King Coal, State Chamber of Commerce Say Environmental Groups Attacking WV’s “Economic Lynchpin” – Coal!

	Says Magnum Coal, "Stream? We ain’t got no stream ... we don’t need no stream ... we don’t have to show you any stinkin’ stream!" This is what the stream in question looked like after Magnum had rearranged it more to their liking.

In mid-May, the Charleston Gazette ran an op-ed titled "Singular mission: Economic cornerstone of W.Va. under attack." Steve Roberts, president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce and Kenny Perdue, president of the West Virginia AFL-CIO, were listed as authors of the column.

The column said environmental groups are using lawsuits to attack the economic cornerstone of the state – the coal industry. The only group named in the column was OVEC, and the authors referred readers to OVEC’s website, because there they would learn – and this is shocking, people! – that OVEC wants to end mountaintop removal.

The column extolled the jobs and taxes the coal industry provides the state and railed against those who dare to speak against Big Coal’s excesses: "Clearly the actions by groups such as OVEC are nothing more than an all-out assault on the economic and fiscal well-being of our state. They are also an assault on our nation and its energy security… West Virginians from all walks of life should be outraged by this and should speak up to put an end to these misguided campaigns. We must preserve West Virginia’s coal industry and its communities."

One of our legal challenges seems to have provoked this op-ed. As OVEC members know, throughout the years we’ve worked to make coal companies obey laws and regulators enforce them.

In an apparent attempt to skirt one of our pending lawsuits over individual valley fill permits, Magnum Coal’s Apogee mine in Logan County secretly contacted the US Army Corps of Engineers. Apogee asked the Corps to "evaluate" and permit the mine’s valley fills under the lenient Nationwide 21 provisions rather than the more stringent Individual permit provisions of the Clean Water Act. The Corps quickly complied and rubber-stamped its approval for the mine, even though Apogee would be violating its own strip mining plan if it filled those streams.

We found out about the Corps’ authorization of the valley fills at the Apogee mine thanks to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the ever-vigilant Margaret Janes of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment.

Margaret contacted the WV Department of

Environmental Protection to see if the coal company had started work on the valley fills. The DEP inspector told her no work had started on the valley fills. So, we filed a motion for an injunction to hold up work until the permit was reviewed under our lawsuit.

The motion prompted an anti-OVEC rally in Logan County, where one mine official exhorted those present to consider our legal challenge a call to arms. The Governor railed against us, and at the rally and in letters-to-the-editor we were portrayed as job-hating, family-hating, out-of-state extremists. We received threatening e-mails. The bullies were out in force.

Two days before the rally, we knew we would have to drop our motion for an injunction, but not because of the rally or published vitriol. The DEP was wrong. The DEP had misinformed us. Work had already started on the valley fills at Apogee.

We had to withdraw our motion because the waters of the United States had already been buried under tons of rock. Once the streams were buried, our legal legs where swept out from under us – the judge simply would not have been able to grant our motion because there were no streams left to protect.

To those who relied on TV for their news, it probably looked like the bullying scared us off. Not true!

Every permit granted means several hundred more acres of West Virginia is lost forever to mountaintop removal. But, while we’ve lost the Apogee permit thanks to the Corps’ underhanded dealing, lawsuits before the courts are holding up dozens of big permits…buying time for all of us to organize and educate and build the movement that will end mountaintop removal.

We are hugely grateful to the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment for leading the lawsuits.

All the bully-style name-calling from Big Coal brought OVEC a flurry of support in the form of  donations, new members, letters-to-the editor (too many to reproduce here!) and general thanks to OVEC members who dare to stand up for their communities.