It’s Cold. It’s Hot. Weathering Heights
Between a Mountaintop and a Hard Place
Score one for the EPA.
The Environmental Protection Agency is often a beleaguered entity, taking its lumps from both environmentalists for not being stringent enough and from big business for not being lenient enough.
So Thursday’s ruling to revoke a permit for one of the nation’s largest mountaintop-removal coal mining projects was a huge — and bold — move.
The EPA ruled against a project by Arch Coal called the Spruce 1 in West Virginia, for the first time reversing a decision by the Army Corps of Engineers, which had approved the permit. The EPA said the project — the largest mountaintop removal mine ever proposed in Appalachia — would have caused devastating damage to the rivers, wildlife and communities nearby, the impact of which Zoe chronicled in November.
Unfortunately, this is not the last we’ll hear about this decision or the Spruce 1 project. Arch Coal will, no doubt, file lawsuits. And the decision will undoubtedly bring the EPA under even more scrutiny from a new Congress that is seemingly predisposed to limit the EPA’s powers. Senator Joe Manchin III (D-WVa) may lead that charge.
“Today’s EPA decision is not just fundamentally wrong, it is an unprecedented act by the federal government that will cost our state and our nation even more jobs during the worst recession in this country’s history,” Manchin said.
That mantra of jobs and money lost was echoed, predictably, by Arch Coal and other big businesses.
“We remain shocked and dismayed at EPA’s continued onslaught with respect to this validly issued permit,” said Kim Link, Arch Coal’s spokeswoman. “Absent court intervention, EPA’s final determination to veto the Spruce permit blocks an additional $250 million investment and 250 well-paying American jobs.”
Of course, neither Manchin, nor Arch Coal mentioned anything about protecting the environment, protecting wildlife, or protecting human health, all things we should care about and all part of the EPA’s mission.
What value would you put on a life? On natural beauty? On protecting wildlife? Coal Arch is arguing it is less than $250 million and 250 jobs.
A final note: Since 1996, Judy Bonds spoke out on behalf of communities around the country fighting mountaintop-removal. She passed away on January 3rd, from cancer. She began her work when her 6-year-old grandson, Andrew, scooped up dead fish from the creek one day and asked her what was wrong with them. Bonds discovered that the fish had been poisoned by debris from the mines in the mountains above where her family had lived for 100 years. Soon, she and her neighbors would have to abandon their homes altogether, and she became an activist against this form of mining. You can read her story in an obituary in the New York Times.
End mountaintop removal coal mining
Ashley Judd on stopping mountaintop removal
Sierra Club
iLoveMountains.org
700Mountains.org