Follow-up stories: April 1998 to August 1999 August 1999 to present Search this series Special Features Today's front page Century Snapshots Bulletin Board Readers' forum Recipes Other Features Horoscopes U.S./World Weather Movie Listings Television W.Va. Lottery About the Gazette Contacting us E-mail addresses Getting in print History FAQ Subscription info Classified rates		New! Federal government releases 4 1/2-year study of mountaintop removal's environmental effects. Click here to read the study. In December 1998, federal regulators agreed to conduct a detailed study of mountaintop removal coal mining's environmental effects. They promised the study to head off a lawsuit that could have dramatically increased regulation of mountaintop removal. The study was supposed to prompt some new restrictions. The study was supposed to be finished by December 2000. The study is 2 1/2 years overdue. But on May 29, the federal government released its first formal draft. To compare that version to an earlier draft -- obtained by The Charleston Gazette under public records laws and published on the newspaper's website in May 2002 -- downloand the documents listed below. Mountaintop Removal/Valley Fill Environmental Impact Statement Working Draft January 2001 Executive Summary Table of Contents I - Purpose and Need II - Approach to the Environmental Impact Statement III - Affected Environment Sections A-E Section F-H Section I Section J Section K Sections L-N Section O Sections P-U IV - Alternatives V - Environmental Consequences Section 1 Section 2 Sections 3-4 Sections 5-15 VI - References VII - List of Preparers VIII - Glossary Appendices (Warning: Though this file is zipped, it is still more than 11 MB, and may take a long time to download). Related documents: Mountaintop Mining EIS Presentation (Corel "Show on the Go" presentation. Double-click on file once it is downloaded to run.) Economic Consequences Study Tables for Economic Consequences Study Landscape Scale Cumulative Impact Study of Future Mountaintop Removal Operations Tables and figures for cumulative impact study (Warning, this file is more than 34 MB, and will take a very long time to download). Some sections may not be complete, or contain all of the figures and pictures. The Gazette is providing this document in the form in which it was released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Though some pages indicate the draft was published in October 2000, this is a January 2001 working draft, the most recent available from EPA. For more information about the Environmental Impact Statement, visit this EPA website: http://www.epa.gov/region3/mtntop/ (Adobe Acrobat required for .pdf files) Questions, comments? Send e-mail to reporter Ken Ward Jr. Or, write a letter to the editor.