Spruce Mine update: Chambers grants stay of lawsuit
A bit of new out of federal court this afternoon … U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers has granted the federal government’s request to stay the legal proceedings concerning Arch Coal Inc.’s Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County.
Chambers cited the move by the federal Environmental Protection Agency on Friday to being the process of vetoing the Army Corps of Engineers’ approval of this, the largest mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia history.
The judge said the stay, until Nov. 3, will give EPA and the Corps time to discuss the permit further and consider the next step. Arch Coal’s Mingo Logan Coal Co. subsidiary had wanted Chambers to deny the government’s request for a stay and throw out a lawsuit filed against the Spruce Mine by environmental groups.
For folks who missed it, EPA has a helpful fact sheet that explains the process it must go through before it can block a permit the Corps wants to approve.
3 comments
Ken- Check out Hoppy Kercheval’s commentary from yesterday at
http://www.wvmetronews.com/index.cfm?func=displayfullstory&storyid=33101
mayflyguy,
I saw that…I wondered if Gene Kitts from ICG had started ghost-writing for Hoppy.
Ken.
mayflyguy, I liked your post to Hoppy’s commentary. You are dead-on right about the mayflies. But have you looked at DEP’s method of determining “impairment”? The EPA study, using DEP’s own method, found that 63% of the mined sites were impaired. When condcutivity was greater than 500 uS/cm, 87% were impaired. And DEP doesnt currently use mayflies in their assessment methodology.
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