BY TIM HUBER

AP Business Writer

CHARLESTON, W.Va.

The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement plans to start the process of replacing the regulation by mid-November and hopes to complete the job by early 2011, acting director Glenda Owens said in a court filing. The document popped up in a lawsuit aimed at overturning the Bush administration's stream buffer regulation, which was approved shortly before Obama took office.

The regulation rewrote rules adopted in 1983 by the Reagan administration that barred mining companies from dumping material removed from surface operations within 100 feet of streams if the disposal harmed water quality or quantity.

Instead, the revisions required mine operators to keep debris piles as small as possible, but allows them to skirt the buffer requirement if compliance is determined to be impossible.

Disagreement over the regulation is at the heart of the ongoing fight over mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia, Kentucky and other parts of Appalachia.

Coal companies say the practice of blasting and scraping away ridges to expose multiple coal seams provides cheap electricity for millions and supports thousands of high-paying jobs. Environmental groups and other opponents contend the regulation allows coal companies to bury streams rather than buffer them.

And they argue that the Interior Department isn't acting quickly enough.

"The Department of the Interior is spinning its wheels," the Sierra Club's Mary Anne Hitt said in a statement. "Appalachia's mountains, streams and communities continue to be destroyed."