George W. Bush enjoys being portrayed as a cowboy who loves his ranch - a good ol' boy who enjoys nothing more than a day spent in natural surroundings. But, the present Administration has mounted an assault on the environment, and on environmental laws, at every level. Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton has made it clear that she considers the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) to be unconstitutional. SMCRA was enacted to "establish a nationwide program to protect society and the environment from the adverse

effects of surface coal mining operations." This landmark federal legislation finally required coal companies who were strip mining to clean up the disastrous messes being created. The law required coal companies to replace water supplies people lost when mine spoil was dumped into streams, which resulted in the clogging or complete burial of entire watersheds. Now the executive branch has decided that these laws "get in the way" of coal operators' attempts to obtain coal.

In 2001 and 2002, floods inundated West Virginia and parts of Kentucky and southwest Virginia for the third time in less than a year. Studies have determined that excessive logging and mountain top removal mining were a definite factor in the severity of the flooding. It is difficult to explain the scope and impact of mountain top removal to people who have not seen it. Some sites cover three and four thousand acres. Millions of cubic feet of land are blasted away by explosive charge to get at the thin seams of coal underneath the mountain

tops. Trees, rocks, soil-in short, everything but the coal-is considered "overburden." Land is devastated, and afterwards the ground must be compacted so hard to stabilize it that nothing but scrub grasses will grow. Rains rush off the denuded mountain tops at an alarming rate.

West Virginia federal judge, Charles Haden, ruled that many of the state-issued permits for valley fills were illegal under federal SMCRA laws. Valley fills result when the over burden is bulldozed into the nearest hollow or valley-which is also usually a watercourse. The Bush administration and its industry allies came up with a plan. If the valley fills were illegal as defined by SMCRA, then they would simply change the definition of "fill material" and make them legal. The way the Administration redefines "fill" will

allow, for example, left-over materials from a riverside construction site to be disposed of in the river. Much of the good the Clean Water Act did to keep our waters free of trash and debris has been compromised, just to satisfy Bush industry allies.

Citizens of the region were aided by environmental activists all over the country, and sympathetic legislators such as Senator Paul Wellstone. These parties recognized that alteration of the SMCRA law has grievous repercussions for the Clean Water Act. U.S. Reps. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Christopher Shays (R-CT) introduced legislation that would prohibit the dumping of industrial waste into rivers and streams, a practice that the Bush Administration would have allowed when it made a rule change to the Clean Water Act last May. When the 107th Congress ended there

were 36 co-sponsors. This bill, HR 738, called the Clean Water Protection Act 2003, has been reintroduced in the 108th Congress.