Archive for the ‘Mountaintop Mining’ Category

EPA crackdown on mountaintop coal mining criticized as contradictory

January 28, 2010

 

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 28, 2010

CHARLESTON, W.VA. — Here in coal country, President Obama’s ambitious Environmental Protection Agency has met its first big mess.

On Inauguration Day, the EPA began a crackdown on “mountaintop” coal mines. The agency has scrutinized about 175 proposed mines, where peaks would be blasted off and valleys filled in with the rubble. It has signed off on only 48.

EPA officials — repeating a refrain from a fast-marching first year in which they also took on greenhouse gases and the seemingly eternal problems of the Chesapeake Bay — say they’re just following the law. That, they say, means keeping poisonous things from the inside of a mountain out of streams on the surface.

But to many people in Appalachia, the orders coming out of Washington, especially one this month, have appeared contradictory and mysterious, signing off on some mines and blocking others. Environmentalists are unhappy because they fear federal officials are losing their nerve to take on the powerful coal industry. The coal industry is unhappy because it thinks the administration is on the brink of giving in to the green crowd.

To each side, it looks like the EPA hasn’t made up its mind. Which would make now the time to yell as loudly as possible.

People have chained themselves to mine equipment and shouted one another down. One scooted past state troopers to slap an environmentalist. The EPA finds itself in the middle of the most bitter in-your-face environmental fight in America today, facing an early test of its resolve and political skills. The agency appears certain to bear much of the weight of carrying out Obama’s historic environmental agenda.

“They didn’t have a well-thought-out plan whenever they did this. And that’s really been the basis of the uproar,” said Randy Huffman, secretary of West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection, which EPA officials say has not been tough enough on mines in the past. Now, he said, confusion over the EPA’s intentions “creates fear, and that brings out the worst in people.”

A sign of fear

The latest sign of that fear came last Thursday, in an auditorium at the University of Charleston. A debate between a coal-company chief executive and environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which attracted more than 1,000 people split between the two sides, had security reminiscent of a presidential visit or a prison rodeo.

Eight police officers were in the room, and two more with metal detectors guarded the door outside. No purses allowed. No backpacks. No weapons. Just to talk.

“The current EPA, which won’t give a permit for anything for any reason . . . they’re the ones that’s going to cost people their jobs and weaken homeland security,” said Don Blankenship, chairman and chief executive of Richmond-based Massey Energy, a major player in mountaintop mining. In the audience, coal miners, wearing uniforms striped with orange-and-silver reflective tape so coal trucks don’t run them over, cheered.

On Monday, Gov. Joe Manchin III (D) issued a plea for an end to intimidation of people fighting mountaintop mining. “We will not in any way, shape or form in this state of West Virginia tolerate any violence against anyone on any side. If you’re going to have the dialogue, have respect for each other,” he said after a meeting with environmentalists and anti-mining activists.

Mountaintop mining, also called “mountaintop removal,” is an exclusively Appalachian practice, dating to the 1970s but having gained momentum in the past 20 years. To get at coal seams that are too thin or too close to the surface to reach by tunneling, miners use explosives and huge machinery to remove the peak above the coal.

In most cases, the law requires that companies rebuild the mountain to its original shape. But leftover rubble is usually left in nearby valleys. There, scientists say, rainwater seeps over rocks that had previously been far underground. That can release trace amounts of salt and toxic metals, which can kill life in streams and cause health problems for people who drink the water.

This practice was deemed legal: From 2000 to 2008, federal and state authorities gave permission for 511 valley fills in West Virginia, according to the Government Accountability Office. Put back to back, the GAO estimated, it was the equivalent of filling a single valley at least 176 miles long.

But Obama’s EPA signaled a new attitude early on by notifying the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — which issues permits to these mines — of its concerns about a mine in West Virginia. The 175 similar sites it has since scrutinized, including new applications, are spread across West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Clarity debated

At the EPA, officials say they’re not out to stamp out mountaintop mining altogether — this month they approved a West Virginia mine permit after the company promised changes to reduce its effect on streams by nearly 50 percent.

But to many environmentalists and coal-industry leaders, the EPA’s actions have seemed erratic and uncertain. It has criticized some mines and approved others, both sides say, without drawing a clear line between good and bad. Activists on both sides say the agency hasn’t always been clear about what criteria it is using to make the distinction — making it hard to guess what mines will make the cut in the future.

EPA official Peter Silva said there was no problem with the clarity of the EPA’s message.

“The notion of ‘clarity’ invoked by some West Virginia officials and industry representatives has too often meant letting coal companies do as they please, with little or no consideration for the harmful impacts on Americans living in coal country,” Silva said. EPA officials declined to comment on the record beyond this statement.

Adding to the confusion: The Interior Department rejected a Bush-era rule considered friendly to mines, then said it wouldn’t have a replacement ready for more than a year. And a Corps of Engineers official rejected an EPA request to revisit a permit given to a particularly large mine, leading the EPA to threaten a first-of-its-kind environmental veto.

“We really don’t know where this is going,” said Jason Bostic of the West Virginia Coal Association. He said his organization has passed the message to miners that the agency might hamstring an industry that is still crucial here, though mountaintop mining only accounts for about 10 percent of U.S. coal production. “If there’s going to be a change to EPA’s attitude, everybody’s got to work together.”

On the other side, environmentalist Mike Roselle said the EPA’s actions were reason to redouble a campaign of civil disobedience. Roselle, a veteran of campaigns against logging in the Northwest, has imported the same tactics and even some of the same people here. In the past year, he said, members of his Climate Ground Zero group have been arrested 150 times after sitting in trees on mine sites or chaining themselves to company equipment.

“We know for a fact that, when we shut down a mine, that somebody in the White House is aware of it,” he said. Mine companies have said the practice is dangerous for both workers and protesters.

What’s passed between the two sides has been mild, at least in a state where miners and mine companies used to shoot it out with rifles. But there have been flash points: At a public hearing in the fall, environmentalists say they were shouted down. At a march last year, a woman in a reflective-tape shirt stepped past the troopers standing guard and slapped local activist Julia Bonds. “They don’t seem to understand the difference between nonviolence and violence,” Bonds said.

At the debate last Thursday, with an unusually high police presence, neither side did anything worse than laugh at the other’s speaker. But about an hour away, at a Massey Energy mine, sirens were in the woods.

Three activists had climbed into trees, Roselle said, and Massey security guards were using loud noises to stop them from sleeping and get them to come down.

On Wednesday, Roselle said a tree-sitter had descended because of gear that had become wet. The other two remained. He said he was pleased that the protest had caused headaches for Massey and the West Virginia government. “It absolutely worked,” he said.

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Environmentalists hold tree sit-in at Massey mine

January 23, 2010

 

Williamson Daily News – January 21, 2010 

Three environmentalists have climbed trees at Massey Energy’s Beetree Surface Mine in southern West Virginia to protest mountaintop removal coal mining.

Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice identified them Thursday as 23-year-old David A. Smith, 19-year-old Amber Nitchman and 28-year-old Eric Blevins. The groups say they’re sitting on platforms about 60 feet above the ground.

Organizers say the protesters want a federal ban on mountaintop removal mining to preserve sites such as nearby Coal River Mountain, among other things.

Massey spokesman Jeff Gillenwater says protesters are endangering themselves and miners and will waste taxpayer money if police get involved. Gillenwater says Coal River Mountain has been extensively mined, but the current operation doesn’t use mountaintop techniques.

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CEO Don Blakenship & Environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. debated Thursday night

January 22, 2010

By Ken Ward Jr

Massey Energy President Don Blankenship and environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday evening debated the future of coal and the science of climate change, agreeing on little but drawing still more national attention to the crucial issues that face the Appalachian coalfields.

 Blankenship said coal has built the nation and must remain strong to protect national security and ensure a high quality of life for Americans.

“The mission statement for coal is prosperity for this country,” Blankenship told a packed house at the University of Charleston. “This industry is what made this country great and if we forget that, we’re going to have to learn to speak Chinese.”

But Kennedy argued giant mining machines have cost thousands of miners their jobs at the same time that mountaintop removal has been destroying ancient peaks, burying and otherwise polluting pristine streams and eliminating once-vital rural communities.

“This is the worst environmental crime that has ever happened in our history,” Kennedy said. “These companies are liquidating this state for cash with these gigantic machines.”

Blankenship, the coal industry’s most outspoken executive, and Kennedy, the passionate son of the late U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, squared off in what organizers billed as a “Forum on the Future of Energy.”

The University of Charleston hosted the event and the school’s president, Ed Welch, moderated the 90-minute discussion. A capacity crowd filled a nearly 1,000-seat auditorium and overflowed into a nearby gymnasium to watch on giant video screens. It was televised and broadcast via radio statewide and on the Internet around the world.

Coal industry supporters scheduled a “Stand up for Jobs Rally” before the debate, but it appeared disorganized and a cold, heavy rain may have reduced any enthusiasm for it. Across town earlier in the day, environmental activists hung a large anti-mountaintop removal banner on the South Side Bridge in downtown Charleston.

A significant contingent of regional, national and even international media attended, drawn by the star power of the Kennedy name and Blankenship’s reputation for bluntly defending the coal industry.

Blankenship has argued that global warming is a fraud or “Ponzi scheme,” and complained that out-of-state environmental “extremists” are wrongly trying to shut down mountaintop removal mining. Kennedy has said Blankenship’s company is a “criminal enterprise” that destroys mountains, pollutes streams and endangers the safety of its workers.

Welch had said prior to the event that he hoped to push Kennedy and Blankenship to get beyond sound bites and actually discuss coal and energy issues with him.

“We don’t do a very good job in our society of having reasonable arguments or discussions of important issues,” Welch said Thursday morning on the MetroNews radio show “Talkline.” “I’m going to push the participants to go beyond the sound bites and really respond to each other, and see if we can find some common ground.”

 And Blankenship and Kennedy indeed did engage directly a few times, most notably when Kennedy rattled off a list of Massey’s continued Clean Water Act violations — thousands of them in a recent year — and asked the coal executive if mountaintop removal could be done without violating the law.

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Debate puts mining in spotlight

January 18, 2010
January 17, 2010 @ 12:00 AM

JEAN TARBETT HARDIMAN

The Herald-Dispatch

CHARLESTON — West Virginia’s mountains, its people, and their jobs and health will likely be the focus of discussion between environmentalist Robert Kennedy Jr. and coal executive Don Blankenship, who face off in a debate Thursday, Jan. 21, at the University of Charleston.

The event, Forum on the Future of Energy, begins at 6:30 p.m. in Geary Auditorium and all tickets have been taken. Each side was allowed to invite some guests, and UC President Edwin H. Welch will moderate the event.

Another 2,000 seats will be open to the public for a live remote broadcast in Eddie King Gymnasium at the university.

The debate is a chance to flesh out an argument that’s critical to the future of West Virginians, Welch said in a release.

“The future direction of U.S. energy policy is a vital concern to the people of West Virginia, many of whom rely on the coal industry for their livelihood,” he said.

To Blankenship, chairman and CEO of Massey Energy, the forum is an opportunity to share his take on the future of coal.

“The energy forum is an opportunity to clarify what I believe is the right direction for our country’s future regarding energy policy, the economy and national security,” he said. “Millions of Americans are without jobs in this country, and policies supported by politicians in D.C. and activists like Mr. Kennedy won’t make things better for families.”

Kennedy is chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper and president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, which advocates for the right to fishable, swimmable and drinkable waterways worldwide. He talked at length with The Herald-Dispatch about his thoughts on the dangers of mountaintop removable to the landscape, the waterways and the people of West Virginia, in terms of their health and the state economy.

“Mountaintop removal is the worst manmade catastrophe in the nation’s history,” he said. “It’s also an economic catastrophe for West Virginia. The coal industry, while promising prosperity to the state, has devastated communities across the state.”

He said mountaintop mines have resulted in mercury in the state’s watersheds, coal ash poisoning drinking water, ozone and particulates that sicken citizens with asthma and other ailments, not to mention global warming. Not one fish in West Virginia is now safe to eat because of mercury poisoning, he said.

“If a terrorist did these things, we’d consider it an act of war,” he said.

He said he’s never met Blankenship before and is looking at Thursday’s debate as a chance to “let the sun in.”

Massey Energy — which is based in Richmond, Va., and is central Appalachia’s largest coal producer — recently received a notice of intent to sue by the Sierra Club, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Coal River Mountain Watch and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy. The suit claims that Massey has continued to violate the Clean Water Act, even after a settlement in which Massey was ordered to pay $20 million for previous violations.

Meanwhile, Blankenship is featured in the current issue of Rolling Stone Magazine in an article titled “The Climate Killers: Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming.” The article criticizes Blankenship for his reported denial of global warming and his reported record of bribery to “bend politics to his will.”

Blankenship declined comment on the “Rolling Stone” article and on accusations of violating the Clean Water Act. He also declined comment on accusations that mountaintop mining affects the health of the Appalachian people.

He did say, “I hope the thousands of people who attend and watch the event come away with a better understanding of where our country is headed and how we can make things better.”

According to the West Virginia Coal Association, nearly 166 million tons of coal were mined in West Virginia in 2009. That includes 97.4 million tons from underground mines, and 68.4 million tons from surface mines.

The association reports that coal companies employed 46,416 West Virginians last year. It reported that 14,678 of those jobs were in underground mines, and 6,249 were at surface mines, along with other coal-related jobs.

According to the report, surface mining produces 40 percent of West Virginia’s coal, while requiring much less manpower.

Kennedy charges that coal companies tout the jobs they provide in the mining communities, but are offering fewer and fewer jobs all the time because of increased automation.

Why is it, he asked, that a state so rich in natural resources — being the nation’s second biggest coal producer behind Wyoming — is continuously ranking so high in poverty, and so poorly in the health and education of its residents? He claimed that the people who benefit from the coal industry the most are out-of-state investors, rather than the people in the mining communities, he said.

“I’ve been to places like Whitesville, Lindytown,” he said. “These are ghost towns, where Massey has come in and bought out the towns, forced out the residents and plowed them under.”

He said he remembers his father, the late U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy, talking a great deal about coal mining in West Virginia. Robert Kennedy Sr. and brothers — former President John Kennedy and the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy — spent a great deal of time in the state about 50 years ago, fighting for John Kennedy’s nomination to the presidency in 1960. The state became known historically for helping John Kennedy win that nomination, and became a beloved place to the family, Robert Kennedy Jr. said.

Mining is “an issue that concerned my father deeply that he talked about to me personally on many occasions,” he said. “My father talked to me about strip mining, which was on a tiny scale compared to what they’re doing today. He was terrified.”

Perpetuating the problem is that government regulators aren’t doing their job, he said.

“One of the things that Massey has done is corrupt the state agencies,” he said. “It’s a dynamic by which regulatory agencies become the captive spokesperson for the agencies they’re supposed to regulate. … It’s a submersion of democracy.”

When asked if he thinks there’s a middle ground and a future for clean coal, Kennedy said he thinks other forms of energy will alleviate the need for coal.

“I don’t think coal can survive in the marketplace,” Kennedy said. “I’ve been involved in a solar thermal company that’s building solar thermal plants in the western deserts. There are 120 companies now building these plants.”

He said they cost the same as a coal plant, but once they’re built, they don’t need to have a substance like coal to process.

“Now, you have to cut down the Appalachian Mountains and ship them across the country,” he said, adding that further costs are damage to the landscape, water and health of citizens.

“I think the challenge for leadership and industry in West Virginia is to look at the resources of the state and to start using imagination and energy to try to develop a sustainable future for the state, one that’s not going to leave rivers, streams and landscapes destroyed,” he said.

Watch the debate

The Forum on the Future of Energy featuring Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Don Blankenship will take place at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 21, at the University of Charleston’s Geary Auditorium. Tickets for auditorium seats are gone, but there are several other options to watch and listen.

On TV: WOWK-TV Channel 13 will televise the debate beginning at 6:30 p.m.

Live remote: A live broadcast will be shown at the Eddie King Gymnasium of the University of Charleston, which holds about 2,000. Admission is first come, first serve.

Web broadcasts: The broadcast also will be shown at www.wowktv.com, www.wboy.com, www.wtrf.com, www.wvnstv.com.

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A Memo from EPA’s Lisa Jackson

January 18, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 12, 2010


MEMORANDUM

From: Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator

To: All EPA Employees

Colleagues:

Almost one year ago, I began my work as Administrator. It has been a deeply fulfilling 12 months and a wonderful homecoming for me. As our first year together draws to a close, we must now look to the tasks ahead.

In my First Day Memo, I outlined five priorities for my time as Administrator. We have made enormous strides on all five, and our achievements reflect your hard work and dedication. By working with our senior policy team, listening to your input and learning from the experiences of the last 12 months, we have strengthened our focus and expanded the list of priorities. Listed below are seven key themes to focus the work of our agency.  

Taking Action on Climate Change:  2009 saw historic progress in the fight against climate change, with a range of greenhouse gas reduction initiatives. We must continue this critical effort and ensure compliance with the law. We will continue to support the President and Congress in enacting clean energy and climate legislation. Using the Clean Air Act, we will finalize our mobile source rules and provide a framework for continued improvements in that sector. We will build on the success of Energy Star to expand cost-saving energy conservation and efficiency programs.  And, we will continue to develop common-sense solutions for reducing GHG emissions from large stationary sources like power plants. In all of this, we must also recognize that climate change will affect other parts of our core mission, such as protecting air and water quality, and we must include those considerations in our future plans.    

Improving Air Quality:  American communities face serious health and environmental challenges from air pollution. We have already proposed stronger ambient air quality standards for ozone, which will help millions of American breathe easier and live healthier. Building on that, EPA will develop a comprehensive strategy for a cleaner and more efficient power sector, with strong but achievable emission reduction goals for SO2, NOx, mercury and other air toxics. We will strengthen our ambient air quality standards for pollutants such as PM, SO2 and NO2 and will achieve additional reductions in air toxics from a range of industrial facilities. Improved monitoring, permitting and enforcement will be critical building blocks for air quality improvement.  

Assuring the Safety of Chemicals:  One of my highest priorities is to make significant and long overdue progress in assuring the safety of chemicals in our products, our environment and our bodies. Last year I announced principles for modernizing the Toxic Substances Control Act. Separately, we are shifting EPA’s focus to address high-concern chemicals and filling data gaps on widely produced chemicals in commerce. At the end of 2009, we released our first-ever chemical management plans for four groups of substances, and more plans are in the pipeline for 2010. Using our streamlined Integrated Risk Information System, we will continue strong progress toward rigorous, peer-reviewed health assessments on dioxins, arsenic, formaldehyde, TCE and other substances of concern.

Cleaning Up Our Communities:  In 2009 EPA made strong cleanup progress by accelerating our Superfund program and confronting significant local environmental challenges like the asbestos Public Health Emergency in Libby, Montana and the coal ash spill in Kingston, Tennessee. Using all the tools at our disposal, including enforcement and compliance efforts, we will continue to focus on making safer, healthier communities. I am committed to maximizing the potential of our brownfields program, particularly to spur environmental cleanup and job creation in disadvantaged communities. We are also developing enhanced strategies for risk reduction in our Superfund program, with stronger partnerships with stakeholders affected by our cleanups.  

Protecting America’s Waters:  America’s waterbodies are imperiled as never before. Water quality and enforcement programs face complex challenges, from nutrient loadings and stormwater runoff, to invasive species and drinking water contaminants. These challenges demand both traditional and innovative strategies. We will continue comprehensive watershed protection programs for the Chesapeake Bay and Great Lakes. We will initiate measures to address post-construction runoff, water quality impairment from surface mining, and stronger drinking water protection. Recovery Act funding will expand construction of water infrastructure, and we will work with states to develop nutrient limits and launch an Urban Waters initiative. We will also revamp enforcement strategies to achieve greater compliance across the board.

Expanding the Conversation on Environmentalism and Working for Environmental Justice:  We have begun a new era of outreach and protection for communities historically underrepresented in EPA decision-making. We are building strong working relationships with tribes, communities of color, economically distressed cities and towns, young people and others, but this is just a start.  We must include environmental justice principles in all of our decisions. This is an area that calls for innovation and bold thinking, and I am challenging all of our employees to bring vision and creativity to our programs.  The protection of vulnerable subpopulations is a top priority, especially with regard to children. Our revitalized Children’s Health Office is bringing a new energy to safeguarding children through all of our enforcement efforts. We will ensure that children’s health protection continues to guide the path forward.

Building Strong State and Tribal Partnerships:  States and tribal nations bear important responsibilities for the day-to-day mission of environmental protection, but declining tax revenues and fiscal challenges are pressuring state agencies and tribal governments to do more with fewer resources.  Strong partnerships and accountability are more important than ever. EPA must do its part to support state and tribal capacity and, through strengthened oversight, ensure that programs are consistently delivered nationwide. Where appropriate, we will use our own expertise and capacity to bolster state and tribal efforts.

We will also focus on improving EPA’s internal operations, from performance measures to agency processes. We have a complex organization — which is both an asset and a challenge. We will strive to ensure that EPA is a workplace worthy of our top notch workforce. Our success will depend on supporting innovation and creativity in both what we do and how we do it, and I encourage everyone to be part of constructively improving our agency.

These priorities will guide our work in 2010 and the years ahead. They are built around the challenges and opportunities inherent in our mission to protect human health and the environment for all Americans.  We will carry out our mission by respecting our core values of science, transparency and the rule of law. I have unlimited confidence in the talent and spirit of our workforce, and I will look to your energy, ideas and passion in the days ahead. I know we will meet these challenges head on, as one EPA.

Sincerely,
Lisa P. Jackson

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Elk Thrive On Reclaimed Mine Sites

June 26, 2008

Check out the newest video on the Kentucky Coal Associations website. It’s all about the Elk herd in Eastern KY. Very interesting indeed!

http://www.kentuckycoal.com/?pageToken=elk

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Seeing is Believing

October 29, 2007

Emily McCue, a Watershed intern with the Office of Surface Mining, like many college students felt “a tinge of skepticism concerning the entire mining process”. It’s easy to understand why when universities like Northern KY University and others make books like Lost Mountain required reading.

Emily, pursuing an Environmental Engineering Major and Environmental Science Minor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, was ready with “with three years worth of technical questions regarding mining hazards and reclamation inadequacies” for Dave Blankenship, Director of Safety and Environmental Affairs, and his assistant, Teresa McHargue both from TECO Coal. They were to be Emily’s tour guide on a trip to some reclaimed surface mines in Kentucky.

Little did Emily know by the time her tour was over she not only would have a greater understanding of the reclamation process but that the memory of clouded streams that had been forged into her mind would be replaced with images of living, breathing ecosystems.

CLICK HERE TO READ EMILY’S STORY

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Buffer Zone Rule Needs Clarity

October 16, 2007

As a college intern working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1975, I researched 19th-century land grants to find where grist mills had been located adjacent to rivers. The Corps used this documentation to claim jurisdiction over those streams based on their historic use as navigable waterways for transporting goods downstream to market.

When Congress passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, it used a stream definition similar to the Corps’ in establishing a buffer-zone rule to place restrictions on mining activities adjacent to major waterways. SMCRA regulations recognize that overburden and impurities mined with coal require disposal and provide stringent procedures for such practices in smaller watersheds.

Recent legal challenges to surface mining by protest groups now want no disturbance within a 100-foot buffer zone of intermittent streams having drainage areas of about 14 acres, which are normally dry and flow only in response to rainfall events. Even a single underground mine disturbs more than 14 acres, so prohibiting filling in small watersheds would abolish all coal mining, not just surface mining.

In the Tennessee River valley, 64 percent of our electricity is generated from burning coal, and 29 percent comes from nuclear reactors. TVA is adding new reactors at a rate of one unit every five years to help meet increasing demands for electricity. Add the current expansion rate in renewable green power to the mix, and even with energy conservation and no growth in demand, it would take TVA at least 65 years to replace its current coal-fired generating capacity. If the buffer-zone rule is applied to small watersheds and coal mining ceases today, how would our demand for electricity be met for the next 65 years?

If coal mining is banned in areas impacting more than 14 acres, should all construction with similar disturbance be banned? If so, every town, highway, commercial development, subdivision and farm would be adversely impacted.

Even the recent construction of the News Sentinel building would have violated an intermittent stream buffer-zone rule, as would the construction of TVA’s wind turbines on Buffalo Mountain and any new nuclear reactors.

Taking the buffer-zone rule to such an extreme seems silly when compared to the infrastructure already in place around us. Yet the U.S. Office of Surface Mining is faced with lawsuit after lawsuit making such demands. Even when protest groups lose the lawsuits, they win when the government reimburses their legal fees. Consequently, attorneys and expert witnesses wait in line to represent them, while taxpayers fund these exercises in futility.

What will this rule make legal that was illegal before? Nothing. OSM is clarifying the intent of Congress when SMCRA was enacted, so it can devote its time to enforcing mining regulations and reclaiming abandoned mine land instead of fighting frivolous lawsuits.<more/>Has there been a significant difference in the way the Bush administration treats the mining buffer-zone rule compared to previous administrations? No. According to its Web site, “OSM has been consistent in its interpretation and enforcement of the stream buffer-zone rule requirements over the past 30 years.”

If protesters want to reduce the amount of coal that must be mined to fuel our economy, they can voluntarily pay more for renewable energy through TVA’s Green Power Switch program or simply turn the circuit breakers in their offices to the “off” position. Under no circumstances should taxpayers be funding the legal games of protestors to reinterpret what SMCRA already defines.

Barry Thacker is an engineer, president of Geo/Environmental Associates Inc. and founder of the nonprofit Coal Creek Watershed Foundation Inc. in Knoxville. His e-mail address is barryt@geoe.com.

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Mountaintop Mining is Legal and Sustainable

September 4, 2007

The debate over the legality of Mountaintop Mining (MTM) has now raged for many years and some have attempted to turn it into a morality play. Issues of morality are present in many aspects of our lives and not surprising people disagree on what is moral and what is not. Many good people disagree on several fundamental issues from what is marriage or relationships between two people to what is a just cause to go to war. Emotional pleas to ban MTM have been made. Just because someone says something is true does not make it so. This is a technical issue and engineering and scientific facts should prevail.

MTM SPECIFICALLY ALLOWED UNDER SMCRA

MTM is a mining method that the United States government is largely responsible for creating. I happened to have been starting my tenure in the engineering community when the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) was passed under President Carter. This act contemplated and specifically allowed and encouraged MTM. R&D under the Carter Administration’s DOE, EPA and BOM helped develop and refine MTM. I know because I helped work on several projects funded by those agencies.

LONGSTANDING AND ACCEPTED PRACTICES ARE SUDDENLY DECLARED ILLEGAL

The mining industry has been operating for almost 30 years with the understanding that these practices were legal and even encouraged by the government. Full resource recovery and higher land utilization is one of the goals of SMCRA. Many in industry also felt that SMCRA was designed to provide a coordinated approach to permitting sites that crossed agency and regulatory program lines to avoid just the types of problems that have now occurred: i.e. a continual reinterpretation of regulations and insertion of personal beliefs.

MTM is truly a form of Sustainable Development.

MTM areas provide one of the keys to the economic future of Appalachia. One point being missed in the public debate is APPALACHIAN LANDOWNERS WANT MOUNTAINTOP MINING! Landowners must approve any plan for MTM or it cannot take place. Developments have been created and landformed all over Central Appalachia including hospitals, schools, golf courses, airports, industrial parks, prison sites, residential and commercial developments, farms, recreation and wildlife areas, all of this in a region where level land is scarce. MTM is bringing many things to Appalachia that other regions take for granted. Some people see these sites today and do not know they resulted from mining. Wildlife is now more abundant than it was 30 years ago. Mining has actually helped create wildlife habitats and the resurgence of wildlife populations.

ROCK AND DIRT ARE NOT NECESSARILY WASTE IN THE EPA CLASSIC SENSE

Much has been made of the controversy over filling streams. Mining can be compared to road construction. Material placed in hollow or valley fills has been called waste; a term adopted by engineers over the years, but not waste in the connotation presented. It is simply excess rock and dirt placed in engineered and managed fills. Streams are not lost forever. The water is still there, however new flow paths are created. The vast majority of these areas are in the upper reaches of a hollow where typically there is no water flow, comparable to drainage ditches or curbs that control the flow of water in cities.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

The recent EPA EIS on MTM found that only 6.8 of Appalachia has or even can be mined by MTM methods, so I hardly think Appalachia is being “decapitated” as many editorialists claim. Rather MTM as I have seen it can be described as creating “plateaus” of useable land where there was none. As an Environmental Practioner, I strongly support Alternative III, as outlined in the EIS as the preferable approach. I feel that MOUNTAINTOP MINING IS A VALUE ADDED PROCESS.

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