Congress took its first punch at the Obama administration’s environmental legacy by repealing the Stream Protection Rule, which would have tightened protections on more than 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests.
The law, which was approved by the White House last December and had yet to go into effect, called on companies, especially the coal industry, to clean up their pollution of waterways. The Senate voted down the rule, 54-45, after the House did the same, 228-194, the day before, both using an esoteric law that lets Congress review regulations before they go into effect. President Trump has to sign the act before the repeal will be final, but Obama’s coal-friendly successor should be glad to oblige.
Coal companies have long claimed that the law would put them out of business, and some farm groups like the American Farm Bureau Foundation also charged that the bill would have slapped them with onerous regulations.
“We see this (rule) as very hurtful to farmers and ranchers and we’re going to do everything to stop it politically,” said Don Parrish of the American Farm Bureau Federation.
When the rule was finalized last year, the Farm Bureau joined the mega-coal company Murray Energy, private businesses and attorney generals from 13 states in filing lawsuits against the new regulations in several courts across the U.S. After a federal judge in North Dakota struck down the rule, the EPA said it would implement it anyway, except in those 13 states that opposed it (Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming).
Other ranchers and farmers, though, saw the rule as essential to protecting the water on their property.
“One person’s regulation is another person’s protection,” Steve Charter, a third-generation rancher in southeast Montana, told FERN’s Ag Insider. Charter’s property is near Bull Mountain Mine and he fears what coal pollution, which has already affected the area’s groundwater aquifer, will eventually mean for the streams that water his cattle and bring diverse wild species to his property.
“It’s easy to say that regulations are bad. But when you talk about mining in the West, is reclaiming land and restoring water [bad]?” said Charter, adding that if opponents to the rule want to stop environmental clean-up, then they are in the minority. “That’s not what people voted for. I think there’s real strong support for making sure we’re not doing permanent harm to the land and water and air,” the rancher said.
The rule would have required a permit to pollute within 100-feet of a perennial or intermittent stream, and it would have demanded that polluters do more to restore the land and riparian areas they disturb. According to a Congressional Research Service report, the rule would have improved 2,811 acres of forest each year and conserved 20 acres of forest annually, while improving the safety of American drinking water.
However, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement acknowledged that the rule would have lowered coal production between 2020 and 2040 by 0.08 percent annually, amounting to about 124 full-time jobs each year.
Yet, ranchers like Ellen Phister, also of coal-country Montana, say that coal puts their jobs at risk. In a statement, Phister said that coal runoff from the Bull Mountain mine has already damaged one stream on her property, while poorly reclaimed areas have hurt the natural biodiversity of local vegetation – and thus the nutrition of grasses — that her animals graze on. Cracks in the earth caused by subsidence from the mine also endanger her animals, she said.
“I can think of no industry that degrades water in such a reckless and cavalier way as the coal industry — from acid mine drainage to eating streams on the prairie to destroying wells and springs in Montana’s Bull Mountains,” wrote Phister in an op-ed for The Hill.