Happy Monday, folks. I hope everyone had a good holiday weekend.
For anyone who missed it, I wanted to point out a story in Saturday’s Washington Post, with the paper’s take on the ongoing controversy over what President Barack Obama and his EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, are going to do about mountaintop removal coal mining.
The story is online here, and it also includes an interesting graphic (pasted above), as well a photo gallery.
I know this particular Post staffer, David A. Fahrenthold, to be an excellent reporter and a fellow member of the Society of Environmental Journalists. He did a story last year that used government records to show that power plants in the D.C. region purchased 32 percent of their coal from large-scale surface mines in Appalachia.
But I was disappointed that David fell into the same trap as The Associated Press (both its local bureau here in Charleston and folks in Washington and elsewhere in AP), in adopting the industry’s term “mountaintop mining,” which is a phrase made up by the coal industry (and some friends in regulatory agencies) to avoid the more nasty-sounding “mountaintop removal.” This term “mountaintop mining,” is not mentioned in the federal strip mining law or its regulations. It’s unfortunate that it’s catching on with the media.
The story was focused on the question of exactly what EPA and the Obama administration are up to, and led off by describing the apparent about-face by the EPA last month — at first announcing what appeared to be a crackdown on mountaintop removal, and then backing off
As I’ve written here before, I think this part of the controversy has been blown out of proportion, and is an unfortunate outcome of the mainstream media (mostly The Associated Press) and activists blogs getting the initial story way wrong.
For the record, let’s review:
On March 24, EPA sent out a news release headlined “EPA acts to reduce harmful impacts from coal mining.” The release explained the EPA had sent two letters to the federal Army Corps of Engineers stating that two proposed mining permits:
would likely cause water quality problems in streams below the mines, would cause significant degradation to streams buried by mining activities, and that proposed steps to offset these impacts are inadequate. EPA has recommended specific actions be taken to further avoid and reduce these harmful impacts and to improve mitigation.
From that, the AP put out a story with this lead paragraph:
The Environmental Protection Agency is putting on hold hundreds of mountaintop coal-mining permits until it can evaluate the projects’ impacts on streams and wetlands.
Word of that spread all over the coalfields and the blogosphere pretty quickly, with many folks throwing around words like “moratorium” and saying Obama was stopping all mountaintop removal effective immediately.
Things got so nuts that EPA sent out a follow-up announcement to “clarify” the situation. Of course, in doing so the agency did the exact opposite, especially by saying EPA officials “fully anticipate that the bulk of these pending permit applications will not raise environmental concerns.”
Really, the confusion here should not be about what EPA is doing right now. Agency officials are simply doing what the law requires, and reviewing Corps of Engineers proposals for Clean Water Act permits for coal-mining valley fills. When they find problems, they’re pointing those out to EPA and, in some cases, threatening to block permits if those problems aren’t fixed.
An important point here is that coal industry folks are complaining that this process alone is creating uncertainty that they don’t like. Industry folks want to know that when the submit a permit application, it’s going to be approved if it meets a certain checklist of rules. The problem with that is that every permit is different, and federal regulators need to review each one and see what kind of damage it would cause and whether that damage is acceptable or not. Industry folks have argued against across-the-board requirements for things like the acres of watershed where fills are allowed or a bright line for the miles of streams a mine can bury. In doing so, they say every mine is different and need to be planned out based on site-specific issues. Well, the same goes for EPA reviews — every mine is different and needs to be reviewed based on site-specific issues.
All of that is not to say that there aren’t questions that need answered.
First among them is, along with doing this permit reviews, does the Obama administration have any real plan for doing what Obama said he supported — that is, ending mountaintop removal?
The rest of the Post story is mostly standard stuff: Environmentalists don’t like mountaintop removal; coal industry supporters do. But it does give us a little bit more information to answer this broader question, with quotes from an interview with EPA’s Jackson:
This week, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson — making her first public comments about the letters — said her agency did not intend to send a mixed message. She said that the EPA was not trying to stop all mountaintop removal but that it “is going to do its job” in checking 150 to 200 projects for environmental impact.
“This was not about making any kind of value judgment on a practice of mining,” Jackson said in an interview. “This is about science. And what the law tells us to do is review these permits.”
In her interview with The Post, Jackson said that the EPA had just begun to review these permit applications and that although “the sense right now is that the vast majority of them are not significant” concerns, she could not predict the final outcome. She said that the White House Council on Environmental Quality has convened officials from the EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies to talk about the future of mountaintop mining more generally.Â
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This is interesting. You read about these things and hear about them all your life but don’t realize how close they are to your family history. I didn’t realize Blair Mt was so close to Ethel, the site where my GGrandfather Aldren Stewart was killed in the mines back in Feb, 1918, along with a man named AJ Dials.
Readers, Got this note in via e-mail from David Fahrenthold, and am posting here with his permission…
Ken–
Hey, Dave Fahrenthold here from the Post. I hope you’re doing well. I’m a devoted reader of Coal Tattoo, and I just finished reading your posting on my story from Ethel, W.Va. on Saturday. Thanks for the mention, first of all.
But I did want to point out one thing in regard to your point about the term “mountaintop mining.” This is the term the EPA has used repeatedly over the last few weeks, both in their original press release on 3/24, and the two letters they sent to the Corps about the Big Branch and Reylas mines. Because the story was primarily about what the EPA did (or didn’t do), I wanted to use the same language they’re using now. We did include, further down in the story, the fact that many folks do call this same practice “mountaintop removal” (along with the industry rebuttal that the mountaintops are often rebuilt, at least approximately). And, most importantly, we also described–both in the story and in an excellent graphic from the Post’s News Art department–the actual mechanics of mining at these sites. I hope, after all that, that readers knew enough about this mining practice that their opinions could not be swayed by its name.
Please feel free to post this on the blog, if you’re so inclined.
Thanks again,
DF
Ken, thanks again for Coal Tattoo.
Dave, thanks for the response. I was glad to see it, and I appreciate the consideration that went into your article.
As someone who’s directly affected by a mountaintop removal mine (Gauley Mountian, http://is.gd/scTa ), I would argue that opinions are *definitely* swayed by the way we name things, no matter what evidence there is to persuade or dissuade a reader over a certain point.
Take “clean coal”, for example. That’s a friendly name for a completely baseless concept that has gained traction in the highest levels of government. Many would argue that this idea’s success is due almost entirely to it’s name.
Readership is a war of attrition, as I’m sure you are aware. While your headline might get a lot of looks, the number of people who read the article deeply enough to attain the kind of critical thought you describe is rare. That’s just how we, as people in today’s world, are.
Many who are part of this particular fight know that the EPA (and especially, in our case, the WV DEP) has been historically complicit in big coal’s plans and practices. If the story’s intent was to explore what the EPA has done recently, it would have been appropriate to point out this naming discrepancy, as Ken observes.
Finally, I agree that the graphic is technically accurate. But it misses the mark when it depicts blue water in the valley fill, signaling to readers that this water is clean, even though the caption says otherwise. The cleanliness of the image overall is incongruous with the reality of mountaintop removal mining.
To say that Kayford Mountain is being “rebuilt” is like saying the Allied Air Forces “remodeled” Dresden.
The Washington Post surface mining graphic is interesting as stated but not accurate. It states that mining waste is dumped into valleys but a valley fill is not shown. What is depicted is a side hill fill which is seldom used and does not fill drainages. The side hill fill is shown reaching downward and blocking a stream resulting in flooding. This is what was common before mining laws were passed in the “old push and shove days” of traditional contour mining.
Since water, or at least drainages where water would flow when it rains, is shown in blue, the sedimentation ponds below the fills should also have been shown. These are designed to prevent the pollution that is stated to occur. Also the graphic fails to point out the airport in the foreground which was built on a mining site.
Ken – Almost all journalists for the past 20+ years have referred to “strip mining” – where you strip away the mountain to get to the coal seam – as “surface mining”… That, too, is a euphemism coined by the coal industry to make this destructive method of mining sound more palatable. And now it is widely used, although common sense tells us that no one mines the surface; the coal is located below the surface… So some of us old timers won’t acquiesce to using terms that the coal industry wants us to use. Indeed, most coal companies that I’ve dealt with also would refer to 3-foot thick roof fall as “draw rock” regardless if the fall was also 25 feet long by 6 feet wide… It sounds better, but it ain’t the truth… In my view, no journalist should use the term “mountaintop mining” to describe mountaintop removal mining. And anyone who thinks that mountaintops are restored to their approximate original shape after MTR mining is either blind or willingly eating a load of crap… Keep up your great work with “Coal Tattoo”! Best wishes, Tony
2581-Tony,
I have an educational book for mining engineers titled “Surface Mining” and in that book the origin of the term strip mining is explained. Early surface mining in the midwest was done by mining pits in long strips, and depositing the rock above the coal in one strip or pit into the previous strip where the coal had been removed. MTR, MTM, contour or area mining better describes what is done in surface mining in the east. Plus it’s easier to tell mom that you got a job as a miner rather than a stripper.
A more accurate description of the mining going on now would be Mountain Range Removal. A flyover shows in agonizing clarity that seemingly endless miles of the Appalachian Mountain Range are being totally and rapidly destroyed with animals, trees, water, people and history held worthless against coal.
Mr. Ward
Knowing that you have significant knowledge of mining practices, I would be interested in your response to Casey’s comments above. I would agree with his remarks that the graphic does not accurately depict the mining method as practiced. Additionally if runoff did occur with exceedances of suspended solids or iron (not sure about sulfur compounds – a new one for me) downstream of the pond, those would be violations for which the company would be held liable. Without judging the rest of the article it would certainly appear to me that the graphic is at best misleading. As I assume the vast majority of the Post’s readership is at best only casually familiar with mining, I would think getting this illustration right is more important than the term one uses for the process.
Thanks in advance.
All,
Wow. Interesting comments about the graphic, and about the terminology. Thanks all.
I’ll throw in my two cents on the graphic, saying first that I’ve been involved in doing some large-scale graphics for our print edition here at the Gazette — and they are very challenging. You have a very limited amount of space to show things, and you almost always simplify them in a way that experts say is misleading. So I don’t want to be too hard on the folks at the Post.
I know too well the challenge for writing about a complicated subject in simple enough terms that casual readers understand it, but experts don’t think it’s inaccurate.
But there are some things that aren’t clear here…
First, the labeling is bad — the top left example, I think, should have just said “traditional mining” not “traditional mountaintop mining,” right?
I agree that putting the streams in blue was misleading.
As for the view of the fills — I think the reason that several of you think it’s incorrect or misleading is that it’s simply a cutout. It’s supposed to be a side-view that gives people a very general idea of what we’re talking about … it’s not an engineering drawing. And try as we might, we aren’t going to get engineering drawings in the newspaper.
But as you pointed out, Casey, it does appear to a more trained eye like yours to be a drawing of a side-hill fill. I’m pretty sure that’s not what they intended, and that they were just trying to show a sideways view, but then didn’t really do that very well either.
I’m not sure where the Post got the information they used, but they might have done something that you folks would have considered more accurate if they went to the EIS, here:
http://www.epa.gov/Region3/mtntop/pdf/III_affected-envt-consequences.pdf — in Section III.K, where they are numerous photos and drawings that they could have used as models.
As for the runoff, I think the wording is probably where you guys are getting hung up — it’s as if the Post is assuming the runoff from all mining operations violates water quality standards. Obviously, that may or may not be the case. They might have used some qualifiers in there.
BUT, I think it’s a great misstatement to simply blow off any concern about the pollution by saying oh, well, the company will be held liable. That’s certainly not always the case.
As we’ve seen in West Virginia, DEP spent many years not even looking at Discharge Monitoring Reports, DMRs, and we’re learning that literally thousands of violations went unpunished.
In addition the EIS clearly found violations of water quality standards downstream from these types of mines, and found that these mines are causing these kinds of downstream pollution problems. So, there’s little question in my mind the Post is accurate in that respect.
Ken.