EPA mountaintop removal letters: A study in contrast

Lots of folks are still scratching their heads, trying to figure out where President Barack Obama’s EPA is really heading on mountaintop removal.

Nobody has any clear answers, and we might not know for a while.

But remember those two letters  (here and here) that EPA sent to the Corps of Engineers on Monday, outlining serious concerns about the damage that would be done if the Corps issued two mountaintop removal permits in West Virginia and Kentucky?

Well, someone sent me a letter in which the Bush administration offered its comments on a similar mountaintop removal permit. The contrast is pretty striking…

Take the letter that EPA Region 3 sent to the Corps about that Massey permit in Logan County. It went on at great length about EPA’s concerns that the operation would destroy mountains, streams and forests:

EPA has expressed its significant concern regarding the impact to the human environment through a lack of avoidance and minimization efforts undertaken for this project, the cumulative impacts on the watershed, forest and habitat destruction and fragmentation within a globally significant and biologically diverse forest system, and the impairment of downstream water quality.

…EPA’s comments reflect a concern that the substantive environmental criteria upon which permit decisions  are to be based will not be met. Based on the evidence that avoidance and minimization of the proposal’s impacts have not been fully considered, and that this project is likely to cause excursions from water quality standards, specifically, impairment of the aquatic life use, and will impact remaining unmined streams necessary to provide clean feshwater dilution to the watershed, EPA believes that the proposed project will result in substantial and unacceptable impacts to the aquatic resources of national importance.

Or the letter EPA region 4 sent to the Corps about that Kentucky permit:

…EPA continues to have significant concerns … regarding the cumulative impacts of this project on the watershed, impairment of downstream water quality, the degradation of perennial streams channels, and that impacts have not been adequately avoided and minimized. Moreover, EPA does not believe the proposed mitigation will adequately offset the persistent and permanent impacts to the aquatic ecosystem communities and functions.

Now, give a quick — and it won’t take long — read to this letter,  in which the Bush EPA commented on a Corps permit that would allow Loadout LLC to bury nearly two miles of streams in Boone County, W.Va. (The two permits the Obama EPA objected to would bury 3.6 miles and 2.5 miles of streams).

This letter doesn’t exactly offer a wholehearted endorsement of the mining proposal. In fact, it encourages the Corps to work with Loadout to evaluate possible alternatives, including not mining some of the coal. The Bush EPA even explained that the headwaters streams to be buried are important parts of the aquatic ecosystem.

But, the Bush letter doesn’t say a darned thing about exactly what burying these streams would do to that aquatic ecosystem. It doesn’t talk about cumulative impacts of other mines in the area.  And it certainly doesn’t say “EPA believes that the proposed project will result in substantial and unacceptable impacts to the aquatic resources of national importance.”

Maybe these are just two radically different permits, and it’s unfair to compare them. But it’s an interesting thing to do all the same.