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This news story originally provided by The Charleston Gazette
WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS — The Bush administration moved Thursday
to appeal the latest in a series of federal court rulings to limit
mountaintop removal coal mining.
Lawyers for the Army Corps of Engineers appealed the July 8
ruling by U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin to the 4th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.
The formal notice of appeal was filed Thursday morning in federal
court in Huntington.
By noon, President Bush’s top environmental adviser was
announcing the action during a luncheon at the 68th annual state
Business Summit at The Greenbrier.
James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on
Environmental Quality, said that Goodwin’s ruling “put a halt to
work West Virginia coal miners do for their communities.”
Asked what miners were affected by the decision, Connaughton
said, “This decision prevented moving forward with projects that
had been approved but not yet started.”
The announcement comes as a television ad by a group with ties to
the White House criticizes Democratic presidential candidate John
Kerry for voting in 1999 not to overturn a previous decision by
then-U.S. District Judge Charles H. Haden II to limit mountaintop
removal.
Twice, the 4th Circuit — considered the most conservative
federal appeals court in the country — overturned Haden decisions
to curb mining abuses.
In his decision, Goodwin said the corps could no longer approve
mining valley fills through a streamlined permit process meant only
for activities that cause minor environmental damage.
Rather than these “general” or “nationwide” permits,
Goodwin said, coal companies must go through individual permit
reviews when they propose to bury streams with waste dirt and rock.
The judge ruled with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and
ordered the corps not to issue new Clean Water Act permit for valley
fills in Southern West Virginia without individual reviews.
Originally, the judge also told the corps to suspend
“general” permits for 11 existing operations if they had not yet
started valley fill construction.
A month later, on Aug. 13, Goodwin expanded that part of his
ruling to suspend all such permits where construction of valley
fills had not started as of the July 8 date of his original ruling.
In a court filing last week, coal industry lawyer Bob McLusky
complained that the expanded order’s “retroactive effect will
have a significant and inequitable impact on the mining industry in
West Virginia.
“By forcing many dozen operators simultaneously to seek
individual permits, the court has practically guaranteed that the
corps’ administrators will be unable to process applications for
individual permits in a timely manner, thereby forcing the closure
of some operations,” McLusky wrote.
McLusky added that Goodwin “has — perhaps unintentionally —
unfairly visited the threat of economic ruin on many coal operators
who have expended millions of dollars on equipment and leases in
reliance on their corps authorizations.”
Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, said
that work is being done to determine how many miners would be
affected.
In a prepared statement Thursday, assistant Attorney General
Thomas L. Sansonetti said that Goodwin’s decision “will
substantially curtail production of West Virginia coal that is low
in sulfur and, therefore, less polluting.
“Although the mining companies may still apply for individual
permits under the Clean Water Act ... [the ruling] prevents the
corps from effectively using a less burdensome and more streamlined
statutory program that has been in place since 1984,” Sansonetti
said.
“The administration remains committed to protecting human
health and the environment in all mining authorizations, but
believes that the court erroneously invalidated a key tool in
regulating mining projects.”
Sansonetti also complained that Goodwin’s ruling, “means
there are now inconsistent standards for coal mining in the U.S.”
Goodwin limited his ruling to the federal court district in
Southern West Virginia. “In contrast, the order does not affect
coal mining in any other portion of West Virginia or any other
state,” Sansonetti said.
In June, however, Bush administration lawyers argued that any
ruling by Goodwin would have to be even narrower.
“It is ironic that the Justice Department criticizes the
court’s decision for creating inconsistent standards in different
parts of the country, when the government itself urged the court to
limit its injunction in this case to Southern West Virginia, where
the plaintiffs lived and the challenged mines were located,” said
Jim Hecker, a lawyer from Trial Lawyers for Public Justice who
represented environmentalists in the case.
Joe Lovett, another of the citizen group lawyers, said the Bush
administration “is making a mistake by sending the chief bigwig of
its Council on Environmental Quality down here to politicize its
appeal of Judge Goodwin’s order.
“We know that West Virginians oppose efforts to weaken the laws
that protect our mountains and streams, and I am just sorry that the
Bush administration is more interested in rewarding its contributors
in the coal industry than in carrying out the wishes of the great
majority of the state’s citizens,” Lovett said.
Through early August, the Bush campaign had received more than
$230,000 in contributions from the coal industry, according to the
Center for Responsive Politics.
So far this election cycle, the coal industry has contributed
$1.7 million to federal campaigns. Almost all of that money — $1.5
million of it — has gone to Republicans.
The biggest coal contributors so far have been Peabody Energy,
$540,000; Drummond Coal, $200,000; and Arch Coal, $121,000.
The share of coal industry contributions going to Republicans has
greatly increased, from about 62 percent in 1992 to 92 percent this
election, the center reports.
To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call
348-1702.
To contact staff writer Paul Wilson, use e-mail or call 348-1798.
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