Their Side of the Mountain

A federal appeals panel earlier this week dismissed a lower court's ruling that mountaintop-removal mining in West Virginia violates environmental law by burying hundreds of miles of streams under tons of rock and earth. The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found unanimously that the plaintiffs in the citizens suit against the state had no standing in a federal court because it was state's bailiwick, not the feds', to enforce the particular environmental law in question. Enviro groups said they would challenge the panel decision.