The Interior Department’s office of Surface Mining finally has a new leader, Joe Pizarchik, and they have begun the process of establishing policies that will govern activities like mountaintop removal coal mining.

Pizarchik is generally thought of as being industry-friendly, so the more input that comes in against mountaintop removal, the better. Here’s part of what’s at stake:

Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, OSM, is publishing an advance notice of proposed rulemaking regarding the protection of streams from the impacts of surface coal mining operations.

The notice requests comments on alternatives for revising the current regulations, including the controversial stream buffer zone rule issued in December 2008 in the final weeks of the Bush administration.

The 2008 stream buffer rule modified a 1983 rule that prohibited the dumping of waste rock within 100 feet of a perennial or intermittent stream except when such activities “will not cause or contribute to the violation of State or Federal water quality standards and will not adversely affect the water quantity or quality or other environmental resources of the stream.”

The 2008 rule allows a surface coal mine operator to place waste rock into streams if the operator can show “it is not reasonably possible” to avoid doing so.

The 2008 stream buffer rule was a last minute Bush administration gift to the coal companies. It will take public pressure to change it, so here’s where to go.

The public is invited to review and comment on the proposed rulemaking and on OSM’s proposed Oversight Improvement Actions. The advance notice of proposed rulemaking will be sent to the Federal Register shortly. Beginning on the date of publication, comments may be submitted using the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov. The document has been assigned Docket ID: OSM-2009-0009.

The public is also invited to review and comment by December 18, 2009, on OSM’s proposed Oversight Improvement Actions, online at http://www.osmre.gov/topic/Oversight/SCM/SCM.shtm. The preferred method for submitting comments is via e-mail to Oversight@osmre.gov. Comments may also be mailed to: Administrative Record (MS 252 SIB), Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, 1951 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, 20240.

Here’s what depending on coal does to us.

A subsidiary of Massey Energy has begun mountaintop-removal coal-mining operations on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, the only peak in Coal River Valley that hasn’t been blasted away for mining. Blasting for the mine is taking place 200 yards from the Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment, which holds 8 billion gallons of toxic coal sludge above the Coal River community.

At 3,300 feet, Coal River Mountain is the tallest mountain ever to undergo mountaintop-removal mining. Massey Energy plans to blast away 6,600 acres of the mountain and fill in 18 streams with toxic mining waste.

That’s one mountain and 18 streams that people will no longer be able to hunt on or hike, camp or fish in.

One less coal plant being built to darken midwestern skies.

A power plant ran out of steam Monday as developers announced that they have decided not to build the $1.6 billion Big Stone II project near South Dakota’s border with Minnesota. The joint announcement by four utilities brings to an end one of the larger environmental debates in the state in recent years because of mounting public concerns about global warming and energy policy.

The proposed plant was also seen as a major potential pollution source for the Minnesota River. With one of the companies involved already stating that it can meet it’s requirements by expanding wind power, this looks like one of those cases where what isn’t happening is good news all around.

We’ve already seen the announcements of advances in technology designed to capture CO2 emissions from coal plants, now comes support for that approach from Energy Secretary Steven Chu:

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that $55 million will be made available to develop advanced technologies that can capture carbon dioxide from flue gases at existing coal-fired power plants. This would allow the greenhouse gas they would otherwise emit into the atmosphere to be sequestered or put to beneficial use.

The funding announced today is a direct investment in carbon capture and storage related technologies that will support the Obama administration’s effort to help moderate the effects of CO2 – a major greenhouse gas and contributor to global climate change.

Note that Chu’s announcement is aimed at technology for existing coal plants. Now compare that to this statement from a coal industry spokesperson:

The nation’s largest industrial trade association issued a statement in support of the $55 million investment announced today.

“Building large-scale, near-zero-emissions power plants will support the continued economic viability of our nation’s manufacturing base, create high-wage sustainable jobs, and continue to improve our global environment,” said Keith McCoy, vice president for energy and resources policy of the National Association of Manufacturers.

Mr McCoy’s statement is obviously aimed at building new plants, not modifying existing ones. Secretary Chu may talk about CO2 sequestration technology as lowering pollution from existing plants, but the industry itself is going to see it as an excuse to build new plants, and continue our reliance on coal, the dirtiest, most destructive form of fossil fuel that we currently employ. If Chu and the Obama Administration don’t watch out, their plan to clean up coal will turn in to a plan to burn more and more of the stuff, at the expense of the environment and any plans we might have to come up with an alternative that doesn’t mean burning more coal.

A classic good news bad news regarding coal.

An $8 million pilot project in Wisconsin successfully showed that carbon dioxide can be captured and kept from being released from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants, We Energies and two partners said Thursday.

The project was the first real-life demonstration of technology that uses chilled ammonia to act as a magnet to capture the greenhouse gas and purify it for possible shipment into underground geological formations instead of into the air.

The Wisconsin project, at the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant, was able to grab at least 90% of the greenhouse gas, officials said, and the French company Alstom that developed the technology is optimistic its next test will capture even more carbon dioxide.

Testing at the Milwaukee electric utility’s power plant has continued since September 2008, the companies said.

The test is scheduled to be completed at the end of this month.

Capturing the CO2 is all to the good, especially since as a practical matter we will continue to burn coal for quite some time to come. But carbon dioxide pollution isn’t the only problem with coal. There’s also mountaintop removal mining, with its consequent deforestation and water pollution, and pollution from mercury emissions.

And it should be noted that the capture technology, even if it works, will be an added cost. That might be the factor that keeps wind and solar moving along, even in the face of what you can bet is now going to be advertised as the modern miracle of “clean coal.”

While the talk everywhere else seems to be about building new coal-fired power plants, canada is in the process of closing an old plant down.

New Brunswick Power announced today that the company will close its coal-fired Grand Lake generating station when its operating license expires in June 2010. During the early years of the Great Depression, New Brunswick Power built the Grand Lake facility, the Atlantic province’s first thermal generating station.

As far as the environment goes, this is a two for one deal.

Opened in 1931, the Grand Lake Generating Station burns bituminous coal from nearby deposits on the shores of Grand Lake near the towns of Minto and Chipman. A NB Power subsidiary, NB Coal is the only mining company left in the Minto area and performs strip mining.

Because NB Coal’s only customer is the Grand Lake Generating Station, the strip mine will close this December.

Close the plant and shut down a strip mine. It doesn’t get much better than that. Unless you also factor in the reduction in emissions.

With the addition of federal initiatives, the plan will result in a reduction of New Brunswick’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels in 2012. (Environment Minister Rick) Miles said the achievement of these reductions will position New Brunswick to realize further reductions of 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Get ready to breathe cleaner air, people of New Brunswick.

In another sign that things have changed a bit at the Environmental protection Agency, a permit to build a coal burning plant in the New Mexico desert is being re-examined.

The contested air permit for the Sithe Global Desert Rock coal-fired power plant on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico today was sent back to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for additional analysis.

The EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board remanded the air permit back to the agency due to deficiencies in the permit’s environmental and technological analyses.

The original decision to approve the permit had been opposed by Colorado and New Mexico, Navajo tribal members, and local citizen groups. Those voices will now have a chance to be heard again and who knows, the EPA might listen to them instead of the coal industry, this time.

Coal-fired power plants are required to have filters and scrubbers that cut down on the air pollution. But those filters and scrubbers are cleaned with water, which then becomes waste water and has, in the past, not been regulated much. That’s about to change.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to revise the existing standards for water discharges from coal-fired power plants to reduce pollution and better protect America’s surface water, the agency said Tuesday.

Wastewater discharged from coal ash ponds, air pollution control equipment, and other equipment at power plants can contaminate drinking water sources, cause fish and other wildlife to die and create other detrimental environmental effects, the EPA says.

The Engineering and Analysis Division of the EPA Office of Water, which conducted the study, concluded that current regulations, which were issued in 1982, have not kept pace with changes that have occurred in the electric power industry over the last three decades.

More evidence that the EPA is once again becoming an institution that regulates polluters, instead of protecting polluters from regulation.

Ever wonder what’s being done with all that coal ash that spilled in Tennessee earlier this year? rperks at Daily Kos has the answer.

It turns out that much of it is being loaded on trains and shipped 350 miles away to a landfill in rural Perry County, Alabama — much to the consternation of many local residents who are worried about the health threat possibly posed by the coal ash. Although local leaders voted to allow the importation of the waste from the Tennessee spill based on economic reasons — namely, the waste tonnage fees collected and the handful of jobs created by the project — a number of citizens strongly oppose turning Perry County into the “ash hole of Alabama.”

The New York Times ran a story about this yesterday. It looks like your typical between ash and a hard place situation, at least for the residents of Perry County. Their elected officials see it more as an opportunity. Can anyone say profits before people?

Here’s one way to save a mountain.

Two tree sitters with the Climate Ground Zero campaign have forced coal giant Massey Energy to cancel blasts on a mountaintop removal mine above Pettry Bottom, a Coal River Valley town in Raleigh County.

Massey has not blasted on the ridge above Pettry Bottom since Tuesday when Laura Steepleton and Nick Stocks climbed onto their platforms 80 feet above the ground in two trees near the Edwight mine site, a spot Massey had scheduled for blasting.

Exemplified by the Boston Tea Party and the Civil Rights Movement, codified by Thoreau, the tradition of non-violent protest in the United States is a long and honored one. Given the right time and place, someone simply standing up, or, in this case, sitting down and saying “This is wrong and and I’m here to show my opposition can gave a tremendous effect on other people. Here’s hoping that Massey Energy’s response to Laura and Nick’s sit-in leads to a real policy change, and isn’t just a ploy to wait them out until they can tear the mountaintop off without having to worry about what it does to people.