Mountains of Debate Concerning Bush's Mining Policy

"Nowhere are the administration's environmental policies more striking and emotionally charged than in the coal fields of Appalachia, where mountaintop removal mining has been leaving scars for years.

Bulldozers scrape the trees, brush and topsoil from a mountaintop, then miners blast away the underlying rock to reach the nearest coal seam. They harvest it and blast down to the next. The leftover rock and dirt are pushed into the nearest valley, leaving a flat or rolling landscape where peaks and valleys once stood.

Environmentalists say the mining companies routinely violate the Clean Water Act by dumping mining waste into streams; they want federal regulators to enforce the act. Instead, the Bush administration proposed changes that would make it easier for the coal companies to get the permits."