Please join me in telling Interior Secretary Salazar that it's time to protect at-risk communities by restoring strong hazardous mining waste protections for streams and ending mountaintop-removal coal mining.

The Department of Interior and its Office of Surface Mining have publicly stated that they intend to revise the "Stream Buffer Zone Rule," a decades-old prohibition on surface mining activities within 100 feet of flowing streams, which was gutted by the Bush Administration.*

But Big Coal is already pressuring the Obama Administration to keep the destructive Bush policies in place. We need your help to flood the Department of Interior with messages supporting the restoration of these necessary safeguards.

Interior Secretary Salazar needs to hear from you before the December 30th deadline for public comments.

Communities throughout the Appalachian region suffer daily from contaminated drinking water, increased flooding, and a decimated landscape resulting from the damage and destruction wreaked on thousands of miles of streams by mountaintop-removal coal mining.

Reinstating and enforcing the 100 foot prohibition in the Stream Buffer Zone rule will rein in the reckless mining that has ravaged Appalachia.

Don't let this opportunity to protect streams and communities pass us by--send a public comment today.

Thanks for protecting our communities and mountains.

Ashley Judd

P.S. After you take action, please share with your friends!

[*] Interior Department Stuck in Slow Motion on Addressing Mountaintop-Removal Coal Mining: November 19, 2009.