Victory: EPA Vetoes Major Coal Mine in Appalachia, After 12-Year Saga

Logan County, West Virginia residents are rockin' out today with news of an amazing victory for the health and safety of their community and a historic victory for the nation.

This morning, U.S. EPA made the decision to veto what would have been one of the largest mountaintop removal mines in the entire Appalachian region: Arch Coal's Spruce No. 1. The victory is the culmination of a 12-year long battle that began with one person taking a stand and ended by a push from environmental, economic justice and public health advocates around the nation and 50,000 public comments flooding Obama administration officials (this included more than 500 from Change.org members).

In 1998, a resident of Pigeonroost Hollow, one of the valleys that would have been wiped off the map with waste from the mining process, first sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the Clean Water Act permit. Today, his lawyer for those 12 years expressed huge relief. 

According to a statement today from a number of groups against the mine, this first-ever citizens lawsuit to stop a mountaintop removal mine touched off years of litigation, both over this particular mine and also many other projects that use mountaintop removal, a process that utterly and completely annihilates the surrounding landscape, air and surface water quality. The Spruce Mine, for example, would have destroyed more than 2,000 mountain acres of Appalachia and would have buried up to seven miles of important streams under an avalanche of toxic waste.

Mountaintop removal devastates the lives of people, too. If you want to understand more about this, I suggest you check out Earthjustice's "Mountain Voices" site, which has gathered the stories of people all over states affected by the practice (you can also submit your own story).

EPA's action today gives everyone hope as both grassroots and national organizations work to stop mountaintop removal mining across Appalachia. The groups said that no other past administration has stood up for environmental justice and taken a stand against the powerful coal industry as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has today. The Spruce Mine, they note, is the only project to have ever undergone a full environmental impact statement, making the fact that they are "driving entire communities to extinction" too obvious to simply ignore.

"Today, the EPA has helped to save these beautiful hollows for future generations. Unfortunately, the Spruce Mine’s impacts are not unique. Although we are grateful for the EPA’s action today, EPA must follow through by vetoing the scores of other Corps permits that violate the Clean Water Act and that would allow mountaintop mines to lay waste to our mountains and streams," said Joe Lovett, lawyer and executive director for the Appalachian Center for the Economy & the Environment.

Of course, the coal industry and the industry's beholden lawmakers expressed immediate outrage at the EPA decision and a promise to continue to challenge the decision in federal court. This is crazy. As EPA noted in its release, the agency worked extremely hard with Arch Coal to try to come up with a compromise solution for the disposal of coal mining waste. They wouldn't even come to the table.

This battle will continue to be fought, and I hope everyone stays tuned to Change.org for updates on how to take action against mountaintop removal mining. To do this please join our Facebook or Twitter accounts.

Photo credit: Silvia Alba via Flickr