New EPA mining rules have environmentalists jumping for joy, coal companies worrying about future

ABINGDON, Va. – New regulatory guidance issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is “the most significant administrative action ever taken to address mountaintop removal coal mining,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said Thursday.

The new rules – setting specific standards, among other things, for conductivity, or dissolved solid material, in water downstream of surface mine sites – have environmentalists jumping for joy and coal companies worrying about the future.

“The mining industry and others have asked EPA to further clarify our expectations and Clean Water Act requirements for Appalachian surface coal mining,” according to one of several documents on the issue that were released by EPA Thursday. “The guidance reconfirms and explains more fully the approach we are now following in permit reviews and provides additional assurance that EPA Regions are using clear, consistent and science-based standards in theses review.”

Ed Hopkins, director of the Sierra Club’s environmental quality program, said the standard is intended to protect water quality, not stop mining – but it’s likely to result in smaller surface mines, fewer fill sites for spoil material and less water pollution.

“That will make it much easier for EPA and state agencies to determine when a mine is exceeding clean water standards,” Hopkins said. “If a mining operation can operate without exceeding this standard, then they won’t have any problem with the guidance that EPA issued.”

In Southwest Virginia, Kathy Selvage, vice-president of the Big Stone Gap-based group Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, said the new standards will help protect the region’s water resources from the damage done by rubble from mountaintop mining.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” she said.

Bill Bledsoe, executive director of the Virginia Mining Association, said the standards will limit the location and type of mining that can occur while increasing the cost and time it takes to get a permit.

“It’s going to change the information that the mining companies have to provide or will have to provide. It’s going to change the way mines are designed, the way they’re approved, and how limiting that impact will be is yet to be seen,” Bledsoe said.

He said the EPA documents released Thursday still don’t define a clear permitting process.

Bledsoe said he believes the EPA will address future projects in a way similar to that used recently to revoke an already-issued fill permit for Arch Coal’s Spruce No. 1 Mine, a large, controversial surface operation in West Virginia.

According to EPA, the concerns raised about that mine are consistent with Thursday’s memo.

Ted Pile, spokesman for the Abingdon-based coal company Alpha Natural Resources, one of the nation’s largest, said it will take time for the industry to determine the full impact of the new rules, but it will affect all mining, underground as well as surface, and further slow an already-stalled permitting process.

“There is a lot at stake here,” Pile said. “Because the EPA wants to make wholesale change to the ground rules we’ve abided by for years, businesses will be presented with uncertainty in future mine planning. As a consequence, it could lead to a major disruption of the reliability of fuel supply to power plants that rely on Appalachian coal.”

Also, Pile said, the new rules could limit re-mining, which eliminates the scars of old surface mines from the landscape during the modern mining process.

“What we’ve witnessed since the new EPA took over in Washington is an unprecedented attack on coal mining which is already one of the most heavily regulated industries in this country,” Pile said. “The EPA is not required to consider the devastating economic impacts its actions will cause on jobs, families and small businesses that sustain the coalfield economies. It’s unfortunate, but they can take unilateral action like this without having to factor in the consequences, which may be severe.”

Bledsoe said Thursday’s EPA action adds further uncertainty to an industry already worrying about the scope of future regulation.

“I guess it would be best if EPA just said this was an April Fools’ Day joke … but that’s not going to happen,” Bledsoe said. “I guess the industry will move forward to the extent that it can.”

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