No CONSOL-A-Tion, Workers Misled About Possible Job Losses?

Late last year, we prevailed in litigation over the illegal permitting process used at mountaintop removal mines in Clay County.

As a result of lawsuits brought by OVEC, the Sierra Club, WV Highlands Conservancy and Coal River Mountain Watch, Federal Judge Robert C. Chambers ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to reissue an amended public notice for the permits, respond to public comments, and reconsider the issuance of the permits.

Why didnt the companies immediately start work on a new public notice, as the judge ordered?

Instead, CONSOL alerted their workers and state politicians that immediate job loss notices would be sent to almost 500 surface and underground miners. (Our litigation did not mention the Little Eagle underground mine.)

The threatened job losses resulted in another of the now-familiar uproars from the coal industry and many state political leaders and the usual increase in threats and harassment of coalfields folks who oppose mountaintop removal. Why didnt the companies just do what the judge told them to do?

Perhaps the mountaintop mining industry saw an opportunity to raise the jobs issue in a dramatic way a way to garner more political support for continued large-scale mountaintop strip mining.

An issue was CONSOL subsidiary Folas mitigation plan, which outlines how the company will compensate for the burial of six miles of stream.

There is no scientific evidence indicating that current legally required mitigation practices actually work. Judge Chambers ruled in January that the Clay County mines could continue operations in streams that the company has already destroyed.