U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers today gave the Obama administration another week to decide what it’s going to do about the largest mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia history.

Judge Chambers issued this three-page order, granting EPA a requested stay of legal proceedings on the permit until March 26 — next Friday.

The judge noted that Arch Coal’s Mingo Logan subsidiary had not formally oppose the requested stay, and the judge refused the company’s request to include language specifying that EPA will not receive additional delays unless it actually moves forward with its plans to veto the 2,300-acre permit.

However, the judge’s order did say:

The Court understands Mingo Logan’s frustration with the delay in this action. Moreover, the Court agrees with the company that, at some point in the near future, the U.S. EPA must decide whether to proceed with its § 404(c) process and, if so, that the agency must issue a public notice to that effect.

Still:

… The Court GRANTS the stay sought by the Corps, without the conditions requested by Mingo Logan, FINDING that, in the context of the multi-year permit review at issue in this litigation, and in light of the company’s repeated consent to the prior requested deadline extensions and stays, a brief extension of the existing stay is appropriate. Such a stay will allow the U.S. EPA an opportunity to complete its determination of whether and how to exercise its §404(c) authority, which, as discussed in the Court’s October 21, 2009, Order, is not only discretionary, but is also likely to affect the instant litigation.

Further, in light of the repeated and often uncontested postponements in this action, and because Mingo Logan may continue to conduct limited mining operations pursuant to the Spruce No. 1 Permit, such an extension will not result in substantial prejudice to Mingo Logan.

I just got done reading a fascinating new paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology.

It’s a real eye-opener about the relationship between mountaintop removal coal mining and global warming. The paper, Terrestrial Carbon Disturbances from Mountaintop Mining Increases Lifecycle Emissions for Clean Coal, is available online here. A subscription is required to read the whole thing, but you can see the abstract (a summary) for free.

Written by James F. Fox of the University of Kentucky and J. Elliott Campbell of the University of California, Merced, the paper leaves no doubt that, even if CCS works and is widely deployed, questions will remain about the climate change impacts of mountaintop removal.

How so? Well, Fox and Campbell attempted to quantify the carbon dioxide released by the huge land disturbance involved in blowing up a mountaintop to get at the coal underneath. They concluded:

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the life-cycle emissions of coal production for MCM [Mountaintop Coal Mining] methods were found to be quite significant when considering the potential terrestrial source.

In fact, this paper reports that mountaintop removal’s life-cycle carbon dioxide emissions are 17 percent greater if you include carbon dioxide from sources other than the actual burning of the coal — emissions from cutting down and burning forests, potential release of carbon previously locked up in the soils of the mountains, and from mining and transportation equipment.

That’s the potential high-end of those emissions if you assume coal is burned in a conventional power plant.

If the industry switches to CCS-equipped plants that capture most of the emissions from coal-burning, then these other carbon dioxide sources would actually account for nearly twice the emissions of coal burning.

As the paper explains:

Notwithstanding the importance of CCS efforts to improve the imprint of coal burning on the environment, the life-cycle emissions also should be further investigated and quantified to determine their significance under coal production scenarios.

In both cases, the current combustion practices and future CCS goals, the terrestrial carbon storage impacted by the disturbance of MCM is shown to be significant. It is argued here that the terrestrial carbon impact be included in the ongoing discussion of coal mining life-cycle emissions and be considered when discussing energy production and environmental sustainability.

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We had a story in this morning’s print edition that was a bit of a spin-off from yesterday’s Coal Tattoo post about a petition seeking a federal takeover of Kentucky’s program to regulate water pollution from coal mining.

The story detailed part of the petition citing previously unreleased U.S. EPA data showing high levels of toxicity in water downstream from mining operations in Kentucky and West Virginia. A copy of the report the story is based on is posted here.

Some readers may recall that U.S. EPA had recently backed off announcing a plan that would have required more of this type of special toxicity testing by mining operators across the region.

Kentucky state officials declined to comment when I contacted them yesterday, but my friend Jim Bruggers at the Courier-Journal in Louisville  had a story on this EPA takeover petition today, that included some comments from them:

State officials on Monday said they had not seen the petition, nor had they seen the analysis of the EPA water sampling. But they said they are moving to try to meet new EPA demands to reduce water pollution from surface mining.

But R. Bruce Scott, commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection, also acknowledged “severe funding concerns” that have left his agency struggling to meet its obligations. Division of Water, which oversees the pollution discharge program, has lost more than 50 positions in recent years, dropping from more than 300 to about 250, he said.

And, Jim included this in his story:

It’s unlikely EPA would take over the program. The agency has never revoked a state’s delegated authority under the Clean Water Act.

Louisville environmental attorney Tom FitzGerald, who was not involved in filing the petition, said EPA would be more likely to try to work with Kentucky to improve any shortcomings, including the funding problem.

“These folks are trying to do their jobs,” he said. “They just don’t have the resources.”

Breaking news in concerning coal permitting and enforcement in our neighboring state of Kentucky:  Four environmental organizations are filing a formal petition asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take over the state’s National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program.

The petition, which I’ve posted online here, alleges a “complete breakdown” of Kentucky’s implementation and enforcement of the Clean Water Act permitting program. In particular, the petition alleges:

… The state’s capitulation to the coal industry and its complete failure to prevent widespread contamination of state waters by pollution from coal mining operations leaves EPA no choice but to withdraw its approval of the program.

The petition cites the Kentucky Division of Water’s own figures showing 1,200 miles in the Upper Kentucky River watershed, nearly 490 miles in the Upper Cumberland River watershed, and 780 miles in the Big Sandy/Little Sandy/Tygarts Creek watershed as impaired with coal mining as a suspected source. But, the petition alleges this nearly 2,500 miles of impaired streams in the coalfields of eastern Kentucky “seriously underestimates” the scope of actual stream impairment.

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