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New Regulations Will Put an End to Mountaintop Mining
Obama administration proposals will make destructive mountaintop mining operations effectively impossible
The Obama administration effectively called time Thursday on one of the most destructive industries in America, proposing new environmental guidelines for mountaintop mining removal.
Mountaintop coal mining operation in West Virginia. (Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images) The move was seen as
a bold action from the White House, which has in the past disappointed
environmental organisations for failing to move more aggressively on
pollution and climate change.
But in a conference call with journalists, just an hour after the administration for the first time finalised regulations setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions from cars, officials spelled out guidelines that they acknowledged would make it virtually impossible for mining companies in Appalachia to carry on with business as usual.
The economics of mountaintop mining removal involve a highly destructive practice of blasting through hundreds of feet of mountaintop to get at thin but valuable seams of coal. The debris is removed to "valley fills", and nearly 2,000 miles of streams in Appalachia have been buried beneath such fills.
In recent years, opposition to the practice has spread from local activists to celebrities, with Robert Kennedy Jr and Darryl Hannah demanding an end to the method.
Lisa Jackson, the head of the Enviromental Protection Agency, said today it is unlikely that valley fills would meet the new standards. "You are talking about either no or very few valley fills that are going to be able to meet standards like this," she said. "What the science is telling us is that it would be untrue to say you can have any more than minimal valley fill and not see irreversible damage to stream health."
Jackson said the new guidelines were not intended to end coal mining. But she admitted it would be hard work for mining companies to meet the new standard.
"They are going to require folks to roll up their sleeves to protect water quality," she said. "We believe that they are often going to need adjustment to projects proposed because of these new guidelines."
The guidelines laid out by Jackson today would set limits on conductivity in streams near mining sites. The electrical conductivity of streams is seen as a measure of the presence of harmful pollutants.
Officials said the new policy, which will apply to all new proposals and some 79 permits now under review, would protect 95% of aquatic life in streams in Appalachia.
EPA scientists have established that streams with conductivity greater than a certain level - 500 microsiemens per centimetre, a measure of salinity - were irreparably damaged. Officials said today the EPA would block any proposed operations projected to exceed its figure.
Today's guidelines mark a gradual tightening of conditions for mountain coal mining. Last week, the EPA took the rare step of vetoing a West Virginia mine that had already been granted a permit.
Tbe EPA said the Spruce Number One mine, which was approved under George Bush administration in 2007, would bury up to seven miles of stream, and that toxic chemicals would hurt aquatic life. If approved, it would have been the largest mine in West Virginia.
The National Mining Association immediately condemned the move, saying it would cost jobs throughout Appalachia.
The Rainforest Action Network said: "The EPA has finally taken a leap to protect America's mountains and drinking water."
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34 Comments so far
Show AllI enthusiastically welcome these regulations, but I won't commend or laud Obama until I am sure the regulations get properly enforced.
I agree. We've often seen signs of proposed progress only to see them languish. Only if the EPA and Justice Department enforce the regulations will we see any progress.
I'm also perplexed. Were there not permits for such mining issued during this administration?
You hit the nail right on the head. For one thing, we already know Obama is a damned liar. For another, the enforcement arm of the U.S. EPA has been gutted for decades, to the point it's essentially powerless.
Oikos: I completely agree with your comment! If enforcement, with teeth, is NOT written into the new regulations, the new regulations won't mean very much. And, those companies who are already blasting, will be able to continue to remove the mountaintops, from what I understand.
I'll hold my breath! However, I would like to believe that this destructive enterprise will soon end!
Well, actually, this requirement is part of the permit-submittal review process, not field enforcement.
The mine operator needs to convince the agency reviewer, om paper, using credible science, that the mine operation won't create the pollutant exceedences, before a permit is issued. A shortage of EPA or State DEP personnel only results in delays in getting the permit. And without a permit, they are in violation as soon as they turn over a single spadeful of dirt. No mine dares start with out all the permits and approvals, they WOULD be shut down by the state agencies, the OSN, or MSHA, backed up by a judge. It just doesn't happen.
The mines that are working are those who that have permits under the old conditions. They won't be affected by this ruling and won't be breaking any law. And there is probably a lot of already-approved permits. That is why this is, unfortunately, only the beginning of the end.
I don't mean to sound offending, but I am frequently dismayed at how little many would-be activsts know much about the technological and organizational mechanisms in our society, and how fast their eyes glaze over when one tries to explain the NPDES permit or other regulatory process, or how a certain technology works, or how a law is made. One cannot be an effective activist until one is familiar with the process that one is working to change! God knows the other side knows all about the processes, and uses them to their advantage.
This is good news. It is not the end of MTR, as there are already a number of approved permits and work underway. But a beginnning of the end.
Maybe this will give some courage in Charleston to seriously considering HB 3279 bill to ban any liquid disposal of coal washing slurry - either in impoundments or underground.
http://www.wvpubcast.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=13392
The latter bill could possibly make my job "redundant" as the British say, but there are other jobs for civil engineers.
Also, if the new water quality regulation applies to both point sources as well, it will force at least some improvements on the Marcellus Shale drilling. The current practice of simply hauling the waste brine to the nearest town's wastewater plant - where the worst pollutants simply pass-through the plant, would no longer be allowed. All waste brine will have to be separately treated and recycled.
This regulation may affect underground mine water discharges too, for similar reasons.
I must be missing something here.
There must be a loop-hole.
This might actually be positive news.
This is good news!!! I want to believe that this will be the end of mountaintop removal mining; yet, another part of me fears that the coal companies will find a loop hole that means they will continue this evil method of mining. I sit here wondering if I have been lied to so many times by our government that I don’t believe anything they say even if this time they tell the truth?
Yet, I also know what it is like to tell the truth and no one believes you because other people don’t want the truth to come out and so they turn things around to make it look like I was lying when I wasn’t. Abused children like me know what it is like to tell the truth about the abuse and no one believes you because from the outside you are the one acting out and the abuser is calm and looks like they are the normal one and the child looks like the bad one and the sick one. Because I have been treated so harshly and judged so badly I refuse to treat others the way I have been treated, and that is why I will have an open mind and will wait until I pass judgement.
This is good news and I hope that this is the beginning of the end of mountaintop removal mining.
A couple of days after advocating offshore drilling "angers environmentalists". Coincidence?
Results are what matter, and we'll see how it looks after further consulting with coal company officials.
It's a good thing, but we should let this one simmer on the "we'll see" burner.
if they're giving ground on coal, and pissing people off with talk of offshore drilling, perhaps they're looking to gain ground elsewhere...
nuclear?
no way would anyone propose using less energy or electricity, overall...
With Obama, sometimes we get good stuff, instead of always doing the wrong thing, like in Dubya's time.
That picture of the denuded mountain is a heartbreak. 500 mountain tops have been scalped like that in Appalachia, and the hardwood timber was dumped, splintered, bull-dozed away and along with dirt, and gray ash now clogs streams and rivers. And what happened to the wildlife?
Well, let us hope that this little bit of "good news" actually means something. As someone already mentioned, it might be "the give" that will allow for all those new oil rigs in the oceans, including up around Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Arctic seas or "the give" for greater allocations for more nuclear plants than is planned already. A lot of money has been allocated for nuclear plants [horrors], but they won't be up and running for many, many years. Neither will the oil be available from drilling in the sea for a long, long time.
Why is there virtually NO money for Green energy? So much innovation and experimenting in the Green Energy field is going on. However, natural sources for energy production are being used, and I guess you can't buy and totally control the wind or the sun or the tides and free-wheeling electron particles and hydrogen, and other freely-available naturals.
I have a book of all of Obama's campaign speeches. What a fraud he turned out to be. Let's hope the new policy on stopping Mountain-top removal and polluting/destroying vital waterways is not another crumb that itself will be diced up and proven to be just diced-up crumbs to pacify the populus.
/cm
Well as one pro moutaintop mining pundit said..(Paraphrased as i do not have the exact quote" "We are actually adding VALUE to the land as it now can be used for housing and shopping malls".
Yeah, even if there were demand for shopping malls and suburbia in this poor, depopulating state, getting the land to cough up even more GHG's is the trick.
"The National Mining Association immediately condemned the move, saying it would cost jobs throughout Appalachia."
The moving concern for the local inhabitants does pull at the heart strings, though.
The god of mines is Pluto. Plutonium is the good stuff that comes out of nuclear reactors that is easy to use to atomic bombs.
It may be that justice, laws etc. will just be possible in virtual worlds.
I would not go as far as FastEddie to pigeonhole Obama as a liar but would rather say that Obama, like all politicians, has found out, after being elected, that the reform he wants is not so easily obtained. His heart is in the right place on most issues and he needs our support.
I want to know how much land area is affected by permits that are already done deals. It wouldn't surprise me if they flatten the rest of Appalachia with the ones already approved. Not all of the approved permits are digging now, are they?
So why isn't President Obama proclaiming this victory from the mountaintops?
I hope this energizes the scores of core activists who have been fighting so hard on this front to become leaders in other areas - lending their experience to strengthening of the logic in environmental battles.
Hey folks - what do think about going after agrofuels and CAFO abuses??
I wonder if rulings regarding mountaintop removal also apply to the removal of hills creating quarries deep within the earth and within 5 feet of the water table also apply?
They surely need to in Wisconsin. The plan is to take down entire hills in the area to get all the frac sand that can be taken for use in the hydraulic fracturing industry to obtain natural gas and oil. Some think of this as sand and gravel pit operations, but it not that. Strip mining, in whatever fashion it takes to get out the product is destructive to the surrounding countryside. There are many other destructive elements to this entire operation but perhaps the worst is that Canada will be reaping the harvest. The sand will be transported out of the USA and shipped all over the world.................and we will suffer the environmental consequences. Does anyone offer any asistance to Chippewa Falls, WI.? City Hall invited this company into our city limits and 2.6 million tons of sand can be processed in the City Limits. Good thinking, huh? For a measly 20 jobs! Mines will be opened in the countyside and will be shipped into our city.
My lesson is, good things may happen under good department heads,such as Lisa Jackson, the Obummer is 90% of the department heads are corporatists.
What's the catch? Obamageddon does nothing against the corporate elite.
This is misinformation.
The spurious aspect of these "guidelines" is that they will apply to "proposed operations PROJECTED to exceed" the limits set by the EPA.
So, if the mining companies want approval for a new project, all they need to do is estimate the environmental damage as lower than the EPA guidelines. Then, when they exceed the approved estimation, they will claim that they didn't intend for the devastation to happen.
I will not be surprised when the mining companies claim that they are the victims of government fraud and some dimwit corporate judge throws out the guidelines as an economic hardship.
I see this as the first step in the solicitation of a bribe. That's based on Obama's history.
Perhaps Big Coal is a little light with their "campaign contributions." The EPA rule reminds them of Obama's power, the money changes hands, then Obama's position on mountaintop mining "evolves," just as his position on offshore drilling "evolved."
This is Obama's way. Consider his 2006 bill to require nuclear power plants to notify governments in the event of radiation releases—Nuclear Release Notice Act of 2006. As reported by the NYT and others, after meeting with his nuclear industry funders—they raised millions for his campaign—Obama amended the bill’s language so that the notification requirement became just an advisory.
Obama explained the amendment by saying something about the difficulty of passing a "perfect bill." (Hey, isn't that what he said about health care reform too?)
By the way, the bill never got out of committee, but that didn't stop Obama from telling Iowa voters in 2007 that he had "passed" a bill cleaning up the nuclear power industry.
Bingo!
I doubt your precious nader could do any better. This is a corporate state, they own the system. I am sooo tired of the constant bellyaching about obama. I 'm not a big fan of his but jeez...blaming obama is like blaming your car's paint job when it won't start.
Some people here are just like the hateful right, they just want to cry and complain. Don't u all know obama is almost powerless??? And so are u and so am I.
Beg your corporate masters for mercy.
Pray that enviromental responsibility becomes profitable....otherwise there is no hope.
Some have complained here about mining companies fudging the data during the permit application process in order to obtain a permit, then going outside the regulations once the mining operation begins.
Having some experience with EPA inspectors many years ago, I know that they pull impromptu inspections during the operation with the authority to stop work if they find violations.
In regards to these new standards killing jobs, one thing that I find prevalent among mining or drilling companies is that the all sing the mantra of "shut us down and the locals will be without jobs".
The truth is that the well paid skilled workers are usually imported and the locals are left to the hard labor low paying jobs even when there are qualified locals for the skilled positions.
It is high time that the EPA is doing their job again. They were handicapped by blind ideology for the last decade. Their hands were tied by high-level appointees who denied environmental science and were sworn to bad governence.
So you don't think there's a teeny chance this is for real? God, 69 years-old and still gullible. Not much hope for me, I guess.
Ms Goldberg, which is it?
" . . . an End to Mountaintop Mining"
per your title, or
" . . . new environmental guidelines for mountaintop mining removal,"
per your article.
Not only are these not identical, they are very nearly mutually exclusive.
has mountain top removal peaked?
As a West "By God" Virginia resident(for those, and there are multitudes of people who think we are just part of Virginia) I hope that this action by Obama will stop the hideous practice of mountaintop removal. Unfortunately, I am sure that many will push against this, including the mining companies, whose money has funded many candidates. There are also those who feel that all coal is "green," as in money, not in environmentally sound, since it provides jobs. Never mind that the people who live in the valleys where the crap is dumped are suffering health problems.
I think this is a positive step, but it must be buttressed by passage of legislation such as the Appalachian Restoration Act. Jackson made clear that this regulation does not ban mountaintop mining- it requires that that future/pending projects- in the Appalachia region- meet certain tough water quality standards. It is not clear- that without the backing of a new law- whether even these changes can be reversed by a new administration that is more favorable to the coal industry. Again, these new regulations do not impact other parts of the nation.
Sadly, I also agree, that like the EPA's recent position on global warming gases- declaring carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases a threat to public health- I am unsure just how effective this will be without strong a legislative underpinning and a comprehensive energy and climate policy that truly addresses the magnitude and urgency of the problem.
So I remain- skeptical- while acknowledging that this is a positive step. Honestly- the Administration's boldest and most substantive environmental moves thus far have been opening up the Atlantic coastline to offshore drilling and funding nuclear power plants. Raising car fuel efficiency standards from last in the world to something better is constructive- but not bold environmental policy in my opinion. Increased, but still inadequate funding of renewable energy projects is positive- but again- without a comprehensive energy strategy that recognizes the true cost of coal and oil- allowing solar, wind, geothermal to immediately become competitive, and that restricts global warming gas emissions through a carbon tax- the money will be too little too late.
Our benchmark must not be the corrupt Bush administration, but rather the urgency of the problem and the health and well being of future generations. By this standard- whether the faux accords in Copenhagen or the reinvestment in nuclear energy- the administration and Congress have utterly failed in meeting the crisis.
Band aids are NOT enough.