42 Mountaintop Removal Permits Approved by EPA
42 Mountaintop Removal Permits Approved by EPA
May 20th, 09
*This article was posted in the Charleston Gazette on May 20, 2009. The original article can be viewed in its entirety at http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2009/05/15/rahall-epa-clears-42-of-48-permits-for-approval/.
Rahall: EPA clears 42 of 48 permits for approval
Congressman Nick J. Rahall is having a telephone press conference right now to announce that the Obama administration has cleared for approval nearly all of the mountaintop removal mining permits that the EPA has been reviewing.
As you recall, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced her agency’s initiative to more closely examine federal Army Corps of Engineers valley fill permits back in March, saying EPA was “expressing serious concerns about the need to reduce the potential harmful impacts on water quality.”
Some in the media — and a lot of folks in the advocacy blog arena — jumped out ahead of what Jackson had announced, and made out like President Barack Obama was putting a stop to mountaintop removal, with a permit moratorium. Within hours, EPA was issuing a statement to clarify what it was up to, and since then Obama officials have kind of dodged the question of what their long-term plan for dealing with mountaintop removal was going to be (this despite the president’s own statements that damage from large-scale strip mining wa “horrendous”).
In Washington, Rahall is chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, where he’s considered a strong environmentalist who has taken on all sorts of industries and exercised strong oversight over regulatory agencies weakened by the Bush administration. Back home, Rahall is generally a “Friend of Coal.” While he sometimes takes on the industry — such as arguing publicly that the post-mining development requirements of the federal strip mining law need to be more tightly enforced — Rahall also has worked hard to protect the mining operations in his Southern West Virginia district.
It seems now that the news is that Rahall, by writing this letter to EPA, has gotten this response, (both letters dated yesterday) which clarifies that EPA has given signed off on almost all (87.5 percent, to be exact) of the mountaintop removal permits that has so far been reviewed under the initiative announced in March.