News
EPA APPROVES Permit For Mountaintop Removal at Pine Creek
Thursday, July 1st, 2010
Last April, the EPA announced new guidance standards for new and pending surface mine permits in Appalachia. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson stated “Coal communities should not have to sacrifice their environment or their health or their economic future to mountaintop mining. They deserve the full protection of our clean water laws.” The Administrator proclaimed “You’re talking about no or very few valley fills that are going to meet standards like this.”
While Jackson made it clear that the new guidance would not ban all mountaintop removal, the guidance and the Administrator’s strong statements, it seemed, did move Appalachia one step closer to the just and sustainable future our region needs and deserves.
Last week, though, the EPA quietly made its first decision under the new guidelines and APPROVED a permit allowing three new valley fills in Logan County, West Virginia.
In other words:
They’re still blowing up our mountains, and we still need a law.
The EPA approved Pine Creek Strip Mine (pdf) would impact over two MILES of already suffering headwater streams, create three new valley fills (each over 40 acres), and further endanger local communities already suffering from increased flooding due to strip mining. As deforestation on the Arch Coal mine site would continue to dismantle an important global carbon sink, the mine itself would produce over 14 million tons of coal, which when burned in power plants, would contribute over 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas pollution to the planet’s atmosphere.
Vivian Stockman of Logan County, West Virginia expresses frustration with the agency: “In approving the Pine Creek permit, the EPA has failed our community. Any more mountaintop removal mining in Logan County is going to further degrade the watershed, increase pollution-related health impacts and increase the likelihood of more flooding.”
Again, we need a law. In this April Huffington Post piece, Matt Wasson, Director of Programs for Appalachian Voices, outlined 5 reasons for the need:
1. The EPA’s action will not affect permits that have already been issued. Moreover, an excellent piece of reporting by Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward revealed that those existing permits will allow some companies to continue mountaintop removal operations without a hitch for the next couple of years.
2. Not all mountaintop removal mines require valley fills and coal companies are already using loopholes by which they can obliterate miles of streams without the need to obtain a valley fill permit. The million or so acres of wholesale destruction that coal companies drove through a narrow loophole in the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act since 1977 is testament to their skill and creativity at exploiting loopholes.
3. Some valley fills will still be allowed under this guidance and the EPA even provided a set of “best practices” by which companies can do mountaintop removal in a manner consistent with it. Moreover, there are a number of recent cases where coal companies went ahead and constructed valley fills without even bothering to obtain a permit.
4. While the guidance takes effect immediately, it is a preliminary document released in response to calls from coal state legislators and coal companies for greater clarity on how the EPA was basing its decision whether to grant a valley fill permit for an Appalachian surface mine. The EPA plans to initiate an extended public comment period before the guidelines will be finalized.
5. An agency guidance document is different from a formal rule and can be easily overturned by a new administration. Even if this guidance proves to be effective in curtailing mountaintop removal, environmental and community advocates still need to ask what happens when a hypothetical President Palin enters the White House in January of 2013 or 2017.
Please take a moment to ask your Congressman to support two bipartisan bills aimed at sharply curtailing mountaintop removal: the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 1310) in the House and the Appalachia Restoration Act (S 696) in the Senate. The health and heritage of Appalachia is at stake, where a “few valley fills” is a few too many.
July 2nd, 2010 at 2:14 pm
I can’t understand why this would be allowed to happen in a civlized, educated society. Anyone who really educates themselves on the matter should be appalled & the complete lack of concern by the EPA for our beloved country & our dwindling resources due to negligence & lack of accountability.
My family & our American Indian decendants are all from the Appalachian area. If we took care of the land half as good as our American Indian ancestors, we wouldn’t have football sized landfills full of items that could’ve been recycled or a beautiful mountain top still in tact 100 years from now for our children.
July 3rd, 2010 at 10:47 am
It’s really unfortunate that our energy crazed society allows for things like this to happen. I can understand mining to a certain extent because all you’re really doing is digging around, but to level an entire mountain is ridiculous.
July 6th, 2010 at 10:33 pm
I’ve been thinking lately about all the attention being paid to an oil spill in the gulf of mexico compared to the ignored environmental disaster in kentucky and west virginia. It seems to me that coal companies should be held to similar standards as BP. It seems to me that media attention should also be similar. What gives?
July 7th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
You have to realize that President Obama is a longtime supporter of coal.
July 8th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Unless this is topped, you give voting citizen adults no choice between you and your opponents. They are pseudo-religion spouting infallibility adherents, marching in visionless, volitionless lockstep behind failed leaders preaching anarchy–non-regulation of the most destructive elements in our society from rogue individuals to corporate, financial, media and government extremists of the most shocking viciousness. All that you have to do to gain positive support and approbation from hundreds of millions of persons is to apply existing regulations where your neocon predecessors refused to do so and stop such destructions as loss of ecozone land and animals species, stopping crimes against individuals they refused to regulate and ending mountaintop removal, offshore drilling without adequate safeguards and initiating repair of dangerously functioning bridges, and other “public” interest projects neocon republicans love to build and refuse to repair. Start with the most destructive and dangerous of all pseudo-industrial criminality–mountaintop removal. Either we are a societal association of individuals willing to obey regulations–a nation of regulations–or we have no reason to exist since our members can’t act like adults, humans, sane minds. Start the reform here. Save your administration and your own careers. Stop mountaintop removal. NOW.
Thank you for saving our nation from postmodernistic reality trashers.
July 8th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
I have just finished a couple of books on American Indian history. We are doing the same thing now that we started in the early 1700’s against the land and the people. Mountain top removal and valley fills are wrong. Someday, this kind of activities will come back to haunt us all. Sad to say, but we are all longtime supporters of coal. We need a new source of energy and conservation of what we now have.
July 9th, 2010 at 9:09 am
a local chicgo boy being a long time supporter of coal.
hummm.and i just heard a very strong argument on joe the blow scarborough this morning about how hostile mr obama is to business.something ain’t jiving.and the epa administrater seems not to be a coal leaning butt kisser.she will be a big help to the people all over the world who love kentucky and her mountains,and their basketball.i know i love them.and prestonburg and their golf courseing coal owning buddies can go straight to heck,i’ll never go thru there again.i love the appalachia mountains,and i love all of the judds.and i sure hope the other judds are as eager to stop these hideous act by coal companies as ashley is.ashley topless is beautiful,kentucky not so much.well stated by a previous poster.
July 12th, 2010 at 11:47 am
The fact that President Obama, whom I supported and still do, or anyone else supports coal is not the issue. The issue is that mountain top removal coal mining is an irreparable rape of our environment and we must come together to make it stop–whatever it takes.
July 12th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
As long as our elected Local and State officials act as taxpayer paid lobbist for the Coal Industry, our Southwestern Counties will be destroyed and the people posioned.