Here in West Virginia, most political leaders can’t say enough nice things about CONSOL Inc.’s plan for the Buffalo Mountain Surface Mine, a project associated with construction of the much-touted King Coal Highway from Bluefield to Williamson.
But officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have always had questions about this particular mining proposal, having objected to it from President Obama’s first day in office. And now, top EPA officials have issued another major new letter about the Buffalo Mountain Surface Mine, basically challenging state regulators and the company to come up with ways to reduce the operation’s projected environmental impacts:
The EPA’s review of the mining operator’s proposal indicates that feasible, cost effective steps are available to be incorporated into the operation to avoid and minimize the significant, adverse environmental and water quality impacts associated with the Buffalo Mountain mine. Unlike Buffalo Mountain’s mine design, modern, technically feasible and cost-effective mining practices are being proposed and incorporated by many mining companies into their mine designs with the intent to significantly reduce the adverse effects to the aquatic ecosystem.
That’s from this letter, sent last week to WVDEP mining director Tom Clarke by Jon Capacasa, director of EPA’s water protection division at Region III headquarters in Philadelphia.
EPA said that this permit — a 2,308-acre proposal for the area between Belo and Delbarton in Mingo County — “is among the largest single mining projects ever proposed in Appalachia” and that “the scale and magnitude of environmental and water quality impacts from the mine as currently proposed are as significant as any mining operation we have reviewed in the pats 20 years.”
Federal officials noted that the mine will bury nearly 10 miles of streams with waste rock and dirt, and the Clean Water Act pollution discharge permit at issue in this letter (as opposed to the Section 404 permit from the Army Corps of Engineers, which EPA previously questioned) includes 159 water pollution outfalls, including 12 outfalls to handle discharges from the 13 proposed valley fills.
Citing its 2011 report, The Effects of Mountaintop Mines and Valley Fills on Aquatic Ecosystems of the Central Appalachian Coalfields and the 2005 Environmental Impact Statement on mountaintop removal, EPA said in its letter:
The current scientific literature has increasingly documented the adverse water quality, environmental, and public health effects of Appalachian surface coal mining. Mountaintop mines and valley fills (MTM-VF) generally lead directly to five principal alterations to stream ecosystems: (1) springs, ephemeral, intermittent streams and small perennial streams are permanently lost with the removal of the mountain and from burial under fill; (2) concentrations of major chemical ions are persistently elevated downstream; (3) degraded water quality reaches levels that can be lethal to stream life; (4) selenium concentrations are elevated, reaching concentrations that have caused toxic effects in fish and birds; (5) macroinvertebrate and fish communities are consistently and significant degraded.
(Not for nothing, but it’s interesting that EPA noted in passing impacts on “public health,” but provided no additional details, not citing the recent papers that link living near mountaintop removal to increased rates of birth defects and cancer. The agency has previously testified to Congress about these studies and cited them in rejecting the Spruce Mine permit.)
Interestingly, and as EPA notes in its letter, the Federal Highway Administration and the state Division of Highways have announced plans to conduct a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement to more specifically consider the impacts of the Buffalo Mountain Surface Mine. EPA observed:
The SEIS process will provide a helpful vehicle for agencies to work together to identify improvements in the mine design to reduce potential advese impacts to water quality, public health and the environment.
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EPA. Needs stopped now its a shame that they can tell us if that you can’t work I wish we could remove everybody from Obama down from office all we are saying let us work we are not looking for any hand outs we get permits then the government takes them away thats not right and you know it’s not right I am sure this permit will be taken away just like all the rest you say they are no war on coal well put yourself in our shoes then you will really see that they are
Out of curiosity are the same standards applied to highway construction that apply to mining? In other words if data indicates being adjacent to a MTR project is detrimental to ones health; what is the impact of a major road cut and landfill along a road right of way. If the King Coal Highway were built without any involvement with coal mining, what would be the impact of the road? Would OVC and others advocate that the mountains are off limits to road building, or wind farm development, or any other process that alters the current sate of the mountains. Using the citeria being proposed today would the West Virgina Turnpike, Corridor G or Route 19 ever have been built. Would I 64 have been built? Since the basis for these mountains is sedimentary material and the hollows and valleys are the result of identical material being eroded away, what has been the impact of the selenium and other conductive minerals on the entire Mississippi Drainage? Mountains are not forever, the erode away, granted at a slower rate, but they due erode away. Is our current human activity causing a net acceleration of that process or impeding it with roads, pavements, dams and other structures? Are we being too simplistic when we study one project without taking into consideration its NET impact within the overall context of things????
Mountains erode at rates millions of times slower, even billions of times slower than what is happening in Appalachia now from Mountaintop Removal. There is no comparison. The natural process is so slow that the pollution is insignificant from erosion.
EPA is not the scapegoat for the decline of Appalachian coal. Many market forces are causing that to happen.
And, EPA does scrutinize highway projects as it does mine projects, even though as a whole they do not have the same impacts cumulatively. Here is one in Utah for example:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/817685/EPA-stalls-Legacy-Highway.html
Jack Warnock,
Thanks for your comment. But this line of argument or questioning is a typical coal industry diversion.
First of all, there’s already been an EIS on the King Coal Highway. It didn’t include a look at the mine combined with the highway — so doing the supplement will provide a much clearer picture of the combined impacts.
As Edd442 points out, EPA does look at highway projects. But more importantly, as we’ve pointed out on this blog before, mountaintop removal is the, greatest contributor to earth-moving activity in the United States,” according to a published study, http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2010/04/02/new-epa-standards-is-this-only-about-coal/ .
Every so often someone brings this up, but it’s really hardly worth discussing.
Ken.
The truth highway projects are not under the same rules that a surface mine is I have worked on both a highway valley fill is the same as a surface mine you don’t have federal mine inspectors on a highway job the laws are not the same on a highway job you can dump more dirt in the valley fill while on a surface mine it’s gotta be 90% rock it is the same method but nobody says anything about it if they was not coal there to be removed the permit would pass very easy they are a war on coal it is a sad day in WV when a coal miner has to be ashamed of what he does
William,
It’s true that there are separate federal and state laws that govern surface coal mining — if you don’t like that, you could lobby your lawmakers to eliminate SMCRA (Some of West Virginia’s delegation might actually like that notion).
But the point is, if you read the paper cited in that previous post on Coal Tattoo, there are reasons that surface coal mining is governed by separate laws.
As an aside, I don’t believe anyone on this blog suggested that you or any other coal miner should be ashamed of what you do for a living. If you can point me to a specific example of that sort of a comment, please do.
Ken.
I am not an engineer, but I imagine there are many good reasons for having different laws for highways than for surface mines. The two might seem the same, but valley fills from mining are often much larger. You don’t see a 30-, or 50-million cubic yard fill for a highway, not for a single fill. Except maybe on the King Coal Highway segments that have already been built, or other highways that have been put on strip mines. I’d like to know of a regular highway that has fills that size?
Anyway, the EPA has nothing to do with the laws that govern how a valley fill is built. That, as Ken Ward has pointed out, is under the SMCRA law, which is overseen and administered by the federal and state Office of Surface Mining.
So: 1. EPA is not singling out mining, they look hard at highway projects, too. And
2. Even if they were, they would probably be justified because the impacts of mining are much greater cumulatively than for highway projects.
The end of the Holiday Season in Mingo County means its time for grandparents to say good bye to their grandchildren as their parents return to their jobs in North Carolina, Ohio, and elsewhere. How many times has a sainted mother lamented that they wish there children could find work at home, only God knows.
What is President Obama’s EPA really accomplishing in Mingo County? After delaying the project the result will be fewer acres of developable land for job creation, housing, and roads. All this without compensation for its loss.
How can the federal government damage our economy without paying subsidy payments? Consider the timber industry for example.
Ken, what is going on with EPA’s mining budget? I have heard all kinds of horror stories about it getting axed.