Say what? It was the Bush administration which tried to eliminate the Stream Buffer rule. You can listen to the whole hearing and read the testimony here, with Bo Webb and Maria Gunnoe start their testimony at 99:22. and 106:27 respectively.
As Bo Webb wrote in the comments he submitted:
The very title of this hearing indicates a bias against those of us who are living (and dying) in mountaintop removal mining communities. The title suggests that jobs are at risk if the SBZ rule is corrected. The SBZ rule must be corrected in order to protect The People’s health. It’s been broken and it needs fixed.
Let us not forget, President Ronald Reagan, your president, my president, in 1983 created the Stream Buffer Zone Rule because he realized the responsibility he had to protect America’s water supply in the face of an industry that was moving more rapidly toward a method of mining that would turn entire mountains into ruin and destroy head water source streams that carry drinking water to millions of American citizens. This committee now shares that responsibility because President George W. Bush, with the stroke of a pen, trashed the Reagan SBZ rule just before leaving office as a present to a coal industry that wills itself to increase profit at all cost, even at the cost of human health.Or as Maria Gunnoe told Gene Kitts of Alpha as he was leaving the hearing, "We're sick of dying for your bottom line.
