GLOBAL CLIMATE DEBATE

EPA Proposes Veto of Spruce No. 1 Mine Permit

The Environmental Protection Agency says it will veto the largest mountaintop removal mining permit in West Virginia history.

The agency announced today that it will overturn Arch Coal's Clean Water Act permit to bury more than seven miles of headwater streams near its Spruce No. 1 mine, near Charleston. EPA says the operation would directly impact 2,278 acres of forestland and degrade water quality in adjacent streams.

The agency says it has been talking with the company, but those talks failed to produce an agreement that would satisfy the EPA. 

EPA has raised questions about the operation since it was first proposed in 1998 as a 3,100 acre development that that would bury more than 10 miles of streams. The Army Corps of Engineers issued a scaled-back permit to bury eight miles of streams in 2007, and environmental groups sued.

In moving to veto the permit, the EPA ruled that the company's mitigation plan did not adequately evaluate the nature and extent of its impact, and that the mine and others in the Coal River basin would contribute to the cumulative loss of water quality, aquatic systems, and forest resources.

This is the 13th time since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 that the agency has vetoed a project, and the first veto of an existing coal mining permit.

The determination is subject to a 60-day comment period before it becomes final. The EPA says its process will include a field hearing in West Virginia.

Read the EPA's proposed determination here.