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This news story originally provided by
The Charleston Gazette
By Ken Ward Jr.
Staff writer
Gov. Joe Manchin on Wednesday defended his
administration’s handling of the controversy over two new
Massey Energy coal-storage silos in Raleigh County.
Manchin said that he has not lost any confidence in the
state Department of Environmental Protection.
“I’m not shaken at this point at all,” the governor said
in an interview. “They’ve jumped right in to try to fix the
situation.”
Manchin said that he was proud that DEP officials did not
hesitate to admit they had made a mistake and moved quickly
to suspend a permit for one of the two Massey silos.
“I’m not in a vigilante, witch-hunt mode trying to
chastise them,” Manchin said.
“I told them if there was an error to correct it,” he
said. “They are making every effort to correct as
expeditiously as possible whatever problems are out there.”
On Wednesday, DEP officials offered no new information on
their investigation into permits for the Massey subsidiary
Goals Coal Co. operation.
“We’re trying to get all the facts and see where we are,”
said Keith Porterfield, a deputy director with the DEP
Division of Mining and Reclamation.
Last Friday, the DEP suspended a permit for Massey to
build a second, 168-foot-tall coal silo just 220 feet from
the property line of Marsh Fork Elementary School near
Sundial.
The DEP also hired a surveying crew to help agency
officials determine for sure if the silos are within the
company’s legal permit boundary.
Under state and federal law, no new mining operations are
allowed within 300 feet of a school.
In 2003 and again last month, DEP Secretary Stephanie
Timmermeyer — a holdover from the Wise administration —
approved the Massey silos anyway. Agency officials said that
the silos were exempt from the 300-foot limit because they
were within the permit boundary of an operation that existed
prior to passage of the federal Surface Mining Control and
Reclamation Act on Aug. 3, 1977.
But maps that Goals Coal filed with the DEP showed that
one silo has been built and the other was under construction
on land that appears to have been slowly added to the
company’s legal mine boundary over the last eight years.
Massey never specifically asked for the permit changes,
and the DEP never approved them. Instead, the changes just
showed up on maps that company engineers filed periodically
with the DEP.
When they approved the two silos, DEP reviewers did not
go back to the original company maps to compare the permit
boundaries.
During a meeting on Friday, agency officials said that
they were unaware of the map changes until The Charleston
Gazette pointed out the problems.
On Wednesday, Manchin said that Timmermeyer told him that
DEP staffers discovered the map problems on their own, as
part of a review ordered by the governor.
“I was just told that there was an error in the maps,”
Manchin said.
On July 5, the governor had ordered the DEP to review its
permit approval for the Goals Coal site. Manchin got
involved to end a sit-in protest on the Capitol steps by Ed
Wiley, whose granddaughter attends Marsh Fork Elementary.
The DEP review, though, did not originally include going
back to examine the older permit maps for the operation.
Joe Lovett, a lawyer with the Appalachian Center for the
Economy and the Environment, said that a law student
interning at his office also brought the map changes to the
DEP’s attention.
“The DEP was completely unaware of it,” Lovett said. “DEP
didn’t have a clue about it.”
In a notice of intent to sue, filed on behalf of the
group Coal River Mountain Watch, Lovett alleged that the
silo approval “is part of a pattern and practice” by the DEP
of “promoting the interests of coal operators at the expense
of the state’s citizens and natural environment.”
Manchin said that his main concern is the safety of the
Marsh Fork students. But, he said, he has to trust DEP to
protect those students.
“I’m not knowledgeable enough in the process to jump in
there and try to micromanage,” Manchin said. “I’ve got to
rely on the people we have.”
To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or
call 348-1702.
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