EPA Moves to Block WVs Largest MTR Mining Permit

by Ken Ward Jr., excerpted from Sept. 8, 2009, Charleston Gazette

Citing "clear evidence" of likely environmental damage, the Obama administration has moved toward revoking the largest mountaintop-removal permit in West Virginia history.

In early September, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency urged the federal Army Corps of Engineers to revoke or suspend the corps approval of a Clean Water Act permit for Arch Coal Inc.s Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County.

William E. Early, acting regional EPA administrator, recommended the corps conduct a new environmental impact study of the permit proposal to evaluate "new information and circumstances" and "recent data and analyses" of mountaintop removal.

In a five-page letter, Early cited the Spruce Mines "potential to degrade downstream water quality," the need for the company to give "serious consideration" to reducing valley fill size, and scientific studies that show mine operators cannot effectively replace the environmental functions of streams buried by mining waste.

The Obama administration has promised "unprecedented steps" to reduce the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal. But a federal judge blocked one of those steps the reversal of a Bush administration rule change that eased permit standards. And while EPA has resumed some role in reviewing Clean Water Act permits issued by the corps something that was all but abandoned during the Bush years EPA has not yet made public clear standards for what level of impacts it will allow or prohibit.

Still, environmental groups considered the EPA move on the Spruce Mine a major step. It is the only mountaintop-removal mine for which the corps has ever completed a detailed Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), and thus EPA is demanding additional study of a mining proposal that has already been studied more than any other Appalachian strip mine.

Joe Lovett, director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy & the Environment and other environmentalists have been fighting the Spruce Mine since 1998, when it was proposed as a 3,113-acre mine that would bury more than 10 miles of streams in the Pigeonroost Hollow area near Blair.

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