Congresswoman Capito on her meeting with EPA
Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., has issued this statement about a meeting she had today with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson:
I appreciated the opportunity to meet with Administrator Jackson to share my concerns about EPA’s role in approving mine permits in the Appalachian region. Though broad disagreements remain, we had a cordial and substantive discussion.
I reiterated my concerns that the delay of these permits has real-world consequences on the economy and on West Virginia jobs. EPA decisions do not exist in a vacuum.
I also expressed my beliefs that continued uncertainty will only serve to hamstring miners and mining communities as they seek to plan and seek future investment in their local economies which depend on mining.
Finally, I presented Administrator Jackson with hundreds of letters from my constituents who have written to me with their views that EPA-driven uncertainty could cost them their jobs and their livelihood. These are real people and real families who deserve to have their voices heard. They live and work in these communities and they simply want to play by the rules, but they’re waiting for the EPA to give them the tools to do so.
I fully appreciate and agree with the Administrator’s goals of promoting clean water, but doing so demands a degree of regulatory clarity that doesn’t yet exist.
The bottom line from today’s meeting is that Administrator Jackson and the EPA believe they have no obligation to take economic factors or jobs into account when it comes to mine permits. I find that incredibly troubling, particularly at a time of record-unemployment and economic insecurity.
It is quite clear now more than ever that we must have a united front to stand up for miners across the state. We have a lot of work to do.
Updated, 5:10 p.m. EPA released the following response:
Administrator Jackson invited Congresswoman Capito to her office to discuss how mining operations in her district impact water quality and, ultimately, the health and economic welfare of her constituents. The Administrator briefed her both on the science guiding EPA’s efforts to protect human health and on the transparent,science based process EPA uses when considering Clean Water Act permits for mines. The Administrator assured Cong. Capito that EPA will ensure permit applications meet the standards EPA believes are essential to protect the water quality of Americans living in coal country, without unduly burdening or delaying projects that are economically important to the region.
5 comments
Interesting that Rep. Shelley Moore Capito says “I fully appreciate and agree with the Administrator’s goal of promoting clean water” yet she didn’t deliver any of the many letters she has received from constituents who are concerned about the effects of mountaintop removal on their water quality. (Also, it’s not just the administration’s goal, it is the law of the land.)
Nice try Rep. Capito, but actions speak far louder than words.
There’s probably some redundancy in what follows, but here goes nothing:
One of the basic tenets of the federal and state surface mine laws is the need to evaluate the CUMULATIVE hydrological (water) effects of any proposed mining activity.
Because there must be such an evaluation, purely “mine-specific” specifications that can simply be complied with — and that would create more “certainty” about whether there will be a regulatory mine/no-mine/limit-mine determination — are easier said than done.
You evaluate cumulative effects by looking at the overall hydrological situation in the region of the mine, as a result of past mining and other hydrologic disturbance and conditions, and making informed judgments about the cumulative effects of the proposed mining.
As more mining occurs in a region, therefore, those “cumulative effects” change for each new proposed mine that would affect the local hydrology. My experience, many years ago, was that few coal mine permit applications did more than pay lip service to cumulative impacts, throwing a greater burden on overworked regulators to examine this issue, and it often was not done very thoroughly or well.
The analogy to the straw that breaks the camel’s back is not perfect, but it does illustrate how the more hydrological disturbance has occurred, the more the need for assessing each additional proposed mine permit in terms of what has already occurred. When multiple permits in a region are pending, this complicates the situation enormously, I imagine.
In other words, prior to such an assessment, based on hydrological conditions in the mine’s region that may change as more mining in the region goes forward, “certainty” about a proposed mine’s cumulative effects, and thereby compliance with the law as proposed — is virtually impossible.
It’s my sense that this cumulative hydrological impact analysis is part of what EPA is doing about MTR permit applications, and I’m pretty sure it’s absolutely required by law. I imagine EPA Adminstrator Jackson explained this to Congressperson Capito.
Thom–
At some point, the limit will be reached. And that limit may come before the coal itself plays out, right? I imagine that only so much of the world can be turned upside down before you get significant environmental problems.
At some point, doesn’t the problem extend beyond the streams and the valley fills? If spoil is backfilled everywhere, the water will percolate through that on it’s way to a stream with, I imagine, many of the same consequences.
But I guess we can’t afford to wring our hands over water quality, even though we want to:
“I fully appreciate and agree with the Administrator’s goals of promoting clean water, but doing so demands a degree of regulatory clarity that doesn’t yet exist. ”
I do agree with this statement Capito makes about the coalfield residents. I take it she includes the tens of thousands that don’t work the strip mines:
“These are real people and real families who deserve to have their voices heard. “
I was under the impression that “economic considerations ” were not to be used in epa permit decission making. Otherwise the projects seeking permits would plow ahead and then claim not granting a permit would create economic hardship.
By wanting “certainty,” I think the mining companies mean they want to be able to know that if they plan to do their mining “this way,” they will get a permit.
But, if their mining will disturb the hydrologic regime of the region, it’s the company’s duty, in creating a permit application process, to make detailed analyses and predictions of how their proposed mining will cumulatively affect the water resources in the region.
However, I doubt that they are doing that — and, therefore, it’s up to regulators to take the essentially inadequate permit applications and do that predictive analysis work.
This lack of “due diligence” by the companies contributes to a lack of the “certainty” they say they want.
Leave a Comment