Massey wins round in Coal River Mountain fight
Coal River Mountain as seen from nearby Kayford Mountain. Photo courtesy of Coal River Mountain Watch.
Massey Energy has scored another victory in the battle over whether Coal River Mountain should be blown up as part of a mountaintop removal operation, or turned into a wind energy facility.
The state Surface Mine Board has issued a ruling in favor of the company and the state Department of Environmental Protection on a key permit revision for Massey subsidiary Marfork Coal Co.’s Bee Tree Surface Mine.
I’ve posted the ruling, entered on March 10, but not made public until today, here. (By way of explanation, it seems the board sent the ruling to the parties via regular mail last Wednesday, it took a couple days to get there, and lawyers for citizen groups provided me with a copy early this afternoon).
Lawyer Joe Lovett of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment said his clients are considering an appeal of the board’s ruling.
“We’re disappointed with the board, and I think it’s not taking its responsibility to protect communities and carefully review this permits seriously,” Lovett told me this afternoon.
The Coal River mine site has been involved in the growing peaceful civil disobedience by coalfield residents and other activists who oppose mountaintop removal.
A majority of board members upheld the DEP’s decision to approve the permit change without requiring Massey to recalculate the amounts of waste rock and dirt to be sure the revised permit complied with the state’s Approximate Original Contour, or AOC, formula and regulations.
Coal River Mountain Watch and the Sierra Club appealed the DEP permit approval as part of a campaign aimed at saving the area from strip mining, and instead having it be turned into the Coal River Wind Project.
The permit appeal itself had little to do with the wind project. Instead, citizen groups appealed a permit change needed by Massey before it can begin mining. The change eliminated one valley fill, and allowed Massey to used waste rock and dirt from it to reclaim an existing highwall on the property.
Lovett said the permit change appeared aimed at allowing Marfork to begin mining the Bee Tree site before it obtains a federal Clean Water Act permit needed if it wanted to dump that waste in an on-site valley fill. Lovett and Peter Morgan, a Sierra Club lawyer, argued in their appeal that Marfork did not properly revise its mining and reclamation plan to meet the state’s AOC formula and minimize environmental damage.
In its ruling, the board cited testimony from a Feb. 10 hearing that the DEP-approved change increased the quantity of waste going into another valley fill from 22.9 million cubic yards to 26.3 million cubic yards. Board members concluded the change “does not create a substantial difference large enough to require additional evaluations or calculations of the proposed mining activities beyond the calculations made when the [original] permit was issued.”
Board members concluded “that the mining phases and reclamation plan was lawful and reasonable and commonly done by the industry and applicants.” Board members also said “the mining plan anticipates contingencies and the need and ability to seek a permit revision if necessary and that is a common and legal permitting practice.”
Board Chairman Tom Michael cast a dissenting vote, saying “it was wrong of WVDEP not to require calculations for the additional backfill to be placed on top of the fills to seek further reduction in the size and impacts of the fills.”
The board’s ruling also said that “although some of the sediment control structures will not be in place prior to the initiation of mining activities, the board finds the drainage and sediment controls comply with the performance standards and that there are adequate provisions in the permit …” Oddly, though, the board added there is also “the opportunity for Marfork to seek future permit revisions if necessary, to prevent hydrologic balance within the permit and adjacent areas.”
13 comments
This just makes me sick. The Surface Mine Board may as well not even exist. They never say NO to any case that comes before them that I know of. I have been to those hearings before. At one of the hearings they broke for lunch so we all went out to get something to eat. Guess what? One of the vehicles that they rode in had a Friends of Coal sticker on it. That should tell everybody where they stand, and how they vote.
It’s probably worth noting that the SMB is a “multiple interest” board, which means the statute that created it required certain members to come from certain interest groups. In this case, the coal industry has its own board member, as does the environmental community.
Check out the board information here:
http://www.wvdep.org/item.cfm?ssid=294&ss1id=613
Six of the seven board members took part in this decision, and only Chairman Tom Michael — who represents the environmental community — voted with the citizen groups.
Those who voted with DEP and Massey were:
– Paul Nay, a retired farmer who represents agriculture;
– Henry Rauch, a WVU geology professor who represents someone “experienced in water pollution control”;
– Ed Grafton, a Glenville State forestry professor who represents “one experienced in modern forestry practices”;
– James Smith, a coal industry engineer who represents someone “capable and experienced” in engineering; and
– Mark Schuerger, vice president of Riverton Coal, who represents the coal industry on the board.
Interestingly, during a Congressional hearing in 2007, longtime environmental group lawyer Walt Morris explained that such multiple interest boards “are generally, if not uniformly, dominated by majorities drawn from the coal industry, consultants to the coal industry, and other pro-development interests.”
Here’s a link to that testimony:
http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/images/Documents/20070725/testimony_morris.pdf
In West Virginia, I know of at least once instance where citizen groups asked SMB members with coal industry ties to recuse themselves from a mining case. The board members refused.
Thanks for this information. Mr Ward do you know of any cases that have come before this board in recent years that hasn’t been decided for the coal companies? I don’t know of any.
Nanette,
As a matter of fact, I do — The board has twice (2007 and 2008) overturned DEP approval of permits for a big underground mine in Taylor County, after citizens challenged the permit approval because of concerns about water quality and quantity issues.
They’ve also several times rejected a permit for a big limestone quarry in Pocahontas County.
But none for MTR, the most destructive form of mining. It seems that anything that big coal wants in southern WV is ok. That is very disturbing to me. Thank you for clarifying that for me.
Hope this makes more jobs for the people of WV. I am so tired of people complaining about coal, why don’t they just turn off their electricity, and then see what their lives will be like. People that don’t even live here, comes here and whines about coal mining, get out.
I have lived here all my life. My family came here to the Coal River Valley in the 1700’s. I have every right to complain about coal mining, and I have no intention of getting out!
There needs to be more investment in clean renewable energy instead of continuing the same filthy way of producing electricity.
Dee, I would like to point out that what is being proposed here is a wind energy project that will provide electricity for 80000 homes. In the long term, a wind farm will provide a lot more electricity than the coal that will be gone from this mountain in 17 years if the mining is allowed to proceed. At that point, it will not be possible to put up a wind farm on Coal River Mountain because the lowered peak elevations decrease the wind potential and the unstable ground makes it economically unfeasible to place a utility scale wind turbine.
The USGS has reported 20 -30 years of coal left in the major Appalachian coal seams. Then what? There will be no electricity and no jobs on Coal River Mountain.
If Coal River Mountain is not destroyed and a wind farm is built there, then that mountain will be producing jobs and employing 40 people, on the wind farm alone, long after the last ton of coal has been mined in West Virginia.
[…] Read Ken Ward Jr’s report on Coal Tattoo The West Virginia state Surface Mine Board leaves the public hearing for the first of several breaks to privately discuss different points on procedure and scope of issue. Pictured from left, Ed Grafton, Paul Nay, Thomas Michael, Henry Rausch, Mark Schuerger and James Smith. The court recorder and witness John Scott for the WVDEP are pictured at right. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009 […]
Dee, those who complain will just do that, complain. When it comes to personal convenience or comfort, all of their standards go out the window.
Dee, you couldn’t have hit the nail on the head any better.
These areas that have been continuously mined for 50 years are suddenly too precious to allow MTR activities.
Matt, have you witnessed the environmental destruction that takes place during the installation of these mega windmills? But I think everyone here agrees with you that the ends justify the means when it comes to installing windmills.
How do you know that the reclaimed mine won’t support the windmills? AOC designs can be exploited to allow for windmills to be installed at proper elevations, just look at the design proposed for Greenbrier County!
Also, this area has already been strip mined and deep mined extensively; for you guys to say that the ground can’t support windmills after mining doesn’t make sense when the area has already been mined.
[…] in line with a recent 4th U.S. Circuit Court decision, a Surface Mine Board in West Virginia today ruled in favor of allowing Richmond-based Massey Energy to continue its massive mountaintop removal operations on […]
Could someone tell me why a wind energy project would be O.K. on Coal River Mountain, but not O.K. In Greenbrier or Pocahountas Counties. Won’t the wind mills be just as hamful to bats and birds in Boone County. Oh and I have also heard complants about how much noise these wind mills produce.
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