Fayette mine permit: Big hearing tomorrow

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.

Basically, the company is arguing that the citizens already won, and that there’s nothing more Blake can do for them. Recall that the citizens did win, kind of …

The board upheld DEP’s permit renewal. But board members added two conditions to the permit for CONSOL subsidiary Powellton Coal. One includes a new reclamation plan as a permit condition and the other prohibits additional coal removal without a firm plan for ending water pollution violations.

Now, Derek Teaney, a lawyer for the Sierra Club and the Ansted Historic Preservation Council, argues that what the board really should have done was to simply deny the pemit altogether. That’s the issue before Judge Blake.

I’ve posted Powellton’s motion to dismiss here and the citizen groups response here.

If you’ve forgotten this case, maybe it will jog your memory if I mention the great quote from DEP lawyer Fenway Pollack, who told the Surface Mine Board there’s no way his agency can refuse to renew permits with water pollution violations — apparently because no single coal-mining permit in West Virginia can comply with its water pollution limits:

Taken to its logical conclusion, that would mean no one gets renewals. We’d just shut down mining.