 mining claims to be staked within five miles of Grand Canyon National Park and that more than 21,000 claims to mine for uranium, gold and other metals had been filed near national parks and other American treasures. To prevent mining near the Grand Canyon while mining reform legislation is being debated, a Congressional committee invoked a little-known emergency rule that enabled it to take quick action to protect threatened public lands.
But on Oct. 10, the Interior department’s Bureau of Land Management announced a plan to eliminate that rule. The deadline for public comment expires today (Oct. 27), after which BLM can proceed with the paperwork to make the change permanent.
Meanwhile, the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining is taking good care of Big Coal. On Oct. 17, it moved a giant step closer to enacting regulations promoting the controversial practice of mountaintop removal coal mining. In 1983, the Reagan administration wrote regulations that barred surface mining companies from dumping piles of debris within 100 feet of mountain streams. Surface miners have targeted those regulations as an impediment to coal production, though many mining operations have simply ignored them. The US Environmental Protection Agency has calculated that mountaintop removal mining has damaged or destroyed at least 400,000 acres of southern Appalachian forests and 1,200 miles of mountain streams since the 1980’s.