Controversial Ison Rock Ridge mining permit granted

ABINGDON, Va. – After a process lasting more than three years, a controversial surface mining permit has been granted for Ison Rock Ridge in Wise County.

The review to determine whether coal mining should take place on the 1,230-acre site beside the town of Appalachia has been one of the longest on record, said Mike Abbott, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, which announced its decision Friday.

“We are fully aware, obviously, of the high degree of interest in this particular application,” Abbott said. “We’ve worked extensively with these other [state and federal] agencies as well as with the company and the consultant that’s preparing the application to ensure that it’s addressing everything that falls under the [legal] requirements.”

All that’s needed now for mining to begin is for A&G Coal to submit its bond and fees to DMME, Abbott said.

The reaction Friday was emotion and outrage from Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, a Big Stone Gap-based environmental group opposed to mountaintop mining.

“We’re going to keep up the fight,” Sam Broach, president of SAMS, said in a written statement. “They only care about the bottom dollar, and we care about the future of our community.”

Kathy Selvage, a founding member of the environmental group, said the town of Appalachia and four surrounding communities – Andover, Arno, Derby and Inman – will be impacted by the mine.

“I am sorely disappointed that we have lost a battle, it seems, that has gone on for over three years,” Selvage said.

“It is bewildering to me that they would approve a permit that would bury three miles of streams or otherwise destroy them, that they would approve displacing over 11 million cubic yards of material that would affect members of SAMS living in four different communities surrounding Ison Rock Ridge.”

The reaction was different from Barbara Altizer, executive director of the Eastern Coal Council.

“I think it’s wonderful news,” she said Friday night, of the DMME’s announcement that the permit is ready to be issued.

“I think our region will benefit from that. It just means a stronger local economy,” said Altizer, whose organization works to educate and raise awareness of the coal industry. “When it’s over, the land can be restored or reclaimed for lots of beneficial things, anything from housing to vineyards or just flat land for industrial development.”

Abbott, with DMME, said less than a fourth of the permit area can be mined without an additional permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that would allow overburden from the surface mine to be dumped into streams in the permit area.

The Corps initially granted a fill permit but suspended it last year amid growing controversy over mountaintop mining and changing federal regulations. A final decision on a fill permit has yet to be made.

Among the areas that could be mined with just the permit from DMME is an area above the community of Inman, Abbott said.

The community, a tiny cluster of homes between two steep ridges, was the site of a tragic accident in 2004, when 3-year-old Jeremy Davidson was crushed to death in his bed by a boulder that tumbled from a mining operation into his family’s home.

The same company fined by DMME for that incident, A&G Coal, is the one granted a permit Friday to mine on the other side of the road, but Abbott said safety regulations have improved in the six years since the boy’s death.

“There will be more precautions in place there,” Abbott said.

A&G did not return a call seeking comment Friday.

While much larger mines have been proposed in neighboring states, Ison Rock Ridge has been at the center of the controversy over surface mining in Virginia in recent years.

The law allows for individuals to contest the permit decision, but requests for a hearing must be made within 30 days. Any such requests on the Ison Rock Ridge permit can be directed to Director of the DMME Division of Mined Land Reclamation, P.O. Drawer 900, Big Stone Gap, Va., 24219.

Glen Besa, director of the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club, said his organization and local citizens who’ve opposed the permit will review it to decide what their next steps will be.

“The issuance of this permit certainly demonstrates the need for stronger federal involvement in the permitting of these mountaintop removal mines,” said Besa.

We’ve got two great examples of what poor regulation does right now: one in the Gulf [of Mexico] and just a few weeks ago the Big Branch Mine at Massey, where 29 miners were killed. So we’re skeptical of the regulatory integrity of getting this right to protect people and the environment, and so we’ll be looking at the permit from that perspective,” he said.

Abbott said Ison Rock Ridge is not a true “mountaintop removal” site, a term that has specific regulatory meaning. The permit for it would technically be classified as another type of surface mining, although the term “mountaintop removal” is sometimes used as a blanket description for surface mining practices.

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