From Corp Watch: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15835
by Puck Lo,
April 25th, 2013
A subsidiary of Arch Coal of St. Louis, Missouri, has been denied permission to dump nearly three billion cubic feet of dirt into local headwater streams after blowing up a mountain in West Virginia. The object was to extract coal from a project known as the Spruce No. 1 Surface Mine.
Arch Coal, the second largest coal producer in the U.S., sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2010 when the agency vetoed a mining permit that had been approved in 2006. The EPA said that new studies published since the permit had been issued showed potential harm to the area’s water quality.
A landmark decision issued Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the EPA was within its rights to revoke water permits after another agency had issuing them.
“This is a major milestone in the fight to end the destructive practice of mountaintop removal mining,” Mary Anne Hitt, Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign director, wrote. “Today’s ruling affirms EPA’s authority to ensure the safety of our waterways and the health of our communities, including by vetoing improper permits issued by the Army Corps of Engineers.”
“The damage from this project would be irreversible,” said Shawn Garvin, the Mid-Atlantic regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which has issued an order to stop the project. “EPA has a duty under the law to protect water quality and safeguard the people who rely on these waters for drinking, fishing and swimming.”
Mountaintop Coal Removal
What Arch Coal was proposing is a relatively new technology called mountaintop coal removal which has often been described as “strip mining on steroids.” Forests are razed and burned. Age-old rocks are blasted through. Giant, 20-story tall shovels and bulldozers tear into the remaining mountain, filling one 240-ton dump truck at a time. Once exposed, the embedded coal seams are carted off for processing.
The remaining rubble is dumped into surrounding valleys, submerging streams and rivers. Toxic chemicals used in the mining process, as well as naturally occurring minerals that are dangerous for wildlife and human consumption, leach out from the debris into the waterways. So far, at least 2,200 square miles (5,632 square kilometers) of the Appalachian mountain ranges have been obliterated, and 1,200 miles (1,920 kilometers) of streams have been buried, according to the EPA.
Continue reading at: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15835
