Winds of Change Newsletter, December 2005     See sidebar for table of contents

	Looking at what the Corps considers “minimal impact,” you have to wonder what constitutes “moderate impact” – global thermonuclear war?

OVEC, Others Challenge Blair Mountain Mining Permit

As part of an ongoing effort to stop the federal government’s illegal permitting of mountaintop removal valley fills, in September the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment and Earthjustice filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for issuing a permit for a large mountaintop removal mine located near an important national historic site.

The attorneys filed the suit on behalf of the members of OVEC, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and Coal River Mountain Watch. If successful, our latest major legal attack on mountaintop removal coal could force federal regulators to perform detailed and time-consuming studies before issuing any new mining permits. A victory could also require government agencies to more fully examine potential impacts on forests and streams, and consider those before deciding to allow mining. All of which the agencies should already be doing!

In July 2005, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued the permit, which allows thousands of tons of waste rock and debris from Massey subsidiary Aracoma Coal’s planned Camp Branch mountaintop removal operation to be dumped into nearby streams, permanently burying them. The mine will not only destroy nearly three miles of stream, but will also impact the nationally important historic site of the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain. This symbol of coal miners’ resistance to the tyranny of the coal industry is being considered for the National Register of Historic Places.

We are challenging the Corps’ finding that Aracoma’s plan “does not significantly affect the quality of the human environment” without first conducting a study of the environmental impacts of the huge mining complex. That’s a violation of two federal laws. Previously, the Corps had been issuing rubber-stamp “general permits” for mountaintop removal mines, but in July 2004 a federal judge, in another OVEC lawsuit, ordered the Corps to stop that method of permitting. This new suit is the first major challenge to the Corps’ new permitting using “individual permits.” Unfortunately, we had to challenge the new permitting scheme, because the Corps is still letting the rubber stamp fly – doing no real scrutiny of permits and omitting the required studies.

More of that “minimal impact” the Corps keeps talking about – Williams Mountain in all its glorious fall colors, glorious except for the fact that the entire mountain is being removed!

“Mountaintop mining has already destroyed over 800 square miles of mountains – an area equal to a one-quarter-mile wide swath of destruction from New York to San Francisco. It has buried more than 1,200 miles of headwater streams and uprooted or destroyed untold numbers of generations-old communities in central Appalachia,” said Cindy Rank of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy. “In issuing this permit the Army Corps of Engineers has inexplicably reasoned that the environmental damages caused by this mine and mountaintop removal coal mining across the region, are insignificant.”

OVEC board member Regina Hendrix added, “The Corps is betraying the public trust by leaving a landscape that will not recover for hundreds of years. While no good reason exists to destroy any mountain, this mountain is of great significance to the people and history of West Virginia. The vast wastelands left by mountaintop removal not only rob us of our economic future, but this mine also infringes on our past by impacting the Blair Mountain historic site. If preserved as a national historic landmark, the Blair Mountain site can help revitalize the tourist economy and provide an economic future for the area long after the coal industry has gone.”

“Mountaintop removal mining is a callous, irresponsible, egregious method of mining coal. It creates false prosperity – enriching the few at a great cost to large areas of Appalachian people and the environment,” said Janice Nease, executive director of Coal River Mountain Watch. “Southern West Virginia has become an energy sacrifice zone in the nation’s quest for ‘cheap’ energy…Coal River Mountain Watch has accepted the challenge of ending mountaintop removal mining. We hope that the rest of the nation will join us in meeting this challenge.”

In November, we added another permit to this lawsuit – the permit the Corps issued to Elk Run Coal, another Massey subsidiary, for its Black Castle Mine in Boone County.