EPA vetoes Arch Coal Company's West Virginian mountain-top removal permit for its Spruce Mine

Major environmental ruling on coal

by Michael Tomasky, MichaelTomasky'sblog, The Guardian, January 14, 2011

Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency vetoed the largest mountaintop removal mining permit in the history of West Virginia, and one that has been at the heart of these new coalfield wars for a decade.

As usual, Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette is the go-to guy here:

The move is part of an Obama administration crackdown aimed at reducing the effects of mountaintop removal coal-mining on the environment and on coalfield communities in Appalachian — impacts that scientists are increasingly finding to be pervasive and irreversible...

...EPA officials this morning were alerting West Virginia's congressional delegation to their action, and undoubtedly preparing for a huge backlash from the mining industry and its friends among coalfield political leaders.

In making its decision to veto the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' approval of the 2,300-acre mine proposed for the Blair area of Logan County, EPA noted that it reviewed more than 50,000 public comments and held a major public hearing in West Virginia. EPA officials said their agency is "acting under the law and using the best science available to protect water quality, wildlife and Appalachian communities who rely on clean waters for drinking, fishing and swimming."

The site is called the Spruce Mine, which became controversial in 1999 when the late federal district judge, Chuck Haden, a Republican, issued an injunction that blocked mining there on environmental grounds. Readers with ridiculously sharp memories will recall that I knew Chuck pretty well -- he and my father were close friends, and he was one of the eulogists at Dad's funeral.

What seems to have happened here, according to Ward, is this. After Haden's ruling, Arch, the operator, scaled the site back by 700 acres (the current 2,300 acres is still about the size of downtown Pittsburgh) and got a new permit from the Army Corps of Engineers in 2007. The Obama administration came in and signaled its intention to review the matter. A full year was spent in negotiation between the EPA and the company trying to find a compromise that would let the mining go ahead but with stronger safeguards, according to Ward. But no deal could be reached.

This is a big big deal, folks. It's the first time the EPA has ever vetoed a project that was previously granted a permit.

You all know which side I'm on here. I give money every year to the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, and I might well recommend that you do the same, or at least visit their web site to read up on things.

I'm sympathetic to the jobs argument. There's no black and white here. It's a struggle that's full of anguish. I feel for the people who depend on these jobs, and I am aware that we're going to be relying on coal for electricity for a long time to come.

But if you study this issue closely, you see repeated instances of the moneyed interests winning: regulators not enforcing regulations, laws being flouted, negotiations undertaken in questionable faith, and so on and so on. Someone has to level out the playing field.

Link:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2011/jan/14/usa-west-virginia