[Old School]

Research and see who is sponsoring the bill to make it harder to mountaintop mine. Republicans. All they want is proof that the coal companies aren't putting junk in the streams, which I am for.

http://www.kentucky.com/216/story/843050.html

Republicans? This bill is sponsored by Benjiman Cardin a democrat from Maryland and Lamar Alexander a republican from Tenn.

As far as making it harder to mountaintop mine.....try making it impossible to mine coal period! If approved this bill will ban valley fills entirely, and what some people can't understand is that it is not just mountaintop mining that uses valley fills. Other forms of surface mining such as contour and area methods also utilize valley fills this ban on valley fills would elimate these methods of mining.

Many say that underground mining is an acceptable form of mining, but what they don't realize is that they also use valley fills to store excess overburden from the face-up area, then on a much larger scale are the slurry impoundments which are normally much larger than valley fills found on surface mines.

Some coal companies have conducted reserves studies on their properties without using valley fills and have found that their reserves are about 75% to 85% less than originally estimated.