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This article originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

Board adds conditions to Fayette mine permit

Read more in Coal Tattoo

Board members added two conditions to the Powellton Coal permit. One includes a new reclamation plan as a permit condition and the other prohibits additional coal removal without a firm plan for ending water pollution violations, said Derek Teaney, a lawyer for two citizen groups that challenged the permit renewal.

During a daylong hearing Tuesday, Teaney had urged board members to overturn the state Department of Environmental Protection's renewal of the permit for CONSOL subsidiary Powellton's Bridge Fork West Surface Mine.

"It really is this simple -- not a day has gone by since it applied to renew its permit when Powellton has been in compliance," Teaney told board members during the hearing in Charleston.

Teaney represents the Sierra Club and the Ansted Historical Preservation Association, both of which appealed DEP's March 16 renewal of the nearly 465-acre permit, located between the Gauley and New rivers north of Ansted.

The groups argue that DEP could not legally renew the permit because agency inspectors had not yet lifted two notices of violation.

In one notice, DEP cited Powellton when the company altered its mining plan without agency permission, a move that left mining and reclamation activities so illegally out of sequence that it would take a year for reclamation to catch up, Teaney said.

In the other notice, state inspectors had cited Powellton for landslides that sent rocks, dirt and debris outside of the mine's legal permit area.

Teaney also argued that DEP was wrong to approve the permit when Powellton continues to have problems complying with its water pollution permit limits for iron and suspended solids.

A.M. "Fenway" Pollack, a lawyer for DEP, told board members if his agency did not renew permits for companies with outstanding water pollution violations, no mining permits would ever be renewed.

"Taken to its logical conclusion, that would mean no one gets renewal," Pollack said. "We'll just shut down mining."

Mike Isabell, manger of engineering for CONSOL, testified that Powellton officials made a good-faith effort to fix the reclamation problems and were progressing to DEP's satisfaction.

The site has three permitted surface mines, but because of market conditions, none are producing coal, Isabell said. The Bridge Fork West permit has coal left on it, but CONSOL has no immediate plans to restart surface production. The company does plan to seek permits later this year for a new underground mine on the site, he said.

According to Isabell, work at Bridge Fork West got out of sequence on its mining and reclamation plan because market conditions caused the company to mine only some of the seams it originally planned on.

Isabell also told board members his company agreed to clean up some landslides that were actually caused by old mines not operated by the company. Also, Isabell said, the company voluntarily restored parts of Rich Creek upstream from its operations that had been damaged by state Division of Highways flood cleanup activities in 2003 and 2004.

Bob McLusky, a lawyer for Powellton Coal, argued that local citizen groups wrongly targeted the Bridge Fork West operation after being upset by several other proposed mining operations nearby.

"It seems to me that the community needs a target, and we happen to be in the middle of the bull's-eye right now," McLuskey said.

Residents argue that they are worried that ongoing and future mining will harm the growing tourism business in and around Fayette County and its protected federal lands. But Isabell testified that the mining operations can't be seen from Ansted or from the New River Gorge Bridge.

During other testimony Tuesday, Teaney walked Mike Zeto, DEP's chief inspector, through a long list of water pollution violations by Powellton since the agency entered into a $121,000 Clean Water Act settlement with the company last year.

Zeto said he had not previously reviewed how many violations the company had since the settlement, or studied how serious any of the violations were. The first he saw of them, Zeto said, was when Teaney showed him a spreadsheet listing the violations.

"There are more exceedences," Zeto said. "The violations indicate a higher degree of noncompliance."

Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1702

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