Mining standards

President Obama sought Thursday to mollify environmentalists upset with his inconsistent stance on environmentally destructive mountaintop mining.

The administration said it will impose unspecified stricter standards for obtaining permits to make it more acceptable, while still permitting the legal coal-mining technique.

The mining method blasts away the tops of mountains and deposits the debris in valleys and streams. Practiced mainly in the Appalachians, it has altered the landscape and wiped out hundreds of miles of waterways and taken the tops off hundreds of mountains.

During the presidential campaign, candidate Obama said he had concerns about the process but never came out firmly against it. That nonetheless gave hope to environmentalists seeking a ban on the method.

Those expectations were raised when President Obama appeared to reverse Bush administration policy by having the Environmental Protection Agency take a closer look at 150 mountaintop permits pending before the Army Corps of Engineers. The president also asked a federal court to reverse a Bush administration rule that allowed debris to be dumped near streams and jeopardize water quality.

Since then, however, the administration has allowed 42 of the 48 projects it reviewed to continue.

On Thursday, the administration said it would put new procedures in place to review future mining permits. It will curb "fast-track" approval for new permits with more detailed interagency scrutiny by the EPA, Army Corps of Engineers and Interior Department. The administration did not provide detailed guidelines or specific standards that would be followed.

But the new reviews will apply only to mountaintop mining applications after Thursday and not to more than 100 pending applications, limiting their effectiveness.

Unable to halt mountaintop mining without congressional action, President Obama must come forward with clear guidelines that restrain its worst applications. The environment must be protected.