For the July 4th weekend, I went camping and hiking down in the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico. I was a little shocked to see a healthy sized mine, run by Chevron, smack dab in the middle of the forest. 

That's nothing, however, compared to the feelings I have upon my return and learning that the EPA has allowed a new mountaintop removal mining permit to go through, in spite of the recent changes to the permitting process that promised to strengthen environmental protections. 

One example of the ridiculousness is that the permit will allow the mining company -- Coal-Mac -- to create one valley fill as opposed to their proposed three. 

A valley fill is when they dump the tons of waste leftover after blowing the top off of a mountain into the neighboring valley. This typically destroys and poisons water supplies -- in addition to the destruction of the mountain. 

How exactly this conforms to a policy of making sure there's no environmental degradation from this mining practice is a little beyond me. 

For a more full/detailed account of this, check out the article over at Solve Climate.