Deadline this Wednesday for coal ash comments

This Wednesday, June 13 marks the deadline for concerned citizens to submit comments to the federal government on its plan to regulate -- sort of -- the filling of old mines with coal ash waste.

The U.S. Office of Surface Mining (OSM) is taking feedback on its response to a National Research Council (NRC) report calling for federal requirements that all states would have to meet when allowing power plant waste to be dumped into coal mines.

Its response? To simply say that such waste is already sufficiently regulated under existing mining rules.

In other words, there's no problem at all with projects like the Big Gorilla pit north of Hometown, or the Springdale pit in Tamaqua, or the many other old mines-turned-coal waste dumps that dot the region's landscape. OSM apparently believes Pennsylvania's mine regulators have those sites under control and are adequately protecting nearby residents from contaminants seeping into their groundwater or dusting their lungs.

But environmental and public-health advocates disagree. They point out that OSM's response inexplicaby ignores the fact that the NRC actually found state regulations to be inadequate -- which is why it called for a national rule. They also note that coal waste has already polluted water supplies all over the country with toxic levels of metals and salts, and that intensifying efforts to curb air emissions from coal plants will only increase the disposal problem.

Concerned citizens are invited to send comments to OSM by the end of the workday this Wednesday. Identify them by docket number 1029-AC54, and e-mail them to rules_comments@osmre.gov.

For more details on the comment process, and to read OSM's proposal, click here. Please note that the original May 14 deadline for comments was extended to June 13.