Update 2: A subsidiary of Arch Coal of St. Louis, Missouri, has been denied permission to dump nearly three billion cubic feet of dirt into local headwater streams after blowing up a mountain in West Virginia. A landmark decision issued Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the EPA was within its rights to revoke water permits after another agency had issuing them.
Update 1: According to the Wall Street Journal, "Arch Coal has lost a round in its battle to build a mountaintop mine in West Virginia as a federal appeals court sided on a key point with regulators who want to stop the project."
A subsidiary of Arch Coal of St. Louis, Missouri, wants permission to dump nearly three billion cubic feet of dirt into local headwater streams after blowing up a mountain in West Virginia. The object is to extract coal from a project known as the Spruce No. 1 Surface Mine. “The damage from this project would be irreversible,” said Shawn Garvin, the Mid-Atlantic regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which has issued an order to stop the project. “EPA has a duty under the law to protect water quality and safeguard the people who rely on these waters for drinking, fishing and swimming."
Arch Coal, which is the second largest coal producer in the U.S., has sued the EPA in order to move ahead. A court decision is expected eventually but the case may well end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
Mountaintop Coal Removal
What Arch Coal is proposing is a relatively new technology called mountaintop coal removal which has often been described as “strip mining on steroids.” Forests are razed and burned. Age-old rocks are blasted through. Giant, 20-story tall shovels and bulldozers tear into the remaining mountain, filling one 240-ton dump truck at a time. Once exposed, the embedded coal seams are carted off for processing.
The remaining rubble is dumped into surrounding valleys, submerging streams and rivers. Toxic chemicals used in the mining process, as well as naturally occurring minerals that are dangerous for wildlife and human consumption, leach out from the debris into the waterways. So far, at least 2,200 square miles (5,632 square kilometers) of the Appalachian mountain ranges have been obliterated, and 1,200 miles (1,920 kilometers) of streams have been buried, according to the EPA.
Mountaintop coal removal has been fiercely opposed by local and national environmental groups precisely because of its devastating impact on local water quality. “Many folks here in Appalachia have streams or creeks running through their back yard. Kids from Kentucky to Tennessee grew up fishing and many of us still enjoy heading out with the pole for a lazy Sunday afternoon hoping to snag a trout,” writes Mary Anne Hitt, the director of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign. “Sadly, for many people in Appalachia that pristine ideal no longer exists."
Permit Wars
The Spruce No. 1 Surface Mine was first given permission to go ahead in early 2007 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granted Mingo Logan Coal Company, (owned by Arch) a permit for the mining operation. According to the EPA, the Spruce mine would have disturbed 3.5 square miles (9 square kilometers) in the heart of Appalachia and removed up to 450 feet (137 meters) off the top of a mountain. The waste is to be dumped in almost 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) of local streams.
As the largest permitted mountaintop mine in West Virginia at the time, Spruce No. 1 quickly became a rallying point for opponents of the practice. In 2007, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Coal River Mountain Watch and other environmental groups sued the Corps for issuing the permit, and Mingo Logan agreed to operate only in a portion of the proposed project area, filling only one out of the original six valleys proposed. Although the EPA expressed concern during the corps permitting process, it did not actively oppose the permit at the time.
Locals like Dustin Steele, of Mingo County, West Virginia, began to actively organize protest actions to try to stop the project. Recently a group of activists disguised themselves in business suits and delivery uniforms and attempted to occupy the company headquarters in Missouri."I have seen coal wreck everything around me. Arch (has) spent the last 125 years destroying (my) home," Steele said when he locked himself to a potted tree inside the company’s headquarters during the protest. “The struggle continues today as we take action to hold Arch Coal and other coal companies accountable for the damage that they do to people and communities in Appalachia.”
In early 2010 the EPA intervened and vetoed Spruce No. 1’s permit to use the requested valleys and streams as disposal sites, citing violations of the Clean Water Act. The veto shut down 88 percent of the proposed operation, excepting only the areas where the company was already mining. It was the thirteenth time since 1978 that the EPA had exercised its veto authority. Only twice before has the agency ever revoked a permit, and never for a coal mine.
“EPA has exercised its post-permit authority sparingly over the past four decades,” the agency said in a legal brief. “These streams represent some of the last remaining least-disturbed, high quality stream and riparian resources within the Headwaters Spruce Fork sub-watershed and the Coal River sub-basin and contain important wildlife resources and habitat.”
The agency said that additional data and scientific studies published after the permit had been issued compelled the agency to step in. Some of the studies reflected Mingo Logan’s impact on the area and showed that the project would have an “unacceptable adverse effect” on wildlife, the EPA said.
Court Battles
At a 30-minute hearing on March 14, Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, Thomas Griffith and Brett Kavanaugh listened carefully to arguments on what the U.S. Congress intended when they wrote Section 404 of the Clean Water Act.
The court decision may take a while. Meanwhile the protestors have vowed to continue their struggle to stop the mine. “Today, tomorrow, and every day for the rest of my life I will disrupt business as usual,” Steele wrote on his blog. “From St. Louis to the strip site, from the city to the hollers, wherever they are I will be there fighting for every inch, fighting for every permit, and I won’t stop until Arch is nothing more then a collective bad memory.”
This article was originally published on the CorpWatch Blog.