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This article originally provided by Forbes

Mountaintop Removal Permit Challenged

By SAMIRA JAFARI

Environmental groups in Appalachia have filed a lawsuit against the federal government, challenging a permit that allows International Coal Group to expand a mountaintop removal operation in eastern Kentucky.

The groups say the expansion would bury streams and creeks leading into the Kentucky River, a water source for more than a million people.

The lawsuit was filed Thursday by the Sierra Club and Kentucky Waterway Alliance at the U.S. District Court in Louisville. It alleges the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated the Clean Water and the National Environmental Protection acts by issuing a permit that allows ICG to expand its 960-acre mine in Leslie County by roughly 1,000 acres and construct valley fills.

Mountaintop removal mining is a highly efficient practice that involves using explosives and massive equipment to remove rock and dirt and expose coal seams. The debris then is dumped into nearby valleys.

"I have watched mountain after mountain reduced to rubble," said Teri Blanton, a Sierra Club member in Berea, who says she visits the ICG mine site regularly. "The area that the Army Corps has opened to mining is a green oasis rising out of the flattened and bare moonscape the company has created."

Carol Labashosky, a spokeswoman for the Corps of Engineers office in Louisville, which issued the permit, said the agency would not comment on pending litigation.

ICG plans to "vigorously defend" its permit, which was issued Monday, said company spokesman Ira Gamm in an e-mail to the Associated Press.

"The suit challenging the ICG Hazard permit is the latest in a series of attacks by environmental extremists aimed at shutting down the coal industry in eastern Kentucky and West Virginia," Gamm said. "In this case it seeks to stop future mining at a mine that has been in operation since the early 1990s."

The challenge is similar to a West Virginia case in which a federal judge ruled the corps violated the same federal laws by issuing valley fill permits for several Massey Energy Co. (nyse: MEE - news - people ) mountaintop removal mines without extensive environmental reviews. The corps had maintained that more extensive reviews weren't necessary for the permits and that mitigation techniques such as restoring streams would offset losses.

"It's ludicrous, absolutely mind-boggling to think that the Corps of Engineers actually believes that mountaintop removal mining in this region will have no unacceptable adverse impact on the environment," said Judith Petersen, executive director of the Kentucky Waterway Alliance.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Chuck Chambers, which is being appealed, has rippled through the Appalachian mining industry. Wall Street analysts routinely ask Massey, ICG and other coal companies about whether the decision will curb production. Massey, for one, has said the decision won't affect production immediately, but that its vast Appalachian reserves of more than 2 billion tons allows it to boost underground production if necessary.

Gamm said ICG also didn't anticipate an immediate impact to production, but declined to elaborate.

Kentucky Coal Association President Bill Caylor said the industry sees no end to environmental litigation.

"They don't try to work with the industry," Caylor said. "They try to sue us to stop us."

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