Obama’s mountaintop removal plan: What they’re saying

Lots of commentary out there on today’s big announcement by the Obama administration about its plans for dealing with (or, some critics on both sides say, not really dealing with) mountaintop removal. As I report in tomorrow’s Gazette, the announcement drew little praise from either side of the debate.

Among the best commentaries I can recommend is this analysis by Tom FitzGerald of the Kentucky Resources Council. It’s among the few commentaries so far that goes beyond the back-and-forth rhetoric of coal lobbyists who complain this creates more regulatory uncertainty and environmentalists who object that Obama didn’t come out and ban mountaintop removal. Fitz raises two primary objections to what Obama’s folks announced earlier today:

The first concern is that the procedural Memorandum of Understanding detailing how EPA and the Corps of Engineers will coordinate review of the 108 pending requests for Section 404 authorization by coal companies in the Appalachian region, sets a schedule for EPA review and identification of proposed authorization of concern, that may result in inadequate substantive review of many of the applications. That only 6 of 48 requests for authorization reviewed by EPA since March were flagged by EPA, suggests that a number of the 108 may go forward due to agency staffing and time constraints.

The second concern is that, while the MOU addresses all mining techniques in the central Appalachian region, the media release and media focus continues to be on “mountaintop mining” and on using only the Clean Water Act to reduce the number of fills and number of sediment ponds and streams affected. The Office of Surface Mining should take a much more significant role in minimizing the footprint of mining, since all forms of surface coal mining generate spoil material that has to be managed, and it is in the design
and approval of mining plans and spoil handling that aquatic impacts can be avoided. 

Fitz goes on to discuss a number of specific steps that Obama could have — but did not — take to get mountaintop removal under control. And he closes by pointing out that Obama still has not named anyone to fill the important job of director of the U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement:

The people of the Appalachian coalfields, indeed the nation’s coalfields, need and deserve a Director who will go to work each day with the goal of restoring the restoring to a troubled agency the morale, staff, and regulatory tools that have been lost and weakened since 1981. OSM must be a
full partner, utilizing all available regulatory tools to do what Congress directed in 1977: To protect society and the environment from the adverse effects of surface coal mining operations” and to assure that areas mined are reclaimed “as contemporaneously as possible.”

For any Coal Tattoo readers who somehow missed the news, here’s the basic story from The Associated Press and a similar account from The Washington Post.  Obama officials gave AP and the Post the scoop on the story, by handing them interviews with several top officials who spoke on background and with White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairwoman Nancy Sutley, who spoke for the record and was quoted by name in both stories.

From a PR standpoint, I guess it was nicely played by Obama’s folks. They got two national stories that, at least in their initial versions, failed to point out that one of Obama’s key proposals — doing away with the Corps of Engineers streamlined permit process for valley fills — was something a federal judge had already ordered the government to do (and, bizarrely, that the Obama administration’s Department of Justice had taken action to fight in an appeals court). And it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that the Post not only got the jump on the story, but handed Obama a very friendly editorial that — as National Review Online pointed out  — basically absolved Obama for teasing coalfield folks into thinking he was going to ban mountaintop removal. (Of course, recall that the Washington Post editorial writers came up with the idea that opponents to the TrAIL and PATH power lines — both truly aimed at helping sending more coal-fired electricity east to their growing suburbs and big cities — were blocking “green energy.”)

In other commentary, one industry analyst is already projecting that Obama’s proposals will reduce coal production 50 million to 70 million tons a year over the next three to five years.

Clem Gutatta over at West Virginia Blue is predicting that “by the end of the year we’ll have a coherent MTR/environmental policy emerge from the Obama administration.”

SolveClimate has a good rundown of views from coalfield environmental groups.  And there are stories now from The New York Times, Grist, The Lexington Herald-Leader, and my buddy Jim Bruggers at the Courier-Journal in Louisville.

West Virginia Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito (a major Friend of Coal) has a statement on her Web site,  as does the United Mine Workers union.  There’s also a statement from West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin and his DEP Secretary Randy Huffman.

Huffman (who doesn’t like the federal government much, but sometimes gets confused about the complex permitting scheme over at DEP)  bizarrely said in one version of the AP story:

 Huffman said the officials made it clear the agencies are focusing solely on mountaintop removal mining in the four states, and not mining nationwide. “You can’t just pick and choose Appalachia and then you can’t just pick and choose mining,” Huffman said. “They’re kind of duty-bound to apply across the country and across all activities.”

Huh? Well, I think Obama’s regulatory agencies picked Appalachia to focus on because that’s where coal operators are doing the mountaintop removal that blows up hilltops and buries streams. It’s all explained on EPA’s Web site, folks:

Valley fills occur in steep terrain where there are limited disposal alternatives. Mountaintop coal mining operations are concentrated in eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, western Virginia, and scattered areas of eastern Tennessee.

And it’s especially interesting to hear Huffman talk about how these kinds of environmental reviews need to apply not just to mining, but to all industries — that mining shouldn’t get special treatment — when one of his agency’s lawyers admitted earlier this week that no coal company in the state is able to comply with Clean Water Act permit limits  that every other business owner in the state is expected to follow.

Finally, Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., announced late today that he plans to hold a hearing in his Environment and Public Works Water and Wildlife Subcommittee to take testimony on the Obama program on mountaintop removal:

Mountaintop mining is one of the most destructive practices that already has destroyed some of America’s most beautiful and ecologically significant regions. Today’s decision by the Obama Administration to limit the practice through a stronger review of mountaintop mining permit applications is an important step in the right direction. However, it does not halt this incredibly destructive form of mining. We must put an end to this mining method that has buried more than a thousand miles of streams.

I am the sponsor of S. 696, The Appalachian Restoration Act, a two-page bill that would outlaw the mining practice. This legislation will put a stop to the smothering of our nation’s streams and water systems and will restore the Clean Water Act to its original intent.