Corps to EPA: Try this permit on for size

Can’t the U.S. EPA and the federal Army Corps of Engineers get along?

Apparently not … because just one day after EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced a plan to more closely scrutinize Corps permits for mountaintop removal mines, Corps officials decided to reinstate a major permit in Kentucky. Corps officials had suspended their approval of the International Coal Group permit a little more than a year ago, after the Kentucky Waterways Alliance and the Sierra Club filed a Clean Water Act lawsuit in federal court to stop it.

In a news release issued very late this afternoon, the Corps said ICG had eliminated one valley fill and one sediment pond as a result of discussions with agency officials.

“With this analysis, the Corps is confident that the discharges in waters of the United States will not result in significant individual or cumulative impacts,” the Corps said.

My friend James Bruggers at the Louisville Courier-Journal did a lengthy story on this particular mining proposal about a year ago. It doesn’t appear to be on the C-J Web site, but it is posted here by the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment.