There was an interesting development Friday in one of the mountaintop removal cases that is making its way through the federal courts.
Lawyers from the Obama administration Justice Department filed a short notice with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, dropping the government’s appeal of a November 2009 ruling by federal District Judge Robert C. Chambers.
This particular ruling by Judge Chambers, available here, held that the federal Army Corps of Engineers wrongly issued mountaintop removal permits without allowing adequate public input. In particular, the Corps considers permits to be administratively complete and ready for public notice and comment before some key documents — most importantly the “mitigation plans” through which companies try to compensate for burying streams — are available for the public to examine and comment on.
What does this mean?
Well, the environmental groups are just fine with the government dropping its appeal, but at least some of the mining firms that intervened are opposing the move. There may be a legal argument over whether the government’s dropping its appeal ends the case altogether. At the least, if the government drops its appeal, then the industry can’t argue in its appeal that Chambers was wrong not to defer to the Corps — because essentially the agency is backing down by dropping its appeal.
While this decision to drop an appeal may be part of the Obama administration’s crackdown on mountaintop removal, it’s important to remember that this case was simply about whether citizens got the right to actually comment on important parts of a permit before it was approved.
All I can really say for sure is stay tuned …
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Interesting … but as to what it actually means, Ken is correct, we will all have to stay tuned. I personally see this as part of a larger retrenchment and reshuffling of the Obama administration regarding the whole mountaintop removal/future of coal question.
They have realized that there are no quick fixes to these questions, and that ANY attempts to clamp down on the business-as-usual way of doing things in WV are going to generate a lot of political heat for the administration. I look for another tightening of the rules regarding a different water quality standard within six months as the administration tries to attack the issue on multiple fronts, hoping that one of the approachs that it throws up against the wall will stick with minimal political fallout. How likely that will be in WV, with the hypersensitivity to all things coal right now, remains to be seen.
Scientists have already proved that fracturing rock releases Selenium into the waters. Selenium is deadly to aquatic life in streams. Underground mining does not cause huge releases of Selenium. So the methods of mining coal is pretty obvious to me. The thin coal seams are not worth saving if we have to destroy the environment to get them by mountaintop removal.