As you know, last October a federal judge ruled that valley fills in certain streams at mountaintop removal operations are illegal. Your letters and calls to Senator Byrd and other political pawns of King Koal were critical in stopping Byrd’s legislative maneuvering that would have pummeled the judge’s decision and escalated the massacre of our mountains.

Judge Haden’s decision is on appeal, but the Clinton/Gore Administration isn’t waiting for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to make a ruling. Obviously bowing to pressure from coal and other extractive industries, the Environmental Protection Agency and the US Army Corps of Engineers have proposed changes to rules in the Clean Water Act. Besides giving the green light to previously illegal massive valley fills (not saying that coal companies obeyed the law) at mountaintop removal operations, these changes would allow all types of mines (coal, gold, lead, silver, etc.) and other industries to dump wastes into streams and wetlands nationwide. Once again, we urgently need you, your family and friends to write letters opposing these changes to the Clean Water Act rules.

Please use the letter below to draft your own letter. Comments are due by July 19. If you need more information, e-mail vivian@wvadventures.net or call OVEC staff at 522-0246.

President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore
c/o Thaddeus. J. Rugiel
Office of the Chief of Engineers
ATTN CECW-OR
20 Massachusetts Avenue
Washington, DC 20314-1000

Dear President Clinton,

These comments are in regards to your Administration’s proposed revisions to the Clean Water Act definition of "fill material" and "discharge fill material" ( 65 Fed. Reg. 21292) (April 20, 2000). Please add these comments to the docket for the proposed rule changes.

The proposed rule changes violate the intent of the Clean Water Act and will be injurious to both people and the nation’s waterways. The changes, if enacted, will substantially increase the dumping of all manner of solid waste into our nation’s lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands. As a West Virginian, I am especially concerned that the rule changes will increase mountaintop removal coal mining, which has already wreaked great harm on the state’s southern coalfield communities and ecosystems.

The rule changes that would eliminate the current exclusion of waste from the existing and long-standing definition of "fill material" must not be enacted. Nor should you enact your proposal to substitute a poorly defined category of "unsuitable fill material" for the waste exclusion, which would be administered by Army Corp of Engineers. This proposal is far too vague to be substituted for the Clean Water Act’s current broad waste exclusion.

Your proposed rule changes have the potential to create extensive environmental damage. It is ludicrous to suggest that such changes should NOT be studied with an environmental impact statement. Please do not implement the proposed rules changes.

Respectfully submitted,

(Your Name)