Smoggy sunrise over San Joaquin Valley

After years of fighting with the EPA and the local air district to improve air quality in California's smoggy San Joaquin Valley—and often feeling like all of our progress was being made in court—we're finally seeing some change, at least at the federal level.

Through persistent administrative advocacy, we were able to convince EPA to reject the local district's do-nothing regulation covering sources that burn coal, petcoke, tires, biomass and municipal solid waste in the Valley.

Today signals a historic and hugely positive step taken by the EPA to protect the people of Appalachia, who have suffered the harmful and grave consequences of mountaintop removal mining for too long.

The news, just released, is that EPA Region III Administrator Shawn Garvin is recommending a veto of the permit for Spruce No. 1 Mine. Read here for background on the EPA's historic decisionmaking around the Spruce No. 1 Mine. Garvin's recommendation is to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who ultimately must make the decision.

What this means is that after years of watching their streams buried and waters contaminated by mountaintop removal mining, there is hope for the health and well-being of the people of Appalachia.

Here is part of Garvin's letter :

Gov. Joe Manchin

Today, we learned that West Virginia's Governor, Gov. Joe Manchin, is suing the EPA for its policies to strengthen watch over the state's biggest polluter, the coal mining industry and to ensure that mining does not put the people of the state and their water supplies directly in harm's way, compeletely devalue their property and turn their communities into wrecking zones for coal corporations.

He's joined the National Mining Association in suing the EPA over its recent guidance on mountaintop removal mining and its permitting process for mountaintop removal operations. The guidance is based on two new scientific studies, both affirmed and validated by an independent science advisory board, which reveal new information about mountaintop removal mining's impacts on waterways in Appalachia.

The guidance is meant to provide EPA field staff with a better, more secure, more scientifically sound way of protecting waters from irreversible harm -- and with a more responsible way of permitting these mining operations.

The travesty is that as long as mountaintop removal mining is allowed -- which the EPA is still doing -- our waters are not being protected.

Photo: Fresno Bee

Across the United States—from California's Central Valley to Chicago, Houston and New York—people are breathing polluted air and suffering. Asthma, bronchitis, heart disease, birth defects and even cancer are the prices paid by residents in scores of American communities where polluting facilities operate.

Worst of all, this suffering is unnecessary. Cost-effective technology to dramatically reduce toxic air emissions exists, but some of the biggest polluters simply brush off obligations to clean up their acts and be better neighbors. This stubborn refusal to comply with the law is having an especially big impact on Latino citizens, as a recent letter to President Obama and Congress points out.

More than 25 million U.S. Latinos—66 percent of the total Latino population—live in places where federal air quality standards aren't being met. Rates of asthma in communities like San Diego's Barrio Logan neighborhood are four times the national average. The letter, signed by community groups representing more than 5 million Latino citizens in the U.S., urges the Obama administration and Congress to uphold the Clean Air Act, which the groups say "means jobs, better health and better opportunities for a brighter, healthier future."