Federal Judge Blocks Massey Mine Expansion

by Ken Ward Jr., Charleston Gazette, March 26, 2006

The latest courtroom battle to curb mountaintop removal coal mining is starting to heat up.

On Friday, a federal judge in Huntington blocked expansion of a Massey Energy mine near the intersection of Kanawha, Fayette and Raleigh counties.

U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers…also set a hearing for early April to consider a request for a broader court order to block permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. (Ed. Note: That hearing is now moved to June 19.)

Over the last seven years, two federal judges in West Virginia have issued rulings to more tightly regulate mountaintop removal.

Those rulings, by the late Judge Charles H. Haden II and Judge Joseph R. Goodwin, were both overturned by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

One of those cases is now back before Goodwin. Environmental group lawyers have asked the judge to rule on several issues that were not considered in his previous decision or in the Fourth Circuit appeal.

And last month, two West Virginia judges who served on the Fourth Circuit issued a harsh dissent that supports Goodwin’s original ruling.

“The Appalachian mountains, the oldest mountain chain in the world, are one of the nation’s richest, most diverse and most delicate ecosystems, an ecosystem that mountaintop coal mining authorized by the corps’ general permit may irrevocably damage,” Judges Robert B. King and M. Blane Michael said in their dissent…

In the current case, Chambers is being asked to force the Corps of Engineers to conduct broad environmental impact studies on every application for a new mountaintop removal permit.

Lawyers for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and other groups specifically targeted permits for three Massey Energy operations based in Boone, Kanawha and Logan counties.

The case is a follow-up to Goodwin’s ruling to block the corps from reviewing valley fill proposals through a streamlined “general permit” process.

In the new case, the environmentalists argue that the corps was wrong to approve mining operations through more detailed “individual permit” reviews because those reviews did not include a study called an Environmental Impact Statement.

“The mining and valley fills at these three mines collectively will destroy over 2,000 acres of land and smother over seven miles of streams,” the lawyers said in the court papers. “Yet, the corps has neglected to examine in a meaningful way the inevitable damage that will be caused by these mines, or to develop any realistic plan for mitigating that damage.”

A gigantic coal sludge lake in southern West Virginia, as seen from a SouthWings airplane flight. Like mountaintop removal mining, scores of such ponds endanger downstream residents and businesses.