Remember last month when the new Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lisa Jackson, promised her agency would step up its scrutiny of Clean Water Act permits being issued by the Corps of Engineers?

Well, she's following through on that promise, halting the issuance of 79 Section 404 permits the Corps had approved for mining companies to lop the tops off mountains so they could get at the coal underneath.

Those permits, which were for mines in Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and Ohio, are being put on hold by the EPA "to further evaluate how water quality would be affected from discarding mining debris in adjacent streams and valleys," according to Bloomberg News.

EPA assistant administrator Peter S. Silva wrote a letter to the Corps explaining that the permits "have not yet adequately demonstrated that anticipated adverse environmental and water quality impacts have been fully avoided and minimized as required" under the federal Clean Water Act.

Although blasting the tops off of mountains to expose coal seams is easier than digging conventional mines, it only accounts for about 6 percent of U.S. coal demand, says Bloomberg. The industry estimates mountaintop mines produce 130 million tons of coal a year, most of which goes to generate cheap electricity for 24.7 million people.

But mining industry officials blasted the EPA's move as a de facto moratorium on all Appalachian coal mining. The governor of West Virginia, Joe Machin III, complained that the Obama Administration was "trying to kill off surface mining through regulation what they cannot get done through legislation."

But the best comment about the EPA's action came from a miner who founded a pro-mining group called Citizens for Coal, calling the EPA's belated enforcement of the Clean Water Act "state-sponsored terrorism."

The reaction is somewhat reminiscent of the reaction of the rock-mining industry to Senior U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler's decision overturning Corps permits to allow mining on the edge of the Everglades in an area called the Lake Belt, a case that we document at length in "Paving Paradise." The Chamber of Commerce and the Florida Department of Transportation joined in decrying Hoeveler's decision, which they said would doom Florida's road-building program and thus its economy. Now the EPA is giving the rock-mining permits enhanced scrutiny as well.

Lost in the hoopla up in coal country is the fact that the EPA's letter says that at least 80 percent of the mining projects "exhibited the potential to cause or contribute to violations of applicable water quality standards." If you want to see the consequences of ignoring water pollution violations in coal country, check out the rotting teeth on this West Virginia child whose home is about 17 miles from Gov. Machin's mansion.