By RONNIE ELLIS
FRANKFORT — He’s tried three times before, but he thinks there’s no better time than now.
Rep. Don Pasley, D-Winchester, Thursday pre-filed legislation to prevent mining operators from dumping “overburden” waste from mountaintop removal sites into nearby streams. It is more popularly known as the “stream saver bill.” Pasley has watched in previous legislative sessions as his bill languished in unfriendly committees dominated by lawmakers sympathetic to mining interests.
“All my bill does is simply call on the coal companies to leave the mountain largely as they found it,” Pasley said, who said he does not oppose “responsible” coal mining. “It may not be as easy as burying a stream and leveling dozens of square miles in a matter of months, but it is the right thing to do.”
Coal operators and their supporters counter that mountaintop removal is the only efficient way to get at deep seams of coal, some of which are only a foot deep or less. Supporters say coal is essential to the state’s economy and energy needs. But it is also more mechanized than deep mine operations. creates enormous amounts of debris and levels the tops of the mountains.
At mountaintop removal sites, operators blast away the earth covering seams of coal and bulldoze the waste over the side of the mountain into valleys which sometimes contain streams and “intermittent streams.” Those are paths which are typically dry but become streams during heavy rains – and many of them feed the headwaters of the Kentucky River. Pasley and others contend the silt and heavy metal contamination of those streams eventually make their way down stream into the Kentucky River.
“I’m interested in the Bluegrass Region and the Kentucky River,” Pasley said Thursday shortly before filing the bill. “Nearly 800,000 people depend on the Kentucky River for their drinking water.” He said sediment is the primary pollutant in the river and it mostly comes from coal mining upstream.
Opponents of Pasley’s legislation have previously contended mining is only one of several causes of sediment – and agriculture and development create more sediment than mining. Pasley is a farmer in his private life.
Pasley said he didn’t know to which committee House leaders might send his bill. In the past, it’s been sent to the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee chaired by Rep. Jim Gooch, D-Providence. But it was never called for a vote. Last year, the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee, on which Pasley serves, amended another bill to insert Pasley’s stream saver bill.
After testimony by academics, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth members – who oppose mountaintop removal – and coal mining supporters, A&R; Chairman Harry Moberly, D-Richmond, called the bill for a vote but it failed. The bill picked up 22 co-sponsors, including Moberly and some other members of the budget committee. Pasley said he expects “as many or more co-sponsors as we had last year.”
Pasley said this is a critical time to reconsider the bill. The outgoing administration of President George W. Bush revised a regulation which required a 100-foot buffer area between streams and the disposal of the overburden waste. He said it could take up to 18 months to have a new federal regulation in place.
“We could lose hundreds of miles of streams in the interim,” Pasley said.
RONNIE ELLIS writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com.
