Mountaintop Mining Debate Continues

This evening at 7 p.m. on the campus of Mountain Empire Community College in Big Stone Gap, Va., the Army Corps of Engineers will hold the last of two public hearings on the proposed elimination of a streamlined permit process known as Nationwide Permit 21 for surface mines in the Appalachian region. 

Nationwide Permit 21 is required for any coal company to engage in what’s become known as “mountaintop removal mining.”

Mountaintop removal is the easiest, least expensive way to reach many coal seams and it is exactly what the name implies. Heavy earth moving equipment and explosives are used to remove all of the mountain lying on top of the coal that the mine operators want. The unwanted material ends up filling the valleys that are invariably adjacent to the mountain. Many of those valleys contain streams.

That’s where the Army Corps of Engineers comes in. They have authority over just about every bit of flowing water in the United States. If you’re going to erase a stream you need their permission and for many years that permission was granted in more or less blanket form through Nationwide Permit 21.

That all changed in June of this year when the Obama administration ordered a review of this process by the Corps and the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has already weighed in, calling for a moratorium on over 70 pending permits.

At first glance it might appear that picking sides in this fight is easy for an angler. Even the tiniest stream connects to a bright web of water that laces fragile ecosystems together throughout our mountains. The very nature of flowing water commands that what is done to the least of it is done to all of it. It would be easy to assume that’s my dog in this fight. But….

I’m writing this column on a computer.  I’ll send it over the Internet to my editor. That requires electricity and 60 percent of electrons I’ll use will come from burning coal in TVA steam plants. I’ve also got a substantial interest in the opposing dog.

On Wednesday afternoon Ninth District Virginia Congressman Rick Boucher proposed a compromise. A press release from his office suggested a “three-tiered” permitting process be adopted by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Boucher believes that The Nationwide 21 Permit could be used for projects with minimal impacts. Those impacts would be determined by using specific criteria based on “the number of linear feet of stream or acreage affected and the amount and location of the fill material.”

Boucher proposed that the Corps develop an “Appalachian Regional Permit” subject to a more stringent examination in coordination with the Virginia Division of Mines, Minerals and Energy.
Projects that would exceed the yet to be established criteria of an Appalachian Regional Permit would be required to undergo an “Individual Permit Process”.

Picking a dog in this fight is tough. Of course the fact that miners sometimes call the material they displace “spoil” needs to be cranked into the equation too.