One of the largest projects ever proposed to mine for coal by stripping the tops off mountains in Appalachia, West Virginia, received a major set back last week.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator for areas including West Virginia, Shawn M. Garvin, has <a href=“”https://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/Garvin%20recommendation%20Spruce%201.pdf">recommended the project be stopped because it will cause “unacceptable” environmental damage.
The EPA is expected to decide whether to allow the project to continue by the end of the year, but analysts think it is likely to follow Garvin’s recommendation. The coal industry and conservation groups regard the EPA’s decision as a bellwether for future mountain-top mining policy.
Reuters reports the EPA saying, “It is important to emphasize that this is only one step in the process”.
The US Army Corps of Engineers granted Arch Coal, a mining company, which has its headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri, permission to go ahead with the project in 2007. But the EPA, which has powers to veto permits issued by the Corps, has delayed its verdict because of concerns about the environmental impacts of the project, in particular water pollution.
Arch Coal says that it will defend its permit. “If the EPA proceeds with its unlawful veto … West Virginia’s economy and future tax base will suffer a serious blow,” the company told Reuters.
Mountain-top mining is widespread in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and southwestern Virginia. To expose seams of coal, mining companies strip away forests and break up rock with explosives. The rubble is dumped in the valleys burying streams, polluting water and killing wildlife. (See Nature’s story.)
The proposed project, known as the Spruce 1 mine, would bury over 7 miles of streams and disturb over 2000 acres of forest, says Garvin’s recommendation, which was published on 15 October, but was sent internally to the EPA headquarters on 24 September. The project would have “unacceptable adverse effects on wildlife” and its plan for mitigating environmental damage is “unlikely” to offset these impacts, Garvin says.
Environmental groups have welcomed the move.
Joan Mulhern, senior legislative counsel, at Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, says, “All of the science that we have alerts us that this mining practice is killing life and that it is harmful to communities.”
“For too long, mountaintop removal mining has made Appalachia into a national sacrifice zone for the polluting dirty energy industry,” she says.
“The Spruce 1 mine permit must be fully vetoed, and the EPA must follow that with a strong policy that honors the Clean Water Act and finally ends mountaintop removal mining,” she adds.
Tierra Curry, a biologist at the Center for Biological Diversity in Arizona, a campaign group and think tank, says, “Although they’ve made a lot of noise about it, the EPA has yet to save a single mountaintop from the devastation of mountaintop removal. This is the agency’s chance to walk their talk and prevent further loss of wildlife habitat and drinking water in a county that has already lost 15% of its land to surface coal mining.”