Well, the race to stand up for coal continues at the West Virginia Legislature …
Yesterday, the Coal Association lobbyists gave their pitch about mining permits to the special committee set up by House Speaker Rick Thompson.
There are reports out from Larry Messina at The Associated Press and Ry Rivard at the Daily Mail. Both stories included a comment from coal lobby Vice President Jason Bostic that the industry believes EPA’s review of Clean Water Act permits is an:
… Intent to rob the state of its sovereignty …
What does that even mean? Does Bostic want West Virginia to secede from the union?
If you give the industry the benefit of the doubt, what they’re arguing here is that they don’t like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency coming in and basically implementing its own guidance about what West Virginia’s water quality standards mean. In particular, we’re talking about the narrative water quality standard, which prohibits:
… Any other condition that adversely alters the integrity of the waters of the state … no significant adverse impact to the chemical, physical, hydrologic, or biological components of aquatic ecosystems shall be allowed.
Now, WVDEP Secretary Randy Huffman has announced his agency is working on some guidance for implementing this particular standard. But we haven’t seen any language yet … and it will be interesting to watch and see if WVDEP’s proposal is aimed more at protecting water quality or at trying to help the coal industry get out from under EPA’s permit reviews.
Which brings me to the more important point … It’s really silly for the coal lobby, Gov. Joe Manchin or members of our Legislature to not understand why EPA is stepping in here. The evidence is all around them, and is pretty clear …
I mean, you really don’t have to go any farther than the Hobet 45 permit. Here’s a situation where WVDEP issued a new mining permit — but once EPA stepped in and looked at it, the company found a way to reduce the stream impacts by half, and still mine 91 percent of the coal they were after in the first place.
If coal operators and their friends in the Manchin administration don’t want EPA meddling in their business, then they need to find ways to reduce mining’s impacts further, not make silly complaints about West Virginia losing its “sovereignty.”
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Excellent point, Ken.
It’s interesting that all businesses find the concept of continual improvement easy to grasp as it applies to their economic bottom line, let only some businesses recognize the advantage of applying the same principle to their environmental impacts.
So often it seems that what we hear from coal industry representatives is either protests against environmental regulation or citing their compliance record with those regs as proof that they’re doing all they need to from an environmental perspective.
As in any business sector, there are coal companies who take their environmental responsibilities more seriously than others, but when my office while I was at DEP developed an incentive program for any business to exceed minimum environmental requirements, the WV Coal Association demanded that they be exempted from the legislation, even though at least one of their member companies was quite eager to participate.
The off-the-record explanation I received was that the Association did not want examples of exemplary environmental performance overly publicized for fear that minimal standards for all would subsequently be raised.
Coal operators often complain about how complicated and time consuming permit processes are, but I can’t help but wonder if a strategy of aggressively minimizing environmental impacts and continually seeking to minimize them even further might have led to far simpler permitting processes.
Regulation tends to emerge from abuses, in any aspect of life. Demonstrated good behavior is a fine strategy to avoid over-regulation.
This post also makes me wonder, if as rigorous of a permit review as Hobet had been applied to all surface mining conducted since 1977, how many fewer valley fills would have been constructed? how many fewer miles of streams filled? how many communities saved? how much less flooding?
hundreds of permits have been approved and associated mining conducted, under an extremely weak permitting standard for environmental impact. 30+ years of surface mining and hundreds of valley fills and miles of streams buried needlessly, all because of a weak DEP and a strong coal lobby.
Manchin, the DEP, most state legislators, and most coal operators continue to act as if the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and the US don’t apply in WV. I think the DEP has been operating with a sort of de facto secession for several years now, and they’re acting as if the EPA and OSM are some invading foreign power. A good example was Tom Clarke’s recent disagreement with OSM findings and refusal to act on recommendations.
Vernon,
Perhaps you could clarify this:
“A good example was Tom Clarke’s recent disagreement with OSM findings and refusal to act on recommendations.”
What are you talking about? If you mean the Brushy Fork situation, my understanding is that Tom Clarke issued an NOV based on the OSM 10-day notice. Are you talking about something else?
Ken.
Glad you mentioned Brushy Fork Ken. Since you compared it to Buffalo Creek, I’ve yet to see you post any copies of MSHA citations that were issued or do you and your followers think MSHA is as inept as WVDEP?
It is kind of sickening, but not really surprising, to watch many of our elected and regulatory officials leave footprints all over each other’s backs in their race to the bottom. I’d love to see Speaker Thompson even say sovereignty five times fast. That’s not what is at issue here.
What IS at issue is the complete, total and repeated failure of West Virginia’s environmental regulatory agencies to do their job. When one of the DEPs own lawyers admits that if they actually enforced the existing laws (let alone anything new contemplated by the feds), coal mining would cease, and we couldn’t have THAT happen, now could we? Of course not. This is one reason why good federal laws like SMCRA are such a joke in this state. SMCRA requires coal operators doing mountaintop removal mining to come up with a post-mining economic use to take advantage of all that wonderful new flat land the Gov. keeps telling us we are so short of.
But since the DEP doesn’t bother to enforce that provision, do the coal operators bother to do it? Of course not – and in point of fact, only 12 of 212 permits issued in West Virginia from 2000 to 2008 proposed a post-mining land use of industrial or commercial development of any type. Which indicates to me, at least, that all the coal companies are interested in is getting their coal and getting the heck out. But then, why change what has worked for the last 150 years in this state?
Concerned miner,
First, you are not accurately paraphrasing what I wrote concerning Brushy Fork. I did not “compare” it to Buffalo Creek. What I wrote was:
“But the fact that WVDEP put out a news release about this thing with Brushy Fork tells me they understand that any sort of problem with that impoundment — any coal-slurry impoundment, really — is something the public wants to know about. We’ve learned very painfully in West Virginia what can happen when a slurry impoundment fails.”
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2010/02/09/more-on-brushy-fork-where-was-wvdep/
The words “learned very painfully” linked to this site, http://www.wvgazette.com/static/series/buffalocreek/index.html which is our series of Buffalo Creek.
I did not say conditions at Brushy Fork were similar to Buffalo Creek or compare the two impoundments. I simply linked to our Buffalo Creek series to explain why folks in the West Virginia coalfields are rightfully concerned that coal-slurry impoundments be kept safe.
Second, MSHA has told me they have an ongoing investigation at Brushy Fork and that they are not yet releasing the results of that inspection. As soon as they do, I’ll report back on that.
Third, just so other readers are clear — MSHA, OSMRE and WVDEP ALL have jurisdiction over this impoundment. Their jurisdictions are separate, while somewhat overlapping, and concerned citizen is wrong to suggest — as he did in earlier comments — that the OSMRE and WVDEP citations don’t mean anything, because MSHA is the only agency that really is in charge of these structures. That’s just not true.
Ken.
Ken, I wasn’t talking about the Brushy Fork situation. It was in your article posted 10/21/09, “OSM report says DEP needs to beef up spill enforcement,” at http://www.wvgazette.com/News/MiningtheMountains/200910210447. You write, “Tom Clarke, director of DEP’s Division of Mining and Reclamation, said he disagrees with OSM’s conclusions and that the state has no plans for additional efforts to stop blackwater spills.”
Thanks, Vernon. That wasn’t clear, at least to me, from your post. I see what you’re talking about now. Ken.
Sorry for not being clear the first time around, the memory itself was paraphrased in my mind. The only way I found the details was using the “search” feature on you blog–thanks for making that available.