Hah! A federal judge tells the U.S. government to do its job and enforce the Clean Water Act, thus hampering the mountain-top removal mining industry.
I think I'll say that again. Mountain-top removal mining: They rip off the tops of the mountains, sift through for ore, then pile the castoffs back where they got it. But, if you've ever tried to pile dry sand, you know that it doesn't stack as well as solid rock. In other words, they got a lotta leftovers, and they've been using 'em to fill the valleys, thus destroying the water supply.
Read the article on SmirkingChimp.com. One forum member makes the salient point that mountaintop-removal mining is profitable because it requires less labor than more traditional forms of mining.
Yet another case of an industry privatizing the benefits of production while socializing the costs.
The judicial watch: Clean Water Act by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.