Stop In the Name of Law

EPA says pending mountaintop-removal permits would likely violate Clean Water Act 9

This post co-written by Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign.

Very big news out of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this morning:  The agency has determined that all 79 mountaintop-removal mining permits submitted to it for review by the Army Corps of Engineers would violate the Clean Water Act. After eight long years of rubber-stamp permits being issued during the Bush administration, this is one of the most dramatic and encouraging actions yet by the Obama administration, and marks a welcome return of the rule of law to the coalfields of Appalachia.

Mountaintop removal—a devastating form of coal mining that involves blowing up mountains and dumping the former mountaintops into neighboring valleys, burying streams—is governed by a patchwork of laws and federal agencies. Permits to bury streams with mining waste are initially issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, but EPA has ultimate oversight and may veto Corps-issued permits if they fail to comply with the Clean Water Act. 

During the Bush administration, EPA never opposed or challenged a permit, despite the fact that they clearly violated laws on the books to protect clean water and public health. Apparently, those days are over. This dramatic announcement by EPA that every single one of the 79 pending permits violates the Clean Water Act is a condemnation of the quality of permits being churned out during the Bush administration and is a testament to the Obama administration’s sincere commitment to science, transparency, and enforcing environmental safeguards.

All of these permits had piled up behind a court decision that was issued in February, and so most of them were written during the Bush administration. For those eight years, permits were being issued that violated the Clean Water Act, but EPA was prevented from objecting to the permits. Clearly there is a new sheriff in town.

It is important to note that this is only the first step in this process. These mountains have not been saved. The Army Corps now has 60 days to revise the permits and address EPA’s concerns. In our view, a sound reading of the science would determine that these permits cannot be issued. Some of the problems that are pervasive in all of these permits—heavy metal pollution downstream, the inability to restore healthy functioning streams to replace what has been lost—are problems that we just cannot engineer our way out of once a stream has been buried under millions of tons of rubble.

And ultimately, the Obama administration needs to take the step of reversing Bush-era rule changes that remain in place. Until President Obama fixes both the fill rule, under the Clean Water Act, and the buffer zone rule, under the Surface Mining Act, Appalachia will continue to suffer destruction under Bush’s regulatory regime. You can encourage the Obama administration to take those actions here.

Today’s announcement is just the latest stark reminder of the fact that, for too long, the coal industry has benefited from loopholes that no other industry enjoys. They bury streams with mining waste in violation of the Clean Water Act. They still lack any federal regulations for mercury pollution, a potent neurotoxin. They are allowed to dispose of toxic waste from their power plants—coal ash—again, with no federal regulations. It is time to close these loopholes, protect public health, and return the rule of law not just to Appalachia, but to all of America.

 

Bruce Nilles is the director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, the largest component of Sierra Club’s new Climate Recovery Partnerships. The Beyond Coal Campaign is working to reduce America’s over reliance on coal, slash coal’s contribution to global warming and other pollution woes, end destructive mining, and secure massive investments in clean energy alternatives.

Bruce joined the Sierra Club in 2002. He previously worked as a staff attorney for Earthjustice’s San Francisco office, and during the Clinton Administration as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division in Washington D.C. He received his J.D. and B.S. degrees from the University of Wisconsin.

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  1. skitters Posted 12:17 pm
    11 Sep 2009

    Good on the EPA to move past the 8 years of lax protection and take a a stand against a huge energy industry.  hopefully thier recomendation is heeded. 

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  2. neosapiens Posted 12:27 pm
    11 Sep 2009

    Allowing coal mining operations to get away with gross violation of environmental standards is one of the ways that coal has been unfairly subsidized. It shifts the burden of cost from consumers of electric power to the people who live near the mines and suffer the health and economic impacts of mining. Making the mining companies operate safely puts the cost burden back where it belongs--on the electric rate payers. The closer coal-burning gets to its true cost, the more motivated power companies will be to look for alternatives and more motivated consumers will be to conserve. Artifically low electric rates just encourage waste. Will some people at the low end of the income scale need help adjusting? Of course. But that isn't an excuse to keep on poisoning people who happen to live near mining operations.

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    1. Tyler Durden Posted 7:06 pm
      12 Sep 2009

      Right on, couldn't have said it better myself.  Nothing should be cheap except food, it encourages needless consumption.  (I would say cheap food encourages overpopulation, but the evidence does not support that.)

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  3. randino Posted 12:31 pm
    11 Sep 2009

    That is what is happening on the playing field.  Let us see what happens in the parking lot as powerful coal state politicians move to hold the health care plan hostage to saving MTR mining.  Bet on it.Randy Cunningham 

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    1. Tyler Durden Posted 7:13 pm
      12 Sep 2009

      Yeah, I wouldn't put it past the slimeballs who run the insurance industry to try that.  Being an environmentalist, the choice would be a no brainer for me.  But realizing that real environmentalists are probably less than 5% of the U.S. population, we wouldn't stand a chance.And unfortunately, Obama is turning out to be a very weak president.  Starting out by begging for a compromise and insisting on idiotic bipartisanship (would you insist on bipartisanship with Nazis; why do it with Republicans) is no way to get "change we can believe in" or get anything else substantial done.

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  4. Tasermons Partner Posted 7:03 pm
    11 Sep 2009

    Thank you!

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  5. Honeybeez Posted 2:03 pm
    12 Sep 2009

    The coal companies have were doing strip mining for decades and undoing the rules is just the beginning of the fight to reverse this horrible detruction of the Appalachian Mountains.  The electic companies are in partnership with Big Coal and there will be no such thing as taking away their major source of cheap coal without a big fight.  They will hold the American people hostage by threatening loss of electricity.

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  6. Rmoen Posted 2:05 pm
    12 Sep 2009

    Kudos to the EPA.  Coal is dirty and nasty. It destroys our land when it's strip-mined and messes up the globe when it's burned.

    -- Robert Moen, http://www.energyplanUSA.com

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  7. Tyler Durden Posted 7:18 pm
    12 Sep 2009

    As some other posters on this thread have said, I'll believe it when I see it.  There are no doubt many people in the EPA who want to do the right thing and have been prevented from doing it during the Bush/Cheney administration.  But Obama is not progressive and seems to be a very weak president who has no idea how to get things done over objections of powerful industries.  Add to those facts that Obama is a coal industry supporter, and this story seems to merely hold out false hope.

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