NASHVILLE (AP) - A Tennessee environmental group is concerned that new Environmental Protection Agency guidelines on surface mining and water quality offer fewer protections for the state's waterways than the interim guidelines they replaced.

Cathie Bird is a member of Statewide Organizing for Community Empowerment who lives in rural Campbell County near the Zeb Mountain mine, which was the subject of a lawsuit over selenium discharges.

Bird said she is disappointed that the EPA guidelines released Thursday exclude Tennessee from benchmarks that take into account the electrical conductivity of streams when gauging how polluted they are.

For the time being, those benchmarks will apply only to the regions of West Virginia and Kentucky where the EPA conducted the studies to validate the benchmarks.