Four conservation groups and two Tennessee state agencies are asking the federal government to re-examine how it applies the Endangered Species Act to strip mining. Current regulations, the petitioners say, are putting the most sensitive and biodiverse watersheds in two states -- some of the most biodiverse watersheds in the world -- at risk. They plan to file the petition today.

Strip miners use explosives and heavy machinery to tear away stone and soil covering coal seams. Some of the rock and dirt is piled back where it came from. Some is pushed into nearby valleys and hollows.

In 1996, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided that isn't likely to harm endangered species or damage the places they live, so long as the mines follow the rules set out by the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.

Studies conducted since the opinion was issued suggest that's not true.

"There's evidence mounting to the harm to water quality and other resources from mountaintop removal," said Cat McCue, communications manager for the Southern Environmental Law Center. The SELC deals with environmental issues in six Southeastern states. "Mining is not going to go away in our region. ... So we really want them to take a serious look at this.

"What this did was do away with the very site-specific, very detailed look for any coal mining -- any surface coal mining anywhere in the country forever and always."

John Fay, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said that's one way to read the 1996 opinion, but he sees a more ambiguous message about site-specific reviews. He's not sure what has happened in the field, but he did call it "a very sweeping kind of opinion."

The SELC and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency are petitioning on behalf of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, the World Wildlife Fund, the Center for Biological Diversity and the National Parks Conservation Association.

More than a thousand miles of Appalachian headwaters have been affected by mine operations since 1985, according to federal studies, and more than 700 miles have been buried. Permits issued between October 2001 and June 2005 would allow more than 200 more miles of Appalachian streams to be filled.

The Office of Surface mining predicts that at the current rate of mining, another 724 miles of Appalachian headwaters will be buried by 2018.

One federal study makes an obvious point. When streams are mined or filled, everything living in them dies.

"Conservation really starts at the headwaters," said Richard Neves, a Virginia Tech fisheries and wildlife professor. "You need to protect those so that water quality all the way down the river system is protected."

Coal processing plants, which operate at many mines, present dangers to the waters that aren't filled in. Federal authorities reported that in one five-year period, there were five coal slurry spills in the Clinch and Powell river watersheds. One spill contributed to a 63 percent decline in one endangered mussel species in a Clinch River tributary, the study said.

"The Clinch River's got the highest concentration of endangered species of anywhere in the United States," Neves said. "We've got 18 federally endangered mussel species in the Clinch and Powell rivers."

Each year, Tech's labs grow about 200,000 juvenile mussels, Neves said. He and his colleagues release 50,000 to 100,000 back into the rivers each year.

"They are the natural filtration system of our rivers," Neves said. "Each mussel filters several gallons of water a day."

That minimizes the cost of making the water potable downstream, Neves said. And it makes the rivers clean enough to support other wildlife.

Fay, the Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, made a more fundamental argument for worrying about mussels.

"Taking it from a strictly utilitarian point of view, is it a good idea to wipe out unique organisms?" Fay asked, quoting environmentalist Aldo Leopold's maxim that the first precaution of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the pieces. "We've been tinkering with our environment since we were living in caves. Let's keep all the pieces."

If it were up to Fay, the petitioners could expect a sympathetic hearing.

"You want me to speak personally?" he asked. "I'm appalled by mountaintop mining. I don't know whoever thought that was a good idea."

But the question doesn't rest with Fay or his agency. It's up to the federal Office of Surface Mining, he said.

"We can't haul them into consultation," Fay said. "We can urge them. We can suggest."

This isn't a case of pitting mussels against miners, McCue said.

"The bigger picture is that a healthy mussel population equals clean water equals healthy watershed equals better community natural resources all the way around," she said.

"Our goal in this is to protect water quality and assure that any mountaintop removal mining that continues in Virginia and Tennessee is done in an appropriate manner that doesn't obliterate our rivers. We only have so many of them."