Coal Tattoo has previously covered the controversy over the state Department of Environmental Protection’s renewal of a CONSOL Energy strip-mining permit in Fayette County, despite the mine’s outstanding water pollution and reclamation violations.

See previous posts here, here and here.

Well, there’s a big hearing at 1:15 p.m. tomorrow before Fayette Circuit Judge Paul M. Blake Jr.  CONSOL lawyers have asked Blake to dismiss an appeal by citizen groups of the Surface Mine Board’s ruling in the case.

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Photo by Vivian Stockman

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency just issued the following statement regarding its ongoing review of mountaintop removal mining permits in Appalachia:

 EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Peter S. Silva today finalized the list of 79 Appalachian surface coal mining permits requiring additional review and coordination under the Clean Water Act. EPA’s letter today confirms that all 79 permits initially identified on September 11 must undergo additional evaluation by EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers. EPA’s final list was transmitted in a letter to the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) Jo-Ellen Darcy.  The 79 permits represent all of the backlogged surface coal mining projects under review by the Army Corps of Engineers.  After a careful evaluation of these surface coal mining projects, EPA determined that each of them, as currently proposed, is likely to result in significant harm to water quality and the environment and are therefore not consistent with requirements of the CWA.  EPA and the Corps have developed a joint enhanced coordination process that establishes a schedule and procedures for the evaluation of these 79 permits. The Corps of Engineers is now responsible under the coordination process for beginning the next stage of discussions with EPA and the mining companies to reduce anticipated environmental and water quality impacts.  In his letter, Assistant Administrator Silva emphasized that “EPA looks forward to working closely with the Army Corps of Engineers, with the involvement of the mining companies, to achieve a resolution of EPA’s concerns that avoids harmful environmental impacts and meets our energy and economic needs.”

Updated:  Here’s a link to EPA’s letter to the Corps, outlining its concerns about these permits.

What does this mean?

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Photo by Vivian Stockman

Look for the U.S. EPA to issue a new draft scientific report on mountaintop removal’s environmental impacts sometime in early November.

That’s the word from  Michael Slimak, associated director of ecology at EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment. The report is being prepared by Slimak’s center, which is part of EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

News that EPA was preparing this study came out last week when agency officials published a notice seeking nominations for a Science Advisory Board ad hoc panel to provide peer review of the report.

Slimak told me yesterday that his center’s report is due by Nov. 1, but could be delayed for a week or two. He expects a draft to be made public by Nov. 15. The ad hoc review panel would then meet, hopefully sometime in January, and a final EPA document would be released perhaps in the spring.

The report is a review of existing peer-reviewed and published scientific research and data about the impacts of mountaintop removal on water quality and related issues. Interestingly, Slimak told me that some of the coal industry research on these issues is not going to be examined as part of the EPA effort, because most of it has not been published in peer-reviewed journals, which are essentially the “gold standard” for scientists.

The Obama administration has quietly put together plans for a major scientific review of the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials published a notice about the review in today’s Federal Register, but so far I have not seen any press announcements or statements issued by EPA about the matter.

According to the notice, EPA is seeking nominations to form an ad hoc panel, under the auspices of the agency’s Science Advisory Board, to provide expert advice to EPA “on a draft assessment of the ecological impacts associated with a surface coal mine technique known as mountaintop mining and valley-fill where mining overburden is placed in adjacent valleys.”

The assessment, according to the notice, is being prepared by EPA’s Office of Research and Development at the request of the agency’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Office in Philadelphia.

The Federal Register notice includes this background statement:

Recent published scientific information reveals that mountaintop mining and valley-fill operations in Southern Appalachia may be linked to degraded water quality and adverse impacts on in-stream biota. Discharges from surface coal mining operations are regulated under the Clean Water Act (CWA). CWA Section 402 provides authority to regulate discharges of pollutants to streams from valley-fills and associated operations. CWA Section 404 provides authority to regulate construction of the valley-fill itself to the extent rock and dirt are placed in waters of the United States, including streams and wetlands. Surface coal mining operations are regulated under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA).

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Playing a little catch up this morning on a ruling that U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers issued last week. Sorry I had not caught this until The Associated Press sent out a little blurb about it.

But, Chambers has granted the Obama administration’s request that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers get 30 days to re-examine its approval of the largest mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia history.

I’ve posted a copy of the judge’s order here.

You’ll recall that the Corps’ Justice Department asked for the delay in court proceedings  to review new concerns raised by the U.S. Environmental Protection about Arch Coal’s 2,300-acre permit in Logan County, W.Va. The permit, issued in January 2007, has been bouncing around regulatory agencies and the courts for more than a decade now. The final Clean Water Act permit issued by the Corps is back in federal court because environmental groups asked Chambers to block it.

In his four-page order, Chambers agreed with Arch subsidiary Mingo Logan Coal Co., which argued that EPA’s Sept. 3 objection letter “does not provide substantial new information regarding the Spruce No. 1 permit.” But, the judge said, the Corps discretionary authority to “re-evaluate” any permit  does not require “the presentation of new information.” Instead, the regulations allow the Corps to “reconsider a permit issued by it, at any time, if such reconsideration is in the public interest.”