Since opening our doors on September 1, 2001 we have achieved significant success, including:
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Nationalizing the issue of mountaintop removal mining by challenging illegal mines through litigation, serving as a resource for the media, and fighting a proposed federal rule change that would make it legal, for the first time, to fill streams with mining waste.
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Forcing a coal-fired power plant operator to
enter into a precedent setting consent decree in the first
ever Clean Air Act appeal of a permit for a new coal-fired
power plant in West Virginia. The consent decree requires
the plant to use the most advanced and protective technology
of any plant in the country.
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In the summer of 2004, winning a
precedent-setting permanent injunction from a federal
district court that protects communities by banning the Army
Corps of Engineers' use of a General §404 (Clean Water Act)
permit to authorize huge mountaintop removal mines.
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Successfully suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to stop it from illegally weakening West Virginia's antidegradation rule, a central portion of the Clean Water Act.
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Causing agencies to conduct the first ever programmatic environmental impact statement on mountaintop removal coal mining and valley fills;
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Bringing a federal court action that resulted in coal operators being required to pay tens of millions of dollars to guarantee complete reclamation at mine sites;
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Stopping, for the time being, the largest mountaintop removal mine ever proposed;
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Convincing agencies to write more protective water pollution discharge permits for hundreds of coal mines;
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Significantly reducing impacts from a long-wall coal mine that would have destroyed a native trout stream flowing into the North Branch of the Potomac River;
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Threatening legal action against a large poultry processing company that resulted in 1.5 million dollar expenditure to clean up stormwater discharges that were contaminating the Potomac.
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Filing the first ever Clean Air Act appeal of a permit for a new coal-fired power plant in WV.
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Introducing a road map to reforest nearly one million acres of previously mined land in Central Appalachia and establishing a broad coalition of citizens, timber companies, coal companies, environmental groups, and state agencies committed to reforestation.
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Strengthening our relationships with local, state, regional and national environmental groups through outreach to local activists and our expertise in coal mining and water issues.
