Mountaintop Removal Damage Proved

Bush Proposes No Concrete Limits on New Mining Permits

By KEN WARD, JR.
Charleston Gazette
May 30, 2003

Studies show that without more limits on mountaintop mining, 2,200 square miles of Appalachian forests will be lost, and another 1,000 miles of streams will be polluted.

After a 4 1/2-year study, federal government experts have confirmed that mountaintop removal coal mining destroys forests and streams. The study released Thursday found that, without additional restrictions, mountaintop removal could eliminate an area of Appalachian forest twice the size of Kanawha County. But the Bush administration proposed no new concrete limits on mountaintop removal or associated valley fills that bury streams.

Instead, federal agencies said that they would "enhance protection" of the environment by working more closely to review permits on a case-by-case basis.

The draft study suggests development of a "joint application" for mining permits. Companies would submit one application that would cover all of the various state and federal permits needed for a large mining operation.

"The agencies would develop enhanced coordination of regulatory actions, while maintaining independent review and decision making," the study says.

The study, called an Environmental Impact Statement or EIS, was required to be completed by December 2000, under the terms of a 1998 legal settlement.

The federal Office of Surface Mining, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Fish and Wildlife Service released a draft for public comment Thursday afternoon.

On Thursday, coal industry officials praised the study's completion and the action plan recommended by the Bush administration.

National Mining Association President Jack Gerard said the "preferred alternative" chosen by the study team "provides a constructive roadmap for coal mining operations as well as state and federal regulatory agencies that could lead to further environmental improvements at mining operations."

Environmental advocates and coalfield citizens condemned the lack of proposed new limits on mining.

"There is and has been for some time ample evidence to support significant limits on mountaintop removal," said Joan Mulhern, senior legislative counsel for the Washington-based group Earthjustice. "Yet, this draft EIS's preferred alternative would adopt none of those limits, and indeed would weaken existing protections."

In a joint statement, federal agencies said that they would "clarify" strip-mining regulations "to ensure that, where fills are necessary, they are as small as possible and located where they cause the least environmental impact."

The agencies also said that they would write recommended best management practices to "promote the benefits of reforestation" of mine sites.

"The draft EIS recommends actions designed specifically to ensure more effective protection for human health and the environment, while enabling the nation to continue to receive the energy benefits of cleaner burning Appalachian coal," the joint statement said.

But the study's preferred alternative reflects, in large part, proposals pushed in late 2001 by Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles. Griles, a former Mining Association lobbyist, wanted the study, started under the Clinton administration, to be refocused on "centralizing and streamlining coal mine permitting."

Among other things, the study proposes to finalize an OSM plan to essentially eliminate a rule requiring 100-foot buffer zones between mining and streams.

The study also does not indicate that federal officials will maintain a temporary requirement that valley fills in streams that drain more than 250 acres be subject to more rigorous Clean Water Act permit review.

Under the preferred alternative, the corps would "make case-by-case determinations" about such matters, the draft study said. 

"This document breaks the promise made by the federal government in 1998 to reduce environmental harm caused by valley fills - not increase it," said Jim Hecker, environmental enforcement director of Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, a public interest law firm that has represented citizen groups in mining cases.

The release of the EIS opens another round in the long battle over mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia.

On Thursday, both sides began poring over the study and offering their spin on the findings. The public comment period runs through Aug. 29. Public hearings are planned this summer in Charleston and in Hazard, Ky.

In mountaintop removal, coal operators blast off entire hilltops to uncover valuable, low-sulfur coal reserves. Leftover rock and dirt - the stuff that used to be the mountains - is shoved into nearby valleys, burying streams.

Twice in the last four years, U.S. District Judge Charles H. Haden II issued rulings that limited the practice. Both times, Haden's decisions were overturned on appeal.

In the draft study, regulators found that 724 miles of streams across the region were buried by valley fills between 1985 and 2001.

A scientific review that projected potential impacts of future mountaintop removal estimated that, without additional restrictions, a total of 2,200 square miles of Appalachian forests would eventually be eliminated by large-scale mining operations. That's more than twice the 913-square-mile-area covered by Kanawha County.

That review also found that, in the next 10 years, another 1,000 miles of streams could be "directly impacted" by mining. That length of streams would run along Interstate 79 from Charleston to Morgantown and back three times.

"All of these changes suggest that the biological integrity of the study area may be jeopardized," the cumulative impact review found.

During a telephone press briefing Thursday afternoon, OSM spokesman Mike Robinson was asked to describe the environmental impact of mountaintop removal.

"It's tough to generalize," Robinson told reporters. "But there certainly is a range of impacts."

The study and related scientific studies are available on the Internet at www.epa.gov/region3/mtntop/index.htm. The study, along with an archive of mountaintop removal stories and documents, is also available on the Gazette's Web site at wvgazette.com/mining.

To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call 348-1702.