Published Friday, November 19, 1999, in the Herald-Leader
Budget deal being held up in Senate
Sens. Byrd, McConnell tag mining issue onto bill
By David Hess and Gail Gibson
HERALD-LEADER WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON - Congress lurched toward finishing its work on the federal budget yesterday, with the House passing the final piece a $385 billion spending package by a wide margin. But a parliamentary snarl was delaying final action in the Senate.
One critical snag in the Senate came over a controversial mining proposal that would override a federal judge's decision last month barring West Virginia coal companies from dumping mine waste particularly rubble from mountaintop removal operations in streams.
West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, joined by Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, revived the measure yesterday, just hours after environmentalists had hailed its removal from the final spending package that Congress must pass to wrap up its work for the year.
President Clinton has threatened to veto any legislation that included the mining language. But the senators were angling to force the president's signature by trying to attach the mining provision to a procedural bill that has to pass to keep the government running.
Because the final budget deal came seven weeks after the fiscal year began Oct. 1, Congress and Clinton have had to approve periodic extensions to the budget deadline to keep the government running.
The current extension was set to expire at midnight yesterday, and leaders in both houses were moving to stretch it to Dec. 2, just in case they needed extra time.
Environmental groups say the federal judge's ruling was correct and arguments that it will harm the coal industry are misleading.
If Congress maintains the status quo for two years, as Byrd and McConnell proposed, they say it could harm Kentucky's waterways.
Environmentalists were stunned when Byrd and McConnell pushed the mining language back into play.
``This is outrageous,'' said Tom FitzGerald, a leading environmental lawyer in Kentucky.
Published Tuesday, November 23, 1999, in the Herald-Leader
Senator wrong to back destructive mining method
Clueless McConnell
Too bad U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell doesn't have to spend congressional recesses within teeth-rattling distance of a mountaintop mine. It might jar some sense into him.
Last week, in supporting a budget rider the coal industry wanted, McConnell said life in Appalachia is improved by letting strip-miners bury streams under the remains of dynamited mountains.
McConnell blasted President Clinton for helping kill the rider. He said if Clinton really cared about Appalachia's economy, as the president said he did earlier this year in Hazard, he would have supported the effort to overturn a federal judge's ban on dumping mine waste into West Virginia streams.
McConnell conveniently forgets that mountaintop mining technology eliminates as many jobs as it creates. And life near one of these mines is pretty much unbearable, what with the explosions and dust and rock raining down.
McConnell should visit what's left of Blair in Logan County, W.Va., where 200 families were displaced by Arch Coal Inc.'s giant mountaintop mine. Rather than try to co-exist with human beings, Arch's policy was to buy out residents and then require them to sign away their First Amendment rights to criticize strip mining and to promise not to move back to the area. Call it prosperity through depopulation.
McConnell could learn a lot from his Appalachian constituents who understand the interests of the region and the interests of the coal industry are not the same.
