Corps Approves Controversial Permit Despite EPAs Objections

In early August, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a Clean Water Act permit for Consol Energys Peg Fork mountaintop removal coal mine in Mingo County, WV.

This controversial decision marks the first time during the Obama administration that the Army Corps approved a mine permit to which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had previously objected.

"We are not willing to sacrifice our homes to the potential of flooding from a mountaintop removal coal mine," said Mingo County resident and OVEC member Wilma Steele. "The Army Corps should protect our homes from being washed away."

The permit would violate the Surface Mining Act as well as the Clean Water Act. This mining operation would be impermissible under the Surface Mining Acts buffer zone rule, which protects intermittent and perennial streams.

The Department of Interior, therefore, has the duty to use the buffer zone rule to prevent giant stream destruction projects like those at the Peg Fork mine from going forward.

"The Department of Interiors continuing failure to force the mining industry to comply with the buffer zone rule is a reminder that it is business as usual at Interior," said Joe Lovett, of the Appalachian Center for the Economy & the Environment. Lovett called for Secretary Ken Salazar to "reverse the Bush Administrations refusal to enforce the Surface Mining Act and to protect our irreplaceable streams."

Earlier this year, the EPA conducted a review of 48 applications then pending before the Army Corps for Clean Water Act permits to fill streams. At the end of its review, the EPA identified the Peg Fork mine and five other mines as projects of high concern, and instructed the Army Corps to not issue those permits.

Following the EPAs review, the Army Corps revised Consol Energys permit for this mountaintop removal mine and issued the permit on Friday, August 7.

But the revised permit still fails to satisfy the requirements for permits issued under the Clean Water Act.

The original permit application proposed mining over 800 acres of mountainous terrain and dumping mining waste into eight valley fills and over 3 miles of streams.

The revised permit that received EPA approval still allows two valley fills immediately, with the potential for up to six additional valley fills if EPA is satisfied with the results of downstream water quality monitoring from the initial fills.

Even with these alterations, the Peg Fork mine would still have unacceptable adverse impacts on local waterways and therefore violates the Clean Water Act.

"Science and the law are at odds with this permit decision," said OVEC staff member Vivian Stickman. "In my opinion, the Corps decision to issue this and other permits boils down to political pressure from coal-friendly legislators."