The Obama administration late last week quietly approved one of six major mountaintop removal permits that were said to be undergoing close scrutiny by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Read more in Coal Tattoo
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The Obama administration late last week quietly approved one of six major mountaintop removal permits that were said to be undergoing close scrutiny by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Without announcing the move publicly, EPA gave the nod for the federal Army Corps of Engineers to issue a Clean Water Act permit for CONSOL Energy Inc.'s Peg Fork Surface Mine near Chattaroy in Mingo County.
EPA approved all eight valley fill waste piles originally proposed by CONSOL, provided that additional water testing is done before six of those fills are constructed, agency officials said.
Corps officials in Huntington approved the permit on Friday. Copies of key permit documents were not yet being made public, despite a promise from the Obama White House of increased transparency in the permit review process.
"We are disappointed that the administration has approved a new mountaintop removal mine without making any commitment to adopt new regulations or policies that would end this destructive practice," said Ed Hopkins, director of the Sierra Club's environmental quality program. "While we appreciate that the Obama administration is taking a harder look at mountaintop removal coal mining, unless that results in decisions that end the irreversible destruction of streams, the harder look isn't going to do the job."
After announcing a crackdown on mountaintop removal in late March, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson less than two months later cleared dozens of valley fill permits for issuance by the corps. Under federal law, the corps directly reviews these "dredge-and-fill" permits, but EPA has veto authority and is supposed to make sure the corps is doing a good job.
Read more in Coal Tattoo
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The Obama administration late last week quietly approved one of six major mountaintop removal permits that were said to be undergoing close scrutiny by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Without announcing the move publicly, EPA gave the nod for the federal Army Corps of Engineers to issue a Clean Water Act permit for CONSOL Energy Inc.'s Peg Fork Surface Mine near Chattaroy in Mingo County.
EPA approved all eight valley fill waste piles originally proposed by CONSOL, provided that additional water testing is done before six of those fills are constructed, agency officials said.
Corps officials in Huntington approved the permit on Friday. Copies of key permit documents were not yet being made public, despite a promise from the Obama White House of increased transparency in the permit review process.
"We are disappointed that the administration has approved a new mountaintop removal mine without making any commitment to adopt new regulations or policies that would end this destructive practice," said Ed Hopkins, director of the Sierra Club's environmental quality program. "While we appreciate that the Obama administration is taking a harder look at mountaintop removal coal mining, unless that results in decisions that end the irreversible destruction of streams, the harder look isn't going to do the job."
After announcing a crackdown on mountaintop removal in late March, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson less than two months later cleared dozens of valley fill permits for issuance by the corps. Under federal law, the corps directly reviews these "dredge-and-fill" permits, but EPA has veto authority and is supposed to make sure the corps is doing a good job.
The Peg Fork Surface Mine was one of six pending permits that EPA had reviewed and was not yet ready to approve. EPA said in mid-May that it had opposed all six permits because "they all would result in significant adverse impacts to high-value streams, involved large numbers of valley fills, and impact watersheds with extensive previous mining impacts."
Originally, CONSOL's 817-acre mining permit proposed eight valley fills that would have permanently buried nearly 3 miles of streams. It's not clear what, if any, changes were made to the size of valley fills, because government officials have not released the final permit documents.
Mark Taylor, a corps permit chief in Huntington, said the permit allows CONSOL to go ahead with two of the valley fills immediately. Regulators would review the other six valley fills after the company performs additional water quality testing, Taylor said.
Enesta Jones, an EPA spokeswoman, said her agency retains its authority to veto the permit if the agency "identifies concerns as a result of the monitoring."
"These are all significant improvements over the originally proposed permit and preserve EPA's role in ensuring mining related impacts are avoided and water quality is protected," Jones said in a prepared statement.
The Obama administration has promised tougher EPA reviews of mountaintop removal permits, a process that the National Mining Association has likened to a "regulatory black hole." Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has also sought to revoke Bush administration changes that essentially eliminated the federal stream "buffer zone" rule, but has not said if his agency plans to apply that rule to valley fills.
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1702.
In West Virginia, mining companies are literally moving mountains to uncover valuable, low sulfur coal reserves.
Mountaintop removal has become the dominant form of surface mining in the state. Coal operators are blasting off hilltops, and dumping leftover rock and dirt into nearby valleys.
An untold amount of the state has been flattened, and hundreds of miles of streams have been buried. Find out more in this Special Report.
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time have changed... get use to it