Read more in Coal Tattoo
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Citing "clear evidence" of likely environmental damage, the Obama administration has moved toward revoking the largest mountaintop-removal permit in West Virginia history.
Late last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency urged the federal Army Corps of Engineers to revoke or suspend the corps' approval of a Clean Water Act permit for Arch Coal Inc.'s Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County.
EPA officials outlined their concerns in a Thursday letter to the corps. A day later, corps lawyers asked a federal judge to delay legal proceedings concerning the permit to give agency officials a chance to revisit the permit.
William E. Early, acting regional EPA administrator, recommended the corps conduct a new environmental impact study of the permit proposal to evaluate "new information and circumstances" and "recent data and analyses" of mountaintop removal.
In a five-page letter, Early cited the Spruce Mine's "potential to degrade downstream water quality," the need for the company to give "serious consideration" to reducing valley fill size, and scientific studies that show mine operators cannot effectively replace the environmental functions of streams buried by mining waste.
Early also cited a series of West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection reports that "indicate that surface mining with valley fills in Central Appalachia is strongly related to downstream biological impairment."
Bob McLusky, a lawyer for Arch Coal subsidiary Mingo Logan Coal Co., did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the EPA letter or the corps' legal request.
The EPA move comes as a self-imposed deadline expired Tuesday for EPA to submit to the corps an "initial list" of mountaintop-removal permit applications that EPA officials want to more closely examine before they are issued.
Obama administration officials had announced in June that they would by Tuesday prepare this list, transmit it to the corps and then publish it on the Internet.
Read more in Coal Tattoo
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Citing "clear evidence" of likely environmental damage, the Obama administration has moved toward revoking the largest mountaintop-removal permit in West Virginia history.
Late last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency urged the federal Army Corps of Engineers to revoke or suspend the corps' approval of a Clean Water Act permit for Arch Coal Inc.'s Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County.
EPA officials outlined their concerns in a Thursday letter to the corps. A day later, corps lawyers asked a federal judge to delay legal proceedings concerning the permit to give agency officials a chance to revisit the permit.
William E. Early, acting regional EPA administrator, recommended the corps conduct a new environmental impact study of the permit proposal to evaluate "new information and circumstances" and "recent data and analyses" of mountaintop removal.
In a five-page letter, Early cited the Spruce Mine's "potential to degrade downstream water quality," the need for the company to give "serious consideration" to reducing valley fill size, and scientific studies that show mine operators cannot effectively replace the environmental functions of streams buried by mining waste.
Early also cited a series of West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection reports that "indicate that surface mining with valley fills in Central Appalachia is strongly related to downstream biological impairment."
Bob McLusky, a lawyer for Arch Coal subsidiary Mingo Logan Coal Co., did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the EPA letter or the corps' legal request.
The EPA move comes as a self-imposed deadline expired Tuesday for EPA to submit to the corps an "initial list" of mountaintop-removal permit applications that EPA officials want to more closely examine before they are issued.
Obama administration officials had announced in June that they would by Tuesday prepare this list, transmit it to the corps and then publish it on the Internet.
But on Tuesday, EPA officials declined to answer questions about the permit list and issued only a two-sentence prepared statement.
"As has been publicly stated, EPA plans to announce a decision on a number of outstanding mountain mining permits," said Adora Andy, press secretary for EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. "That announcement has not yet been made, but the agency expects it will take place in the coming days."
The Obama administration has promised "unprecedented steps" to reduce the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal. But a federal judge blocked one of those steps -- the reversal of a Bush administration rule change that eased permit standards. And while EPA has resumed some role in reviewing Clean Water Act permits issued by the corps -- something that was all but abandoned during the Bush years -- EPA has not yet made public clear standards for what level of impacts it will allow or prohibit. The National Mining Association has repeatedly complained that the EPA's permit reviews amount to putting new mining proposals into a "regulatory black hole."
Still, environmental groups considered the EPA move on the Spruce Mine a major step. It is the only mountaintop-removal mine for which the corps has ever completed a detailed Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), and thus EPA is demanding additional study of a mining proposal that has already been studied more than any other Appalachian strip mine.
"I'm pleased EPA is taking seriously the science and the devastation caused by mountaintop removal in a way that the Army Corps has refused until now to do," said Joe Lovett, director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment.
Lovett and other environmentalists have been fighting the Spruce Mine since 1998, when it was proposed as a 3,113-acre mine that would bury more than 10 miles of streams in the Pigeonroost Hollow area near Blair. Arch Coal had proposed the operation as a continuation of its Dal-Tex mountaintop-removal operation.
U.S. District Judge Charles H. Haden II blocked the permit, prompting Arch Coal to close Dal-Tex and lay off more than 300 United Mine Workers members employed there. Since then, Arch continued to seek the permit but shifted it to its nonunion Mingo Logan arm.
In January 2007, corps officials issued a slightly scaled back version of the Spruce Mine, a nearly 2,300-acre mine that would bury more than 8 miles of streams. Soon after that, environmental groups sought to have U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers block the permit.
The Spruce Mine was not among those halted by a March 2007 ruling by Chambers or directly affected by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision overturning Chambers. Since July, Arch Coal has been citing the 4th Circuit decision in asking Chambers to end a court challenge to the Spruce Mine approval.
Corps lawyers have asked for several extensions of time to respond to Arch Coal's motion. In Friday's filing, the corps cited the new EPA letter is asking Chambers for another 30 days to revisit the permit approval before responding to Arch.
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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July 2004
Internal government documents initially obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that senior Bush administration officials at the U.S. Department of the Interior intentionally disregarded extensive scientific studies conducted by five separate federal and state agencies over four years in preparation of an environmental impact statement (EIS) on mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia.
Scientists working for various federal agencies have documented a wide range of enormously destructive environmental impacts from this mining technique.
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/case_studies_and_evidence/mountaintop-removal-mining.html
I have known truck drivers who would rather come to Charleston and go down corridor G then travel across 52 even though it adds 88 miles to the trip.
There is nothing there but a system of narrow roads that wind between mountains along a set of railroad tracks and small creek until it gets too narrow and then they go over the mountain.