Haden's ruling came less than a week after the Bush administration announced changed to federal rules that would remove restrictions on filling valleys and streams.

Many coal companies in West Virginia and Kentucky dynamite the tops off mountains to get to valuable low-sulphur coal seams burned for electricity. Waste rubble is swept off cliffs into valleys, a process, which at times, buries streams.

Officials from Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a social-justice organization that sued to block a mining application in the Haden case said the Appeals Court decision would pave the way for more of Appalachia's streams and rivers to be buried by coal waste.

"Strip mining is destroying our mountains and streams and taking away a future for our children," said Patty Wallace a KFTC member, and gubernatorial appointee on the Kentucky Environmental Quality Commission.

The case was sent back to the lower court for review.

Last year, U.S. Reps. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, and Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, introduced legislation to amend the Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, to clarify that fill cannot be comprised of waste.

A spokesman for Rep. Pallone's said last week that his office would reintroduce similar legislation next week.