It might be the first time I’ve said this since the 2007 election, but Steve Beshear is right. On Monday, Beshear - along with more traditional environmental advocates Ben Chandler, John Yarmuth and Jack Conway - wrote a letter to the EPA condemning the proposed changes to the Stream Buffer Zone rule, which currently requires coal companies to avoid mining within 100 feet of a waterway. The rewritten rule would eliminate the buffer zone, potentially allowing hundreds (even thousands) of miles of waterways to be buried in Appalachia under the overburden from MTR mines. The changes have been in the works for years, and now coal companies are trying to get them pushed through in the 11th hour before the Bush administration gets the boot on January 20th. While an Obama administration, despite its less-than-stellar record on coal, certainly won’t be buying the BS of the coal industry when in office.
Beshear wrote:
I am strongly committed to environmentally responsible coal mining and cannot support rules that may be subject to arbitrary administration or enforcement…This will not serve our state well, nor will it provide more regulatory certainty for the industry.
While I’m still not sure what “environmentally responsible coal mining” is, or where it is practiced, this statement is a drastic departure from this summer’s ‘mountaintop removal is awesome, let’s do it more often’ remarks of Dr. Dan.
Beshear’s adamant opposition to the proposal is a welcome surprise, especially looking in retrospect to his own comments, as well as the Lieutenant Governor’s, about mountaintop removal over the summer. So while this wasn’t necessarily an expected move, it is representative of the (sometimes small) differences between the thusfar lackluster Beshear administration and the atrocious four years of Ernie Fletcher that we endured. Had we so stupidly reelected Fletcher (like we did McConnell), there would certainly be no support from the state government to stop the loosening of the stream buffer zone laws. Small victories, folks. Small victories.
In other related, upcoming news, Governor Beshear should be releasing his energy plan on Thursday. word seems to have it that the thing isn’t all that bad, save some nonsense about nuclear power. look forward to it!
WHAT: The Inaugural Sustainability Lecture Series with Tom FitzGerald
My weekly column in the Kentucky Kernel came out today, accompanied with the headline, 



