End the scourge of mountaintop mining

America should ease its reliance on oil, particularly foreign imports, but it shouldn't bury the economic potential and the environmental integrity of Appalachian communities to achieve that goal.

Lisa Jackson, the Obama administration's new Environmental Protection Agency chief, recently ordered her staff to conduct more extensive reviews of 150 to 200 permit applications to strip-mine coal from mountains in southwest Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.

The controversial mining process, known as mountaintop removal, does exactly what the name implies: It blast the tops off mountains to gain access to coveted low-sulfur coal. But the mountains aren't the only things destroyed; companies have been allowed to dump the remnants of those mountaintops into rivers, streams and valleys below.

Under the Clean Water Act, the EPA has the authority to review permits and raise concerns about water quality and environmental degradation. But, during the Bush administration, the agency was largely bypassed in the review process, leaving the weight of decisionmaking to the Army Corps of Engineers.

Less rigorous reviews caused serious, widespread damage to waterways, fish and wildlife across Appalachia. Some communities, including the town of Appalachia in Virginia's Wise County, attempted to fight back, but their concerns mostly fell on deaf ears.

All Americans, including Virginians who live downstream of strip-mining operations, should be concerned with the short-sighted destruction of mountains and surrounding communities.

Mining companies contend that even the most rudimentary regulations - preventing the conversion of valleys into dumping grounds - will kill tens of thousands of jobs. But the truth is that responsible mining could well preserve jobs, and perhaps even create more, if companies were forced to extract coal through methods that mitigate environmental damage.

For the companies, the short-term profits might not be as great. But ending mountaintop removal would have long-term economic benefits for Appalachia - and for a nation that eventually will have to step in to help communities left behind, and to clean up the environmental damage.

Today, America is belatedly embarking on a transition away from oil toward renewable energy sources. Coal, a dirty fuel even in its "cleanest" incarnation, is a necessary part of that transition.

But the Obama administration can and should take steps to minimize the damage caused by coal mining. EPA officials have acted responsibly by reconsidering the wisdom of blasting off mountaintops and dumping the spoils into the nation's rivers, streams and valleys.