For 25 years, the Clean Water Act (CWA) allowed for the granting of permits to place "fill material" into waters of the United States, provided that the primary purpose of the "filling" was not for waste disposal. As such, the CWA prohibited mountaintop removal operations from using the nation's waterways as waste disposal sites. That changed in 2002, when the Army Corps of Engineers, under the direction of the Bush administration and without congressional approval, altered its longstanding definition of "fill material" to include mining waste. This change accelerated the devastating practice of mountaintop removal coal mining and the destruction of more than 2,000 miles of Appalachian streams.
How You Can Help
Write your representative today and ask him/her to be a co-sponsor of the Clean Water Protection Act, to be introduced by Congressman Frank Pallone of New Jersey and Congressman Dave Reichert of Washington in the 111th Congress. (Click here for a list of co-sponsors from the 110th Congress.)
Points to make in your letter include:
- The Clean Water Act is meant to protect, not bury, our rivers and streams.
- More than 400,000 acres in West Virginia alone have been leveled, and estimates are that a total of 1.4 million acres of Appalachia's mountains have been destroyed by mountaintop removal mining.
- Across the Appalachian coalfields, more than 2,000 miles of streams are now buried and destroyed by mountaintop removal.
- The Clean Water Protection Act is necessary to protect clean drinking water for many of our nation's cities.
- The Clean Water Protection Act is also necessary to protect the quality of life and economic security for Appalachian coalfield residents who face frequent catastrophic flooding and pollution or loss of drinking water as a result of mountaintop removal.
