clean water act

At the request of the federal government, a federal judge yesterday put a temporary halt to the legal clash over Appalachia’s largest mountaintop coal mine, the 2,300 acre Spruce No. 1 project in Southern West Virginia.
That project is slated to bury more than seven miles of mountain streams, leading to a protracted legal battle with [...]

As Kate pointed out a few weeks back, the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this month stalled 79 applications for new surface mines in the Appalachian Mountains, citing concerns that those operations would harm local water quality. Today, the agency went a step further, announcing in a letter to the U.S. Corps of Engineers that all [...]

In a bow to the mining industry, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the Clean Water Act permits an Alaskan gold mining company to dump tons of waste into a 23-acre lake nearby — never mind that the dumping will kill off every bit of aquatic life there.
The ruling extends from a 2002 rule [...]

California Rep. Henry Waxman (D) might be headed for the chairmanship of the House energy committee, but not before he gets a final shot at the Bush administration from atop the oversight panel.
A report released today from Waxman’s office — a joint effort with the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, headed by Rep. James Oberstar [...]