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This news story originally provided by
The
Charleston Gazette
By Ken Ward Jr.
Staff writer
Damage to streams and forests from mountaintop removal coal
mining is far from minimal, lawyers for environmental groups have
told a federal appeals court.
Lawyers for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and other
groups urged the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a
federal court ruling to make mining permits harder to get.
The Bush administration and the coal industry are appealing a
series of rulings by U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin in
Charleston.
Goodwin ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could not
authorize new mining jobs through a streamlined permit process meant
for activities that cause minimal environmental harm.
In a brief filed Wednesday, environmental group lawyers listed a
variety of statistics about mountaintop removal damage from a
federal government study of the issue:
From 1992 to 2002, mountaintop removal and associated valley
fills in Appalachia destroyed 1,208 miles of streams and 380,547
acres of forest.
If past, present and future disturbance is combined, strip
mining will impact more than 1.4 million acres of Appalachia.
Since 2002 alone, 11 specific permits issued by the corps and
challenged by environmentalists would destroy 26 miles of streams.
“It is difficult to imagine any agency, no matter how delusional,
could conclude that this amount of destruction is minimal or
insignificant,” lawyers Jim Hecker and Joe Lovett wrote in their
61-page brief.
Since 2001, the Richmond, Va.-based 4th Circuit — dubbed the
nation’s most conservative appeals court by The New York Times —
twice overturned rulings by the late U.S. District Judge Charles H.
Haden II to force more strict regulation of mountaintop removal.
As with Haden’s two rulings, the case before Goodwin deals with
complicated questions about how the federal Clean Water Act applies
to strip mining.
Specifically, Goodwin examined the corps’ historic practice of
approving valley fill waste piles through a Clean Water Act
authorization called Nationwide Permit 21, or NWP 21.
Under the law, such permits are supposed to be used only to
approve categories of activities that, cumulatively, would have
minimal environmental effect.
In October 2003, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Coal
River Mountain Watch and the Natural Resources Defense Council sued
the corps over this practice. Lawyers for those groups argued that
the corps could only approve valley fills through individual
permits, which receive more detailed reviews.
In a July 8 ruling, Goodwin ruled that the corps had never
concluded that valley fills caused only minimal adverse impacts.
Without such a finding, the judge said, the corps cannot use NWP 21
for any mining permits.
The 4th Circuit has not scheduled oral arguments in the case.
To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call
348-1702.
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