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EPA head is ‘Dismissive’ Toward Resolving Issues

kentuckycoal — Thu, 05 May 2011 21:42:18 +0000

EEC Secretary Peters Testifies Before Congressional Panel, says EPA head is ‘Dismissive’ Toward Resolving Issues

Challenges EPA’s rule-making process

WASHINGTON, D.C. – (May 5, 2011) – Kentucky Energy and Environment Secretary Len Peters today told a congressional committee meeting in Washington, D.C. that he is deeply troubled by the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) refusal to talk with states and listen to suggestions regarding the issuance of Clean Water Act 402 permits sought by coal companies.

In his testimony before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, Sec. Peters said Kentucky intervened in support of the Kentucky Coal Association in its lawsuit against the EPA because the administration of Governor Steve Beshear believes the EPA’s actions for the past year are arbitrary, requiring Kentucky’s regulators to adhere to permitting conditions that have not been promulgated in line with the Federal Administrative Procedures Act. Sec. Peters told the panel his attempts to bring a resolution to issues with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson have been disappointing.

“People on my staff and I have been in ongoing discussions with our regional EPA administrator attempting to resolve the issues to the satisfaction of all parties – the EPA, state, the regulated community and the citizens of Kentucky,” Sec. Peters said. “Unfortunately, I am not highly optimistic that such a resolution will occur, especially in light of a recent meeting with Region IV EPA. Indications are that these earnest discussions to arrive at a resolution are not being accepted by EPA headquarters. I am very disappointed that EPA Administrator Jackson can be so dismissive of such an important issue.”

Sec. Peters went on to tell the subcommittee that it is Kentucky’s contention that the EPA has, for more than a year, unlawfully reviewed and objected to Clean Water Act 402 permits proposed for coal mining operations in six Appalachian states, including Kentucky, for compliance with an un-promulgated water quality standard. “Incredibly, these EPA objections were for permits that my staff drafted in accordance to standards that EPA had, prior to April 1, 2010, supported,” said Peters.

The impact of the EPA ruling-making process, according to Peters, is that 21 permits are being held up by the EPA and dozens more face the same fate. The federal agency has used guidance that EPA itself says is not legally binding, as the basis to object to proposed CWA 402 permits. In so doing, EPA has made these objections without any timetable requirement to act upon those objections and without any judicial recourse by affected parties.

In October 2010, the Beshear administration joined with the Kentucky Coal Association in a lawsuit against EPA, challenging the agency’s arbitrary rules, guidance and oversight regarding coal mining permits under the Clean Water Act. That action is pending in federal court in Washington, D.C. “Kentucky state government works hard to balance our need to mine coal and the stewardship of our environment,” said Gov. Beshear. “Sec. Peters’ testimony today made clear that the EPA.’s arbitrary actions make our job more difficult, and harm Kentucky’s economy.”

For coal people, mining is their lifeblood

kentuckycoal — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 15:00:20 +0000

By Dennis B. Roddy and Daniel Malloy Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

BAILEYSVILLE, W.Va. — Just about every man who works underground here promises himself he’ll be the last of his family to dig coal.

Johnny Vance knew this, he believed it and he promised himself his own son would stay out of the cold ground of Appalachia. He told that story as his boy, Adam, was getting ready for his night shift at a coal mine 20 miles away.

“If that’s what he wants to do, I’m gonna support him,” says the elder Mr. Vance, who hobbles on legs made wobbly by underground falls and gulps for air with lungs caked with black dust. Johnny’s father was a miner and wasted away at 56 with a single working lung, crushed ribs and worn out hopes. Johnny is 53, knows he looks older and knows that’s how people on the street can spot him for a miner.

Adam, 28, married his high school sweetheart, Patti. They settled into a house a quarter-mile from his parents. The jobs came and went, at $7 or $8 an hour, and along came Logan, their firstborn.

“She kept saying, ‘You need to go into the mines, you need to go into the mines.’ And I told her I wasn’t going. Told her I’d make it elsewhere,” he says. He landed a few jobs that paid decently. Then came layoffs. “The only thing really going at the time was underground. That’s where I went.”

Today he draws between $60,000 and $70,000 a year. Life is good, if not always safe. The work can be dirty, grueling, dark and dangerous, yet like so many others who go underground, Adam Vance finds dignity in bringing coal to the surface.

“It makes steel. It does electricity. Without coal you wouldn’t have automobiles. You wouldn’t have buildings. You wouldn’t have just about anything,” he says.

He says all this and declares something else: Those two boys at the side of the yard, bouncing and laughing on the trampoline a miner’s bountiful wages bought — they’re not going underground. No way

“I’m gonna be wrassler,” says Logan, age 7. He flips forward and howls.

This is a rolling land of mountains teeming with burnable rock, isolated by two-lane roads forced to loop back on themselves to make it over the peaks, with too little flat bottom land for factories, tied by rail and highway to a nation hungry for electricity and the cheap fuel needed to generate it. Here, escaping the ubiquitous, cyclical, perilous and strangely enriching life beneath the mountains of Appalachia is a thing not often done.

“It’s not easy to escape because there are so few economically viable options in the coalfield communities,” says Dwight Billings, a University of Kentucky sociologist who grew up in Appalachia and has studied its coal culture. “For those who wish to live there — and … the deep ties to family and kin and place is the lure — mining represents the best-paying opportunity despite the danger.”

The economic draw doesn’t explain it all, though. Shannon Elizabeth Bell, a sociologist at the University of Kentucky, has lived among and studied the people of the region since 2000.

“This identity of being coal people is very strong in the region,” she said. “It’s part of their heritage and their history, and a great source of pride.”

Both mineral and metaphor, coal defines towns like Baileysville. It is as much a culture as a job. Even in times of cheap oil and the subsequent low demand that registers in layoffs across the coal fields, men and women call themselves miners and mining families. The bonds are born of shared cycles of wealth and poverty.

Shared, too, is the suspicion that much of the outside world, the one from which their winding roads and isolated hollows shield them, a world known by satellite television, looks down on them.

Adam Vance lives in a spotless, prefabricated house, the kind that crowds narrow strips of flat land between mountains. In the living room, a 55-inch television shows Jerry Brown in a campaign commercial before his victory in the California governor’s race. The station beams by satellite from Los Angeles.

He’s seen other commercials, notably the ones mocking the idea of “clean coal.” They’re a slick set of 30-second spots pushed by environmentalists, mostly from outside West Virginia, and the Vances can’t help but think someone is mocking them, belittling their labors, without answering the question of whether global warming is a safer bet than freezing in the dark.

“They don’t understand coal,” he says. “Just ’cause we got coal dirt on us or whatever, they think we’re uneducated. Yeah, we all have accents from down here. We’re not the most well-spoken people.”

A town without a post office

Baileysville is a spread of land with no government of its own save the general consensus that the people there like one another and, in large measure, have deep roots. The town’s post office closed in 1973. The local high school at which Adam Vance piled up the third-most rushing yards in the football team’s history is shuttered.

The road on which the Vance family lives — and this means the immediate clans of Adam, his father, his uncle and the cousin with whom he rides 40 minutes to work most days — stops abruptly. When a long-gone coal company that cut the road played out its mine a generation ago, maintenance ended.

“There’s a tree growing right in the middle of it,” says Adam’s uncle, Roger Vance.

Wyoming County is tucked just short of the Kentucky border. To its west is Mingo and to its south McDowell. The Tug Fork River marks the West Virginia-Kentucky line and the Vances have been here long enough to lay a profound claim on Appalachian lore.

One ancestor, James Vance, was kin to William Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield, patriarch of the clan that feuded for a generation with the McCoy family from the Kentucky side of the Tug Fork. The murky origins of that feud have been as various as a fight over the ownership of a razorback hog to a jilted bride. The Vances were among those killing and dying alongside the Hatfields, and the nearby Hatfield-McCoy Trail now hosts hikers and ATV riders.

At the county seat of Pine-ville, locals are mixed about whether it has appreciably bolstered the economy. Tourism does not pay the way coal does. Tourism, in the words of Pat Armstrong, doesn’t keep the lights on.

If the Vances are characteristic of coal’s hold on the families of southern West Virginia, Pat Armstrong’s shop, called Pat’s Fashions and Tax Service, is emblematic of coal’s secondary economy.

“Every time a coal truck goes through here, I don’t feel bad about dust blowing all over town. I think that’s another man supporting his family, going out making his living,” she says.

Mrs. Armstrong lives where she grew up: Glen Rogers, an old coal camp where her father worked underground. She worked in the dress shop on Pineville’s main street and bought it out when the owner ran into problems. Yet it was a fascination with taxes that held her. So, like many a person in rural West Virginia, she doubled up on jobs.

This odd mix works. The formal wear side bustles during prom and wedding season in spring. Tax season picks up in the winter. In addition, Pat’s offers UPS shipping, Western Union wire transfers and a tanning salon.

“She wanted to do bail bonds, too, but we talked her out of that one,” says Jessica Jewell, one of Mrs. Armstrong’s four employees.

The endless season, and the one families here shudder to think could end in another down cycle for the market, is coal season. It’s year-round, and nobody wants it to fade. By this autumn, the cash register at Mrs. Armstrong’s shop was signaling a slight dip.

“The economy has finally gotten to us. We’re always the last, usually, on the totem pole. We’re always the last to get hit, but we’re always the last to recover,” she says.

Just around the corner is the office of Democratic state Sen. Richard Browning, a former teacher at the local high school, an ardent fan of coal and a counter of the cars and heavy trucks that lumber past his storefront.

“Five of six of the cars that pass here have something to do with natural resources — coal, gas, lumber. It’s our economy here,” he says. People here know a coal mine has shut or laid off because the traffic thins, the town isn’t noisy enough, and the trains stop running.

He knows the blessing and the curse of the business. Thirty years ago, when he taught high school, he had a student in his class who was out-earning him. Each school day, the boy would slip off to the second shift at the mine.

Mr. Browning wonders at the cost of that kind of early economic leap — the ability to graduate or quit high school, take the 80-hour course needed for a mining license at one of the private teachers in town and then slide into a mining life.

By one measure, it means a great income. By another, it leaves the place locked into an economy that cries for diversification because of the fickleness of the marketplace.

“I’m tired of riding this roller coaster,” he says.

There are the other costs. Two of the senator’s brothers were miners.

“Both are dead,” he says. Early heart problems took one. Black lung killed the other. He taught Robert Clark, one of the men who died in the blast at Upper Big Branch in April. His daughter called from college to tell him one of her high school classmates, Adam Morgan, had died as well.

Many of Mrs. Armstrong’s tax clients are mining families. With both spouses working, six-figure tax filings aren’t unusual. Their incomes buttress the other shops on Pineville’s short but noisy main drag. The number of storefronts hasn’t changed much since her girlhood, Mrs. Armstrong says.

That economy is endangered, she says, by an administration and Congress increasingly focused on the environmental harm of extracting and burning coal. In these parts, environmentalists are scornfully called “tree huggers” and the refrain to D.C. is: Leave us alone.

Even mountaintop-removal mining — a controversial process in which coal companies lop off the top of a mountain to get to the coal inside, dumping the waste in surrounding streams — is fine by Mrs. Armstrong, because it creates jobs.

“We’ve got enough mountains around here,” she reasons. “If they haul off a few mountaintops, they’ll re-seed it.”

The coal operation just up Route 16 from downtown Pineville is an underground mine where two generations of Vances have worked. From the depths of Pinnacle mine, workers hauled out 864,000 tons of metallurgical coal last year for Cleveland-based Cliffs Natural Resources.

To work in the dark

In the darkness each night, Adam winds through two-lane roads dotted with churches and convenience stores to Pinnacle, where he works the midnight to 8 a.m. “hoot owl” shift, though those hours often extend with overtime.

To make room for a passenger, he has to move the King James Bible from his truck seat. He stopped taking it underground after someone vandalized it following an argument over a broken piece of mining equipment.

Back home, Patti Vance prays, too.

“I pray every night for him to come home safe to me,” she says.

At the mine, after the pre-shift prayer in a small locker room on the surface, 100 or so workers on the shift take turns crowding into a freight elevator that plunges them 600 feet into the mountain.

Pinnacle is a vast expanse of tunnels. Its miners boast that its footprint is about the size of Washington, D.C., its employees like to boast. Miners have dug here since 1969, when the mine was owned by U.S. Steel, and there are a few more decades’ worth of coal yet to be cut.

The rail car ride to Adam Vance’s usual section, under the undulating roof held up by ancient-looking steel bolts less than 6 feet overhead, takes about 40 minutes through chilly crosscurrents of air, whisking explosive methane and invasive coal dust out of harm’s way.

Along the way, small clusters of miners working to repair train tracks or on other jobs are chipper, offering a “Hiya” or “How’s it goin’, buddy” to passersby.

They toil as the lights attached to their helmets bore small holes into the dark. Mr. Vance operates the shuttle car, a 20-foot orange hauler that he calls a “buggy.” It whisks loose coal and rock from a continuous mining machine to a feeder, a conveyor belt that takes the material to the surface.

On a recent predawn Wednesday, a small crew is working to prepare a new section for the longwall mining machine, a $100 million feat of coal-shearing engineering. The machine works a few months at a time to hollow out a section before moving on to a new one; the new longwall must be ready to go when the old one is finished so the investment doesn’t sit idle.

Near the end of this shift, work has ground to a halt as the feeder has broken down. Mr. Vance chats with co-workers about his mine foreman class schedule. He has the training to do a variety of jobs in the mine — roof bolting, running the miner — and a foreman’s certification would be another avenue to find work the next time he’s looking for a job.

Mr. Vance could get a fine recommendation from Frank Shrewsbury, a rotund 30-year veteran of the mines who’s operating the continuous miner with a joystick that wouldn’t look out of place next to an Atari.

“He’s a good worker, conscientious of his job and all the safety aspects,” says Mr. Shrewsbury, 49, of Pineville. “When somebody’s running a piece of equipment like this, you’ve got to have a little faith and trust.”

When something goes wrong, Mr. Shrewsbury said, Mr. Vance is “cool and calm. You gotta be.”

‘Put it to back of your mind’

Disasters like the one at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine, an hour away in Raleigh County, are rare, but their reverberations are felt throughout the coal fields. Mr. Vance said he now gives more thought to the methane levels in his mine, which has high levels of the flammable gas, similar to Upper Big Branch.

But more frequent than the headline-grabbing disasters are miners dying alone or in pairs, under fallen roofs or crushed by machinery. The 2001 accident that sent Johnny Vance out of the mines for good easily could have been fatal. A load of coal fell and almost crushed him.

“I worry every day when I go up there it could be the last day I tell my kids goodbye,” Adam Vance said. “But you still gotta go make a living for them. You put it to the back of your mind and go along with it.”

If he’s not heading off fishing or hunting with some of the other 11 men on his section — “your second family,” he calls them — Adam heads home in the morning when his shift is done and spends a couple of hours with son Braden, 3, before going to bed. He’s back up in the evening to go to church or take Logan to peewee football practice and have a little more family time before he returns underground.

On a recent evening, the children bound around the house. Adam and Patti are chagrined. An aunt has treated the boys to Mountain Dew and a small sugar jag has ensued. Adam watches the Cincinnati Reds win a game. He orders Braden down from the coffee table, where the child is brandishing a play World Wrestling Entertainment championship belt.

From the latest video game systems to birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese’s in Charleston, the boys want for nothing. Yet in a quiet moment before his father leaves for work, Logan pulls a visitor aside, first to show him his stash of video games, his set of wrestling figurines, and then to pass along something that has been boiling inside him for months, something he hasn’t even told his mom and dad.

“I think it’s not very good that he’s in the coal mines. You know how all those coal miners died? I’m scared. He might die.”

The boy looks away, hugs the visitor, and resumes childhood.

The mines’ dangers are why Roger Vance, Adam’s uncle, retired early from his job at a local golf course. It opened up a spot for his 20-year-old son, Joseph, who against his father’s wishes had insisted on going underground.

“It’s too dangerous,” Roger says of the family trade. “People don’t live a long time.” Roger worked in the mines briefly before getting out; three of his four brothers made careers there.

In the weeks after Johnny’s career was cut short by injury, he implored Adam not to go underground. His oldest son, John, wanted no part of the mines and is now a sheriff in neighboring McDowell County. Adam never intended to go underground, but never promised not to, either.

He worked a few jobs and caught on with a railroad company for a while. But when the company told him he had to move to Ohio or quit, he chose to stay in the only home he’s known. There was no choice left, he said, if he was going to make a decent living. Johnny understood but refused to help him get certified. Adam had to go to his father-in-law for that.

Now Adam is focused on logging 20 years of union time. It would earn him medical coverage for life. The labor is dangerous and difficult, but it’s the best way to be a provider in the hollows of Wyoming County.

“If I could find something right now with the same benefits and making the same money outside around here, I’d quit the coal mines in a heartbeat,” he says. “I’d go to it and never look back. But until I do, I guess I’ll stay.”

Sierra Club Dispatching Campaign Workers to Help in 29 Pivotal Races

kentuckycoal — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 17:42:44 +0000

Congressman Chandler will get help from Sierra Club-

The nation’s oldest environmental organization on Monday announced it was throwing its considerable weight behind 29 “environmental champions” in the upcoming November elections. “Sierra Club’s thousands of volunteers will be pounding the pavement, working the phone lines, and talking with their friends and neighbors to help get environmental champions elected,” said Ken Brame, Chair of the Sierra Club Political Committee.

While it has endorsed 220 candidates and doled-out funds to 150 individual candidates for U.S. House and Senate, San Francisco-based Sierra Club said it will be deploying additional staff to help out on the ground in 29 key races.

”Voters want a clean energy future, and the Sierra Club is promoting candidates who are going to do the right thing to protect communities from pollution and move our country towards green energy,” said Brame.

In the Senate, the group will be working to help elect incumbents Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. The group will also be working to elect Illinois state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, Rep. Paul Hodes of New Hampshire and Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania, who are all running for open Senate seats.

Candidates for the House of Representatives The Sierra Club will be backing are: John Spratt of South Carolina, Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, Jerry McNerney of California, Betsy Markey of Colorado, Alan Grayson of Florida, Ben Chandler of Kentucky, Mark Schauer of Michigan, Heath Shuler of North Carolina, Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire, Martin Heinrich and Harry Teague of New Mexico, Dina Titus of Nevada, Mary Jo Kilroy and John Boccieri of Ohio, Gerry Connolly and Tom Perriello of Virginia, and Rick Larsen of Washington.

The group will be also supporting state Rep. Bryan Lentz (D), who is running to replace Joe Sestak in the House, and former Washington state Rep. Denny Heck (D), who is running to replace Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), who is retiring at the end of this term.

”In many of these races, there is a clear choice between a candidate with a strong environmental record and a candidate who sides with polluters rather than with the public,” said Brame.

No apologies for targeting coal enemies

kentuckycoal — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:37:36 +0000

Chandler voted for carbon tax; conway’s stand too uncertain
By Roger Nicholson

At issue | July 28 Herald-Leader article, “Coal execs taking aim at Democrats”
The Herald-Leader obtained a copy of a letter that I sent discussing support of certain political candidates in upcoming elections that clearly bear on this nation’s energy policy.
My letter stated the obvious: There are those of us in the coal industry who are clearly concerned about the attack on the coal industry, and by extension, the jobs of each and every one of those workers, directly and indirectly, employed by the coal industry.
The Obama administration, through the Environmental Protection Agency and the Congress controlled by Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid are taking steps that seek ultimately to eliminate coal production and its use.
We believe these goals are disastrous for Kentucky and West Virginia, and would constitute an egregious national energy policy that would make us more, not less, dependent on foreign governments.
Kentucky U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler voted for cap-and-trade which, if enacted, would amount to a tax on average citizens and would undermine the benefit to Kentucky and West Virginia businesses and consumers of low-cost energy. Chandler also is a co-sponsor of H.R. 1310, a bill intended to ban valley fills and therefore eliminate most coal mining in Appalachia.
Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, has made statements that call into serious question whether he would be willing to stand up to Reid and the Obama administration on the important questions of cap-and-trade and rational mine permitting.
In West Virginia, U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall has stated that the “EPA is simply doing its job” as it has basically caused mine permitting, even for underground mines, to slow to a trickle. The EPA’s interference in the states’ administration of mine permitting decisions is, in my view, a veiled attempt to strangle the industry, and by extension the jobs of those who work in the industry.
The article also erroneously implied that mine-safety legislation is a key driver of this potential initiative.
Our primary focus is on protecting a core job-producing industry from destruction through overzealous and unproductive environmental regulation. The coal industry is not opposed to reasonable and appropriate legislation that will truly improve mine safety.
The notion that mine safety is not important to the industry is absurd; the costs of safety lapses far outweigh — in both human and monetary costs — any alleged monetary gains by cutting safety corners.
There are several of us in management positions in the industry who, as native Kentuckians and West Virginians, strongly oppose the Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda. It is bad for business, bad for our employees, bad for the communities we live in and bad for our nation.
We intend to support those candidates who support a rational energy policy that recognizes the economic, employment and national security implications of our nation’s most abundant energy resource — coal.
Roger Nicholson is senior vice president and general counsel of the International Coal Group, Inc.

Army Corps of Engineers Announces Decision to Suspend Nationwide Permit 21 in Appalachian Region

kentuckycoal — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:26:50 +0000

For Immediate Release
June 17, 2010

Army Corps of Engineers announces decision to suspend
Nationwide Permit 21 in the Appalachian Region

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced today it has suspended the use of Nationwide Permit 21 (NWP 21) in the Appalachian region of six states. NWP 21 is used to authorize discharges of dredged or fill material into waters of the United States for surface coal mining activities.

The suspension is effective immediately and applies to the Appalachian region of Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

NWP 21 continues to be available in other regions of the country.

The suspension in Appalachia will remain in effect until the Corps takes further action on NWP 21 or until NWP 21 expires on March 18, 2012.

While the suspension is in effect, individuals who propose surface coal mining projects that involve discharges of dredged or fill material into waters of the United States will have to obtain Department of the Army authorization under the
Clean Water Act, through the Individual Permit process. The individual permit evaluation procedure provides increased public involvement in the permit evaluation process, including an opportunity for public comment on individual projects.

On June 11, 2009, the U.S. Department of the Army, U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed a Memorandum of
Understanding with each agency agreeing to work together to reduce the adverse environmental impacts of surface coal mining activities in the Appalachian region. As a part of the MOU, the Corps agreed to issue a public notice to seek comment on the proposed action to modify NWP 21 to
preclude its use in the Appalachian region.

On July 15, 2009, a Federal Register notice was published soliciting public comment on the Corps’ proposal to modify NWP 21. The notice also proposed to suspend NWP 21 in order to provide more immediate environmental protection while the longer-term process of modification is fully evaluated. The
comment period was extended in response to many requests, and public hearings were conducted in October 2009 in each of the six affected states.

Approximately6,000 individuals attended the public hearings and about 400 individuals provided oral testimony. The Corps received approximately 23,000 comments during the comment period that concluded on October 26, 2009, of which 1,750
were substantive comments that were nearly evenly divided for and against the proposed modification and suspension actions.

The Corps determined after a thorough review and consideration of comments that continuing use of NWP 21 in this region may result in more than minimal impacts to aquatic resources. Activities that result in more than minimal
impacts to the aquatic environment must be evaluated in accordance with individual permit procedures. Therefore, NWP 21 has been suspended inthis region and coal mining activities impacting waters of the U.S. in this region will be evaluated in accordance with individual permit procedures.

NWP 21 verifications provided in writing by the Corps to mining
companies before today’s suspension will continue to be valid until the NWPexpires on March 18, 2012. Modification of NWP 21 will continue to be evaluated and a decision on this proposal will be made before NWP 21 expires.

Five pending NWP 21 requests are currently being processed in the Appalachian region affected by suspension of NWP 21. Corps districts will contact these applicants to discuss the process to submit individual permit applications for these activities. If applicants submit individual permit requests
for these activities, the Corps districts will prioritize the evaluation of these applications. The Corps will work with the applicants and other interested parties to address and resolve substantive concerns and make final permit decisions as expeditiously as possible.

The Corps’ decision will be published in the June 18, 2010, edition of the Federal Register. A copy of the notice, FAQs and the decision document will be posted on the Corps’ Web site at

http://www.usace.army.mil/CECW/Pages/nnpi.aspx

Climate Change Bill Coming May 12-

kentuckycoal — Fri, 07 May 2010 19:34:05 +0000

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) will unveil their long-awaited climate and energy bill on Wednesday, May 12.

The duo, in a joint statement Friday, stressed that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill underscores the need for the bill.

House liberals shift climate tactics, will not draw ‘lines in the sand’

kentuckycoal — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:38:26 +0000

By Russell Berman – 04/07/10 06:00 AM ET

Liberal House Democrats are shifting their political tactics on climate change after failing to secure a public option in the new healthcare reform law.

The move comes in the wake of liberals having to walk back threats that they would vote against a healthcare bill without a government-run program.

“Drawing the line in the sand too quickly was part of the lesson we learned on healthcare,” the co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), told The Hill.

Grijalva voiced strong concerns about the direction of the climate and energy bill, which has moved toward the center as Democrats try to build a bipartisan consensus that can win 60 Senate votes. Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are leading the effort in the upper chamber to pass a comprehensive bill.

A cap-and-trade program, which was included in the House bill that passed last year, is likely to be jettisoned, and President Barack Obama disappointed liberals last week by announcing his support for expanding offshore oil drilling. The president’s decision was seen as a move to garner the support of conservative Democrats and Republicans who would be open to voting for a comprehensive climate and energy measure.

EPA Issues Comprehensive Guidance to Protect Appalachian Communities From Harmful Environmental Impacts of Mountain Top Mining

kentuckycoal — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:18:41 +0000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 1, 2010

EPA Issues Comprehensive Guidance to Protect Appalachian Communities From Harmful Environmental Impacts of Mountain Top Mining

Guidance provides additional clarity and ensures stronger protection at projects in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced a set of actions to further clarify and strengthen environmental permitting requirements for Appalachian mountaintop removal and other surface coal mining projects, in coordination with federal and state regulatory agencies. Using the best available science and following the law, the comprehensive guidance sets clear benchmarks for preventing significant and irreversible damage to Appalachian watersheds at risk from mining activity.

Mountaintop removal is a form of surface coal mining in which explosives are used to access coal seams, generating large volumes of waste that bury adjacent streams. The resulting waste that then fills valleys and streams can significantly compromise water quality, often causing permanent damage to ecosystems and rendering streams unfit for swimming, fishing and drinking. It is estimated that almost 2,000 miles of Appalachian headwater streams have been buried by mountaintop coal mining.

“The people of Appalachia shouldn’t have to choose between a clean, healthy environment in which to raise their families and the jobs they need to support them. That’s why EPA is providing even greater clarity on the direction the agency is taking to confront pollution from mountain top removal,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “We will continue to work with all stakeholders to find a way forward that follows the science and the law. Getting this right is important to Americans who rely on affordable coal to power homes and businesses, as well as coal communities that count on jobs and a livable environment, both during mining and after coal companies move to other sites.”

EPA’s Actions:

Improved Guidance and Clarity: EPA is communicating comprehensive guidance to its regional offices with permitting responsibility in Appalachian states. The guidance clarifies existing requirements of the Section 402 and 404 Clean Water Act permitting programs that apply to pollution from surface coal mining operations in streams and wetlands. The guidance details EPA’s responsibilities and how the agency uses its Clean Water Act (CWA) authorities to ensure that future mining will not cause significant environmental, water quality and human health impacts. EPA also expects this information will provide improved consistency and predictability in the CWA permitting process and help to strengthen coordination with other federal and state regulatory agencies and mining companies.
Strong Science: EPA is making publicly available two scientific reports prepared by its Office of Research and Development (ORD). One summarizes the aquatic impacts of mountaintop mining and valley fills. The second report establishes a scientific benchmark for unacceptable levels of conductivity (a measure of water pollution from mining practices) that threaten stream life in surface waters. These reports are being published for public comment and submitted for peer review to the EPA Science Advisory Board.
Increased transparency: EPA is creating a permit tracking Web site so that the public can determine the status of mining permits subject to the EPA-U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Enhanced Coordination Procedure (ECP).

A growing body of scientific literature, including previous and new studies performed by EPA, show significant damage to local streams that are polluted with the mining runoff from mountaintop removal. To protect water quality, EPA has identified a range of conductivity (a measure of the level of salt in the water) of 300 to 500 microSiemens per centimeter. The maximum benchmark conductivity of 500 microSiemens per centimeter is a measure of salinity that is roughly five times above normal levels. The conductivity levels identified in the clarifying guidance are intended to protect 95 percent of aquatic life and fresh water streams in central Appalachia.

EPA will solicit public comments on the new guidance. The guidance will be effective immediately on an interim basis. EPA will decide whether to modify the guidance after consideration of public comments and the results of the SAB technical review of the EPA scientific reports.

The EPA guidance identifies improvements in mining practices and operations that will reduce adverse impacts on water quality. EPA will continue to work with coal companies that are interested in modifying their projects to reduce their environmental footprint and prevent harm to water quality and human health. Earlier this year, EPA approved the Hobet 45 permit in West Virginia. Working with the mining company, EPA was able to reduce stream impacts by almost 50 percent and minimize mine runoff into surface waters. Those changes helped permanently protect local waters, maximize coal recovery and reduce costs for the operators.

In contrast, EPA recently proposed to significantly restrict or prohibit mountaintop mining at the Spruce No. 1 surface mine in Logan County, W. Va. Attempts at dialogue with the company failed to ensure a significant decrease of environmental and water quality impacts from the project. The Spruce No. 1 mine, as proposed, would bury more than seven miles of headwater streams, directly impact 2,278 acres of forestland, and degrade water quality in streams adjacent to the mine. The project was permitted in 2007 and subsequently delayed by litigation.

EPA’s guidance offers recommendations to its regions on the application of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to surface coal mining projects permitted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps is separately announcing plans for rulemaking to expand the scope of NEPA review. EPA is supportive of this effort and will work closely with the Corps.

All the documents: http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/guidance/mining.html

Fact Sheet on EPA Guidance and Scientific Reports

Additional Comprehensive Guidance

EPA is issuing comprehensive guidance clarifying the standards that its regional offices should apply in permitting reviews of Appalachian surface coal mining projects under the Clean Water Act (CWA). This guidance directs EPA field staff to coordinate with their federal and state regulatory partners to strengthen the environmental review of new Appalachian surface coal mining projects and to improve protection of the communities’ local water and environment. More specifically, the guidance:

Incorporates the latest scientific information in clarifying how CWA permits should assure compliance with existing water quality standards to protect the use of streams by communities and to ensure healthy aquatic life.
Clarifies how CWA requirements apply to the disposal of mining overburden in streams to reduce the size and number of valley fills, to limit water quality contamination of streams near mining operations, and to prevent significant environmental degradation of streams and wetlands.
Improves opportunities for the voices of adversely affected Appalachian communities to be heard in the process of reviewing proposed new mining operations.

EPA Releases Two Draft Scientific Reports for Public Comment

Field-Based Aquatic Life Benchmark for Conductivity

This draft report adapts EPA’s traditional approach for developing water quality criteria to field data in central Appalachia in order to develop a conductivity benchmark protective of stream life in Appalachian surface waters. Conductivity is a measure of the level of salinity (salt) in the water. There are mining materials that are dumped or runoff into water that can raise the salinity level that turns fresh water into salty water. When this happens, living organisms have difficulty surviving because they cannot tolerate the high salinity level.

The draft report makes the following conclusions:

The salinity of water has been shown to negatively affect aquatic organisms (stream life).
By plotting the conductivity levels at which organisms are no longer observed in streams, we can determine a level of conductivity that results in their loss. EPA identified a benchmark of 300 microSiemens per cm (units of conductivity) that protects 95 percent of aquatic organisms living in streams in central Appalachia.
EPA derived this benchmark using more than 2,000 field samples collected in West Virginia. These results were validated using data from Kentucky.
Although the method is applicable to any region, the value 300 is only applicable to Central Appalachian streams containing the types of salts found in those streams.
Additional analyses demonstrate that the observed effects on the aquatic community are due types of salts that are consistent with minerals leached from mountaintop mining operations and not to other variables that were evaluated.

Mountaintop Mining / Valley Fill Impacts Report

EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) conducted a literature review of peer-reviewed studies focusing on aquatic environmental and water quality impacts of mountaintop mining and valley fills. The draft report among other conclusions, found:

Burial of headwater streams by valley fills causes permanent loss of ecosystems.
Concentrations of salts as measured by conductivity are, on average, 10 times higher downstream of mountaintop mines and valley fills than in un-mined watersheds.
The increased levels of salts disrupt the life cycle of freshwater aquatic organisms and some cannot live in these waters.
Water with high salt concentrations downstream of mountaintop mines and valley fills is toxic to stream organisms. To date, there is no evidence that streams that undergo a restoration process have returned to their normal ecological functions after the mining is completed.

GOP’s Graham: Forget EPA, let Congress regulate carbon

kentuckycoal — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:08:06 +0000

Sammy Fretwell
The State

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Monday he expects to introduce a bill by the end of April that would help the economy and control greenhouse gases better than rules proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Speaking to business and environmental leaders in Columbia, Graham, R-S.C., and state regulators said the new EPA rules are more far-reaching than necessary to control carbon dioxide, a major contributor to global warming.

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control says the regulations are so sweeping they could affect large homes and small businesses, not just industries that produce the bulk of greenhouse gases.

“Anybody that produces carbon, from a small farmer to a church, is potentially affected,” Graham said. “And I believe the way to regulate carbon – and it should be regulated by the way – is through Congress, not through the EPA.”

Graham is working with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., on new legislation. The bill would pre-empt the EPA regulations.

Whether the Graham bill can pass Congress is in question.

Some clean air activists have said it might be hard for Congress to approve such a bill anytime soon. As a result, the EPA rules will put necessary controls on greenhouse gas pollution, they say.

After Monday’s meeting, Graham said the bill would require oil companies that produce carbon to pay a fee, with the proceeds going to retire the national debt or for low income people “to deal with their energy needs.”

Utilities also would have a limited cap on carbon dioxide emissions, he said.

But the bill also would allow for more offshore drilling and emphasize nuclear power and alternative energy, Graham said. It will encourage investment in alternative energy and nuclear energy, he said.

“The sooner we can get away from our dependence on Mideast oil, the better,” Graham said.

Sierra Club chief: If healthcare reform can pass, so can a climate change bill

kentuckycoal — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:00:27 +0000

By Ben Geman – 03/26/10 12:38 PM ET

The Sierra Club’s new executive director thinks healthcare’s passage shows a climate change deal remains possible. Michael Brune, who took over as the venerable group’s executive director this month, noted that healthcare received “multiple death pronouncements” during a year-long debate.

Climate change has received similar death notices, particularly since many think Democrats will be reluctant to move controversial legislation after the difficult healthcare battle.

But Brune said his organization still believes legislation is possible, and sees inspiration from this week’s dramatic passage and signing into law of healthcare legislation.

“We are optimistic about the bill’s chances for passing, not because we are naïve,” Brune said in an interview with The Hill Thursday.

“Just look at the healthcare legislation. Looking at the progress that has been made in spite of multiple death pronouncements. The fact that a bill was signed gives us reason to hope that somehow, some way, reason can prevail,” he said.

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are working on energy and climate change legislation they hope to unveil next month.

Graham this week said he believed the healthcare fight would make red-state Democrats like Sen. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) less likely to support climate change legislation. Lincoln faces a tough reelection fight this year.