ACTIVISTS FEAR EFFECTS OF STRIP-MINING LAW

The federal government is proposing a coal-mining regulation that could allow strip mining in national parks, wilderness areas, wildlife refuges and other protected areas, say environmentalists.

About 52 million acres could be affected, according to the National Wildlife Federation.The Interior Department, however, said it was improbable that strip mining would be allowed in national parks and that any operations the rule would authorize would be subject to stringent environmental and reclamation standards.

The rule would establish a more lenient standard for deciding whether would-be miners have rights to strip mine in areas that Congress intended to be protected from mining. The proposed rule can be adopted by the Interior Department without congressional approval.

A 1977 federal strip-mining law "says there are certain places where you can't do surface mining unless you have valid existing rights, " said Alan Cole, spokesman for the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining.

Those places include national parks, wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, wild and scenic rivers and lands around schools, homes, roads and cemeteries.

Under current rules, no one can mine in those areas unless the miner got - or made a good-faith effort to get - the necessary permits for mining before Aug. 3, 1977, the date the law took effect, or by a later date if the land was protected later.

Under the proposed rule, the miner need only show that a denial of the request to mine would amount to a government seizure under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution - even if he had made no effort to get needed permits.

The Fifth Amendment says, in part, "nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."

National Wildlife Federation attorney Glenn Sugameli said the proposal would illegally strip the courts of the responsibility for deciding what constitutes "taking" of private property and would turn that responsibility over to bureaucrats, who are "not equipped to make those decisions. They are not experts in constitutional law."

Making matters worse, from the perspective of environmentalists, is that those bureaucrats would be required to use Justice Department guidelines designed specifically to protect private property owners from "takings."

So the rule would "radically increase the likelihood that strip-mining activities can occur in the nation's national parks, wildlife refuges and state parks and forests," the federation charged.

The federation and seven other environmental groups have sent a letter to Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan saying the proposal was "illegal and must be withdrawn."