Comment on FR Doc #

I am outraged at the proposed change in policy concerning mountain-top removal mining near to streams. It is well known that current policies are disgracefully lax, and still hardly ever enforced! As a West Virginian likely to be directly affected by this proposal, I demand that the stream buffer zone and similar restrictions not be loosened, but rather that stricter guidelines be enacted. The current policy requires that no MTR take place within (only a mere) 100ft of a stream bed. 2,000ft sounds like a (slightly more) reasonable bear minimum. The damage done even by "legal" MTR operations is catastrophic. The flood plane has been altered, and every year more and more West Virginia homes are flooded - every year more people drown because the government allows the coal companies to make dangerous and irreversible alterations to the water-shed system. There is no media attention (yet) because this only affects poor "rednecks." It is time for the government to step up and protect the people before the Appalachian equivalent of Katrina is brought to national attention and portrayed as the preventable tragedy it is.