Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

Yesterday the White House took a firm stand against an effort to undermine the 40-year-old Clean Air Act, reverse a Supreme Court decision, and block the federal fuel efficiency standards that were finalized this past spring, which will reduce the nation's consumption of oil by at least 455 million barrels.
 
The effort at hand is a seldom-used congressional "Resolution of Disapproval" by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), on the Senate floor for a vote tomorrow, June 10. The resolution, which was influenced by oil- and polluter-industry lobbyists, is at the center of a fury of political positioning and partisan politicking. Its purpose is to block the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases, authorized by the Clean Air Act and reaffirmed by the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court decision.
 
In an official statement yesterday, the White House threatened to veto the resolution if it is passed by the Senate tomorrow. Meanwhile, Sen. Murkowski and her Republican allies held a press conference to solicit public attention and support for this vote. The rest of the Senate and, more importantly, the public, should see through their smoke-and-mirrors routine. After all, the connection between reducing our national dependence on oil and controlling fossil fuel pollution are two sides of the same coin.

With the recent mining tragedy in West Virginia there has been argument enough that mountaintop removal mining takes the human element out of mining – that is, machines extracting coal from deep within mines supplant the human cost of mining.

A new study shows that this belief has no merit.

According to researchers at West Virginia University and Virginia Tech, West Virginians living near streams polluted by mine waste are more likely to die of cancer. This study is the first to see the connection between the health of Appalachian streams and the health of coalfield residents. If you didn't know, mountaintop removal mining is a method that blows up mountains and dumps mine waste into streams.

In Appalachia, moving mountains is easy. What's hard is keeping them where they are. Coal companies have used dynamite's muscle to blast hundreds of the earth's oldest summits into neighboring valleys, permanently altering the landscape. But two recent developments are shaking the foundations of mountaintop removal mining, signaling that perhaps, at long last, what's moving is the mountain of science and law that compels the end of this destructive practice.

In late March, the Environmental Protection Agency took dramatic action in proposing to veto a permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the Spruce No. 1 mine in West Virginia—one of the largest mountaintop removal projects ever approved—on the grounds that mine operations would violate the Clean Water Act. The action was presaged by an Earthjustice lawsuit filed in 2007 that challenged approval of a Clean Water Act permit for the mine for failing to follow science and the law.

If the EPA does veto the permit, the agency's invocation of the Clean Water Act to curtail operations at the Spruce mine will be an important victory. It could have broader repercussions on mountaintop removal in general. (The agency is currently accepting public comments on the veto proposal. You can take action by telling EPA to follow through with the veto and enforce the Clean Water Act.)

But the good news doesn't end there.

<Update: Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) announced that he will introduce legislation that provides the same protections on federal lands in Montana that British Columbia has agreed to.> Canada's portion of the Flathead Valley—a dazzling part of wilderness known as the "Crown of the Continent"—has been saved from the kind of mineral development that is destroying many parts of the United States.

British Columbia, in partnership with the state of Montana, has agreed to ban mining, oil and gas development and coalbed gas extraction in the valley, which is adjacent to a World Heritage site spanning the U.S.-Canadian border.

This is a big win for Earthjustice and its Canadian counterpart, EcoJustice, which had petitioned the United Nations in 2008 to investigate proposed mining activities. What's been saved, says Earthjustice attorney Tim Preso, is "a treasure more precious than coal or gold."