New Basis for Environmental Protection

From Sierra Club's recent Thank you letter to Obama Administration, Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator and Nancy Sutley, Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), Chairwoman, March 30, 2009

Thank You for Taking Action on Mountaintop Removal

Dear [Decision Maker],

Thank you for taking action to protect the streams, mountains, and communities of Appalachia. I am heartened by the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to apply the best science in thoroughly reviewing pending mountaintop removal permits, and I commend your commitment to enforcing Clean Water Act rules and to environmental justice.

Mountaintop removal coal mining has already destroyed close to 2,000 miles of streams, flattened more than 500,000 acres of mountain landscape, and degraded the quality of life of residents across the coal fields of

Appalachia. For three decades this practice has proceeded largely unchecked. Your actions demonstrate a welcome and long-awaited change in direction.

This decision will stop the bleeding; however, long term policy changes are necessary to ensure that communities and streams are fully protected from the most devastating effects of mountaintop removal coal mining.

In keeping with your agency's renewed focus on sound science and enforcing our nation's environmental laws, I ask that EPA begin a rulemaking to keep waste out of the definition of "fill" material, and out of our waterways.

In addition, regulatory activity should shift to protecting the natural environment as the essential, non-substitutable natural capital of the human economy, not simply for its intrinsic, aesthetic, or health value, as worthwhile as they are.

To this end, one project to undertake would be to produce an annual natural asset accounting of the human economy's effect on the natural economy, capital, and infrastructure. Done correctly, this could be the basis for accurately adjusting GNP calculations and price corrections to address external costs.

Scott T. Edmondson, AICP, Sustainability 2030 Solutions, Sustainability Strategy / Environmental Review, (415) 992-6473 scott-e22@earthlink.net.