Photo by Vivian Stockman

We asked yesterday what President Barack Obama is going to do about mountaintop removal coal mining…

Well, on Monday we might get a hint about Obama’s plans. Federal government lawyers will be in court there, before U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers, for what could be a key status hearing on one of the ongoing court fights over mountaintop removal.

If the Obama administration intends to take some action to scale back or end mountaintop removal, this hearing might give the public some indication of that.  So far, officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Council on Environmental Quality have been pretty closed-mouthed on the issue.

And today, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, whose lawyers represent the Army Corps of Engineers in the case before Judge Chambers, also had little to say.

“I’ve got nothing that I can really update you on, except that our attorneys will be in court for the status hearing,” said DOJ spokesman Andrew Ames.

Still, pressure has been building … coalfield activists have launched peaceful civil disobedience protests against mountaintop removal operations, the New York Times weighed in with a powerful editorial, and this week, citizen activists and environmental lawyers have been meeting with various administration officials in Washington.

Meanwhile, the coal industry in West Virginia is busy lobbying for another delay in compliance deadlines for toxic selenium pollution. And on its Web site, the National Mining Association is touting an investment group’s warning that Obama could worsen delays in the issuance of U.S. mining permits, hurting the nation’s global competitiveness:

Permitting delays in the United States are the most significant risk to mining projects. This will likely worsen due to the election of Barack Obama and the expansion of the Democrat Party majorities in both houses of congress. A few mining friendly states (Nevada, Arizona) will be somewhat of an exception to this rule. The significant economic downturn may temper antimining sentiment in some jurisdictions as new jobs and investments hold the potential to bring good paying jobs to depressed areas.

Chambers called Monday’s hearing to assess the status of Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition v. United States Army Corps of Engineers,  which is the environmental community’s lawsuit trying to force the corps to conduct more detailed environmental reviews before it grants Clean Water Act permits for valley fills.  In March 2007, Chambers ordered tougher oversight by the corps, and explained that coal mining isn’t the only important thing to West Virginians:

Coal mining has long been part of the fabric of Appalachian life, providing jobs to support workers and their families and energy to fuel the nation. Unfortunately, coal mining also exacts a toll on the natural environment. In particular, the mining technique at issue in these permits potentially results in dramatic environmental consequences.

And the corps, the judge said “have given no more than lip service” to evaluating what sort of damage mining does to streams that are buried by millions of tons of rock and dirt.

On Friday, Feb. 13, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Chambers’ ruling, the fourth time in eight years that the Richmond, Va.-based court has thrown out a West Virginia judge’s ruling to limit mountaintop removal.

So why a hearing on Monday?

Well, the judge asked for the hearing “so that we may progress quickly to resolution.” I’m not really sure what that means.

But in addition, long before the 4th Circuit’s ruling, environmental groups sought to add four more mountaintop removal permits to the case before Chambers. These four mines include 20 valley fills that would bury more than 15 miles of streams, according to court records and permit documents.

Chambers never ruled on that request, so it’s still pending. And federal judges like to clean up things like this.  So Chambers set the status hearing for 11 a.m. Monday in Huntington.

Interestingly, DOJ lawyers were supposed to file a response to the motion to add the four new permits by today. But on Monday, they asked Chambers to allow them to wait until after the status hearing “in the interests of judicial efficiency.”

During the previous eight years, DOJ lawyers dutifully defended the corps’ permits. But Obama has said he opposes mountaintop removal and thinks it should be stopped.

Will the president give the DOJ new marching orders? Maybe we’ll find out Monday.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Mountaintop Removal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.