Federal and state agencies say the media have only increased confusion that continues to swirl about changes to the federal Stream Buffer Zone Rule.

Tom Clarke, director of the Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Mining and Reclamation, said that misinformation has led some to believe this change is a loosening of valley fill regulation.

Valley fills are created when rock and rubble covering coal seams are removed and strategically dumped in nearby ravines. Environmental groups say the practice chokes streams and pollutes water.

Clarke said the new rule will do two things it now does not -- minimize the amount of excess spoil placed in hollows as fill and require consideration of alternatives. Alternatives would include placing spoil against high wall mine faces instead of in streambeds.

"Far from the 'giveaway' to the coal industry as it is characterized by some anti-coal extremists, the new rules actually tighten regulations relating to stream protections under the Buffer Zone Rule," said West Virginia Coal Association President Bill Raney in a news release.

Raney said the rule resulted from four years of public hearings and environmental analysis by multiple federal agencies.

Environmental group leaders insist that the rule does nothing to improve water quality issues in valley fill streams.

"This is a death sentence for many of the streams and communities of southern West Virginia," said Coal River Mountain Watch co-director Vernon Haltom.

Previously, coal industry representatives have said perennial and intermittent streams are really just "dry ditches" or "ravines." Haltom said this is inaccurate, and that real streams are being buried by industry practices and regulations such as the stream buffer zone rule.

He said burying a stream kills that stretch of waterway and pollutes water downstream. That puts homes at an increased risk from flooding and valley fill failure and diminishes property values. He said there's not a single positive aspect of the rule change.

He said the group is exploring its options in calling the changes into question, and hopes the new administration will appoint regulators "concerned more with enforcing the law than granting giveaways to polluters."

All future mountaintop removal mining will still have to comply with federal law, the Clean Water and Surface Mining Control and Reclamation acts. The federal Office of Surface Mining said the rule is consistent with both acts.

Clarke said the Clean Water Act already requires that companies applying for valley fill permits consider alternative areas to place valley fills, so he wasn't sure how those two requirements will play out.

OSM contends that the revision is meant only to clear up confusion about how buffer zone requirements work. The office, in a statement explaining the rule, contends that there was never a prohibition of all mining within 100 feet of a river or stream, and this rule does not increase or decrease mountaintop removal mining.

Clarke said the present rule, on its face, prohibits surface mining operations within 100 feet of an intermittent or perennial stream, but that if companies meet certain water quality requirements they are still permitted to place valley fills in streambeds. He said the changes are not a lifting of standards.

In all actuality, the rule will make other states meet requirements to which Clarke said West Virginia already conforms.

The state now requires more soil to be placed on top of the mountain for contouring purposes, reducing the amount that previously was placed in hollows. That requirement came as part of a settlement following a ruling by the late U.S. District Judge Charles Hayden for the Southern District West Virginia.

In the 1998 Bragg vs. Robertson lawsuit, several environmental groups filed suit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for violating federal environmental law by allowing huge mountaintop removal mining sites to be permitted despite the damage they were causing nearby streams.

Haden ruled in favor of the environmental groups. He said the stream buffer zone rule prohibits valley fills in streams and declared that the stream buffer zone is more stringent than the Clean Water Act guidelines for placing fill in streams.