This news story originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

Massey engineer changed permit map

By Ken Ward Jr.
Staff writer

A Massey Energy engineer testified Tuesday that he altered the permit boundary shown on official maps when the company sought approval for a new coal silo near a Raleigh County elementary school.

Paul McCombs, an engineer for Massey’s Goals Coal subsidiary, said he expanded the map boundary to match what he believed the real permit area should have been, based on a field examination at the site.

McCombs told the state Surface Mine Board that he did not seek state Department of Environmental Protection approval for the changes, or notify the DEP that he had made the changes.

“No, I didn’t make a report,” McCombs said during cross-examination by DEP lawyer Perry McDaniel.

McCombs took the stand near the end of a daylong hearing on Massey’s appeal of a DEP order that blocked construction of the silo.

Massey lawyers Terry Sammons and Bob McLusky appeared ready to end their case, but called McCombs to the stand after huddling briefly outside the hearing room.

The revelations from McCombs explained part of the controversial problems with the Goals Coal maps. But the engineer’s testimony did not indicate why other company permit maps — dating back to at least 1998 — indicate a repeated expansion of the permit boundary.

For most of the day Tuesday, Massey presented expert witnesses who blamed any mapping discrepancies on the poor quality of earlier mine maps and inaccuracies created by enlarging those maps or changing them to computer format.

Tom Michael, the board chairman, was not convinced by the explanations.

“I haven’t heard anyone tell me where the western boundary is so far,” Michael said.

Lance Rankin, one of Massey’s experts, replied, “I cannot sit here and tell you exactly where that boundary is.”

Surface Mine Board members will decide if the DEP was right to revoke the Goals Coal permit last July.

When the hearing continues this morning, DEP mining director Randy Huffman and Keith Porterfield, an agency field office chief, are expected to take the stand to explain that decision.

At Sundial, Goals Coal operates a large coal processing and shipping facility adjacent to Marsh Fork Elementary School.

The 168-foot-tall silo — the second of two such structures at the site — would be less than 300 feet from the school, and a huge coal-waste impoundment sits just upstream from the school building.

The DEP revoked the silo permit after the Gazette revealed that agency permit maps showed it was proposed to be built outside the operation’s original permit boundary.

Under state and federal law, no new mining operations are allowed within 300 feet of a school.

Initially, the DEP said that the Massey site was exempt from the rule because the area was part of a permit boundary before the 1977 federal strip mine law was passed. Later, a DEP-funded survey found that the silo that has already been built is also outside the legal permit area.

DEP has declined to take any action over that silo.

During opening statements and in questioning witnesses, McLusky argued that permit markers at the Goals site — not maps the company filed with the DEP — are the key indicators of the permit boundary.

McDaniel, and Joe Lovett, a lawyer for the citizens group Coal River Mountain Watch, disagreed.

“We have a map, and that map is controlling in this case,” Lovett told the board.

“I think these markers are irrelevant. What matters are the maps.”

But McCombs, who certified the accuracy of numerous Goals Coal maps over the last five years, testified that he changed the maps to meet what he saw on the ground at the Sundial site.

When McCombs testified, Sammons questioned him repeatedly about numerous versions of permit maps from various years.

Sammons flipped back and forth between the maps, and board members said that they did not really follow McCombs’ testimony until he was cross-examined by McDaniel and Lovett and questioned by board members themselves.

McCombs explained that he visited the site prior to seeking the second silo approval in early 2005.

When he did, he saw a rock wall, a road and a berm that he believed were clearly in a “disturbed area” that he felt should have been part of the company’s permit.

“It’s important to reflect on your maps the disturbance in the field and that’s what I was doing,” McCombs said. “It was changing the maps to reflect what disturbance I saw in the field, not to do anything to allow me to put silos in where people think they ought not to be.”

DEP officials interviewed McCombs before they revoked the silo permit last July. At the time, McCombs did not reveal that he altered the mapped permit boundary.

McCombs testified Tuesday that he realized he made the change only after looking into the matter further, several months after that meeting with the DEP.

“I didn’t realize it had changed,” McCombs said.

“I didn’t realize why that change went about until I did some research.”