One of the enduring environmental catastrophes of the Bush years has been the rampant destruction wrought by mountaintop removal mining on the streams, forests and water resources of Appalachian valley communities. Through this environmentally and morally offensive form of virtually unrestricted strip mining, hundreds of mountaintops and ridge-tops have been blown off to expose subsurface coal, sending the mountains’ rocks, trees and debris down hillsides to valleys below — smothering streams, polluting water supplies and obliterating the natural landscape and the lifeblood of surrounding communities.

Community and environmental advocates, and in recent years evangelical adherents of biblically based Earth stewardship movements, have sought, generally without much success, to persuade the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to stop permitting such mining to preserve water quality and environmental integrity.

The Bush administration’s response was to negate the protections of the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Protection Act by declaring the streams, forests and wildlife in the path of mountaintop removal mining to be outside the protections of those laws — in effect, to be legally nonexistent.

The Obama administration, thankfully, is reversing course on that arrogant, malfeasant abrogation of federal laws. That good news came Tuesday when the EPA’s new director, Lisa P. Jackson, refused to approve two proposed mountaintop-removal mining petitions presented by the Army Corps of Engineers, long a key facilitator of environmentally degrading projects. She further said that the EPA planned a comprehensive review of scores of similar pending permit requests.

The case the EPA laid out against the petitions — which already had been approved by federal surface mining officials — could not be clearer, or more indicative of the EPA’s renewed adherence to the explicit legal mandates of environmental laws that the Bush administration spurned.

Referring to the Highland Mining Co.’s petition to destroy a mountaintop near the town of Ethel in Logan County, W.Va., the EPA noted that the company would use the blast debris from the mountaintop to fill in 21⁄2 miles of stream bed below, permanently destroying the stream and permanently polluting downstream waters that flow into the Guyandotte River. In addition, it would destroy a substantial section of an ecologically significant forest area. It also said the inadequate proposed remedy for post-mining flooding of the community below would be FEMA relocation of residents in the stream valley.

None of the mining company’s proposed remediation plan for mining and post-mining damage would restore the damaged area to acceptable levels, the letter concluded. The lengthy letter summarized exhaustive environmental studies of the proposed mining area, the adjacent affected environmental and human communities, and the significant violations that would occur of both West Virginia and federal environmental laws.

The new EPA position stakes out a scientific case that seems likely to reach far beyond the two permits at issue with regard to mountaintop removal for coal mining in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and elsewhere. Appeals in a prior federal court lawsuit had resulted in a backlog of some 200 similar permit requests for mountaintop removal mining applications. With the likelihood now of an aggressive review and environmentally sensible application of legal standards, most of those permit requests could well be denied.

While that understandably warms critics’ hearts, mining company officials are predictably angry. They warn that the EPA’s new position could endanger mining jobs and local economies.

It’s hard to find sympathy for the mining companies, however. They have passed the cost and effects of their vast pollution and environmental destruction on to the public for years with scant regard for the consequences. They also have refused to use traditional tunnel mining techniques, or to effectively contain their damage.

It’s long past time for sensible regulation and respect for our environment to take precedence over one of the most environmentally destructive mining techniques known to man. The new EPA ruling, as well, may also bolster a new bipartisan bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Lamar Alexander, to halt mountaintop removal mining by amending the Clean Water Act to specifically ban the dumping of mining waste and removed earth, known as “fill,” into headwater streams and rivers.

It’s tragic such corrections were not embraced earlier. Regardless, permanent legal barriers against the environmental destruction of mountaintop removal mining cannot be embraced too soon.