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The Star-Ledger, Saturday, November 03, 2007 http://www.nj.com/opinion/ledger/forums/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1194068462132510.xml&coll=1
The Environmental Protection Agency, nine state attorneys general and 13 environmental groups recently reached a settlement forcing power plants to upgrade pollution controls. However, a Bush administration amnesty clause allows utilities to violate the law for 10 years with no action against them. President Bush supports constructing more than 100 coal-fired power plants, touting coal as an affordable, clean fossil fuel al though its CO2 emissions make it one of the most polluting. Coal is mined in West Virginia. Some of the world's most biologically diverse temperate hardwood forests are clear cut from mountaintops, which are then blasted with dynamite, with "fill" dumped into valleys, burying headwater streams. This was permitted because "waste" was reclassified as "fill" in Bush's 2002 rule change to the Clean Water Act. Billions of gallons of slurry produced by chemi cally cleaning coal are dumped into the Southeast aquifer. On Aug. 24, Bush's Office of Surface Mining proposed another change in the Clean Water Act to allow mining within 100 feet of a stream, nullifying the 100-foot stream buffer zone. The coal industry has earned an excellent return on millions of dollars contributed to Republicans. -- Bettie J. Reina, Milmay
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