This article originally provided by The Herald-Dispatch

January 30, 2007

Corps issues permit for mountaintop removal mine

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- Arch Coal Inc. has received a federal permit for a 2,278-acre mountaintop removal mine in Logan County, nearly eight years after a judge blocked the company's original permit.

The "dredge-and-fill" permit approved for Arch's Spruce No. 1 Mine near Blair could be the largest ever issued in West Virginia, said Jessica Greathouse, spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued the permit last week.

Arch Coal has scaled back the project since it was initially approved in the late 1990s. The original permit covered 3,113 acres and allowed the company to dump waste rock and dirt into more than 10 miles of streams. The new permit allows the mine to dump waste rock and dirt into nearly 7 miles of streams, according to corps permit documents and DEP records.

Arch can reach about 75 percent of its coal reserves under the new permit, the corps said in a permit study completed in September.

"The applicant made additional modifications to further avoid and minimize impacts to the environment, while satisfactorily meeting the purpose and need for the project," the permit study said.

Joe Lovett, a lawyer for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, said those groups may challenge the new permit in court.

In 1998, the conservancy and a group of coalfield residents filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Spruce No. 1 mine's original permit, contending that state and federal regulators were issuing permits for mountaintop removal mines in violation of federal law.

The late U.S. Chief District Judge Charles H. Haden II issued a preliminary injunction in March 1999 blocking the mine's original permit. Haden ruled that the mine had been illegally "segmented" into smaller phases by Arch and the corps to avoid doing an Environmental Impact Statement study. That study has since been conducted.

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Information from: The Charleston Gazette, http://www.wvgazette.com