|
This news article originally provided by
The
Charleston Gazette
HUNTINGTON — Maria Gunnoe has lived most of her life at her
family homeplace, at the mouth of Big Branch near Bob White in Boone
County.
Gunnoe fished in the streams, played in the creeks and picnicked
at family reunions on nearby Cazy Mountain.
The last few years, Gunnoe has lived with flooding and water
pollution that she blames on Magnum Coal’s mountaintop removal
operation up the hollow.
“It has devastated our property,” Gunnoe told a federal judge
Wednesday.
Gunnoe and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition want to block
Magnum from continuing to mine. Company officials say they need a
new valley fill, or the mine will close. Up to 219 workers could
lose their jobs.
On Wednesday, the coalition, Coal River Mountain Watch and the
West Virginia Highlands Conservancy asked U.S. District Judge Robert
C. Chambers for a temporary restraining order to block the mining.
More than 100 people packed Chambers’ courtroom in Huntington.
The group split, with miners on one side of the gallery and
environmental activists on the other. More spectators lined the
courtroom walls and spilled out into the hallway.
The legal wrangling over Magnum’s Callisto Surface Mine is the
most recent skirmish over the enforcement and ramifications of the
latest federal court ruling on mountaintop removal.
Environmental groups want to use Chambers’ decision to limit
further damage from new mining operations. Coal operators are trying
to find ways around the ruling, to continue mining until they can
get an appeal decided by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
Richmond, Va.
On March 23, Chambers concluded that the federal Army Corps of
Engineers had not fully evaluated the potential environmental damage
before approving four other strip-mining permits. Chambers noted an
“alarming cumulative stream loss” to valley fills. The judge said
the corps “does not explain how the cumulative destruction of
headwater streams already affected by mining in these watersheds
will not contribute to an adverse impact on aquatic resources.”
Three weeks later, though, Chambers allowed Massey Energy to
continue to dump waste rock and dirt into streams at three of those
mines, because the company had already started operations there.
Earlier this month, Massey asked Chambers to also allow operations
to resume at the fourth mine covered by the judge’s original ruling.
In a related case before U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin,
environmental groups in May dropped a challenge to another Magnum
permit after learning that the company had already buried part of
the stream involved.
In the Callisto Mine situation, Magnum officials had originally
said they would not move into any new valley fills until after an
appeal of Chambers’ March ruling was decided.
Two weeks ago, Magnum lawyer Richard Verheji told environmental
groups that they planned to move forward sooner on at least one
valley fill.
The fill in question would bury 2,435 feet of a stream called Dry
Branch, court records show.
Magnum official Mike Day testified Wednesday that the mine has
run out of coal reserves and room to dump mining waste on other
parts of its operations.
The company needs to start preparing the new valley fill area in
two to three weeks, Day said, or nearly 40 workers would lose their
jobs in about two months.
Day said the new valley fill would give the company space and
reserves to operate for a year to 18 months.
Without the new valley fill, the company could also end up
shutting down an associated underground mine and coal preparation
plant, Day said. In all, 219 jobs are at risk, he said.
“These people and their families depend on these jobs to support
their families and educate their children,” Day told Chambers.
Legally, judges in such cases must undertake a
“balance-of-hardship” test. Chambers is supposed to weigh potential
environmental damage from continued mining against harm to the
company if mining is blocked.
Bob McLusky, a lawyer for Magnum, said Day testified that state
inspectors concluded the mining operation did not cause the flooding
in Gunnoe’s community. Given that, McLusky said, any claim of harm
from future mining is “speculative.”
“The real harm is to the jobs of these folks here,” McLusky said,
pointing to the miners in the courtroom.
Corps lawyers sided with the company in court papers. The
government added that a ruling to block the Callisto Mine “would
impede energy production by eliminating nearly 13 million tons of
low-sulfur content coal that would otherwise help satisfy the
nation’s growing energy needs.”
Joe Lovett, one of the environmental group lawyers, argued that
potential economic harm would be only temporary. The company could
always come back and mine the area later if it wins an appeal,
Lovett said.
“The costs of delays in mining operations are ‘purely economic
harms’ that cannot outweigh the irreparable harm from the filling of
streams,” Lovett wrote in court papers. “When the valley is filled,
it can’t be undone.”
Chambers did not immediately rule. The judge told the parties
they could file more briefs next week, and he would rule the week
after that.
To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call
348-1702.
|
