Proposed coal mining rule changes spark fierce debate

NORTON, Va. – Coal underlies more than the landscape in Southwest Virginia: It’s the lifeblood that fuels the region’s economy, identity and heritage.

But as the federal government takes a closer look at the long-term costs of cheap fossil fuel, the Appalachian coal region could see a shifting balance between jobs and the environment.

Two major issues are on the table in Washington – proposed federal legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to put a large number of surface mines on hold while the permitting process is changed and reviewed.

“The industry has never faced threats like this in its entire history,” Bill Reid, publisher and managing editor of the trade publication Coal News, said while addressing both issues in a speech at the 2009 Bluefield Coal Show.

Reid suggested the unthinkable for a coal-dependent region: If people don’t make their voices heard today, there might not be a coal industry tomorrow.

While the proposal to cap greenhouse gas emissions has generated its own share of controversy, of most immediate concern to many in the coalfield region is the EPA action because of the affect it’s already had on jobs and production.

Effectively, said Carol Raulston, spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, the process has held up every pending surface mine permit in Appalachia.

Elected officials in Virginia’s coalfield counties said the new rules could devastate the economy.

Environmental and community activists, meanwhile, say the land, communities and culture of Appalachia already are being devastated by mountaintop mining, or the blasting of mountaintops to get at the coal and the dumping of excess dirt and rock into adjacent valleys.

“This place looks like a war zone – war on the land, war on the environment, war on the water, war on the people and war on our culture,” said Kathy Selvage, vice president of the Big Stone Gap-based group Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards.

On both sides of the debate, people are watching and waiting to see what the EPA will do, because whatever the outcome, the agency’s permitting decisions have the potential to profoundly impact every aspect of life in Southwest Virginia and throughout Appalachia.

High stakes

At stake are tens of thousands of jobs, the mountaintop landscape and the region’s energy resources, which also are funneled to other areas.

According to a 2009 National Mining Association report, mountaintop mining provides 14,000 direct jobs and 60,000 indirect jobs to the Appalachian region. The average annual salary is $66,000, or 57 percent higher than the average industrial salary.

Additionally, mountaintop mining has a $12.5 billion economic impact on the region.

Wise County Administrator Shannon Scott said that represents the bulk of the economy in Southwest Virginia’s coalfield counties. In Wise, roughly half of all jobs are related to surface mining, Scott said, and 75 percent to coal in general.

Scott estimates that in addition to the $12 million to $15 million received a year in severance tax from the coal that is removed, about 75 percent of the county’s other local tax revenues, including property taxes, is “directly or very closely coal related.”

“Wise County has enjoyed stability in its housing prices, we have enjoyed stability in our tax base that many communities haven’t enjoyed, and we have enjoyed that stability because of coal,” Scott said. “If that were taken away, Wise County would not be Wise County as we know it today.”

The Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority reports that the unemployment rate in Virginia’s coalfield region, even in this down economy, is lower than that of Virginia and the United States.

“Our region is blessed with the coal and natural gas industries, growth in information technology sector jobs and the tremendous economic impact of the [new coal-fired] power plant project in Wise County,” Executive Director Jonathan Belcher said in a written statement.

Ted Pile, a spokesman for Abingdon, Va.-based Alpha Natural Resources, said the EPA’s newfound interest in the mine permitting process is affecting not only surface mines, but deep mines. Alpha is Virginia’s largest coal company and the nation’s third largest.

For example, Pile said, a fill permit needed to add a ventilation shaft to a Dickenson County deep mine was delayed three months and issued with changes that added significant costs to the project.

“Many other companies are receiving the same type of demands from EPA for operations that are not related to mountaintop removal – including deep mines, refuse fills, even access roads,” Pile said.

“Environmental groups contend that this is only about mountaintop removal, but that’s a smoke screen – this is an attack on coal mining in all its forms,” he said. “If it succeeds, it eliminates thousands of high-paying jobs, eliminates tax revenue that funds schools and municipal services, and kills economic development in the coalfields.”

Suzanne Lay, executive director of the Washington County Chamber of Commerce, said any negative impact to the coal industry would resonate throughout the region. The money generated by the coal industry accounts for up to half the economy in Abingdon, a regional hub outside the coalfields, Lay said, and as much as 30 percent in Bristol and the Tri-Cities, where many coalfield residents spend their money.

“Any time there’s a job loss in the region, the whole region’s always affected,” Lay said. “People in the counties to the west of us … I really do think we depend a whole lot on them.”

EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones, in an e-mailed response to questions, said the agency recognizes “the critical role that coal and coal mining play in the Appalachian economy” and “is ready to work with states and the coal industry to ensure that proposed mining projects comply with the Clean Water Act.”

But Pile said the two West Virginia permits released so far by the EPA “have very restrictive requirements that we believe will be difficult, if not impossible, for the operators to meet.”

Environmentalists hope the recent federal action indicates the end of mountaintop mining – and a speedy transition away from coal. They want to preserve the wind energy and tourism potential of the ridgelines, along with the homes and peace of mind for the people who live near the mines.

“It’s a no-brainer that it [mountaintop mining] destroys streams and it destroys forests and it destroys wildlife,” said Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. “But I think the reason it’s become such a compelling national issue is because of all the impact that it has on clean water and on people’s ability to stay in their homes and on people’s health.”

Fundamental shift?

Congress passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act in 1977, setting the regulatory framework that governs surface mining in the United States.

The law, which prohibits mining altogether on certain public lands, requires surface mine operators to meet environmental standards, obtain detailed permits, submit to inspections and post a bond large enough to cover the cost of reclaiming the land. The law also allows citizens to challenge proposed surface mining permits on environmental grounds.

Phillip Mullins, director of permitting and environmental affairs for the Norton-based coal company Cumberland Resources, said the regulatory changes adopted in the past year are as big as the changes that came with the surface mining act more than 30 years ago.

“Since 1977, it’s just been a gradual increase in regulations. Things have been pretty consistent, and you kind of knew what the rules were,” Mullins said. “With this administration … there’s not been one law changed. All that’s changed is the interpretation of the policies … but it’s had the effect of major legislation.”

Even worse, Mullins said, no one knows what the rules are now to get a permit, the EPA’s demands seem arbitrary and no one has legal recourse to take issue with a permitting decision.

“They change the rules as you go,” Mullins said. “There really is no boundary because they’re operating outside of the law.”

Cindy Rank, mining committee chairwoman for the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, said regulations have loosened as the size of equipment and mines has grown over the years, reflecting a successful lobbying effort by an industry with too much political clout.

Finally, she said, the EPA is enforcing the law.

“Both the surface mine act and the Clean Water Act had within them or within the regulations, provisions which would not allow this kind of mining,” said Rank, who contends the law was never designed to allow – or even contend with – the blowing up of mountains.

“The balance of the impact on the land, the water, the people – the balance isn’t there between those impacts and the value and worth of the coal that’s removed.”

Bill Bledsoe, who worked more than three decades for the state agency that regulates mining and now serves as executive director of the Virginia Mining Association, said Congress struck a deliberate balance between the environment and the nation’s energy needs when it passed the surface mining act.

Now, he said, with a change in the country’s political mood and a Democrat in the White House, federal agencies are trying to shift the balance sharply toward the environmental side – and, in so doing, risk toppling the economy not just in Southwest Virginia but in Kentucky, West Virginia and other coal-dependent Appalachian states.

The issues

Some of the hottest issues in the mountaintop mining debate are addressed in a June 11 Memorandum of Understanding signed by the three federal agencies that play a role in regulating surface mining: the EPA, the Department of the Interior and the Department of the Army.

Some regulatory changes identified in the memo are fairly straightforward; others leave unclear as to how far the administration will go. But the memo promises to “significantly reduce” environmental damage in mining communities and move the Appalachian region toward a greener economy.

Under the Obama administration, the EPA has taken a more active, hands-on role. In an Oct. 30 news statement, the agency acknowledged “a number of unprecedented steps” in regulating mountaintop mining.

Asked what the new regulatory procedures will ultimately look like, Jones wrote in an e-mail that it “is particularly interested in a regulatory process under the Clean Water Act and the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act that improves environmental protection, is consistent with the law and sound science, and increases consistency among federal and state mining programs.”

Among the issues that are part of the debate:

* Nationwide Permit 21: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is eliminating the NWP 21, a type of fill permit that allows a surface mine operator to dump the overburden, or excess material from the mine, into streams.

* Section 404: All fill permits for mining are being subjected to stronger environmental review under the Clean Water Act.

* Frozen permits: The EPA announced Sept. 11 that 79 pending surface mine permits would be held for further scrutiny.

* Stream discharge: The EPA is strengthening review of water pollution permits issued for discharge from valley fills, or the sites where mine spoil is deposited.

* Fill rules: The excess dirt and rock from a surface mine is now classified as fill, but a move to reclassify it as waste would prevent its placement in stream beds.

* Buffer zone rule: The Office of Surface Mining in 2011 will consider revising the distance required between an operating mine and a stream.

* Federal legislation: Several bills have been introduced in Congress to restrict Appalachian surface mining; none has passed.

* State legislation: Virginia has a proposed bill that would ban fills associated with mining; some non-coal-state lawmakers have proposed bans on the burning of coal from Appalachian mountaintop mines.

The controversy hit a fever pitch Oct. 15 as a public hearing erupted in shouts, boos and bouts of applause at Mountain Empire Community College in Big Stone Gap.

At the hearing hosted by the Corps of Engineers, hundreds of people gathered to express their fears over losing livelihoods if the new rules hinder or halt mining operations. The corps was seeking input on eliminating the Nationwide 21 fill permitting process.

Environmentalists were there, too, begging the Corps to protect the people who live downstream.

“Coal has been the lifeblood of our community for 100 years. It continues to be the lifeblood of our community,” said state Delegate Bud Phillips, D-Castlewood, who attended the hearing. “Let’s preserve the families and the communities in Southwest Virginia.”

Phillips said it comes down to a single question: “How can we as a community protect our jobs and our economic development, and make sure that Virginia’s energy needs are met? … How do we make sure the economics of our region are not killed or stymied?”

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