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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials today announced the gigantic news that they have formally moved to veto the Clean Water Act permit for the largest mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia history.

Details of the action are just now coming out, but EPA has been warning since early September that it would do this if the federal Army Corps of Engineers and Arch Coal Inc. officials did not do more to reduce the environmental impacts of the company’s proposed Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County, W.Va.

In a statement just issued, EPA said:

EPA is taking this action because it is concerned about the magnitude, scale, and severity of the direct, indirect, and cumulative adverse environmental and water quality impacts associated with this project . The Spruce Mine as currently configured would bury more than seven miles of streams.

I’ve posted a copy of EPA regional administrator Bill Early’s letter to Corps of Engineers District Commander Robert D. Peterson here.

Early wrote the letter to inform Peterson that EPA plans to issue a public notice that it has determined the Spruce Mine, as currently designed, “may result in unacceptable adverse impacts to fish and wildlife resources.” Under the law, that notice is EPA’s first step toward officially vetoing the Corps’ approval of this highly controversial permit.

In the letter, Early explained:

We are taking this unusual step in response to our very serious concerns regarding the scale and extent of significant environmental and water quality impacts associated with the Spruce No. 1 Mine … 

The Spruce No. 1 Mine represents the largest authorized mountaintop removal operation in Appalachia and occurs in a watershed where many streams have been impacted by previous mining activities.

While we recognize that the project has been modified to reduce projected impacts, the project will still bury more than seven miles of streams and additional analyses by EPA and in a TMDL by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and approved by EPA provide evidence that there is the potential for its associated discharges to cause further stream degradation.

This move by EPA is certain to draw more attacks on the agency from Gov. Joe Manchin, other West Virginia political leaders and the mining industry. But let’s remember that the veto of the Spruce Mine permit comes just a day after EPA revealed that it had reached a deal with Patriot Mining that should allow that company to move forward with a huge permit to expand its Hobet 21 complex along the Boone-Lincoln County line.

In addition, Early emphasized in his letter to the Corps that, because of “the magnitude and scale of anticipated direct, indirect, and cumulative adverse environmental impacts associated wit this mountaintop removal mining operation” EPA’s move to veto the project:

… Represents an unusual set of circumstances we do not expect to be repeated again.

Environmental groups have been fighting the Spruce Mine since 1998, when it was proposed as a 3,113-acre mine that would bury more than 10 miles of streams in the Pigeonroost Hollow area near Blair. Arch Coal had proposed it as a continuation of its Dal-Tex mountaintop removal operation.

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This weekend’s West Virginia Book Festival here in Charleston has plenty for everybody, even for folks interested in the coal industry.

On Saturday morning, our friends Wess Harris  and Penny Loeb will present a program called When Documentaries are Not Enough, in which they discuss making a non-fiction book into a feature film, including the limitations of documentary film and the process of dramatization.

Penny, of course,  wrote the incredible 1997 U.S. News and World Report  expose on mountaintop removal and is author of the book Moving Mountains: How One Woman And Her Community Won Justice from Big Coal.  More of her work is available on her Web site, WV Coalfield. And Wess published When Miners March, about the Battle of Blair Mountain.

My guess is coal might come up a time or two in their discussion …

Their Saturday session starts at 10 a.m. The Book Festival is over at the Charleston Civic Center, and the complete schedule is online here.

Roland Micklem, left, 81, of Richmond, Va., leads a group senior citizen’s on a 25 mile march to protest mountaintop removal Thursday, Oct. 8, 2009 in Charleston, W.Va. Micklem intends to lead a group on a five day march from the capitol in Charleston to the gates of Massey energy owned Mammoth MTR site in Kanawha County. (AP Photo/Jeff Gentner)

Eight environmental activists between 50 and 83 years old began the first leg of a five-day, 25-mile march today to protest mountaintop removal mining practices they believe are destroying communities and lives across southern West Virginia.

Vicki Smith from The Associated Press has the story:

 Led by 81-year-old military veteran Roland Micklem of Savannah, N.Y., the toes of his black boots held together with duct tape, the group set out from the gold-domed Capitol, heading east along the Kanawha River with about a dozen younger supporters.

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No word yet today from EPA on its “initial list” of mountaintop removal permits it wants to more closely review (the list was due to be made public Tuesday) … but the politicians continue to weigh in on coal’s side in the Obama administration’s effort to block the largest strip-mining permit in West Virginia history.

A little while ago, U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., joined West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin  in blasting the Obama EPA for urging the federal Army Corps of Engineers to revoke the nearly 2,300-acre permit to mine in Pigeonroost Hollow near Blair in Logan County, W.Va.

In his two-page letter  to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Rockefeller expressed “grave concern” about the agency’s move:

Such an action not only affects this specific permit, but would also needlessly create great uncertainty surrounding other currently operational permits.

Rockefeller took the unusual action — for a member of the Senate — of encouraging a specific action by a regulatory agency on a specific matter pending before that agency (and also pending before a federal judge), telling Jackson that EPA should “retract” the agency’s Sept. 3 letter to the Corps and “to remove any further impediments to this mining operation.  In a handwritten note at the end of the letter, Rockefeller said:

Obviously, I feel more than strongly about this matter. It needs to be corrected.

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Last week, I reported on Gov. Joe Manchin’s appointment of a former coal industry lobbyist to fill a seat on West Virginia’s Surface Mine Board reserved for someone who “represents the general public interest.”

At the time, Manchin had not yet filled another important vacancy on this supposedly “multi-interest” board — the one set aside for someone with “significant experience in the advocacy of environmental protection.”

That changed  late last week, when the governor named former state Sen. Jon Blair Hunter to fill the board vacancy created by the resignation of longtime Chairman Tom Michael.

Hunter, a Democrat, served three terms from Monongalia County and was considered a solid pro-environment vote. As Don Garvin, lead lobbyist for the West Virginia Environmental Council, recounted here, Hunter dared to take on the coal lobby by sponsoring legislation that would ban mountaintop removal coal mining. And during the 2008 session, Hunter engineered the unthinkable: A hearing before a West Virginia legislative committee that actually talked about the damaging environmental impacts of mountaintop removal.

Late last week — just before the Labor Day holiday — the Obama administration EPA issued a mountaintop removal bombshell: A major letter that blasts a whole host of problems with the largest strip-mining permit ever issued in the state of West Virginia.

EPA experts have concluded that the mine, as currently designed and permitted, would violate the federal Clean Water Act. They’ve urged the Army Corps of Engineers to suspend, revoke or modify the permit. In response, Corps lawyers have asked U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers for a 30-day stay in legal proceedings over this permit, to give Corps staffers time to re-examine the project.

I’ve posted a copy of the EPA letter to the Corps here, and a copy of the Corps’ legal motion here. The letter was dated last Thursday and the legal motion was filed the following day.

In the five-page letter, EPA experts express grave concerns about the mine’s “potential to degrade downstream water quality, and to cause or contribute to potential excursions of West Virginia’s narrative water quality standards.”

EPA also cautioned that “additional valley fill minimization techniques such as further backstacking material on-site where appropriate, inclusion of sidehill fills with stream relocations, or other design modifications to ameliorate water quality impacts need serious consideration” from the company.

And, EPA said that “scientific and field observations strongly suggest that compensatory mitigation measures heretofore accepted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, such as on-site stream creation, may not result in functional replacement with specific performance criteria.”

Read on for more on the EPA letter …

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Following up on yesterday’s story about Blair Mountain coming off the National Register of Historic Places, here’s the text of the letter sent by the feds to the Manchin administration on this issue:

Mr. Randall Reid-Smith

West Virginia Division of Culture and History

The Cultural Center

1900 Kanawha Blvd. East

Charleston, WV 25305-0300

 

Dear Mr. Smith:

This letter is in response to your letter of April 6, 2009, in which you alerted me to objections that were unintentionally not counted prior to the March 30, 2009, listing of Blair Mountain Battlefield in the National Register of Historic Places.  Based on the information you provided, particularly the property owners and objections list dated May 21, 2009, we concur with your determination that more than 50% of the owners objected to the National Register listing and, therefore, the property should be “considered eligible” for listing in the National Register, rather than listed in the National Register.

In your letter of April 6, you stated that the number of objections increased from 22 to 30 when recounted, with the total number of property owners remaining 57.  Attorneys for the Department of the Interior determined that the objection submitted by Loretta White cannot be counted, because she has a life estate in a property, rather than fee simple ownership.  Nevertheless, 29 objections constitute more than 50% of the 57 owners (or 56 owners if the owner of Loretta White’s property is already on the owners list).  We consider the erroneous counting to constitute a procedural error, as discussed in 36 CFR 60.15(a)(4).

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This just in from our friends at The Associated Press:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Blair Mountain Battlefield is coming off the National Register of Historic Places.Jacqueline Proctor with the West Virginia Division of Culture and History said Monday that the 1,600-acre site likely will be removed from the list sometime next month.

State officials were informally notified of the change on Thursday. Official notification is in the mail.

Following a public notice and 30-day comment period, the Logan County site of a bloody battle over union organizing in 1921 will be designated as eligible for listing.

The site was placed on the register in March. Efforts to remove it began after the number of objections was corrected to 30 of the 57 affected property owners.

Federal rules bar listing on the register if a majority oppose it.

See previous posts here, here and here.

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In this photo distributed by the Xinhua news agency, a rescuer walks by the entrance to a coal mine where a colliery gas burst at Tonghua Coal Mine in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality, on Saturday May 30, 2009. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Liu Chan)

Earlier this week, at least 30 people were killed and 101 miners rescued after an illegal mining practice triggered an explosion that ripped through a coal mine in south-western China. Reports are available from China Daily, the Times of India, and the U.K. Telegraph.

There’s also raw video (without a translation of the narration) via AP:

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In response to a recent reader post asking what the United Mine Workers of America’s position on listing Blair Mountain on the National Register of Historic Places, this just came in from Phil Smith, the UMW’s chief media spokesman:

The UMWA supports the listing of Blair Mountain on the National Register of Historic Places. As you and others have pointed out, the UMWA has long supported national recognition of Blair Mountain. UMWA President Roberts has spoken on several occasions about the need for national historic recognition of Blair Mountain, including sending a letter of support for naming the battlefield as a national historic site in 2006. The union was pleased to see the designation by the Keeper of the NRHP last month.