NRDC recently released a report -- Reclamation FAIL -- that debunked the coal industry's propaganda that mountaintop removal mining is beneficial because (1) Appalachia needs more flat land and (2) flattened mine sites are routinely converted for economic development. Such claims are nothing more than a big, flat lie.
Maybe the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should change its acronym from EPA to WTF.
How else to explain the perplexing and downright disgusting decision last week by the agnecy to recommend approval by the Corps of Engineers of a permit sought by Coal-Mac (subsidiary of Arch Coal) for the Pine Creek Surface Minein Logan County, West Virginia. So much for EPA's supposedly hard-line water protection standards issued in April which promised tougher oversight of mountaintop removal.