The Federal Surface Mining Act was passed in 1977 for the laudable purpose of protecting the environment from the ravages of strip-mining of coal. For many years environmentalists had fought to get the bill passed. Strip-mining menaces the habitat of wildlife and causes incalculable damage to the environment. The law is explicit on such matters as where strip-mining is prohibited, the disposal of toxic waste, the placement of power lines, and the rights of the public to take part in the control of strip-mining. However, the Secretary of the Interior has recently incurred the wrath of environmentalists by advocating numerous proposals that repudiate the existing law.
According to the law, strip-mining is prohibited in national forests, national wildlife refuges, public parks, historic places, and within a specified number of feet from roads, cemeteries, parks, houses, and schools. The exception to this prohibition is stated in the words valid existing rights, referring to those miners who had rights in protected lands before the law was passed. By redefining “valid existing rights,” the Secretary now intends to infringe upon the law by opening over a million acres of national forest and wildlife refuges to strip-mining. Naturally, the National Wildlife Federation is appalled. This new proposal does not augur well for wildlife, which will be destroyed by such latent killers as power lines and tainted ponds near strip-mines.
Why is the Secretary attempting to jettison the regulations so tempestuously gained only a few years ago? He claims that mining companies are losing money and that the new proposals would make mining more lucrative. Irate ecologists repudiate that theory on the basis of a study made by the Department of Energy that estimates that the savings to mining companies would be less than five cents per ton of coal.
It doesn’t require a sage to foresee the wrangle that is forthcoming between proporrents. of conservation and the Interior Department. The consensus among environmentalists is that unless they obstruct the Secretary’s new regulations, this land will be ravaged and our wildlife severely maimed by strip-mining companies for the sake of a few pennies’ profit.
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