[In Depth] Demise of stream rule won't revitalize coalindustry
Environmentalists were outraged earlier this month after the Republican-led Congress used an obscure law to erase a new regulation aimed at reducing the environmental damage caused by coal mining. The votes to undo the so-called stream protection rule, released last month on President Barack Obama's last day in office, were "a disgraceful opening salvo from this Congress, as they begin to try and do the bidding of big polluters," Michael Brune, executive director of the San Francisco, California–based Sierra Club, said in a statement. But the demise of the rule, which took regulators years to craft, drew a less impassioned reaction from a scientist on the front lines of the fight over coal mining. The rule had been watered down in its final form, they say, and would not have barred one of the most destructive mining practices in Appalachia: blasting away mountaintops to uncover coal seams and piling the debris...